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“Mutual Obligation”: John Stuart Mill versus Dennis Milner – lessons for 21st century policies on income support

Written 2006, don’t know where published

Australia’s current policies on income support will be viewed through the eyes of two significant writers. The central themes which will be interrogated include: liberty, conditionality, desert and paternalism. This is done with a view to assessing whether the current policies are designed to enhance or reduce the autonomy and dignity of people who receive income support. The current income policies started to take shape in the mid-1980s under Labor but have become more clearly defined since the election of the Liberal Coalition Government led by John Howard. The first Australian legislation dealing with Federal income support was introduced in 1908 (prior to that income support came under the jurisdiction of the States). State and Federal policies on income support have been significantly influenced by attitudes enshrined by administrators of British Poor Laws.

The approach taken here is to select from the writings of the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (one if not the most, celebrated 19^th century liberal defender of freedom) and to compare his views with those of an early 20^th century proponent of Basic Income: Dennis Milner. Mill was selected because many Australian politicians and social policy aficionados are familiar with his writings particularly his essay On Liberty. Milner was chosen, rather than one of the many current proponents of Basic Income, because his writings demonstrate that policies on income support which enhance autonomy have a long lineage.

This article will examine the different approaches taken by John Stuart Mill [in his essay On Liberty] and Dennis Milner in Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output: A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with national productivity (1920) in relation to how they interpret the ethics of imposing obligations upon people who receive income support from the State. Mill’s earlier and far more extensive text, Principles of Political Economy, originally published in 1848, will be relied upon to put into context some of the statements he makes in his essay On Liberty.

It would require a very long article to do justice to Mill’s extensive writings on moral philosophy, his utilitarianism or even his writings on the concept of the social contract. This article does not purport to be a major philosophical or policy analysis of Mill’s writings. Many others have attempted to do this. I have simply taken his essay On Liberty, rigorously searched it for comments on liberty particularly where they relate to income support and compared them with passages from the writing of Dennis Milner. In relation to Milner, I am indebted to Walter Van Trier (1995) who devoted a considerable part of his PhD thesis to analysis of Milner and his colleagues’ attempts to introduce a Basic Income in Britain in the early 20^th century.

This brief analysis will then be used to interrogate the approach to rights and responsibilities taken by Prime Minister John Howard in the last decade.

Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) originally published his essay On liberty in 1859 and it ran to four editions in a decade. It is available on the World Wide Web thanks to Bartleby.com. Within a short time, this book came to be acknowledged as the classic liberal defence of the freedom of the individual. Mill set out to explore “the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual” (Ch. 1 p. 1) and the “struggle between Liberty and Authority” (Ch. 1 p. 2). He says:

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle … That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant (Ch. 1 p. 9).

Mill constructed the concept of “self-regarding” actions to explain what part of human behaviour he considered the absolute right of that individual to control. Essentially, he determined that unless harm could be demonstrated to another from an individual’s action then society had no right to intervene in the actions of the individual. Mill elaborates upon this point when he makes his celebrated distinction between acts likely to incite and action likely to inform:

An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard (Ch. 3 p. 1).

Mill qualifies somewhat his absolute position about the freedom from interference for individuals, who do not cause harm to others, when he argues that all members of a society should be compelled to do their duty by giving evidence in court, playing a role in common defence of the society and “interposing to protect the defenceless against ill-usage (Ch. 1 p. 11)”.

Mill clearly sets a high bar, in defence of individual rights when he asserts:

The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind (Ch. 2 p. 1).

Mill returns to the issue of general obligations owed to fellow members of a community when he writes:

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest (Ch. 4 p. 3).

This issue of the absence of a real or implied “contract’ is one to which I will return later. I prefer, for the moment, to concentrate on the issue of good form and the concomitant absence of the right to compel. Mill claims this balance lies in the fact that “We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours (Ch. 4 p. 5)”. Mill equivocates on this point when he allows that knowledge of a person’s “vices” might “corrupt or mislead” (Ch. 4 p. 8). Here, as in most of On Liberty, Mill refers to the general obligations of every person, irrespective of their social rank, to comport themselves as good citizens.

