Claims from Australia’s welfare peak body appear at odds with reality, as Alan Austin reports. Would the welfare lobby and academics now calling for greater poverty alleviation congratulate the Government for such progress? Australia’s median wealth is now the world’s second-highest. The latest ABS jobs data shows 649,000 workers unemployed, but only 139,800 jobless for a year or more. What data shows that “more than 600,000 people have been living on $395 per week for more than a year”?