Dr Angela Jackson says the 2024 federal budget should anticipate rising rates of domestic and family violence (DFV), the negative impacts of poverty on the early years of a child’s development, and insecure housing.
Jackson has warned that unless the federal government’s highest priority is given to more equitable economic policies dealing with income support, social housing, and childhood development incomes, people will not be the only ones to suffer — the economy will, too.
“We allow what is, at best, dubious economics and views about what those out of the labour market deserve to deny children that would benefit the most from early childhood education and care access,” the lead economist for Impact Economics and Policy recently told an audience in Canberra.
“Each year we delay providing these children access, we reduce future GDP by at least $11.5 billion through the very well established connection between school completion, which lifts productivity through participation and life.”
As more Australian families struggled with the cost of living and came under financial stress, Jackson said government policies concerned with protecting children from long-term impacts should be elevated.
“Growing up in a household that is under financial stress … reduces rates of school completion and increases rates of poor mental health,” Jackson said.
“Lower levels of parental education, higher levels of financial stress, and less access to services all contribute to undermine the development of children in low-income households.
“Access to quality early childhood education and care is the policy with the strongest evidence for improving outcomes — particularly for children from lower-income families.”
Four in five children who had the benefit of early childhood education and care are found to start school “developmentally on track”. Of those who do not access these services, three in five are not on track.
“Children who start behind, they never ever catch up. They fall further and further behind as they progress through school,” Jackson said.
“In Australia, we proactively and by design exclude the most vulnerable children from accessing the recommended three days of early childhood education and care.
“We do this through limiting access to subsidised early childhood education and care based on the work-activity of parents in an attempt to incentivise labour force participation.”
But Jackson said other countries around the world, including the US, Canada, Sweden and South Korea, acknowledged this trend and were delivering early childhood education and care programs to ensure fewer disadvantaged children were left behind.
Several expert groups want Australia to abolish the activity test to be abolished and are agitating for major reforms to give more children access to a minimum of three days of education and care.
From the ACCC to the Productivity Commission, and the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce (WEET) to the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee (EIAC), the evidence and calls to scrap the policy continue to get louder.
“Alongside addressing the low wages in the childcare sector that are impacting supply right now, abolishing the activity test should be a priority in the Budget,” Jackson said.
The chair of the Women in Economics Network and former public servant made her remarks at a National Press Club address last week.
Alongside Jackson at the NPC address were Westpac’s Besa Deda and Grattan Institute CEO Dr Aruna Sathanapally.
Sathanapally described investment in early childhood education and care as necessary for Australia’s productive capacity.
“There are sound economic reasons to be investing in our boys and girls and our future workforce.
“The future can be bright provided we face up to tackling our challenges and make good policy choices… People are our greatest resource. From a structural and long-term perspective, our people are critical,” she said.
Jackson said higher DFV rates were a known pattern in the aftermath of “major disruptive events” such as natural disasters and epidemics, she said, with higher rates of DFV also associated with financial stress.
“Work by Professor Alice Campbell at the Life Course Centre found that women who experience family violence are three times more likely to be experiencing financial insecurity.
“The Commonwealth government [has recognised this] with the substantial commitment to make permanent the leaving violence program — and that is to be welcomed,” Jackson said.
“As are the reforms in last year’s budget to the single parenting payment, which reduced the severity of poverty experienced by a number of single mothers in Australia, 50% or more of whom have experienced family violence.
“But it remains the case that two-thirds of people relying on the parenting payment are in poverty. It’s the highest group living in poverty in this country when you look at income support recipients.”
Dr Jackson said without the government’s action to “substantially increase” income support payments like JobSeeker in line with advice of the EIAC, the enduring effects of poverty on single parents and survivors of DFV would not be cured.
The price of Australia’s “broken housing system” was also being disproportionately felt by DFV victim-survivors, she suggested.
Jackson said one policy response to partially address this was for government to take on the EIAC’s latest annual report recommendations to lift the rate of rent assistance and deal with the “critical” housing shortage among ATSI communities.
“We see too often women who are escaping violence end up at specialist homelessness services — they are the biggest client seeking assistance. Without adequate housing options, they are regularly forced to choose between returning to a violent partner, and homelessness,” Jackson said.
“Research I conducted in 2021 for the ‘Everybody’s Home’ campaign found that 7,690 women return to a violent partner each year because they have nowhere else to live, and a further 9,120 experienced homelessness.”
Factors such as homelessness, poverty and financial insecurity also needed to be considered with respect to their connected interruptions to the labour market, Jackson said.
The economist further estimated that the economic impact of violence against women was 1-2% of GDP (or $50 billion per year in lost output), and Australia’s alarming 30% increase in intimate partner homicide this past year.
Official data in Victoria has indicated that women fleeing violence are being made to wait two years on average for social housing.
“We need to see a generational commitment to replenish our social housing stock, and the political fortitude to tackle the much-discussed but minimally actioned reforms to our housing market to ensure that women have somewhere to go when they leave a violent partner,” Jackson said, going on to argue that it was incumbent on the commonwealth to ensure at the very least that its own systems were not being weaponised against women.
“Included in the list of [EIAC recommendations] are important reforms … about the interaction between the child support system and the family tax benefit system to ensure that it’s no longer used by men to continue the financial abuse of their ex-partners,” she said.
“[The budget must] mitigate these impacts through policies that lift economic inclusions,” Jackson said.
“Family violence is … pervasive amongst our society — it makes the family home, where we should be our safest, statistically the least safe place for a woman to be.
“The more gender-based violence, the less power a woman has, the less likely women are to participate in paid work, the less productive women are likely to be at work, and the less likely women are to have economic security,” she said.
READ MORE:
Angela Jackson: Budget measures must lift productive capability of the economy, foster equity