In his final Chapter, Mill is clear that fellow citizens might warn another against foolish or non-violent drunken conduct but should not compel another. But then abruptly goes on to claim:

idleness, except in a person receiving support from the public, or except when it constitutes a breach of contract, cannot without tyranny be made a subject of legal punishment; but if, either from idleness or from any other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform his legal duties to others, as for instance to support his children, it is no tyranny to force him to fulfil that obligation, by compulsory labour, if no other means are available (Ch. 5 p. 6).

The closest that Mill comes to arguing this point is when he asserts that:

It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent (Ch. 5 p. 12).

I will return to these largely unsupported statements later in this article when dealing with points of departure between Mill and Milner.

Milner

In 1920, Dennis Milner (1892-1956) published one of the early English books supporting the introduction of a Basic Income. It ran to only one edition. The entire book can be accessed at the Basic Income Guarantee Australia (BIGA) website. From 1918 to the early 1920s Milner, his wife Mabel and Bertram Pickard campaigned in Britain for the introduction of a Basic Income, paid to all individuals irrespective of age (Van Trier 1995, Cunliffe and Erreygers 2004). They variously referred to their proposal as a “State bonus” or a “National dividend”. All three were Quakers.

The Milners’ pamphlet a “Scheme for a State Bonus” (1918 reprinted in Cunliffe and Erreygers 2004) argued that their proposal would increase feelings of security, abolish poverty, improve health, assist large families, improve education by keeping poor children at school longer and improve gender equality (pp.126-131, see also Pickard 1919 reprinted in Cunliffe and Erreygers 2004)”. The Milners went on say:

in order to produce a healthy race everyone must have access to the primal necessities of life, namely, food, shelter and liberty. Then, in order to encourage work it will be necessary to offer proper inducements, such as just pay, proper conditions of labour, public opinion, patriotism and the common welfare (p.131).

The Milners’ main justification for the provision of a Basic Income (1918 p.131) was similar to that of Thomas Paine’s “natural right” or the right to a share of the common wealth (1797 reprinted in Cunliffe and Erreygers 2004). They were concerned that the administration of the welfare system, particularly the requirement to prove destitution prior to receiving assistance, created perverse incentives. They did not fear that the presence of a Basic Income would create work disincentives. They were more concerned that “No one should be driven by the threat of destitution into accepting work which is underpaid, unhealthy, or even dangerous (p. 124)”.

In Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output: A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with national productivity, Milner (1920) set out to do just as the title suggests; designate ways in which national productivity could be increased in a way which would reward all and punish none. His first Chapter dealt with the “Problems of production”. In the second Chapter he sets out a proposal to introduce a minimum income guarantee “for every man, woman and child in the country (p. 19)” paid from a pool of “one-fifth of National production (p.21)”. He does qualify that universalism by excluding unnaturalised foreigners and Irishmen who lived in England less than six months (pp. 27-28). But he insists “The Minimum Income would be absolutely inalienable and free from all legal obligations (p. 28)”. He saw his Bonus replacing much of the welfare and social insurance systems.

Chapters 3 to 6 inclusive, deal with the creation of an efficient workforce by encouraging but not compelling labour. In Chapter 5, he deals explicitly with the problem, of those he indelicately terms “slackers”, arguing that of those who would be tempted to avoid work and just live on the income guarantee “is the type of man who does exceedingly little now” and he goes on to argue that national efficiency would be improved if they were removed from the work force “so that their feeble efforts would no longer be a drag on the work of others (p. 84)”. Finally, he returns to the topic of increasing production by avoiding strikes and unemployment and ensuring that all get a decent living in the land in which they toil.

