John’s
Publications
Social Innovation
September 7, 2023
We have to do more: Examining School Leader Perspectives on Hygiene Poverty within Australian Schools
The benefits of access to hygiene products transcend the notion of hygiene alone, likely conferring significant benefits to reduced absenteeism, reduced presenteeism, improvements in mental health and better engagement with school and civic systems.
Progressive Economics
March 27, 2023
Submission to the Inquiry into the Extent and Nature of Poverty in Australia
Poverty is best understood as neither a personal failing nor as an historical accident. Rather, it is the consequence of power relations, such as those between working people and their employers, or between citizens and the state.
Progressive Economics
December 3, 2020
We’ve Got Your Back: Building a Framework that Protects us from Precarity
The social guarantee is a means of acknowledging and addressing the reality of manufactured precarity.
Social Innovation
July 5, 2020
Per Capita Submission to the Inquiry into Homelessness in Australia
This submission recommends a new national housing and homelessness strategy and the setting up of a permanent, dedicated national housing authority to coordinate it. It also argues that the Commonwealth government can address homelessness by addressing poverty and protecting people against rental arrears, housing crisis, and eviction; and unpacks the issue of unaffordable housing. recommending a two-pronged strategy of de-commodifying our housing market and rebuilding our public housing.
John’s
Media
Our Media
September 21, 2023
Changing the housing story
First, when we talk about the HAFF we cannot ignore the adjacent legislation and reform agenda. Let’s return to the powerful words of the housing advocates at the time when the legislation was being obstructed:
The new institutions it will create, such as Housing Australia and the Housing Supply Affordability Council need to start their important work. We need a robust national response that has a significant expansion of social and affordable housing as its central pillar.
Our Media
September 5, 2023
John Falzon | The golden goose is workers not the businesses
There's a fear which underwrites big business's boastful claim to be society's golden goose.
YOU know the fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs: Goose lays golden eggs, goose-keeper gets greedy, reckons it might be quicker to kill the goose and slash it open to retrieve all the golden eggs at once.
Nothing doing. Nothing there! If you listen to big business, they should be treated with kid gloves because they are the faithful guardians of big capital, from which comes the golden eggs of jobs, incomes, goods, services, and stability. Any challenge to the neoliberal business model by working people is met with a frantic defence of the status quo, no matter how dangerous it is to the community.
Our Media
July 18, 2023
Bricks n’ Oughta – John Falzon
There’s a long list of things the Albanese government ought to do to fix the housing crisis. Views are mixed on what should go on the list and in what order. There is, however, no ambiguity about the desperate need for a massive increase in social housing and no ambiguity about the position of housing and homelessness peaks on the urgent demand, not to stop at the housing bills that are currently being held up by the Liberals, Nationals and Greens, but to start with them, by passing them and getting them done.
Our Media
June 10, 2023
The controversy surrounding the government’s Same Job, Same Pay measure and the big businesses behind it
BANK robber Willie Sutton, arrested in New York City in 1952 after being placed on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives list, had a real taste for expensive clothes and an impressive aptitude for acting. The latter couldn’t save him though when the former led to his downfall, having been spotted on the subway by a ... Read more
Our Media
June 4, 2023
Slowly changing the trajectory?
In this year’s Budget we have seen a change in direction, modest in its making but, let us hope, bold in its trajectory.
Our Media
May 9, 2023
Treasurer delivers budget speech – as it happened
John Falzon comments on the Federal Budget in The Guardian
Our Media
March 18, 2023
Poverty a feature of profits, not a bug
John Falzon in The Canberra Times on unmasking the true perpetrators of poverty - neoliberal capitalism.
Our Media
December 12, 2022
John Falzon | Corporate greed has created a cost-of-profits crisis
As a society, we are paying the unacceptably high price of allowing free reign to those companies that raked in the pandemic profits and now continue to rake in the profits made possible by increased global demand for energy resources.
Our Media
December 9, 2022
Building a new architecture of fairness – Policy Forum Pod
What does the new government’s budget mean for the millions of Australians living below the poverty line? Does the government have the political will to build a new architecture of fairness? And how could a wellbeing economic framework support all Australians?
Our Media
November 12, 2022
Providing opportunity is not a radical idea
The greatest obstacle to getting the seemingly impossible done is not so much the lack of hope or aspiration on the part of those who want it done, but the dogged resistance of those who want to see them fail.
Our Media
October 13, 2022
What the neoliberals wanted was never good for the country
An op ed from Dr John Falzon in The Canberra Times
Our Media
July 30, 2022
What is really causing so much poverty in a prosperous country like this?
Op ed by Dr John Falzon
Our Media
May 10, 2022
It’s up to us to fight if we want a government with soul
An op ed by John Falzon in The Canberra Times
Our Media
February 26, 2022
Imagine if we focused on a different kind of surplus
An op ed by John Falzon in the Canberra Times and AMC network
Our Media
November 28, 2021
We have a choice as to who must bear society’s risks
John Falzon in The Canberra Times
Our Media
September 22, 2021
Far right is preying on Melbourne vaccine protesters
John Falzon in The Canberra Times
Our Media
September 10, 2021
Podcast: Time for work to change
John Falzon is a guest on the Policy Forum podcast
Our Media
July 23, 2019
With Centrelink’s gutting, we lose a little more of society’s collective soul
John Falzon in The Canberra Times
John’s
Podcasts
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John’s
Blog Posts
Blog
August 8, 2019
Speech: John Falzon at the Don Dunstan Foundation’s Homelessness Conference
Homelessness and the house of lies Don Dunstan Foundation’s Homelessness Conference, Adelaide, 07 August 2019 Dr John Falzon Senior Fellow, Inequality and Social Justice I remember learning an important lesson From a young woman experiencing homelessness in Melbourne. Everyone was walking past her, refusing to meet her eyes. She wasn’t asking for somewhere to live. ... Read more
Blog
May 29, 2019
Election 2019: Another dose of fear
Dr John Falzon is our Senior Fellow, Inequality and Social Justice. He was national CEO of the St Vincent de Paul Society from 2012 to 2018. Those who breed insecurity are quick to prey on the insecure. We saw this writ large in the Australian federal election of 2019. As political economist William Davies explains: ... Read more
Blog
May 7, 2019
The right to hope: John Falzon’s May Day Dinner speech
The right to hope May Day Dinner Speech, Adelaide, 01 May 2019 Dr John Falzon Senior Fellow, Inequality and Social Justice I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are reflecting on inequality and social justice On land that always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land. I pay tribute to the First ... Read more
Blog
October 24, 2018
Dr John Falzon joins Per Capita
Per Capita is delighted to announce that Dr John Falzon OAM will join our team as Senior Fellow, Inequality and Social Justice on 1 November 2018. Dr Falzon is a sociologist, poet and social justice advocate, and was national CEO of the St Vincent de Paul Society from 2006 to 2018. He has written and ... Read more
