Children experience 'profound disadvantage' in WA resource-rich area

Every month, billions of dollars in trade is exported through Port Hedland, the iron ore-coated export hub in WA's Pilbara region. 

But on the doorstep of the world's largest bulk export port, about 1,630 kilometres north of Perth, children in South Hedland are experiencing what has been described as "profound disadvantage".

The Pilbara has long been touted as the engine room of Australia's economy. So how is it that one of the wealthiest regions in Australia is seeing children go without, less than 15 kilometres down the road?

Tania Murray, chief executive of South Hedland's Youth Involvement Council (YIC), said the contrast was confronting.

"For some of our young people, it's going home to housing that is below acceptable standards, very little food, overcrowding, there's no adequate air conditioning, even though we live in a desert," she said.

"And at times there's very little sense of safety, and that's when poverty stops being an economic statistic."

Pilbara to parliament

Working with locally based YIC, the Valuing Children Initiative's (VCI) End Child Poverty campaign captured the voices of children in South Hedland. 

The kids' voices were recorded through a phone and will be played to federal ministers and MPs in Canberra today.

"When the researchers from VCI came up, our job wasn't to research what children in Hedland experience; our job was to create a safe opportunity for children to tell themselves," Ms Murray said. 

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), a tool that ranks areas according to their relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage based on census data, South Hedland's score was 989, lower than the broader Port Hedland area average of 1,011. 

End Child Poverty campaign lead and VCI executive director Sarah Quinton said it was important that children were asked about their experiences directly.

"We were invited to South Hedland by the Youth Involvement Council because they were so concerned about the number of children that they were seeing," she said. 

"They're talking about 500 children that they see who come to their service and they were saying that they're very hungry all the time, they haven't eaten, they haven't slept, they haven't gone to school."

Calls for national strategy

WA Commissioner for Children and Young People Jacqueline McGowan-Jones said she was not surprised by the findings. 

"There's a two-speed economy. There's all the money going out every day in the port; children see that and they understand it," she said. 

"We know from talking to children themselves, that this is a critical issue … I've spoken to elders, I've spoken to community groups, I've spoken to the Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, and we know there is more to be done."

Ms Quinton said there needed to be a nationally legislated strategy to end child poverty that included a definition and metrics for children. 

"We might have measures like CPI, we might have mortgage rates, those kinds of things, those are very adult-centred poverty measures," she said. 

"Seeing the world from a child's point of view is so much different from an adult's point of view, we need to start measuring that.

"We need to be sitting down and really listening to children and bringing out those child-centred poverty indicators."

'Come and see it'

Dr McGowan-Jones echoed calls for a nationally legislated poverty reduction strategy. 

"We've got to stop blaming kids for the circumstances they're born into over which they have no control,"

she said.

"By not supporting them, by not providing the services and supports, we're basically saying, 'You don't matter.'"

In a statement, a spokesperson for the federal Department of Social Services said the government was working to break the cycle of disadvantage and improve the wellbeing of children.

"We know children and families in regional and remote areas like the Pilbara can face unique barriers," the spokesperson said. 

"Children and families in the area have access to programs designed to improve wellbeing and connection."

Ms Murray called on decision-makers to see the issues firsthand. 

"My message to the people in Canberra is to come and see it," she said. 

"Most importantly, sit down with our young people and listen to them."