The points of similarity

Both Mill (1909) and Milner (1920 Chs. 3-6) considered that public opinion was a great modifier of the amount of effort people contribute. Mill argued that “though the ‘master’s eye’, when the master is vigilant and intelligent, is of proverbial value, it must be remembered that in a Socialist farm or manufactory, each labourer would be under the eye not of one master, but of the whole community (1909 p. 205, see also Milner 1920 p. 85)”. After pointing to similarities between religious communities and socialist communities, Mill goes on: “independently of the public motive, every member of the association would be amenable to the most universal, and one of the strongest, of personal motives, that of public opinion (1909 p. 206)”.

Milner (1920), whilst strongly of the view that a Basic Income would discourage idleness (p. 79 and Ch. 6) points out “that there is no way of compelling willing work, which is the only efficient work (p. 81 italics not in original)”. Milner accepted that his proposal “will enable the idle to do no work (till their neighbours, in the interests of the Common pool, take the matter in hand) [p. 117]”. Some 80 years later Guy Standing wrote:

Dignified work needs basic security, or real freedom is denied. The ultimate paradox is that it requires the freedom to do no work at all. Dignified work can only exist when it is done for intrinsic reasons, not because a landlord, a boss or the state says it shall be so (2002 p. 277).

Mill writes quite favourably about some forms of socialism. He says, “The most skilfully combined, and with the greatest foresight of objections, of all forms of Socialism, is that commonly know as Fourierism (1909 p. 213, see also Cunliffe and Erreygers 2004 Chs.10 and 11, Cunliffe and Erreygers 2001)”. Mill refers to Fourier’s 1803 suggestion of a Basic Income as “distributing a certain minimum (1909 p. 214)” to every member of a community. He prefers the Fourier approach to that of communism because Fourier, in addition to the minimum, allowed other economic distribution commensurate with talent and labour.

Mill (1909 p. 969) supports the public provision of “certainty of subsistence” for the destitute who were able bodied rather than have them rely on private charity for the following reasons:

1. “charity almost always does too much or too little: it lavishes its bounty in one place and leaves people to starve in another”.
2. the state provides for the criminal poor and should do the same for those who have committed no crime.
3. “Private charity can give more to the deserving. The state must act by general rules. It can not undertake to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving indigent. It owes no more to the first and can give no less to the last … The dispensers of public relief have no business to be inquisitors. Guardians and overseers are not fit to be trusted to give or withhold other people’s money according to their verdict on the morality of the person soliciting it”.

Milner’s colleague Pickard argued for the abandonment “of public and private philanthropy, which, however well intended, has failed to raise permanently any considerable number of the ‘submerged tenth’ from an abyss where Faith is a mockery, Hope is an impossibility, and Charity a byword indeed (1919 p. 136)”.

The points of departure

Milner claimed that under his scheme “there is no advantage to the idler (there will be nothing to be gained by laziness, everything to be gained by working), because earnings will be no bar to receiving the Minimum income (1920 p. 98)”. He writes “if, therefore, we wish to see a growing productivity, we must undermine suspicion by a tangible pledge that all classes will actually share the benefits of greater National Income (pp. 111-112)”.

At this point, we should return to the two long quotations from Mill’s On Liberty from Chapter 5 which concluded the first discussion of Mill’s writings, in this article. There, he contended that, once a person was reliant upon receiving support from the public, they forfeited the right to be left to their own devices. Mill does not justify that position in On Liberty but he attempts to do so at length in his earlier Principles of Political Economy (Book 5, Ch. 9 section 13). He concedes some people require assistance “and none needs help so urgently as one who is starving (p. 967)”. He goes on:

in all cases of helping, there are two sets of consequences to be considered; the consequences of the assistance itself, and the consequences of relying on assistance. The former are generally beneficial, but the latter, for the most part, injurious … And this is never more likely to happen than in very cases where the need of help is the most intense. There are few things for which it is more mischievous that people should rely on the habitual aid of others … and unhappily there is no lesson which they more easily learn (p. 967).

