Logie Jan: Financial Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16288. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): There are 285000 children in this country living in poverty. That is because of this Government’s decisions. That number boggles my mind. I grew up in a city of around 45000 people. To think that six cities’ worth of children in this country are now living without the basics offends me at a very deep level. About one in four of our children are now living in poverty. They are our children and their poverty is our poverty. As already mentioned two out of five of these children have parents who are working. To quote—as has been quoted many times in the last year or so in this House—the words of Nelson Mandela: “Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity; it is an act of justice. Like slavery and apartheid poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”—that is by the actions of the Government its policies and budgets; policies and budgets that we have not seen from this Government.This Government has chosen not to measure poverty. It has knowingly hidden the real levels of poverty from us while it happily used figures that it knew were incorrect to justify its performance. Today in this Committee it has listed off all the money it is spending on these children—these lucky children—and told us that the Salvation Army has suggested that the Government spend less on children. That is disingenuous and frankly offensive. This Government has taken $1.1 billion a year from all of us and given it to the top 10 percent of income earners. That is $1.1 billion a year it could have used to reduce poverty to feed our kids and make sure that they are warm and healthy. The 285000 children without the basics cannot be dismissed with misinformation.Under this Government there are 45000 more children living in poverty than when this Government came to power. That is an entire city’s worth of children without enough. This Government has told us child poverty is a problem of the parents. Then it has told us the country cannot afford to pay family carers a legal wage. It has told us it cannot afford to extend paid parental leave. It has told the courts that rest homes should not be required to pay women equal pay for work of equal value. It has reduced the bargaining powers of workers. It has made it more difficult to get disability support. It is not informing beneficiaries of their protections and entitlements. How can parents help their children when this Government is creating barriers to the basic entitlements and undermining the ability of those in work to look after themselves and their children?I hear from far too many sole parents that they are trying to look after their children but feel ashamed for not being in paid work. I have heard of parents having to choose between buying medication for their children and food and worrying that if they choose food then there may be a notification to Child Youth and Family for neglect. That is the level of pain that this Government is responsible for and it is not the vision of an inclusive society that this country was built on.Children have told us directly that they really worry when their parents are stressing out about not having enough money and school lunches are not going to solve that. Children have told us that they think that this Government is giving money to the rich people and that those rich people are spending it on things they do not need. We need to listen to the wisdom of our children. Poverty may feel inexorable to those burdened by it but the truth is that we can reduce it. It is a matter of values.