Public Expenditures And Social Policy In Australia The Whitlam Years 1972 75

This book provides a comprehensive account of the modern Australian legal aid system. It charts the twists and turns of policy and practice over the past 30 years with a particular focus on:the reaction of the legal profession to conflicts and debates about legal aid policy and services and the way in which this has both reflected and accentuated major shifts in the social and political structure of the profession itself; the development of community legal centres from radical fringe organisations to accepted legal practices, which provide a 'value for money' service and work in alliance with the big city firms; the constancy of government calls for fiscal restraint and the recurrent lack of clear objectives despite widely varying approaches by different administrations.

This book explores the tensions between the competing social rights and social control functions of the modern Australian welfare state. By critically examining the history and rhetoric of the Australian welfare state from 1972 to the present day, and using the author’s long-standing research on the Australian Council of Social Service and other welfare advocacy groups, it analyses the transformation from rights-based to conditional welfare. The Labor Party Government from 1972-75 is identified as the only clear cut example of Australia positively using welfare payments and services as an instrument to promote greater social equity, inclusion and participation. Since the mid-1970s, the Australian welfare state has gradually retreated from the social rights agenda conceived by the Whitlam Government. Australia has followed other Anglo-Saxon countries in adopting increasingly conditional and paternalistic measures that undermine the protection of social citizenship outside the labour market. In contrast, this text makes the case for an alternative participatory and decentralized welfare state model that would prioritize social care by empowering and supporting welfare service users at a local community level. This book will be of interest to academics, students and policy-makers working within social policy, social work and political sociology.

Since the 1980s, waves of neoliberal ‘economic reform’ have transformed Australia. Privatisation, deregulation, marketisation and the contracting out of government services: for three decades now, there has been widespread agreement among policymakers on the desirability of these strategies. But the benefits of economic reform are increasingly being questioned. Alongside growing voter disenchantment, new voices of dissent argue that instead of efficiency and improved services, economic reform has led to unaccountable oligopolies, increased prices, reduced productivity and degradation of the public good. In Wrong Way, Australia’s leading economists and public intellectuals do a cost–benefit analysis of economic reform across key areas. Have these reforms been worthwhile for the Australian community and its economy? Have they given us a better society, as promised? ‘Has privatisation led to more productivity-enhancing competition? Has deregulation increased economic welfare in energy, finance, health, education and labour markets? Does the lived experience of Australians measure up to the promise of economic reform? The authors answer these questions with conclusions that are both compelling and disturbing.’——Emeritus professor Roy Green, University of Technology Sydney Damien Cahill & Phillip Toner on Economic Reform Stephen Duckett on Private Health Insurance Elizabeth Hill & Matt Wade on Early Childhood Education And Care Phillip Toner on Vocational Education And Training Jane Andrew & Max Baker on Prisons Bob Davidson on Aged Care Paul Davies on Public Sector Engineering Sue Olney & Wilma Gallet on Employment Services John Quiggin on Electricity Jim Stanford on Labour Markets Evan Jones on Banking Peter Phibbs & Nicole Gurran on Housing Lee Ridge on The NBN Ben Spies-Butcher & Gareth Bryant on Universities Michael Beggs on Monetary Policy And Unemployment John Quiggin on Productivity Peter Brain on Orthodox Economic Models Patricia Ranald on Free Trade David Richardson on Foreign Investment Frank Stilwell on Inequality

This book explores the legal meaning of the radical new laws which have transformed the social security system in the last decade.It analyses legislation and case law and lays out the legal principles and concepts, which underpin the sweeping reforms, culminating in the 'welfare reform' package announced in the 2005 Budget. It also explores the policy foundations of these reforms and key administrative changes, such as the creation of a privatised 'job network' and of Centrelink as a 'payment agency' .This book also explores the tension between traditional 'protective' functions of social security and the contemporary focus on 'activation', reciprocity and 'capacity-building', and the extent to which social changes have altered the form of Australian welfare. It reviews the history and transformation of the welfare state, the ideas about the nature of poverty and need, and the policy choices to be made.Detailed case studies are made of the law and policy affecting key groups such as the unemployed, people with illness or disability, and sole parents, as well as the administration and review rights of welfare recipients, and the workings of income and means tests.

This open access book examines the comparative evolution of social protection in Australia and New Zealand from 1890 to the present day, focusing on the relationship between employment relations and social policy. Utilising longstanding and more recent developments in historical institutionalist methodology, Ramia investigates the relationship between these two policy domains in the context of social protection theory. He argues that treating employment relations as dynamic, and as inextricably intertwined with changes in the welfare state over time, allows for more accurate portrayal of similarity and difference in social protection. The book will be of most interest to researchers, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in social policy, employment relations, public policy, social and political history, and comparative politics.

The world economy has undergone a fundamental transformation in recent decades and theoretical structures inherited from the 1930s through the 1950s, while retaining large elements of truth, are inadequate to deal with current problems. Benjamin Higgins feels that for a society such as the United States a fiscal policy needs to be adopted that can deal simultaneously with existing unemployment and inflation. He suggests three possible governmental policies: stimulating a high rate of long-run growth, by use of reward innovations and by maintaining the highest possible level of scientific and technical activity; isolating regions that are generators of inflation and others that are pools for unemployment; and establishing a system of direct controls similar to those used in wartime. Higgins describes the transformation of the cogent prewar business cycle, with its alternations of inflation or unemployment, then a transitional period of underemployment equilibrium and secular stagnation, and finally, the strange new world of today, one with economic fluctuations in the form of shifting trade-off curves and loops. He then applies his new paradigm to current problems, showing why they cannot be managed through macroeconomic monetary and fiscal policy. Higgins offers case studies of efforts to fight inflation and unemployment, and to reduce regional gaps, to show their strengths and weaknesses. It can be said that unemployment always results from too many people chasing too few jobs, and inflation is always caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services. Beyond such banal generalizations, Higgins maintains there is no single cause for either unemployment or inflation, and thus no single cure can be prescribed for either, let alone for both at once. Nor is it to be expected that the appropriate cure will prove to be the same in all countries at all times. He suggests that an optimal blend of monetary and fiscal policy that will produce the "minimum discomfort" is a good start. Employment Without Inflation will be of direct policy interest to economists, sociologists, and national planners.