Mill commends the principle of less eligibility, enshrined in the 1834 Poor Law. He approves “guaranteeing all persons against absolute want” on the condition that “those who are supported by legal charity can be kept considerably less desirable than the condition of those who find support for themselves (p. 968)” claiming that the application of strict rules by the Poor Law Guardians had succeeded in abolishing pauperism from parts of England.

The language Mill employed in the mid 19^th century may well seem antiquated but, as will be seen below, the essence of what he said is very much a part of the debate about income support in 21^st century Australia. Many of the same struggles which the Milners and Packard fought in England during the early 20^th century are still being waged in Australia today.

Moral jeopardy

Nowadays, economic fundamentalists who wish to limit the access of less affluent people to welfare assistance rely substantially upon the sort of argument originally mounted in 1848 in Principles of Political Economy (Mill 1909 Book 2, Ch. 1, Book 5, Ch. 9 section 13). In particular, the argument that whilst limited assistance is sometimes necessary it should be temporary and provided under conditions which ensure:

that the assistance is not such as to dispense with self-help, by substituting itself for the person’s own labour, skill, and prudence but is limited to affording him a better hope of attaining success by those legitimate means (Mill 1909 p. 968).

Perhaps those righteous rich, allegedly so concerned about the moral wellbeing of the poor who are given welfare assistance, should read Mable and Dennis Milner’s 1918 pamphlet where in relation to those who claim:

there is a moral value in poverty, both to the poor and to those who assist them. Yet there is abundant evidence that those who live in ‘want and the fear of want’ are cramped in their spiritual outlook, and the few who are virtuous would be so under any circumstances. On the other hand, those who minister to the needs of the poor will find ample scope for their efforts when the merely economic factor in destitution is removed.

Surely this economic minimum is the first step to the realisation of any spiritual advance. ‘Great are the uses of adversity’ – but even the preacher has his breakfast (p.132, italics in original).

The suggestion that imposing obligations upon poor people who receive assistance helps them avoid “welfare dependency” did not impress the Milners. In a far less theological vein, I have argued that it is the affluent who are the clear beneficiaries of such mystifying suggestions (Tomlinson 2004).

Howard

At the time of writing this article, John Howard has completed a decade as Prime Minister of Australia and political commentators are falling over themselves to assure the public he is still as popular as he was in 1996 when he promised, that if the voters would only toss Labor out of office, we would all become “relaxed and comfortable” (Borghino 2006). The Australian economy has experienced 12 years of continuous growth. The Australian military has pre-emptively engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of asylum seekers have been incarcerated for years on the Pacific Islands of Nauru and Manus and in outback immigration detention centres like Woomera and Baxter. The independent, elected Indigenous agency (the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission) has been abolished. Over 100 Indigenous communities have been coerced into signing shared responsibility agreements in return for receiving access to goods and services most Australians take for granted (See Manne 2004, Marr and Wilkinson, Brennan 2003, Bessant, Watts, Dalton and Smyth 2006, Tomlinson 2005 [a], [b], 2004, 2003).

Since Howard (1999, 2000) set out his plans for social welfare in this country, the social security system has become more selective and targeted. Recipients have been forced to meet increasingly oppressive requirements (Ziguras, Dufty and Considine 2003). This Government policy is euphemistically described as providing recipients with the opportunity to meet their “mutual obligations”. Howard claims that if people receive assistance from the Government it is only fair that they give something back in return. Here he is invoking the concept of a contract, albeit unwritten, between the recipient and the Government. This contract soon takes on a physical form. Officers of Centrelink (the department which pays social security) make their “customers” enter into written agreements in return for receiving social security benefit payments. Such Government conduct would seem to fly in the face of Mill’s suggestion in On Liberty that “society is not founded on a contract, and … no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it (Ch 4 p. 3)”.

