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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-10-18 Daily Xml
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THE BIG ISSUE

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (16:47): I was very pleased to hear on the radio in the past week the promotion of a publication that I am really keen on supporting, that is, The Big Issue. I hear that Kate Ellis (the member for Adelaide and also a minister) and Peter Goers are going to go out on the hustings and sell The Big Issue to people in the community.

One of the reasons I am a big fan of The Big Issue is that it is an independent current affairs and entertainment magazine that has really been important for a number of people I have spoken to who sell it, to help them get back into the workforce and give them confidence about being out in the community.

The vendors keep half the cover price of the magazine they sell and also receive training and sign a code of conduct and, obviously, wear identification. There is actually a warning in The Big Issue that if you are approached by anyone requesting a donation, as opposed to buying the paper, not to do so, because that is not how money is distributed.

I was also pleased, having been associated with The Big Issue and being a person who has bought it for many years, that South Australia has actually played an important role in Australia regarding The Big Issue. One of the distributing partners is the South Australia Premier's community benefits fund, and also listed as principal supporters are the Adelaide City Council and the government of South Australia, particularly through the Social Inclusion Unit. They know, and I think we know in this place, that this is a way of connecting people who in the past have been dissociated from paid work or gone through hard times and getting them back into the community.

The other reason, I suspect, that Kate Ellis and Peter Goers in particular are going to be selling The Big Issue is to acknowledge the fact that in Australia we will hold Anti-Poverty Week from 16 to 22 October, and I note that yesterday, 17 October, was United Nations international anti-poverty day. Unlike a lot of people, I was really impressed when prime minister Hawke said that his aim was that no child would live in poverty. A lot of people scoffed at that and thought it was impossible and also a bit sentimental, but I must say I still think that we need to have those goals, not only in Australia but also on an international level.

The Big Issue is part of an international network of street papers. This is an idea that, certainly in Australia, we adopted from the UK. I understand that there are 110 papers in 40 countries which have similar programs to our The Big Issue. A big campaign going on through that international network of street papers is that poverty should be made illegal, which is again a very lofty sentiment but one that I think we need to look at as well. It is argued that this may seem a ridiculous claim but the first attempts to make slavery illegal were along the same lines. Whether that is a good comparison or not I do not know, but it certainly has the sentiments that I support.

I was a little bit concerned in this edition of The Big Issue to read an article that the great divide, the gap between rich and poor, has got bigger. ABS statistics tell us that 20 per cent of household incomes in 2009-10 accounted for 62 per cent of household worth; the poorest 20 per cent of households accounted for 1 per cent of household worth. This means, according to Alan Atwood, who wrote the article, that one-fifth of society has claimed two-thirds of the cake and the other fifth shares a very slim slice—or some could say the crumbs. He goes on to say that there is some good news for poor people: between 2005-06 and 2009-10 their average worth went up by 16.8 per cent.

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