Changing the conversation about poverty starts with listening

Australians love podcasts. Every month 52 per cent of us listen to at least one. So why did The Smith Family make a podcast about young people who’ve had a tough start and the moments that changed everything for them? Glad you asked.

Reason 1: Poverty is the product of systems but still framed as personal failure.

Too often, poverty is explained away as the outcome of individual bad choices or a lack of effort. People just need to work harder. Try better. Make smarter decisions.

When myths like that are passed off as truth, they don’t help us tackle poverty, they corrode the values our society is built on – values like fairness and looking out for your neighbour.

Poverty is created by systems that decide who gets access to opportunity and support, and who doesn’t. These systems ration education, housing, healthcare and work.

One of our podcast guests, social researcher Dr Liz Allen, knows hardship firsthand. But it wasn’t until she studied demography at university that she understood the forces shaping her life.

“It was such a profound realisation that I was not the fault of my circumstances,” she says. “But rather society and structural factors – like policy, the welfare safety net, the healthcare system – were working against people like me.”

Reason 2: We talk about people experiencing poverty. We don’t always listen to them.

Everyone has opinions about poverty. Politicians have them. Commentators have them. Talkback callers have them in abundance. But people living it? They’re rarely asked for their opinions.

Podcast guest Tabitha, a young mum and business owner, explained, “When you grow up in different situations ... you get a fear of putting yourself out there. You don’t know if you’re going to be heard, what’s going to change.”

When people believe their voices don’t matter, it adds to their isolation, shame and fear. Poverty has never travelled light.

No one understands poverty, or what it takes to overcome it, better than the people living it. Listening to their expertise is long overdue.

Reason 3: Data tells you poverty exists. Stories make it impossible to ignore.

In Australia, 757,000 children are growing up in poverty. In our most disadvantaged communities, two in five children will start school behind their peers.

Numbers, though, can’t explain what it feels like to be the eldest of five kids –and 13 years old– when your mum and dad say you need to grow up fast because they don’t expect to live much longer.

Josh can tell you. Today he has a career and a life he couldn’t have imagined. The view from his childhood pointed somewhere else entirely.

Josh’s parents “were squeezing stones and trying to make juice”, he says. Yet amid the hardship, they made sure he knew education was his way out. “Dad encouraged me: ‘Don’t live your life like us. You’ve got the opportunity to get out. This is your ticket, university.’”

Stories move people in ways PowerPoint never will.

Reason 4: Where you start shouldn’t determine where you finish.

For too many young Australians, the deck is stacked. The opportunities they get and the dreams they’re allowed to follow are decided by the circumstances they’re born into.

Grit and courage can help. So can a mentor, a teacher, someone who sees something in you before you see it yourself and who refuses to let circumstance have the last word.

Podcast guest George Williams, who grew up in a home where money was scarce, knows the truth of that. At nine, he was about to be expelled from primary school.

“I didn’t see any hope or future,” he recalled. “The thing that changed my life was education and one teacher in particular … it was a turning point. A teacher investing in me – suddenly I felt, I can be something. There’s some worth in me that is meaningful.”

That nine-year-old is now Distinguished Professor and Vice-Chancellor George Williams AO. One teacher, one decision – enough to rewrite the whole book.

Poverty is a circumstance. It’s not an identity, and it definitely doesn’t have to be a destiny. One of the surest roads out of poverty runs through education.

That’s why we made a podcast.

Every child has potential. Every child deserves to be seen. And when one young person gets the chance to be all they can be, it doesn’t just change their life. It changes everything.

About the author

Doug Taylor is CEO of national children's education charity The Smith Family. The podcast All I Can Be is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.