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Violence within the family is becoming so widespread that its treatment cannot be left to specialists alone, but increasingly will be faced by the helping professions generally. The Hindu concept of Karma and the Christian theory of redemption together provide a religious understanding for those who seek to help both the perpetrators and victims of family violence. Karma holds the truth that actions bear consequences, whereas redemption suggests that the evil consequences can be altered for good. The result is a new Karmic law which provides a fundamental starting point for family abuse counseling.

P overty has been in the news recently. According to a report released in December 2001 by the Smith Family and the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (Natsem), 'in 2000, about one in every eight Australians lived in income poverty -13 per cent of all Australians' (p. vii). Moreover, 'there was a steady increase in poverty among all Australians during the 1990s' (Harding, Lloyd and Greenwell, 2001:4).A response was provided by a team from the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) in January 2002 (Tsumori, Saunders and Hughes, 2002). The CIS authors concluded that the findings of the Smith Family/Natsem report are dubious because they confuse poverty and inequality and 'rest on data that is in some respects unreliable'(p. 1). They argue that 'the debate over the future of welfare requires more reliable data on the extent and causes of deprivation'. Other commentators have subsequently joined in the discussion.Controversy over poverty lines is nothing new in Australia. The Smith Family/Natsem report uses a modified form of the Henderson poverty line. This poverty line was developed for a Melbourne study in the late 1960s and rose to national prominence in the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty in 1975. This poverty line has been subsequently updated by the Melbourne Institute according to changes in Average Weekly Earnings and (later) Household Disposable Income per capita. The Henderson poverty line was never endorsed by government and, from time to time, criticisms of the Henderson poverty line were mounted from official sources. Eventually, the Minister for Social Security asked the Social Welfare Policy Secretariat to construct a poverty line that would be suitable for use in contemporary Australia.The Social Welfare Policy Secretariat (SWPS, 1981) subsequently reported that the task was impossible. They concluded (p. 208) that: there are no entirely satisfactory techniques which would allow us to assess whether the money amounts of pensions and benefits are adequate or not. Further, many factors other than the needs of families in different circumstances influence decisions about the level of pensions and benefits.