Nearly three million Australians are living below the poverty line, including 731,000 children - a two per cent increase in the past decade.
Such staggering statistics in a new Australian Council of Social Service report come at a time when welfare payments are again under the political spotlight as the federal government sets out on an "investment approach" for social services.
ACOSS chief Cassandra Goldie is becoming increasingly frustrated with such debates, and says the alarming increase in child poverty revealed by the report should act as an urgent appeal to senators to reject further cuts to family payments, currently before the upper house.
"We frame it as if it's the fault of the individual, you're either lazy, not working hard enough, not retraining hard enough, but the basic numbers are there," she told ABC television on Sunday.
"One job available for every five people conservatively is the estimate looking for paid work."
She said former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke reduced child poverty by a third after setting it as a core goal of his government.
"But over the last 10 years we've seen no change in the level of poverty among the Australian population as a whole, but children are really at risk," Dr Goldie said.
She said the cuts stripping another $60 a week from single parent families and the proposal to withhold Newstart support for young people for up to four weeks will likely lead to increased poverty.
Dr Goldie said the overall picture from the last decade was one of persistent and entrenched poverty across the community with an increase in child poverty, which she described as a national shame.
Those most at risk are children in lone parent families who are three times more likely to be living in poverty than those from couple families,
Dr Goldie said those doing it toughest were overwhelmingly people living on the $38 a day Newstart payment, 55 per cent of whom were in poverty.
That was followed by families on the parenting payment (51.5 per cent), the majority of whom were lone parents with children.
"This report is a further wake-up call to the government to address the inadequacy of the lowest income support payments and bolster support to low income families through the family payments system," Dr Goldie said.
