Tony Konjarski lives in his own home, but he can't afford to maintain it.
The 57-year-old lives with rheumatoid arthritis, is partially blind and has chronic back problems.
He inherited his home from his late father, who he lived with, but it needs some major repairs.
He can work 15 hours a week as a casual relief cleaner and receives some welfare support, but it's not enough to cover his medical expenses, let alone maintenance on his home.
"Unfortunately I've got no water coming in at all," he said about the taps in his bath.
"Same as the shower up behind as well. For me to have a shower, I usually go down where I swim locally and use the facilities there."
Mr Konjarski is one of the millions of Australians living below the poverty line.
Experts say it would be easy to make lives like Mr Konjarski's less financially stressful because it's not that complicated.
How do we measure poverty?
Surprisingly, Australia has no official method for measuring poverty.
Researchers have to use a range of different "poverty lines" to try to estimate how many people are living in stressed financial circumstances.
Different methods produce different results, but they all routinely estimate that millions of Australians are currently living in poverty.
One of the most famous measurements is the Henderson poverty line.
It traces its origins to ground-breaking work in the mid-1960s when researchers at Melbourne University made the first serious attempt to estimate the extent of poverty in Australia.
The research was led by Professor Ronald Henderson and surveys were taken of the living conditions in the homes of Melbourne.
Using a "poverty line" based on the same income as the basic wage plus child endowment payments, for a family with two adults and two children, the researchers estimated one in 16 of Melbourne's population was living in poverty in 1966.
They thought that was a conservative estimate.
Their research led to growing calls for a national inquiry into the problem, and a Commission of Inquiry into Poverty was eventually established in August 1972, chaired by Professor Henderson.
"It was very pivotal in producing the modern welfare state that we have," Professor Roger Wilkins from Melbourne University said.
Professor Wilkins is responsible for updating the Henderson Poverty Line every quarter, to account for changes in the economy.
"We can really attribute a number of the income support payments that came about in the '70s and beyond, they really had their origins in the measurement of poverty that Henderson pioneered," he said.
"It put the spotlight on those groups in the community that were really experiencing severe hardship."
According to the most recent Henderson poverty lines, the poverty line for a single person, who is in the workforce, is $616.62 a week (including housing).
For a single parent with one child who is working, it is $791.62 a week (including housing).
A different way of measuring the poverty line
But there is another common way to measure the poverty line.
According to this method, you're considered to be living in poverty if your weekly income is less than half of the median income.
The median refers to the income sitting in the middle of the income distribution.
Half of the households in Australia have an income higher than that figure, and half have an income lower.
This poverty line is used by countries in the OECD, so it has the benefit of being internationally comparable.
But it produces a more austere poverty line than the Henderson poverty line, which was formulated with special reference to Australian conditions.
You can see that in the graph below, where the "50 per cent of median income" line, which is the relative poverty line, is noticeably lower than the Henderson.
However, both lines suggest that millions of Australians are living in poverty.
According to the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), the most recent data suggest there are over 3.3 million people living in relative income poverty in Australia.
That includes more than 2.5 million adults, and 761,000 children (16.6 per cent of all children in Australia).
During the pandemic, the federal government's coronavirus supplement was paid to millions of Australians.
It increased their weekly incomes above both poverty lines, which lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty for a brief period.
However, when those pandemic payments were taken away again, it pushed hundreds of thousands of Australians back into poverty.
Mr Konjarski said the coronavirus supplement made a "huge difference" to his life for a brief while. It meant he didn't have to ask charities for help to pay his electricity and phone bills.
"I was able to fix and repair things, pay some outstanding bills," he said.
"When my GP refers me to a specialist sometimes I have to defer it because I don't have the money now."
We need an official measurement of poverty
Dr Peter Davidson, principal advisor at ACOSS, said the "50 per cent median income" poverty line is the most commonly used measure in wealthy countries like Australia.
He said ACOSS produces two lines, 50 per cent and 60 per cent of median income, to see what differences there are between them.
He said the "60 per cent of median income" poverty line is used in a number of European countries, and when applied to Australia it suggests around 5 million people are living in poverty, which is 1.7 million more than the 50 per cent line.
But regardless, he said it was clear there were millions of people living in financial distress in Australia, and the government could address the problem easily.
"It's not that complicated," he said.
"The one single thing that could be done to lift millions of people out of poverty tomorrow, if the government was of that mind, is to lift the lowest income support payments.
"Whichever way you cut the poverty research, it's the people on jobseeker, single parents on the lowest income support payments, people with disability on income support payments, and older people who are renting on their own [who are most likely to be in poverty]," he said.
He said Australia should also develop an official measure of poverty.
"What we’d really like to see is an official measure of poverty in Australia, which we’ve never had, because governments tend to walk away from the issue, and it should be front and centre in the government’s well-being budget when they announce those measures next week," he told the ABC.
Kristin O'Connell, from the Antipoverty Centre, said she thinks the Henderson poverty line is a better measure for analysis, because it was created with Australian conditions in mind.
She said Australia was one of the most expensive countries in the world in which to live, and other poverty lines didn't capture that reality as well.
She said we also needed to think about "technology poverty," because governments were increasingly shifting their services online without understanding how difficult it was for some people to access the internet.
But the Henderson line still had obvious flaws.
"The government needs to work with unemployed advocates to develop a new measure of poverty to really understand what it costs to live in Australia in the twenty-first century," Ms O'Connell said.
"The Henderson poverty line doesn't take into account adequately the really high cost of housing here, and it also doesn't take into account things like the cost of the internet, the cost of a mobile phone or a computer, which are absolutely essential when you're trying to find work or develop the skills to be more employable."
As for Mr Konjarski, he said he's concerned about the level of inflation at the moment, and he's just trying to pay his next bill.
"I'm always watching the news and all that," he said.
"I got my electricity bill, it was $148. Thankfully it's come down a little from what it used to be," he said.
