Registration information is at: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/unfinished-business-50-years-after-henderson-tickets-1736078881669

The Henderson Commission of Inquiry into Poverty (1972-1975) identified structural inequality as the primary driver of poverty and recommended a suite of measures to ensure no Australian would fall below the poverty line. Fifty years later, around 3.3 million Australians (13.4%) remain in poverty, with persistent gender inequality and the welfare state’s systematic failure to serve First Nations peoples representing critical unfinished business from Henderson’s agenda.

This online panel event examines the trajectory of Australian poverty policy since Henderson’s landmark report, analysing why many of the report’s core recommendations were not implemented and how poverty has evolved in the context of labour market casualisation, housing unaffordability, and the development of an increasingly punitive social security system. The panel discussion will be guided by three key questions:

How has the nature and measurement of poverty changed since 1975?
What structural barriers continue to prevent effective poverty reduction?
What future policy innovations could achieve Henderson’s goal of ensuring no Australian falls below the poverty line?
Drawing on contemporary poverty research, policy analysis, and lived experience, panellists will assess contemporary social policy frameworks against Henderson’s original vision, while also exploring future opportunities for change.

Facilitator:

Dr Cassandra Goldie AO is CEO of ACOSS and Adjunct Professor with UNSW Sydney. Cassandra has represented the interests of people who are disadvantaged, and civil society generally, in major national and international processes as well as in grassroots communities. Cassandra is Co-Chair of the ACOSS and UNSW Sydney Poverty and Inequality Partnership, and a member of the Federal Government’s independent Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. In 2023, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished services to social justice through leadership and advocacy, promoting the rights of marginalised and disadvantaged people.

Panellists:

Associate Professor Bruce Bradbury is an Associate Professor at the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) and part of the UNSW Poverty and Inequality Partnership. His research looks at poverty, inequality and economic disadvantage and the role of government policies in their creation, alleviation and prevention. He is the co-author of the 2015 book Too many children left behind: The U.S. achievement gap in comparative perspective and a co-editor and author of the 2001 book The Dynamics of Child Poverty in Industrialised Countries.

Professor Kay Cook is the Associate Dean of Research in the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education at Swinburne University and the only female academic or qualitative researcher on the federal Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. Her research focuses on the gender of social policy processes and their outcomes, which are often most striking and disadvantageous for single mother families.

Jeremy Poxon is a welfare rights activist based in Ballarat. As a lead organiser on the grassroots campaign to Raise the Rate, Jeremy worked alongside welfare recipients to push their demands for economic justice to the forefront of the national agenda. His investigations and condemnations of Australia’s welfare system regularly appear in the ABC, The Guardian, SBS, and elsewhere.