The left has deserted Hawke's famous promise

While increased dole payments, for example, might satisfy a desire to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, they didn't address the root causes of poverty. And in the long run, if the economy was not growing, such income transfers were unsustainable anyway. As uncomfortable as it was for them, ultimately the left was forced to acknowledge a basic truth: the single biggest cause of poverty is unemployment.

As this dawned upon the left, it fell silent. And for the past 20 years the left has more or less stayed silent on poverty. It is noticeable that today those in the ALP who express a concern about poverty are predominantly from the party's right. This was not the case in Bob Hawke's time.

Since 1987, the politics of good causes in Australia has been turned upside down. The reality is that the people who have done the most to overcome poverty have been John Howard and Peter Costello.

Unemployment at a 30-year low is more than a statistic. Having a job provides measurable benefits to individuals and their families. The fashion of the left to ignore low unemployment as mere "economics" reveals just how far removed it is from the causes it once fought for.