The experts in poverty are the people who live it
Kristin O’Connell, the Antipoverty Centre
Building an economy that works for everyone starts with listening to, and acting on, the expertise of people living in poverty and ends with real structural change. So, let’s begin. Kristin O’Connell, who helped establish the Antipoverty Centre, takes it from here.
What was the impetus for creating the Antipoverty Centre?
I started working at the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union in 2020 with my colleague Jay; we were both unwaged workers. We thought there needed to be an organisation that challenges mainstream welfare advocates in the spaces where they feel they’re the only ones who are entitled to have access when developing policy and pushing for policy change through parliamentary processes, and through consultations with bureaucrats.
One of our core aims was to change what community sector organisations ask for and to demonstrate that welfare recipients have the capacity to think for ourselves, know what we need to participate in these processes, and develop and contribute to policymaking.
Over this time [since starting the Antipoverty Centre], we’ve seen paid advocates shift their positions; very few organisations are where we’d want them to be but there are lots who’ve moved a long way.
One of the Centre’s core objectives is to ensure people in poverty dominate social policy and advocacy work. What does that look like in practice?
Enabling people to participate is first and foremost about accessibility, and that’s to accommodate physical disabilities, psychosocial disabilities and caring duties, which are expensive, so it means making choices about including fewer people but using more resources to include them. Enabling people to lead is also about creating as much of a supportive space as possible.
In the time we’ve been doing this work, we’ve gotten into spaces where poor people weren’t before. Going forward it means making sure more people can get into those spaces and bringing them with us. And that includes parliament, that includes parliamentary inquiries and that includes public platforms. And that doesn’t just include people who work directly with the Antipoverty Centre, it includes other grassroots organisations led by poor people like the Anti-Poverty Network and the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union.
What myths and stereotypes about people living in poverty are the most damaging?
That we need to be pushed to do things that the broader society thinks we should — that causes a lot of individual harm but also is very othering. It’s why there’s a broad belief that unlike other marginalised groups, poor people don’t need and shouldn’t have a leading role in policies that affect us.
Secondly, that all poor people are pathetic. With few exceptions, people don’t understand what it’s like to be poor and objectify us in the way that they perceive what our lives must be like. That’s partly fuelled by the way mainstream advocacy organisations use poor people in the media and fixate on our experiences and feelings to the exclusion of our opinions and our agency.
The third harmful stereotype is welfare dependency, that relying on a Centrelink payment means there’s a deficiency that can be transmitted generationally — that poverty is genetic somehow. That links back to the first point, which is needing to push parents who are poor to do certain things to make sure their children don’t become poor.
My mum was on Centrelink payments when I was a kid. She didn’t have compulsory activities because she was on parenting payments in the 1990s. She started working a little bit, built up over time and ended up having a stable full-time job. She did that at her own pace on her own terms and didn’t need to be forced. I have been in and out of paid work my whole adult life — I had undiagnosed disabilities fuelling that cycle — and now that I have access to a Centrelink payment, I have more stability than I’ve ever had and am able to take on bits of paid work when I can.
What are your current priorities?
The big opportunity right now is abolishing compulsory activities (called “mutual” obligations). The government has realised it’s created such a complex system it cannot lawfully administer it. [Currently, people on Centrelink payments are having their payments suspended — often unfairly and automatically — when they miss required activities under the mutual obligations system. The Ombudsman has warned many of these suspensions may be unlawful.]
So, there’s an opportunity to force the government’s hand to stop these suspensions and it will take them a long time to figure out how to turn them back on in a lawful way. That will give people the opportunity not just to breathe and improve their own lives, but also to demonstrate what they can do in their life and in their community when they don’t have the boot on their neck. That’s what we saw in 2020 when compulsory activities were paused.
What does success look like for the Antipoverty Centre?
In the medium-term, success looks like building a big, broad ecosystem of poor people who have control over the narrative about us, the things that we need, and more direct influence on government, bureaucrats and the community sector and media. And eroding stigma so that people feel more comfortable talking about the fact that they are poor and not feeling ashamed to admit that they rely on a Centrelink payment to live. Obviously real success looks like poverty not existing, because everyone is supported to live a comfortable and fulfilling life no matter how they’re contributing or what their capacity is.
What gives you hope for the future?
My mantra is ‘never hope, only work’ — I don’t think hope is a productive emotion for me.
What gives me energy is observing the things that have changed since we started — when you see the government changing things, not in ways we’ve asked them to, but in response to problems that we’ve pushed to be fixed. It shows that being uncompromising in what we’re asking for and relentlessly demonstrating what the problems are does shift things. As we continue to be uncompromising we believe that will create the conditions for government to move further towards where we want them to be.
Likewise, when you see such drastic shifts in what the community sector is asking for, it shows that being relentless and uncompromising has forced some organisations’ hands and in others, it’s led people to reflect on what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and to change that.