Many writers (Kinnear 2000, Goodin 2001, Tomlinson 2003, Schooneveldt 2004) have suggested that such contracts are unethical because poor people have little choice but to comply with the dictates of government. Howard is asserting that it is right (just) for the State to unilaterally impose a contractual obligation upon some of the most powerless people in our land. Goodin (2001) points to the propensity of governments to assert an implied consent for changes in income policy between welfare recipients and the State through the widespread use of the language of the social contract. He conjures the image of a highwayman declaring that even if one had parted with one’s money in return for one’s life; no court would enforce such a contract. He goes on:

The proposition that the welfare worker is putting to her putative ‘client’ is: ‘Agree or starve.’ That is the same, in all essentials, to the proposition the highwayman puts to his victim: ‘Agree or die.’(p.191).

Just as we still have an obligation to feed people even after they have committed heinous crimes so too we have an obligation to not let people starve even if they have committed mortal sins against the labour market …Welfare recipients have not agreed to those new arrangements at the macro-level; and such consent as they give at the micro-level, in ‘agreements’ negotiated under effective duress with welfare caseworkers, has no moral standing (p.195).

If we seriously believed that work is good for you and that it is the state’s legitimate role to force you to do it, then we would have no grounds for confining our paternalism to the poor. Paternalistically speaking, it would be equally important to make the rich work too (p.198).

It is a pity that the Howard Government has ignored Mill’s assertion that:

The dispensers of public relief have no business to be inquisitors. Guardians and overseers are not fit to be trusted to give or withhold other people’s money according to their verdict on the morality of the person soliciting it (1909 p. 969).

If the Government has taken anything from Mills in relation to welfare assistance it is from the two pages immediately preceding this quotation. In particular:

There are few things for which it is more mischievous that people should rely on the habitual aid of others … and unhappily there is no lesson which they more easily learn (1909 p. 967).

Conclusion

Mill, in his essay On Liberty, provides a reasoned defence of freedom for all individuals except those who, from necessity, are forced to rely upon income support assistance. Every reader selects what appeals to them in the texts that they read. That being the case, we are left to wonder about the thought processes of Howard Government ministers that lead them to believe that if social security recipients are not forced to engage in “work for the dole” programs, fill out a “dole diary” and meet all their other “mutual obligations” then they will sink into the slothful state of “welfare dependency”.

It is clear from the actions of the Howard Government that they do not trust social security recipients to make an effort to escape poverty without such compulsion. It is unfortunate that they have not come to share Bertram Pickard’s view that “Even the cynic will probably admit that genius, love of family, satisfaction in labour well done, ambition, and the desire for free and full development, together account for a very large proportion of the stimulus that urges men and women to work (1919 p.138)”.

The Government’s paternalistic claim that by imposing obligations upon social security recipients it is assisting people avoid “welfare dependency” flies in the face of Mill’s injunction that society should avoid such impositions because a citizen’s “own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant (Ch. 1 p. 9)” to intervene.

It was equally open to Government Ministers to adopt Mill’s (1909 p. 969) suggestion that it was not the job of dispensers of welfare to determine the moral worth of recipients. Had they done this, they might have been able to move on to the early 20^th century ideas of Dennis Milner and see the job of social security as being to provide “a minimum income below which none can fall (p. 117)”.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Penny Harrington for her editorial assistance and encouragement.

