Opinion & Commentary
There's no conspiracy about poverty, there's just the facts
It's an old tactic in politics. When you want to drown out your opponent's arguments, don't address what they say, just trash their reputation.
Wayne Swan's article in The Age (8 May) is a classic example. He says he wants to 'crusade' for a 'fairer Australia,' but he's having trouble recruiting supporters. He thinks this is because a 'new elite' (or a 'conservative establishment' - he's not sure which) is 'conspiring' against him, and at the heart of this conspiracy is the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS).
Mr. Swan claims that '2.5 million Australians [are] living below the poverty line,' but that other people - even those on the left - are not taking his concerns seriously. His explanation for this is the existence of a 'conspiracy' against him.
For the last two years, CIS has been publishing material showing that poverty measures are often misleading and that estimates of the number of Australians in poverty have generally been exaggerated. Mr. Swan doesn't like what we have been publishing - it undermines his crusade. Hence his attack on us.
He does not address any of our evidence or arguments. Nor does he bother defining what the poverty line is, nor even quoting sources to defend his 2.5 million estimate. Rather, he criticises us for undermining the sorts of claims he wants to make.
He describes the CIS as a 'right-wing think-tank' and complains that commentators like us 'take their cue directly from John Howard's office.' He says our resources 'dwarf' those of the welfare lobby and that we are at the centre of a 'well-funded industry' whose 'sole purpose' is the 'destruction of those indicators that bring attention to growing inequality and poverty.'
CIS is used to these kinds of attacks, but Swan's latest broadside is so extraordinary that it really has to be answered.
CIS is not a 'right-wing' think-tank, nor does it take its cue from John Howard, or from any other politician. The 'independent' in our name means we are politically non-aligned. We take no government money precisely to avoid the 'bullying' which Swan says happens when voluntary organisations accept public money.
The 'independent' in our name also means we take orders from nobody. We are funded by sales, membership subscriptions and donations from individuals, corporations and foundations. We are happy to accept money from anybody (except government), but never with strings attached. After a lifetime of political wheeler-dealing and faction-building, Mr Swan perhaps finds it hard to imagine that people still exist who owe no allegiances or political favours and who simply say whatever they think is right and true. As for the fanciful notion that our resources 'dwarf' those of the welfare lobby, oh that it were true! ACOSS nationally has an income in excess of $1 million, nearly half of which comes from a government grant. Affiliated to ACOSS are dozens of other welfare organisations, also in receipt of taxpayer funding, many with their own 'research and policy' units and media officers spending further thousands of dollars annually on reports and press releases. And backing them up are the social policy academics, nearly all committed to higher welfare spending and higher taxes, and every one of them depending on the drip-feed of government dollars to fund their salaries and research.
Against these massed ranks of state-funded welfare lobbyists stands the CIS with a total budget this year of $1.6 million (which funds much more than just our social policy work). Who, then, is David, and who Goliath?
Swan claims that, by 'denying the problem' and 'destroying the indicators,' CIS has brought about a 'conspiracy of silence about poverty and inequality in Australia.' In reality, however, we have opened up the debate over poverty and inequality rather than shutting it down. Furthermore, our criticisms of the sorts of poverty indicators that Swan wants to use have been fully vindicated by others.
Last year, for example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics admitted that its figures for the bottom ten per cent of incomes - the very data to which people like Swan keep referring - were so 'misleading' that researchers should stop using them. And only last month, the left-wing Social Policy Research Centre (which had earlier dismissed our criticisms of these statistics as 'astounding') belatedly admitted that, 'Uncritical use of the data may give rise to flawed estimates of the extent of poverty and inequality in Australia.'
All of which prompts the question: how far has the conspiracy against Crusader Swan extended if the ABS and even the SPRC now agree with us that his claims about poverty do not stand up?
Peter Saunder is Director of Social Policy Research at The Centre for Independent Studies.
