It has been three years since I last visited Australia and 25 years since I last lived in Australia. A lot has changed. One of the changes is that this time there were a lot of ads on TV for child sponsorship schemes. Now these, in one form or another, have existed on Australian TV for a long time. What is different this time is the target recipients – they are Australian children.
Several different charities in Australia are seeking donations or monthly sponsorship to help Australian children living in poverty. One charity focuses on children who are living on the streets. Another shows a child and mother living in a car as they escape from domestic violence. A third shows a child who is unable to afford the correct uniform and other school staples (including, one would imagine, staples).
Child Poverty in Australia 2025 (https://cms.vinnies.org.au/media/3v3p0qsf/bcecplusvcipluschildpluspovertyplusreportplus2025plusfinal.pdf) is a report by The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre and the Valuing Children Initiative that talks about rising child poverty in Australia.
“The national rate of child poverty has risen by 0.6 percentage points in two years, from 15 per cent in 2023 to 15.6 per cent in 2025.”
“Australia’s child poverty count is estimated to have risen from 868,350 children in 2023 to over 950,100 children in 2025, an increase of 81,750 in two years.”
I find these numbers shocking.
It is hard to compare this data with data in other countries because different countries use different measures and different definitions within those measures. What is the cut off for poverty? Is it household income / parental income / asset value / etc? Is it adapted for the number of children in the household? What is the age of a child?
It is also quite hard to compare poverty in two different contexts. Is a child who is unable to have a new party outfit more or less poor than a child who is unable to participate in an after-school club, or a child who eats the same basic food every day, or a child who has a library membership but few books of their own, or a child who has to engage in paid work outside of school, or a child who is unable to attend school at all, or a child who can’t afford a bike, or a child who has to use a bike because the family has no other way of getting the child to school, etc.
In any case, it is a scandal that children live in poverty. Any children. In any context. In any country. For any measure. And while charitable giving is a very good thing (in most cases) and charitable organisations should be lauded (in most cases) for the work they do, I can’t help but think that children living in Australia (one of the richest countries in the world) should be supported by the government. This goes for poor children in the UK, the USA, and other wealthy nations too.
Some of the roles of a government should include: ensuring essential services are free at point of use; ensuring the availability of jobs that pay a decent living wage; providing training courses for those who want to upskill; providing early-stage interventions to help families with young children get set up strongly; providing benefits that are fair for those in need. And I think all of this should happen before children should be reliant on charity.
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