Awkward facts

Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 11:00

MARK LATHAM: "In recent years there has been a backlash against some of the poorest people in our society. The reason for this backlash is simple ... [Australians] object to helping people who are cheating the system." <http://www.marklatham.com.au/speeches.php?speechID=28>

LATHAM: "Welfare dependent migrant communities in middle and western Sydney, for instance, are a product of the poor settlement practices and low-skill migration of the 1970s and '80s." <http://www.labor4refugees.org/news.php?page=showcomments&id=76>

AWKWARD FACTS: "Over 20 years the social security system has become increasingly harder ... We are a low taxing country compared with the other 30 OECD countries, we are the sixth lowest, which means that we have got a really tight, targeted, lean social security system... So it is very tough because the payment levels are really low, around about the poverty line...

"More and more people are on social security payments. The migrants we brought out here in the 1950s we used them up as factory fodder and then we spat 'em out in their 50s with bad backs and the like. ... they are on disability payments." — Workers Online interview with Michael Raper, Welfare Rights Centre, < http://workers.labor.net.au/features/200311/a_interview_raper.A HREF="mailto:html"><html>.

LATHAM: "Karl Marx was wrong. The trouble with assets and capital is not that they exist but that too few people have them. Opportunities for saving and owning assets should not be restricted to high-income earners. They should be universally available. I believe in a stakeholder society in which all Australians are encouraged to save and take an ownership stake in the economy." — < http://www.marklatham.com.au/speeches.php?speechID=28>

AWKWARD FACT: Despite the much talked about rise in share ownership in Australia, according to an 2002 ASX study () only 37% of Australian own shares directly up 2% since 2000. Some 42% of these only own $10,000 or less worth of shares while 17% own $100,000.

From Green Left Weekly, December 10, 2003.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.