Response to the 2025 SA State Budget by Nicole, Anti-Poverty Network SA member.
Instead of addressing issues of need like public housing, the State Budget has focused on ‘law and order’ but law and order for who?
Australia’s prison population is made up of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in society and traps people in a cycle of poverty.
Since the 1980s and, coincidentally (?) after a couple of decades of massive social struggles, there has been a large increase in Australia’s prison population.
There has been a particularly large increase in the population of Indigenous people, women, LGBTQIA+ people and people with disabilities and mental and physical health issues in prison.
Australia’s prison population is also much more likely to have been unemployed or homeless than the general population and has a lower than average level of education.
As people fought to raise themselves out of poverty and oppression, instead of assisting them, the government fought back with ‘law and order’.
The police are simply pushing problems of poverty out of sight and addressing problems they themselves acknowledge are often not actually criminal matters and, in fact need to be addressed through other services
At the same time the rate of crimes, including violent crimes, has not reduced.
People are not safer.
Currently Indigenous women are the largest growing prison population and also represent those on the lowest incomes and experiencing the most disadvantage.
What all these people actually need is a decent income, adequate healthcare, safe and affordable housing, education and transportation and to be treated as respected and equal members of society, not more ‘law and order’.
Anti-Poverty Network SA 