Australia - Cost of Living.

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One in seven Australians living below the poverty line, survey reveals
Michael Safi
Sunday 12 October 2014 14.18 AEST

Four in 10 Australians who rely on social welfare payments – and nearly half of people on the disability support pension – are living below the poverty line, according to a major new report.

The research, published by the Australian Council of Social Services (Acoss), found that more than 2.5 million – or one in seven – Australians were living in poverty in 2012, a slight increase on the same survey two years earlier. Nearly 18% of children live beneath the poverty line, one-third of them in sole-parent families, Acoss found.

The governor general, Peter Cosgrove, said the report revealed the problem of poverty in Australia to be “insidious and all-encompassing”. “It deprives [the poor] of their freedom and assaults their dignity. As a nation we can’t allow it to continue,” he told the launch of Anti-Poverty Week in Sydney.

The chief executive of Acoss, Dr Cassandra Goldie, said the findings were “deeply disturbing and highlight the need for a national plan to tackle the scourge of poverty which diminishes us all in one of the wealthiest countries in the world”.

Single adults on less than $400 per week, and families with two children on less than $841 each week, were deemed as living below the poverty line. (Newstart is $250 a week) More than half of Australians on the Newstart Allowance, 48% of disability pensioners and 15% of aged pensioners struggle to meet basic living costs, the report says. “This finding brings into focus the sheer inadequacy of these allowance payments which fall well below the poverty line,” Goldie said.

The maximum payment for a single person on Newstart is $303 per week, nearly 25% less than what is required to stay out of poverty.

Goldie said the 2014 federal budget – particularly its proposal to index pension payments only according to consumer price index, rather than to the more generous average weekly earnings rate – “is likely to result in higher poverty rates over time”.

Women, children, the elderly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, migrants from non-English speaking countries and people with a disability were all most likely to be living in poverty.
“These overall findings are a wake-up call for us as a community and shine a spotlight on the current policy direction of federal government,” Goldie said.

New analysis released on Friday of the government’s budget found the impact of deep cuts to government spending “falls most heavily on low and middle-income families with children”.

Fifteen of the 16 hardest-hit electorates were held by Labor, including Jason Clare’s western Sydney seat of Blaxland, where households would be $990 worse off each year. The seats held by Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey and Julie Bishop were all largely unscathed by the harsh budget. Voters in Turnbull’s inner-Sydney city of Wentworth would lose less than $70 in 2017, the analysis found.

Hockey told ABC television on Sunday that “variations” in the way budget measures were felt were inevitable. “We’re reducing government expenditure, and government expenditure is going to be less in higher-income areas than it will be in areas that have a lower income,” he said.

But he disputed the “stereotype” that the budget hit working-class Labor voters while sparing Liberal electorates, pointing out that the Coalition held a number of low-income seats, and some of the country’s wealthier electorates voted Labor. “Frankly the stereotype is easy to create but its not necessarily right,” he said.

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Survey finds 1 in 8 Australians cannot afford to pay electricity bill
Amy Bainbridge
Mon 13 Oct 2014, 7:31am

A survey of Australian households has found one in eight people cannot afford to pay their electricity bills.

The Ernst & Young survey of households in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland showed more than one in 10 people have missed more than three bill payments in the past 12 months.
The proportion of customers often or occasionally worried about being able to pay their electricity bill has also remained consistently high at 70 per cent since the same survey last year.
Earlier this month, the ABC revealed some household bills had gone up as much as $1,000 in the past five years.

Ernst & Young's Jenny Young said the survey sought to gauge how people are coping with rising energy costs. "Electricity prices are continuing to be a cause of financial stress for Australian consumers," she told the ABC. "Most are citing the reason for missing a bill to being unable to afford the payment, so that was the single biggest reason for not paying on time. "It is causing concern, a lot of people are very worried about financial stress in general but electricity bills are one of the key financial stressors."

Federal Parliament has announced a Senate inquiry to investigate whether the so-called gold plating of Australia's electricity networks is artificially driving up the cost of electricity. Up to 60 per cent of some household electricity bills can be attributed to network costs, which is the amount passed on to consumers for maintaining infrastructure such as poles and wires. The Energy Retailers Association of Australia (ERAA) said there were hardship programs available to consumers who were suffering financial stress. "Your energy retailer is there to help when you have payment difficulties. Whether it's a short term difficulty or a longer term hardship, your retailer can help tailor a payment plan," ERAA chief executive Cameron O'Reilly said. "If you think you are unable to pay your energy bill, please to talk to your retailer as early as possible to see what options are available. "This may include the retailer arranging an extension on bill payments if necessary, creating affordable payment plans to help get back on track, providing financial counselling or making sure you get full entitlements from government agencies such as Centrelink."

