Rev Tim Costello: ‘Social cohesion is really fraying”

Tim Costello looks out from the dunes on Frankston beach, Victoria. ‘I can talk to both sides of politics. I have probably had as much influence as I might have had if I was in there.’ Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

In year 9, a curious young Tim Costello asked his teacher if poverty was a natural phenomena – as inevitable as the tide going out or the sun rising. It was a good question then, he says, and one everyone should think about now.

“It’s not natural,” he says. “It’s a policy.”