From Crikey
Poverty doesn’t last even one news cycle in Australia’s Gilded Age
Aidan Lewis and Loire Hunter
“In Australia today, wealth is shared just as unequally. The richest 10% of households hold almost half of all wealth (46%), while the majority of Australians (60%) possess only 17%. Almost 15% of Australians live below the poverty line after taking housing costs into account — that is 3.3 million people in poverty, more than 750,000 being children.
“Our nation’s wealth is being used to camouflage the modern adaptation of the poorhouse; people unable to support themselves struggling to survive, only this time without any guarantee of shelter. A struggle often framed in terms of economic burden, not human suffering … As with America at the time, yellow journalism has flourished in Australia — the insipid, captured, fourth estate that elevates sensationalism above science