Social Policy and the Challenges of Social Change: Australian 1995 National Social Policy Conference
Vasantha Krishnan
Peter Kennedy
Neela Dayal
Social Policy Agency
The Australian National Social Policy Conference is an annual event organised by the University of New South Wales Social Policy Research Centre. The 1995 conference, held in July, attracted over 500 participants, many of whom were academics. Approximately 20 made the trip from New Zealand. The these of the conference, Social Policy and the Challenges of Social Change, provided an opportunity to think about the meaning of the complex and profound changes which have occurred in Australia social and economic life in recent decades and their implications for social policy in the years to come. These issues were addressed in the selected papers summarised below:
"After Social Justice". Stuart Macintyre (Ernest Scott Professor of History, University of Melbourne) discussed his 10-year-old publication Winners and Losers, an historical account of the pursuit of social justice in Australian history. The book was written when the social implications of (now familiar) circumstances – the end of full employment, the demobilisation of class and the rise of the new social movements – were still fresh, and their political implications were still unclear. He went on to consider how the intervening decade has seen the collapse of communism, the extension of the market into new domains of social life, and, in Australia, the substantial revision of the meaning of social justice.
"Rewarding Care: A Challenge for Welfare States". Hilary Land (University of London) discussed the way family, labour market structures and relationships were changing and how these changes affected the obligations which family members have to maintain and care for each other. Labour markets are undergoing major structural changes, part-time employment has grown and the wages of part-time workers may be insufficient to support them, let alone their dependants. She questioned whether it was realistic to suppose that wage systems in the future will provide sufficient cash, either directly or indirectly, to support those with dependants or those heavily involved in caring. The important questions she posed to policy makers included: Should social security systems more often supplement rather than replace wages? Is money the most appropriate way of rewarding care? Does paying for care diminish its value (e.g. accounting for the reluctance in Britain, in the past, to pay wives, social workers and foster parents)? What are the roles of services provided by the state, the market and the voluntary sector? And what is happening to the caring capacity of a variety of professions as they become subject to measure of efficiency and become more heavily monitored and regulated?
"Social Policy and the Challenge of Globalisation: The Welfare State in Transition". Ramesh Mishra (York University, Canada) discussed one of the most significant developments of the past 15 years which is the growing influence of the international political economy on national social policies. The dominant developments, largely economic in nature, are summed up by the term "globalisation". His address explored the relationship between aspects of globalisation and the nature and scope of national social policies. He argued that, while there was an economic logic at work constraining choices, it was premature to think in terms of a new convergence and "end of ideology", centred on welfare pluralism. In support of this view, Mishra went on to state that evidence from Western Europe and North America suggested that social policy responses to this new situation were being influenced by the politics of class interests, ideology and national traditions of social welfare.
Papers on Social and Economic Inequality. Paul Flatau and Gavin Wood presented a paper entitled "Housing-Related Poverty Traps" which explored different ways of accounting for tenure status and housing-costs outlay in poverty research. It raised issues about the need to take into account different asset circumstances of a population, such as the fact that units can be income poor but asset rich. Three different definitions of income were explored in this paper: cash income; full-income (incorporating the implicit rents from owner-occupied housing); and realised income (post-tax income which would result from the realisation of the housing asset when the full turnover cost, inclusive of loss of benefit from moving from one housing tenure to another, have been taken into account).
A paper presented by Russell Ross and Angela Mikalauskas, "Income Poverty Among Indigenous Australian Families", estimated the proportion of indigenous families with children who have incomes near or below the Henderson poverty line, using data from the 1991 Census and the 1990 Income and Housing Costs and Amenities Survey (IHCA). Because the Census income information was not very useful, but Census had good demographic information and an ethnic identifier, the IHCA income data was linked with the Census information to improve the income data quality as IHCA data does not have an ethnic identifier. (Questions were raised as to the appropriateness of the variables used to merge the data.) This paper demonstrated that there were marked differences in the income circumstances of two-parent families between; indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, while one-parent families displayed similar income distribution characteristics. Furthermore, two-parent families among indigenous Australians were substantially better off than one-parent indigenous Australian families.
Community Services. A paper presented on the Community Services Commission in New South Wales posed the question, "Is the New Watchdog for Community Services in NSW a Rottweiler, St Bernard or Chihuahua?" The Commission was established in 1994 as a independent consumer watchdog for government and non-government community services in NSW, investigating and conciliating serious complaints from their consumers and consumer advocates. It also uses a variety of other more pro-active strategies to identify problems in services, including the use of a community visitors scheme in residential services, actively following up state wards and other people in care, and monitoring patterns of complaints. The Commission's legislation prohibits it from making recommendations critical of government resource allocations or policy decisions. While one might conclude that such a prohibition automatically qualifies it for Chihuahua status, the presenter assured us that this was not the case. They apparently have a high profile amongst service organisations and a formidable reputation for their investigative and advocacy skills.
The Welfare State. Gaby Ramia and Peter Whiteford presented a paper entitled "The Swedish Model: Did It Fall Or Was It Pushed?" The authors examined two propositions concerning the Swedish model of public policy: a) that the model cannot reproduce itself successfully for long periods of time; and b) that the failings of the model flow largely from ideological and policy pushes from interests unsympathetic to the traditional Swedish approach to social protection. The paper seemed to miss the point that the most significant threat to this model has been high levels and prolonged levels of unemployment which have caused a drain on resources. The system may be sustainable in periods of low unemployment, but risks bankruptcy in periods of high unemployment.
