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How do Australian policymakers frame the causes of and policy solutions to poverty? A critical examination of Anti-Poverty Week parliamentary debates from 2012 to 2021
Mendes, Philip Roche, Steven
Mendes, Philip
Roche, Steven
Author
Abstract
In recent decades, poverty has increasingly been marginalised in Australian policy discourse. One strategy used by social justice advocates to revitalise a poverty policy agenda has been the annual Anti-Poverty Week campaign, which aims to stimulate community debate around policy innovations to relieve poverty. This paper analyses the Commonwealth parliamentary debates around Anti-Poverty Week for 10 years from 2012 to 2021. We analyse and compare how politicians from three political parties – the Liberal and National Party Coalition, the Australian Labor Party and The Australian Greens – identified the key statistics for and groups in poverty, their sources of evidence, the consequences of poverty for those affected, the causes of poverty including whether or not disadvantage was linked to wider structural inequities, and the framing of poverty and potential policy solutions. Some conclusions are drawn from these findings about potential strategies for reinvigorating the poverty debate.
Keywords
Anti-Poverty Week campaign, poverty, parliamentary debates, social justice advocacy
Date
2023
Type
Journal article
Journal
Australian Journal of Social Issues
Book
Volume
58
Issue
3
Page Range
592-606
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Allied Health
Faculty of Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Collections
Relation URI
DOI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open
Notes
© 2022 The Authors. Australian Journal of Social Issues published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australian Social Policy Association.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.