THE St Vincent de Paul Society said major political parties had to come up with policies that demonstrated compassion and concern to avoid 3 million Australians remaining like disadvantaged refugees in their own country.
The society’s national president, John Moore of Sydney, said last week that the gap between the rich and the poor in Australia continued to grow.
Consequently, ‘like refugees the world over, these millions of disadvantaged Australians do not feel safe’, he said.
‘They are concentrated in areas forgotten by global prosperity and are identifiable by postcodes.
‘They have substandard housing, poor health, high mortality, no jobs and no way out.’
Mr Moore said international crises should not be used as a political expedient to ignore a major crisis at home, in this case ‘the dire economic circumstances of poor, and increasingly, middle-income families’.
