An Unlikely Survival

The Politics of Welfare in Australia since 1950

John Murphy
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An Unlikely Survival

Published

3 December 2024

ISBN

9780522880458

Pages

408

Imprint

Melbourne University Press

An Unlikely Survival

The Politics of Welfare in Australia since 1950

John Murphy
Exploring over 75 years of Australian welfare policy
An Unlikely Survival takes us through three-quarters of a century of welfare politics in Australia, to contests about political principles, and about what we think is the common good. As both economy and society were transformed, the need for government assistance, alongside the growth of civil society advocacy, became a core part of political debates John Murphy traces the evolution of welfare, government by government, from Menzies to Morrison, from the postwar era of full male employment to neoliberalism, deregulation and globalism. He ranges across policy areas well beyond Centrelink payments, from wage fixing to work-for-the-dole, from childcare to middle-class tax benefits, from family payments to superannuation, from aged care to Indigenous welfare, and from Medicare and to disability support. How did the Hawke-Keating governments square neoliberal economics with reforming social welfare? What did successive governments retain, modify or dismantle? Who were the civil society actors who fought for and…
An Unlikely Survival takes us through three-quarters of a century of welfare politics in Australia, to contests about political principles, and about what we think is the common good. As both economy and society were transformed, the need for government assistance, alongside the growth of civil society advocacy, became a core part of political debates. John Murphy traces the evolution of welfare, government by government, from Menzies to Morrison, from the postwar era of full male employment to neoliberalism, deregulation and globalism. He ranges across policy areas well beyond Centrelink payments, from wage fixing to work-for-the-dole, from childcare to middle-class tax benefits, from family payments to superannuation, from aged care to Indigenous welfare, and from Medicare and to disability support. How did the Hawke-Keating governments square neoliberal economics with reforming social welfare? What did successive governments retain, modify or dismantle? Who were the civil society actors who fought for and against different initiatives? What accounts for the unlikely survival and refurbishment of our welfare system in a world of more diverse families, globalisation, unemployment and the entrenchment of the working poor? An Unlikely Survival explores, and attempts to answer some profound questions about policy action and social justice in the past and in contemporary Australia and asks: do we actually want a fairer society-and are we prepared to pay for it?

John Murphy

John Murphy

John Murphy teaches and researches Australian politics and history, and comparative social policy history, with a developing focus on Indonesian social protection. He has expertise in social policy, examined historically and comparatively. He has published research on Australian social, political and policy history, public narratives about welfare, masculinity and nation, and memory, historiography and biography.

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Paperback
Added to basketCheckout →
Available on publication date
Other formats available