If you just work harder, you’ll get ahead.

It’s a seductive concept, and essentially the view of 50 per cent of Australia Talks respondents, who agreed with the statement: “In Australia, anyone who works hard enough can get out of poverty.”

Forty per cent of respondents disagreed.

For those who haven’t followed it, the ABC’s Australia Talks National Survey questioned nearly 55,000 people across the community to get a nationally representative sample of what the nation thinks.

And a majority of people across the nation think “if you have a go, you’ll get a go.”

There’s logic to this view — Australia is a developed country with solid public education and health systems that should, at least in theory, offer everyone in the community a baseline of opportunity from which talent and hard work can shine through.

But those who work on the frontlines of poverty reduction almost unanimously say the notion that hard work alone can lift someone out of poverty is just plain wrong.

“People are incredible, and people who really face lots of adversity can find a way to break through, with luck and hard work and good will,” says Matthew Cox, who runs the Logan Together program, which aims to break the poverty traps in one of Australia’s poorest areas.

It’s hard to find someone more upbeat than Matthew. In our half-hour interview he constantly returns to the positives of Logan — it’s diversity, energy and opportunity — and the successes his program is already enjoying, ensuring more kids get a good start in life.

But even Matthew isn’t so optimistic as to think that everyone living in poverty can haul themselves out by force of will and effort.

“Those examples, in my experience, are the exceptions to the norm,” he continues.

“If you are born into a particular set of life circumstances where there are structural, economic, cultural barriers that you face then, on average at a population level, that’s just not true.

“So, we can certainly see people who are the exceptions, and all those wonderful stories about people beating the odds are heart-warming because they’re exceptional.”

I also spoke to Suzanna. For many years she ran a fairly successful small business with her husband; they owned their own house and car.

But when his personal problems led to the collapse of the business and the breakdown of their marriage, Suzanna found herself left with nothing but thousands of dollars of business debts that had been taken out in her name.

She found herself staying at her adult son’s house and, when that wasn’t tenable anymore, she moved between friends.

And she has this message to the 50 per cent of Australians who think getting out of poverty is just about hard work.

“It’s definitely not true. You don’t know what’s around the corner,” she tells me.

“I never thought I’d be in this situation, especially in my 50s, so it can happen to anyone.

“I did work hard all my life and, at the end, I’ve ended up being homeless.

Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell from Sydney University’s Department of Political Economy has just written a book on economic inequality in Australia and around the world, and he isn’t shocked by the Australia Talks response.

“Frankly, if you haven’t lived in a state of extreme poverty yourself, you’re unlikely to understand the vicious circle characteristics that actually prevent people escaping from that trap in practice,” he tells The Money.

“So, the fact that 50 per cent of people effectively blame the poor for not working hard enough to get out of poverty doesn’t surprise me at all.

“But I think if the roles were reversed they might see the situation a little more sympathetically.”

Strong concern about ‘steady march’ of wealth inequality
An apparent contradiction in the Australia Talks survey is that, while half the population thinks escaping poverty is just a matter of hard work, 81 per cent of people say wealth inequality is a problem in Australia.

Perhaps, as Professor Stilwell suggests, this reflects the lived experience of more people — while relatively few Australians have experienced genuine poverty, most Australians are at least somewhat aware of just how well the economic elite are doing relative to them.

Although they may not be entirely aware just how big that wealth gap between the top and bottom has become.

“The trends in the distribution of wealth show a steady march of inequality,” Professor Stilwell observes.

“The wealthiest 10 per cent of households now have over 50 per cent of the total wealth.

“In other words, the poorest 90 per cent have only as much as the top 10 per cent.”