Baygon,

I have my reservations about using relative poverty. Firstly having travelled through Africa, I have seen first hand what real poverty is, and relatively, those living on Newstart here in Aus would be middle class.

I saw an article several years ago where someone was using a figure like the bottom 10% of society is in poverty, then complaining that the number of people in poverty wasn't improving. What an idiot.

Poverty of the mind and body comes from unemployment. The best that the country can do is to reduce the roadblocks to employing the least skilled or abled, even if it is at below award wages.