The main role of governments is to promote economic and social opportunities for all their citizens. This includes opportunities to learn and work, to enjoy good health and relationships, to have affordable housing and transport options, to raise children and pursue pastimes, to be treated fairly and to be helped when hardship strikes. Lack of these opportunities is the main cause, and also the main consequence, of hardship and injustice.
The tax system is the major source of money governments can use to promote these opportunities by, for example, funding education, health care, social security and transport. The funding may directly benefit individuals and families or it may assist them by promoting economic or community development which will provide them with work and income.
Catalyst is proud to launch the first in a series of readers: Equality Speaks
Australia may have dodged the bullet that has put the US, Britain and most European economies on life support, but our new collection of essays shows that – despite our enviable economic position – Australia is not the egalitarian paradise that many believe it to be.
Equality Speaks features an eclectic mix of writers who highlight a common challenge – to use our (relatively) stable economic times to make the shift to a fairer Australia. It includes new research on the distribution of wealth in Australia. And it brings together some of our sharpest minds to look at paths to a more equal Australia in areas like transport, homelessness, education, women, tax, refugees, work and employment amongst others.
Co-inciding with the release of our first publication, Equality Speaks: Challenges for a fair society, Catalyst asked a group of primary students to explore what Australia would look like if it was a village of just 100 people.
Based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data, here is how Ella, Callum, Natalia, Paloma, Rosie and Willow saw Australia as a village....
