Two million Aussies in poverty, report finds

August 30, 2007 01:29am
From: www.news.com.au

* Almost one in 10 Aussies below poverty line
* Only Ireland spends less on education
* Retirees hit hardest by living cost rise

EVEN though the economy is booming, almost two million Australians, or 10 per cent, are living in poverty, a report has found.

The Australia Fair campaign, which was established by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), today released a report comparing Australia to the rest of the developed world in 10 key areas.

The areas are community, education, environment, health, housing, reconciliation, rights, services, welfare and work.

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The report came as new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that costs for working families and pensioners were rising faster than inflation.

The figures showed wage-earning households pay 18 per cent more for the same goods and services as they did five years ago.

Pensioners are paying 15.8 per cent more, according to the Bureau.

Australia's home ownership rate was 70 per cent but housing affordability was worse than any other developed English-speaking country, the report found.

Using an international measure that defines the poverty line as 50 per cent of median income, the Australia Fair campaign found the number of Australians living in poverty rose from 7.6 per cent to 9.9 per cent of the population between 1994 and 2004.

Poverty levels were even higher when calculated with the line used in the UK and Ireland.

One in five by UK measures

Under this measure - 60 per cent of median income - the poverty rate in Australia was found to be 19.8 per cent in 2004.

Using the more complex UN Human Poverty Index, Australia ranked 14th in the developed world, behind countries such as Japan and Canada, but ahead of the UK, US and Ireland.

ACOSS president Lin Hatfield Dobbs said governments needed to do more to ensure the benefits of economic prosperity were shared throughout the Australian community.

“There are too many areas where Australia is falling behind other OECD nations,” she said.

“Governments need to ensure the benefits of the economic prosperity are shared with all Australians.”

Education spending among lowest

The report also found Australian spent less on education as a proportion of GDP than all other developed English-speaking countries except Ireland.

Australia had the sixth highest rate of expenditure in health in the developed world but 40 per cent of Australians were unable to access dental care when they needed, the report said.

Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet

From: www.ksg.harvard.edu
A report from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy,
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Prepared by Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, John F. Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University


Executive Summary

This report examines trends in Internet-based news traffic for the purpose of peering into the future of news in America. In light of the continuing migration of Americans to online news, the evolving nature of Web technology, and the limits of our survey of websites, our assessments are necessarily speculative. Nevertheless, our examination of traffic to 160 news-based websites over a yearlong period revealed noteworthy patterns. The websites of national “brand-name” newspapers are growing, whereas those of many local papers are not. The sites of national “brand-name” television networks are also experiencing increased traffic, as are those of local television and radio stations. However, sites connected to traditional news organizations are growing more slowly than those of the major nontraditional news disseminators, including aggregators, bloggers, and search engines and service providers. Our evidence suggests that the Internet is redistributing the news audience in a way that is pressuring some traditional news organizations. Product substitution through the Web is particularly threatening to the print media, whose initial advantage as a “first mover” has all but disappeared. The Internet is also a larger threat to local news organizations than to those that are nationally known. Because the Web reduces the influence of geography on people’s choice of a news source, it inherently favors “brand names”—those relatively few news organizations that readily come to mind to Americans everywhere when they go to the Internet for news.

Although the sites of nontraditional news organizations are a threat to traditional news organizations, the latter have strengths they can leverage on the Web. Local news organizations are “brand names” within their communities, which can be used to their advantage. Their offline reach can also be used to drive traffic to their sites. Most important, they have a product—the news—that people want. Ironically, some news organizations do not feature the day’s news prominently on their websites, forgoing their natural advantage.



Contents
Introduction 5
Methodology 5
News Traffic on the Internet 6
Daily Newspapers 7
Television News Organizations 8
Radio News Organizations 9
Nontraditional News Outlets 11
Peering into the Future, Dimly 13
Endnotes 16
Appendix 18


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