The survey also found nine in 10 people said they had, or would consider, switching to solar energy.
"The interest in solar is very much driven by the opportunity to save money and that was by far and away the most dominant reason ... to switch to solar," Ms Young said. "Not everybody does make the switch to solar because of the cost of installation but there is significant interest around solar." Yet if you can't afford your electricity bill how can you afford to spend on solar infrastructure.

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Sydney house prices push families north to Queensland
Date October 13, 2014 - 8:12AM
Bellinda Kontominas

As Sydney house prices rise and traffic congestion worsens, some enterprising workers are moving north to seek the lifestyle they want in Queensland while continuing their careers in NSW.

Belinda Kerr and Michael Trehy discovered the best of both worlds after moving in January from Killarney Heights in Sydney's northern suburbs to Kiels Mountain near Maroochydore on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Each Tuesday Ms Kerr flies to Sydney for two days to run her recruitment company from its Surry Hills office, leaving her husband to care for their eight-year-old twins Molly and Ivy. She works from home on Mondays and Fridays. Oh yeah this is gonna solve the problem for most Australians...

Ms Kerr said leaving her family each week is a huge sacrifice that "pulls at the heartstrings" but it has allowed them to afford to buy a family home, previously out of reach in Sydney.
"Every year in Sydney was another year that we were paying rent ... and [house] prices were going the wrong way for us," Mr Trehy said. "I think that was the clincher, just realising we could have a similar lifestyle up here to Sydney without the pressure of having a huge mortgage." The couple bought a four-bedroom home with an in-ground pool and separate studio accommodation for when family come to stay. They paid $670,000 in October last year.

"If we'd bought this in Sydney it would have cost at least double, maybe $1.5 million," Ms Kerr said.
They did the sums and, even with the cost of weekly flights and two nights' accommodation, it worked out cheaper to buy in Queensland and for Ms Kerr to work in Sydney than to pay a Sydney mortgage.
She now spends less time commuting than she did when travelling to work in Sydney five days a week.

The family is part of a growing number of people living and working in separate cities through fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) arrangements, according to Graeme Hugo, professor of geography at the University of Adelaide. "I think it's an emerging trend," he said. "It does appear as though housing affordability, or availability within a certain price range, is really becoming limited for even middle-income earners, so it's one of the ways of adapting. In the past people have adapted by moving further and further out to the suburbs; this is the logical extension of that." Professor Hugo said professional couples unable to find good jobs in the same city were also commuting interstate.

FIFO work has been documented extensively in the mining industry. However, census data tells only part of the story for white-collar workers. In 2011, of those working in greater Sydney on census night, more than 3400 lived in Queensland and 3300 in Victoria. Of these, it is not clear how many were genuine FIFO workers, as those counted may have been at a one-off interstate meeting, or may have been working from home on census night. To help rectify this, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is considering including a question in next year's census about whether people have second homes.

The census also examines people's modes of transport to work, but does not include plane travel as an option. This omission showed that outside the mining industry, fly-in-fly-out work is still an emerging trend, social demographer Mark McCrindle said. "It was never possible in the past but now, with the availability and affordable cost of flights, the ability to use that travel time to work, and the increase in technology, people are able to work a couple of days from home and work interstate for a couple of days. "And because there's such a massive house price difference across some of our capital cities, that does make the fly-in-fly-out option actually viable."

That price difference allowed Sid Shukla, his partner Simone Matteson and their three children to live mortgage-free after they sold their home in Earlwood, in Sydney's inner west, last year and bought in the Queensland suburb of Doonan, near Noosa. "Financially it was a no-brainer," said Mr Shukla, who spends three days each week in Sydney working at his video production company. "In Sydney we pay all these millions of dollars for our property and we've got to live under the flight path with terrible roads and traffic. And we just felt like, why are we pushing ourselves so hard in Sydney just to be able to live? There must be a better solution," Mr Shukla said.

The couple bought their four-bedroom Doonan home for $575,000, plus a studio apartment in Chippendale, around the corner from his office – and they still came out ahead.

The move also offered a more laidback lifestyle to raise their children and Ms Matteson is under less pressure to return to work as a teacher until the children are older. "Even if I'm stressed for a day or two [in Sydney], I'm back up north in a couple of hours, and it feels so close it's almost like I'm in Sydney's northern beaches."

