Poverty: lazy louts or in need of aid?

In contrast, the CIS and its supporters in the Coalition Government and the media adhere to a neo-liberal ideological agenda. This means that they view the economic inequality produced by the operation of the free market as by-products of the engine of economic and social progress. They are firmly opposed to the redistribution of income from the rich to the poor on the grounds that it will unfairly limit the freedom of those who create wealth, and encourage laziness and other forms of unproductive behaviour.

The CIS attributes poverty to behavioural explanations such as incompetence, immorality or laziness. Welfare recipients are constructed as fundamentally different from the rest of the community. The CIS rejects the welfare state and any other forms of government intervention that provide extra resources to the poor on the grounds that such schemes produce poverty instead of relieving it. Instead, they favour reliance on private charities, families, and what they call “self funded benefits and services”.

The key strength of their agenda is that their prescription for less government spending is likely to prove politically influential, given it fits comfortably with the current global drive for lower taxes and reduced social expenditure.

The key weakness is that the CIS seems to have little, if any, actual experience of working with and assisting poor Australians. Their proposed solution to poverty appears to be completely utopian, likely to produce enormous social damage, and based solely on ideological preconceptions rather than any genuine desire to improve the life chances of the poor.

It is likely that we will hear more verbal assaults around both the accuracy of poverty statistics, and the legitimacy of those who produce such research. But the question of how we measure poverty is arguably a mere distraction from the fundamental division over how we define the causes of poverty and identify potential solutions. Those who view poverty as produced by structural inequalities will continue to advocate increased government intervention to promote greater opportunities for the disadvantaged. And equally those who view the poor as largely to blame for their own predicament will continue to urge that the free market be allowed to allocate resources without undue interference.