Who We Are
An alliance of people affected and concerned by poverty and unemployment, including job-seekers, low income workers, sole parents, Aged and Disability pensioners, carers, students, community workers and others. We are not another charity, or any type of professional saviors from above. Such saviors will never be able to end poverty because they focus on tinkering around the edges of a system that requires an “underclass.” We have a systematic, anti-capitalist critic of poverty, one that seeks to eliminate poverty altogether, not just ease it’s symptoms.
It has become almost an accepted fact that those on welfare are treated like criminals and housing is becoming ever more unaffordable and inaccessible.
Anti-Poverty Network QLD was founded to fight back and reverse these trends.
We are tired of Centrelink and Job Search Agencies using the threat of starvation and homelessness as a tool to enforce compliance with an unfair welfare system. We are fed up with the council and the police hounding the homeless for sleeping rough in the parks. We’re tired of seeing houses sit empty whilst so many experience homelessness and housing related stress.
Charity is nice, but if we are going to eliminate poverty we need to acknowledge that poverty is not simply the result of misfortune or an individual’s ‘poor decisions’, but the deliberate intentions of the social structures in which we live.
Simply put, welfare is made harsher to force people into poor paying jobs, the homeless are chased away to make the city more appealing for businesses and housing is unaffordable due to speculators hoarding property.
No amount of charity is going to fix a rotten society that is waging a war on the poor. If we are going to stop this war, we need direct action and to give our solidarity to those copping it tough.
Anti-Poverty Network QLD is taking up the fight by squatting the empties and opening them for the homeless, being on standby to resist evictions and move-on orders, and providing advocacy to those on welfare. We do so not as an act of charity from on high, but as the very people who are at the brunt of the attacks on the poor, as it us among those who can’t afford housing, get moved on by the cops and harassed and belittled by welfare services.
The lead demands of Anti-Poverty Network QLD are:
Scrap JobActive and the Cashless Welfare Card and Investigate the Crooks! Anti-Poverty Network QLD calls for the immediate abolition of all mutual obligations as well as the cashless welfare card and an immediate investigation into the abuse enacted by the JobActive system and Indue.
Raise the Rate! Anti-Poverty Network QLD calls for an immediate raise to all forms of social welfare to a minimum level of the first COVID payments – $550 a week. This raise must not affect any other payments an individual or family may be receiving.
No One Left Behind! Anti-Poverty Network QLD calls for no individual or community to be left behind or forced to live in poverty. Access to welfare must be extended to all those who need it including but not limited to: refugees, immigrants, overseas workers & students as well as all those over the age of 16.
If you’re tired of the poor being trampled upon and demonised by the very people who cause poverty (and profit the most from it), get involved!
Anti-Poverty Network QLD 