A leading international poverty researcher has warned the media and politicians against creating an “us and them” divide that marginalises the poorest people.



Julia Unwin, the chief executive of the UK-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Housing Trust, sounded a warning over tabloid language that “assumes people who are just struggling to get by ought to resent those who are not coping at all”.

Unwin, who is visiting Australia, told Guardian Australia she was worried some people targeted under the Abbott government’s “earn or learn” clampdown on benefits could find themselves without support, leading them to disconnect even further from the jobs market.

Unwin – who wrote the book Why Fight Poverty? – is meeting Australian politicians, the community sector and business groups. She met the social services minister, Kevin Andrews, in Canberra on Tuesday.

“One of the things that's been a huge issue in the UK is a public discourse that increasingly talks about poor people as if they're completely different from the rest of us, leading completely different lives, motivated by completely different things, whereas in fact many people are, it's often said – it's a bit of a cliche – three pay cheques from poverty,” Unwin said.

“Many people lead far more precarious lives than you would think, and poverty is a much more dynamic condition than that. There tends to be a public discourse that suggests they are completely different and that erodes solidarity and erodes a sense that it could be us, makes people deny [and be very] ashamed of being poor."

Unwin said the fact there was no "proud to be poor movement" allowed for a political and policy response “which treats people as if they must therefore be goaded into work and treated differently” and divided people into “lifters or leaners”.

She took aim at the tabloid media construction of people on benefits as lazy.

"It's a huge construction and it pits the poor against the very poor, it makes a forced distinction between those people who are just struggling to get by, and there's a quite a lot of the political language and the tabloid language that assumes people who are just struggling to get by ought to resent those who are not coping at all,” she said.

Unwin said poverty was a risk everyone faced. It was "never cost-free to the state" and "costs us all very dearly". For young people poverty was "a scar across their lives".

Drawing on the UK experience, Unwin sent a clear message to Australian policymakers about welfare reform: "Plan long term. These are long-term issues with unexpected consequences. Short-term quick fixes may create more problems in the future."

She said simplification of the welfare system was a good aim “but people's lives are very complicated and it can be more difficult and I think very expensive to make it work”.

Unwin said the UK was coming out of the “longest, deepest recession we could imagine with a long period of austerity with no sign of let-up” and “no end to our program of government spending reductions”.

One of the problems was a "distorted and dysfunctional" housing market which did not provide security.

Unwin said new requirements imposed on people to receive benefits had resulted in some young people deciding it was not worth it. They slept in cars, went "under the radar", ended up getting ill and potentially breaking the law.

Commenting on the Abbott government’s “learning or earning” requirements on people under 30, Unwin said: "I think for some people given the challenge of earn or learn they will earn and learn and it will be good, but for others they may fall through that safety net.

“I do worry that in the periods when they have no support at all, people who come from poorer families – because of course the family is always the first port of call for support – may find they have no support at all. We are beginning to see in the UK the early signs of destitution among people who have been sanctioned."

Unwin said Britons in poverty were beginning to have to sleep in "beds in sheds" and other dangerous locations.

"I think those [situations] are risky for the individuals, but I think they're risky for society because they disconnect those people even further from the jobs market, from a secure place to live,” she said.



“Once you're sleeping in a car, on a friend's couch – sofa surfing we call it in the UK – it's extraordinarily difficult to apply for a job."

Unwin said the UK had made progress, including breaking the historic link between poverty and old age. Poverty and squalor also no longer necessarily went together. But Unwin spoke of the rise of insecure work which meant that people who secured a job were not always able to lift themselves out of poverty.

Unwin called for community and philanthropic organisations to "shine a bright light on what's happening" and keep track of the data, to pilot solutions and work together, but warned: "The philanthropic cent will never ever, ever replace the tax dollar. It is tiny in proportion."

Unwin’s trip to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra was organised by the Reichstein Foundation, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and Jobs Australia.