While Ms Kerr and Mr Shukla own their own businesses, both say it would not be difficult for many employers to allow their workers the flexibility required to live and work in different states. "If I can do it, anyone could potentially do it," Mr Shukla said. "I just don't think they've thought outside the square."

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Charities can't cope with increasing demands, says report
Date October 12, 2014 - 3:40PM
Anna Patty
Workplace Editor

Charities are pessimistic they will be able to meet an expected growth in demand over the next 12 months, a new report reveals.

PricewaterhouseCoopers found 84 per cent of more than 300 chief executives it surveyed in the not-for-profit sector doubted they would have the necessary resources.

PwC partner Mark Reading said despite a 60 per cent increase in government funding over the past six years to $41 billion a year, 40 per cent of the sector believes social outcomes have deteriorated.
"These results make clear that the way government is currently funding charities isn't working," Mr Reading said. "Funding is currently awarded on an ad-hoc basis with no clear rationale." Mr Reading said constant policy changes including "the deeply unpopular move" to abolish the new charity regulator had made it impossible for the sector to properly plan for the future. He said overstretched federal and state government departments were increasingly relying on charities to deliver social services. "Funding is not allocated based on performance, which means it doesn't always go to organisations who can actually deliver social outcomes," he said.

"The sector wants long-term strategic investments by governments, focused on delivering better outcomes. Above all they want certainty – in both funding and policy."

Andrew Young, chief executive officer at the PwC Centre for Social Impact, which conducted the research, said not-for-profit sector CEOs expect no improvement in their ability to deliver services to meet demand over the next 10 years. "On average, they expect it to worsen," he said. Of those surveyed, 71 per cent said they do not believe funding and other incentives reward the most effective social service providers. "These are not inspiring findings considering how much Australia relies – and will increasingly rely – on charities to deliver social outcomes. We face huge challenges with demographic shifts and continue to see entrenched social issues with little or no positive change, or where things are getting worse," Dr Young said.

Dr John Falzon, chief executive officer of the St Vincent de Paul Society, has previously said charity groups should not be expected to fill the gaps left by the federal government. "It is just not good enough to say charity will be there to fill in the gaps, because charity is not the answer," he said.
"Charities like Vinnies will always be there for people, but this is a real lack of strategic thinking and vision from any government that says let charities sort it out. "Government has a responsibility to do what markets cannot and that is provide equitable access to those essentials of life such as housing, education and employment."

The PwC report said the not-for-profit sector is the fastest growing part of the Australian economy, having grown at almost twice the rate of the mining sector in the last six years. In 2012-13, its turnover was more than $100 billion. The report says simply increasing funding is not the answer. "More than anything else, CEOs want the sector to be taken seriously," it said. "This means fixing the way governments currently engage with [the sector]."

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FIFO article comparo...

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ACOSS 2014 poverty report key findings:

Poverty line: single adults on $400 a week; couple with two children on $841 a week
Poverty rate: 2,548,496 Australians (13.9%) living below the poverty line
Child poverty: 602,604 children (17.7%) living below the poverty line
Income support: 40.1% of people on social security living below the poverty line
Unemployed: 61.2% of unemployed people living below the poverty line
Working poor: 33.2% of people below the poverty line came from a household with wages as their main income
Overall growth in poverty: Poverty increased between 2010 and 2012 by nearly 1%, from 13% to 13.9%

I'm guessing Monk is going to blame Abbott for that last one

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Sir Peter said the problem of poverty did not discriminate.

He told the launch of Anti-Poverty Week in Sydney poverty was insidious and all encompassing because it deprived people of a choice.

'It deprives them of their freedom and assaults their dignity. As a nation we can't allow it to continue,' he said on Sunday.

The risk of poverty is greater outside capital cities in most states and territories (especially in Queensland and Tasmania), in part due to higher unemployment in regional Australia, the report says.

The exceptions are NSW and Western Australia, where very high housing costs in the capital cities have increased the risk of poverty.

The poverty line for a single adult is $400 per week yet the maximum rate of payment for a single person on Newstart is $501 a fortnight.

When Rent Assistance and other supplementary payments are added, it's only $303 per week.

That's $97 per week below the median income poverty line.

The report found those most likely to be living in poverty are people who are unemployed (61.2 per cent) and those in households that rely on social security as the main source of income (40.1 per cent), particularly on Newstart.

- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national ... d48Pm.dpuf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Super Nova]

I hear that Australia's cost of live is just going up and up from aussie's I have met here.

Housing prices just are out of balance to the rest of the world.

Something is going to give..... get ready.

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been ready for years.... everything is still going up.