SVDP Australia – Real welfare reform needs guts

John Falzon, Chief Executive Officer of the St Vincent de Paul Society National Council of Australia, writes that according to a recent OECD report Australia has one of the lowest unemployment benefits in the developed world.  Since the mid-1990s, people experiencing unemployment have been increasingly disadvantaged compared with average weekly earners and the aged pension recipients. A single Newstart recipient is forced to survive on $34 a day, a battle that is waged from below the poverty line. Social, and political exclusion is a systematic action that is done to people. It is not something that people happen into by means of bad luck, bad choices or bad karma. It is manifested in individual lives as a unique intersection between personal narrative and the axes of history and structure. [Read More]