Stats and stones: Vinnies’ report from the trenches on the poverty wars

Pope Paul VI also quoted St Ambrose approvingly:

You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.

These teachings are faithful to their scriptural roots, planted in the soil of justice:

Woe betide those who enact unjust laws and draft oppressive legislation, depriving the poor of justice, robbing the weakest of my people of their rights, plundering the widow and despoiling the fatherless! (Isaiah 10:1-3)

He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:53)

Vinnies is a charity. We will always be there, alongside the many wonderful charitable organisations, large and small, to assist the people who have been left out or pushed out of the economic prosperity that Australia has enjoyed.

Charity, however, is no substitute for justice. The scriptures, the Church’s teaching and the tradition of the St Vincent de Paul Society are all unequivocal in their call for us to pursue justice.

In view of this imperative we produced our latest Issues Paper. This is what we stated:

In terms of private incomes (a measure cited by the PM about which we have reservations since it ignores those with no private incomes) it is hardly a moderate increase in inequality when the lowest 10 per cent get an increase of $26 and the highest 10 per cent get an increase of $762. On this measure, high incomes rose more than the bottom incomes by almost 3,000 per cent. On any reading, it is a mathematical illusion to suggest that the bottom 10 per cent are the winners.

The ABS Survey of Income and Housing demonstrates that between 1994-5 and 2002-3, low incomes (real mean weekly income of $269) experienced a 12 per cent rise ($32.28); middle incomes (real mean weekly income of $449) experienced a 14 per cent rise ($62.86); and high incomes (real mean weekly income of $975) experienced a 16 per cent rise ($156.00).

Contrary to the claim that the movements in inequality are not statistically significant, the ABS commentary states, “The statistically significant movements are the increase in the P90/P10 [the ratio between the top and bottom 10 per cent of incomes] and the decline in the share of the total income going to persons with low income”.

The Gini coefficient is used to measure income inequality. At zero, everyone has the same income. At 1.0 one person has all the income while everyone else has nothing. Australia’s Gini coefficient deteriorated from 0.296 in 1996-7 to 0.309 in 2002-3. When we presented this datum we were accused by the CIS of wanting to highlight the deterioration by choosing the lowest point (1996-7) rather than full data set available in the ABS publication.