Ideally, it is no doubt that Australia has traditionally been considered as a “lucky” country for the last couple of decades now. In this light, alteration in Australian social policies have significantly changed how the Australian live and how people compare on various indicators in regards to other organizations for development as well as economic cooperation. Contrary to the popular belief regarding carefree lifestyle as well as wealth, Australia is not a place with a low level of poverty or rather equality. In essence, Australian comparative position continues to be under scrutiny even with the continued globalization becoming hurtled onwards. This paper proposes to discuss in detail how the Australian history has taken part in shaping its social policies to the contemporary society.
Historically, Australia took part in developing various post-war initiatives just like Britain, therefore, forming the overall basis of a welfare state that was based on Keynesian economics. The Australian system of welfare was known to be constructed around the family issues as early as the beginning of Federation in 1901 (Hartwell, 2017). In essence, this aspect was formulated around the overall principle of a provider is a male worker who was tasked with supporting his wife as well as children in a family. In this regard, all the inclined efforts towards the protection of a family unit were aligned on the aspect of wage fixing as well as the overall protection of those earning wages (Petrov & Quinn, 2017). Notably, this initiative was handed down and came to be known as the Harvest Judgment in early 1907 where the minimum wage was set depending on the needs of a particular man, wife as well as children (Hartwell, 2017). This is the main reason why the Australian society has for many years been referred to as the wage earner’s welfare state. The fact that wages were set artificially high encouraged families to work hard in meeting their own needs thus establishing a sense of the overall Australian aspect of self-reliance. Furthermore, there was an increase in development regarding education, and social services over the next few years.
In essence, during the 70s, Australia was marked by entering into a whole new range of measures that resulted into the widening of the welfare state (Atkinson, 2018). Through various formulated initiatives, the Federal Government resulted in reconfiguring its main roles as well as responsibilities with the aim of implementing and fostering social and industrial rights in the society. This was the major time where there was a revamping of the income security system so that it could be more accessible to those groups that were previously excluded such as single mothers. Additionally, there was a creation of a universal health-care system, Medicare, which is still in existence in contemporary society. While this period is considered as an unusual time in the Australian history regarding its welfare, it is an important time where Australia was moved to a rater more comprehensive liberal welfare state that marked some apparent elements of social democracy in the Australian society.
Primarily, the issue surrounds job network is something that has been significantly influenced by the history factor in the Australian society. For instance, Australia government introduced a far-reaching experiment with the aim of addressing the issue surrounding unemployment, as a major influence on job network in the year 1998 (Thane, 2016). One core element of the job network was the factor of mutual obligation. Essentially, this was regarded as a concept that entered the welfare discourses some two years earlier to the implementation of the experiment. Notably, the overall mutual obligation principle required an individual to be involved in a rather active job seeking behaviour in case they wanted to receive continuous benefits. In this regard, the Federal government took part in disbanding the old national labour exchange survives to guard the employment practices in Australia. This allowed the government to establish a network that consisted of employment services providers by the use of a process of a rather competitive tendering as well as contractual arrangements. The created job network was known to consist of various services across the nation and was run by large charities organizations as well as NGOs and for the profit providers across the Australian community (Reitz, 2018). Essentially, the crated job network organization strategy ensured that there was a provision of basic services across to the unemployed something that depended on the assessment of their degree of employability or rather the risk factor of the employability.
Ideally, Australia is considered as a rather federation of states as well as territories that were historically created with both the federal government and the government that is founded in each state and territories. All the available Australian jurisdictions formulated policies as well as legislation that targeted specific social problems of the populace in Australia (Morgan, 2017). In this light, the federal government was tasked at addressing issues that included a broader-scale policy intent as well as providing funds that came in the form of untied grants to the states who would then administer various local programs in the society (Lavelle, 2016). In essence, such arrangements were known to have been facilitated as well as controlled through various Commonwealth and State as well as Territorial agreements (Goodin, & Le Grand, 2018). For instance, this was the time where the federal government set out the policy arrangements that would ensure the overall creation of housing, the education system that was all inclusive, disability services, as well as health services. The collected funds would then hand over to the national government that would then ensure there was a development of housing facilities, schools, and health services.
Currently, the Australian social as well as well as the political context surrounding the overall welfare of work policies are well founded under individual obligation instead of rights. Most importantly, the welfare benefit has been highly encouraged where it provides a rather fairly low level of payments. In this regard, that individual who depends on the benefits has been understood to undergo rather significant financial stressors. In this light, there has been an increasing decline in the overall public support upon some types of payments in the Australian community. In essence, this may be perhaps the social security is considered to be paid out of the overall general revenue (Curran, Fenton, & Freedman, 2016). Essentially, it is no doubt that the entire welfare reforms that were historically created are as well expanding. The welfare reforms as stated from its initial focus was reestablished in 2016 where it would then seek to be directed towards people with disabilities as well as single mothers across the Australian community (Briskman, 2016). More recently, there have been some clear proposals that there should be a policy allowing the indigenous welfare recipient parents to receive benefits while their children attend schooling. However, such ideas have no doubt created some traction. In this light, the history of the Australian community has no doubt participated in the establishment of national social policies for the betterment of people’s policies.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the rolling out policies, as well as reforms in Australia, has created various questions surrounding the welfare of the Australian society. It is, however, because of the historically established proposals that the Australian social welfare has been known to the extent it is today. The workforce, as well as workplace reform that has been constituted lately, was formulated out of the historic reforms.
References
Atkinson, A. (2018). The I in the past. History Australia, 1-13.
Briskman, L. (2016). Decolonizing social work in Australia: Prospect or illusion. In Indigenous Social Work around the World(pp. 111-122). Routledge.
Curran, J., Fenton, N., & Freedman, D. (2016). Misunderstanding the internet. Routledge.
Goodin, R. E., & Le Grand, J. (2018). Not only the poor: The middle classes and the welfare state. Routledge.
Hartwell, R. M. (2017). The industrial revolution and economic growth. Routledge.
Lavelle, A. (2016). The death of social democracy: Political consequences in the 21st century. Routledge.
Morgan, B. (2017). Social citizenship in the shadow of competition: the bureaucratic politics of regulatory justification. Routledge.
Petrov, V., & Quinn, R. (2017). Everyday Stalinism: ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Macat Library.
Reitz, J. G. (2018). Warmth of the welcome: The social causes of economic success in different nations and cities. Routledge.
Thane, P. (2016). The foundations of the welfare state. Routledge.
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