The poor in Australia hide behind the destitute.
To add to the list, the poor are now the subject of the "shrill" call to have them thrown into prison as domestic violence perpetrators. 30k police call outs for DV in Logan Qld last year is proof.

The poor are actually excluded from medication at all by pricing mechanisms, this is the US system at work. Two thousand people died waiting for elective surgery last year, a wait which can be usurped with available personal resources. No public housing for them, since immigrants and refugees are now seen as priority tenants. (Unless you happen to be Aboriginal, and given special poor privileges under "Closing the gap" scheme).

And when their poor arses hit the homeless street, special laws are becoming the norm to criminalise street dwelling. No escape from rent gouging merciless private land lords, with upward ever upward rents, and no hope of ever owning a home for them and their poor families as an alternative.
Virtually no defence in criminal cases in court, as the most inept lawyers swallow up meagre resources from legal aid. There is definitely only justice in the court system, for the wealthy self funded defenders, rendering the poor to unnecessary prison terms!

If you are among the poor, this country is totally F* for you on every level !

Although my PC indoctrinated brain baulks at many of his arguments, he makes a lot of sense. The poorer you are, the more you engage in behaviour that the comfortable middle class finds distasteful. Being grindingly poor is deeply distressful and leads to self-destructive and destructive behaviour. This is by no means a new phenomenon. These are the throw-away people in a throw-away society that prides itself on recycling its waste. We can no longer transport them to faraway colonies, so just keep telling them their poverty is their own fault. Punish them appropriately and all's well with the middle class world

The government should be helping the poor, both through the benefits system and by running expansionary economic policy.

But last time I checked, ISTR Senator Leyonhjelm opposed both these things.

Try not to be poor! Absolutely no effort required, new found champion for the underdog! And given your status and record, breathtaking hypocrisy?

I could change my mind, but only and when, your unmistakeable actions speak louder than you pious parsimonious pollywaffle!
Alan B.

diver dan, Aidan
Until you have understood and taken account of what government interventions are doing to cause or exacerbate the problem, your opinions in favour of any government interventions to fix or improve the problem are not valid.

diver dan
Your assumption that everything belongs to the government, and then people receive unequal distributions out of that, is not correct. People die waiting for elective surgery because government makes people pay in time instead of in money. However it's true that that doesn't mean that they would necessarily be able to afford elective surgery in a fully-privatised dispensation.

What you both need to understand is that government cannot magically conjure away the problem of poverty. The assumption that it can is wrong. Government can make society poorer, but it cannot, by forced redistributions, make society richer.

Aidan has already lost this argument over and over again. He equivocates whether any aggressive force is involved in policy, alternatively arguing when it suits him
- that it is,
- that it isn't,
- that it is but it's not aggressive, and
- that it is aggressive but it's okay.

Complete gibberish.

He also cannot defend his beliefs in the welfare state, or that printing money makes society or the poor richer, except by the simple expedient of assuming he's right without reason, and then answering any challenge by merely repeating the assumption. It's superstition.

Of course if it were were true that government has this magical power to conjure away poverty by forced redistributions, or by running the printing presses, then why not just make the tax rate 100%, or print so much that everyone in society is so rich that they don't have to work for a living?

Leyonhjelm is right. The anti-freedom freaks are wrong in fact, logic and ethics

The logic of David's article is inescapable. The poor, the underemployed, the disabled, the marginalised need their own political party. One Nation comes closest to being a political voice of the disenfranchised, but its ideological suite of policy interests is so loopy as to render it a cul-de-sac for anyone seeking change. Labor and the Greens represent the affluent inner-cities, and the Libs represent the Big End of Town. But 50% of Australians have an income of less than the median of $67,000, and that is more than enough to seep the electoral stakes - if we can get ourselves organised.