Calls for Australia to implement poverty line to measure the number of people struggling to make ends meet

Joshua and his mum Laura support calls for poverty to be measured, and income supports to be lifted above the poverty line. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)

At 16, Joshua Patrick has a lot on his plate, from helping care for his younger sister with complex health needs to being an advocate for young people's issues.

On top of all that, while still in high school, he also worries about how his family will make ends meet.

"Sometimes we're really scraping just to pay the bills and afford food for the family," Joshua says, sitting in his family's home in Northam, an hour-and-a-half out of Perth.

"Mum, actually quite often, misses out on dinner so that there's actually a portion size suitable for the rest of the family the following night.

"Even myself, I've actually somewhat developed a fear of serving up just in case there's not enough for everyone in the family."

It's because of these experiences that he's supporting a campaign calling for the federal government to join other nations in measuring, and committing to end, child poverty.

Unseen effects of poverty weigh heavily

Josh's 10-year-old sister Charlotte has complex medical needs, including cerebral palsy, seizure disorder and a heart defect.

It means Josh's mum Laura can't work, leaving the family of six to scrape by with help from a carer's payment.

The family can point to lots of outward signs of the impacting poverty is having, like paid out-of-school activities being out of the question, and letting car insurance lapse because it's too expensive.

But they say there's also a side to their poverty you can't see.

"Because we do our absolute utmost to make sure that there's always food available, I think [people] may look at us from the outside and not realise just actually how tough and how much stress and budgeting and thought … goes into making sure that my children are fed and clothed," Laura said, standing in a backyard with dying grass she can't afford to water.

"There's a perpetual underlying stress that families face.

"The stress of trying to give them the best childhood that you can possibly give them, and as many opportunities as you can possibly facilitate, on a really, really, really tight budget."

Josh says he's felt the effects of poverty throughout his schooling, while his youngest sister is stuck on a public waitlist to have learning difficulties assessed.

No official measure of poverty in Australia

Child poverty is tricky to measure, but the OECD reports Australia as having the fourteenth-highest poverty rate among countries it looks at, behind New Zealand and the United States, but ahead of the UK and Canada.

Locally, academics like Roger Wilkins have been updating the Henderson Poverty Line for decades - re-calculating the rate first set in the mid-1970s to account for increasing incomes.

"In developed countries we tend to think of poverty as a relative concept, in terms of 'are your living standards adequate, acceptable for the community in which you exist?'" he said.

It's an area where the Henderson Line can fall down, leading the Australian Council of Social Service and the University of New South Wales to estimate their own lines, based on 50 per cent and 60 per cent of  median income.

'It's able to be ignored': The Australia Institute

Their most recent estimate is that 750,000 children – or one in six young people – were living in poverty in 2019/20.

But it's just that — an estimate — something The Australia Institute is asking to change in a report released for the End Child Poverty campaign today.

The groups are calling on the Commonwealth to start officially calculating those rates — as is done in countries like the US, Canada and New Zealand.

The Institute says a poll of just over 1,000 Australians it conducted in January showed 83 per cent of people supported the idea of government measuring, and regularly reporting on, poverty.

"When we're not measuring it properly it's able to be ignored a little bit," the institute's chief economist Greg Jericho said.

"If every three months the government is updating the poverty line and being able to estimate how many people are actually living in poverty, that's a pretty tough figure to have to announce, and especially to announce that you're not doing anything to make it better."

Legislation seen as way to 'focus effort'

The End Child Poverty campaign is led by Tony Pietropiccolo, a nearly 50-year veteran of social services, including 35 years as director of Centrecare, which works on the frontline of homelessness, and child poverty, in WA.

"It impacts on their mental health, it impacts on their physical health, it stunts future opportunities for them. It often leads to intergenerational poverty," he said.

That's why  Centrecare is calling for the government to go one step further by passing a law to cement its commitment to measuring, and eventually ending, child poverty, as countries like New Zealand have done.

"It focuses effort, it places accountability on the government, but more important I think it keeps the Australian community informed," Mr Pietropiccolo said.

Legislation works: NZ Commissioner

That belief is backed up by New Zealand's experience since introducing the laws in 2018, according to the nation's Chief Children's Commissioner.

"We have been starting to make progress [to reduce child poverty], but the biggest thing here is that we have this clear accountability framework, and it's a commitment across all political parties that reducing child poverty is something that we are committed to," Claire Achmed said.

"It means that it doesn't slip out of focus when issues of the day come up."

Dr Achmed said while COVID and a cost-of-living crisis had produced an uptick in child poverty, the legislation meant everyone could see the change and how it was tracking against three and 10-year targets.

"It also means that the government is able to ensure its policies to address poverty affecting children are well-informed," she said.

Government focused on local solutions

Australia's Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth didn't respond to questions about the campaign's ideas.

"Poverty and inequality are complex issues and it's critical that we address the complicated mix of factors that push people to the margins through persistent, whole of government, long-term approaches," she said in a statement.

That included social security payments to provide "an adequate level of support to those who need it most, particularly for children in low-income families".

Ms Rishworth also pointed to a $200 million 'Tackling Entrenched Disadvantage' program which is focused on empowering local communities to address poverty of all kinds.

But Joshua and his mum hope that as well as increasing the rates of Commonwealth payments, the government takes the experience of other nations onboard.

"If you try and fix poverty without actually knowing what it is in the first place, it's going to be very difficult to understand where the issue is at the moment and how to support people that you don't even know exist," he said.