Bibliography

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http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au
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Brennan, F. Tampering with Asylum: A Universal Humanitarian Problem. University of Queensland, St Lucia.
Cunliffe, J. & Erreygers, G.[eds.] (2004) The Origins of Universal Grants: Palgrave, Houndmills.
Cunliffe, J. & Erreygers, G. (2001) “The Enigmatic Legacy of Charles Fourier: Joseph Charlier and Basic Income.” History of Political Economy. Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 459-484.
Goodin, R. (2001) “False principles of Welfare Reform.” Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol 36, No. 3 August.
Howard, J. (2000) “Quest for a decent society” The Australian 12^th. Jan, p.11.
Howard, J. (1999) “Building a Stronger and Fairer Australia: Liberalisation in Economic Policy and Modern Conservatism in Social Policy.” Address to ‘Australia Unlimited Roundtable.’ 4^th. May.
http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/1999/AustraliaUnlimitedRoundtable.htm
Kingston, M. (2004) Not Happy, John: Defending our democracy. Penguin, Camberwell.
Kinnear, P. (2000) Mutual Obligation: Ethical and social implications. Discussion Paper No. 32, The Australia Institute, August.
Manne, R. (ed.) (2004) The Howard Years. Black Inc. Agenda, Melbourne.
Marr, D. & Wilkinson, M. (2004) Dark Victory. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest.
Mills, J., S. (1999) On liberty. Bartleby.com,
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Mills, J., S. (1909) Principles of Political Economy. Longmans, Green & Company, London.
Milner, D. (1920) Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output: A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with national productivity. George Allen & Unwin. London. http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au/docs/Dennis%20Milner%201920%20book.pdf
Milner, E., M. & Milner, D. (1918) “Scheme for a State Bonus.” Reprinted in Cunliffe, J. & Erreygers, G.[eds.] (2004) The Origins of Universal Grants: Palgrave, Houndmills.
Paine, T., (1797) “Agrarian Justice.” Reprinted in Cunliffe and Erreygers (2004) The Origins of Universal Grants: Palgrave, Houndmills.
Pickard, B. (1919) A reasonable Revolution. Being a Discussion of the State bonus Scheme – a Proposal for a National Minimum Income. Reprinted in Cunliffe and Erreygers (2004) The Origins of Universal Grants: Palgrave, Houndmills.
Schooneveldt, S. (2004) “Do Mutual Obligation breach penalties coerce compliance with government expectations?” Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 155-167.
Standing, G. (2002) Beyond the New Paternalism: Basic Security as Equality. Verso, London.
Tomlinson, J. (2005[a]) “Must be the Grog can’t be the Government: Relations between Government and Indigenous people in Australia.” Paper given at the International Conference on Engaging Communities, 14-17^th August, Brisbane.
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Tomlinson, J. (2005[b]) “The Howard Government’s Disabling Policies.” Paper given at the Social Change in the 21^st Century, Brisbane 28^th October.
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Tomlinson, J. (2004) “The real moral jeopardy of ‘Welfare Dependency’” On Line Opinion. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2595
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Van Trier, W. (1995) “Every One A King.” PhD. Thesis Department of Sociology, K.U. Leuven.
Ziguras, S., Dufty, G. & Considine, M. (2003) Much Obliged: Disadvantaged job seekers’ experiences of the mutual obligation regime. Brotherhood of St Laurence  and St. Vincent de Paul
http://bsl.org.au/pdfs/MOreportV2.pdf

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A universal basic income advantages all.

Some Australians are old enough to remember a time when a fair day’s work meant receiving a fair day’s pay, when unions were strong enough to represent their members and few were left to languish without access to some form of social support.

Nowadays we have decreasing numbers of people with secure full-time employment, casualised work is becoming the order of the day, insecure and part-time work has become the norm. The gig economy is upon us and robots look increasingly likely to destroy many jobs. The system of social security which had existed in last half of the 20^thcentury has been eroded by governments enamoured with neo-liberal economics.

There is a nostalgia for a more stable and secure life. However, the past was never a golden age. Fortunately, there is an exciting way forward which can guarantee a livable income for all permanent residents and which ensures there are incentives to produce and earn. That is through the introduction of a universal basic income.

The idea of generalised income guarantees paid to the entire populous is a very old idea. Professor Guy Standing in his book Basic Income: and how we can make it happen traces its beginnings as far back as ancient Greece 400 years before Christ. In the 1920s a group of Quakers led by Dennis Milner attempted unsuccessfully to convince the British Labour Party to adopt a “national bonus on productivity” which was a form of universal income guarantee.

In 1975, the Henderson Poverty Inquiry recommended a two-tiered form of guaranteed minimum income in Australia which the then Minister of Social Security, Bill Hayden, supported. Unfortunately, the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the Whitlam Government before they could implement such a system.

Why we need a UBI

For the last 43 years Australia has seen governments of Labor and conservative persuasions increasingly committed to a neo-liberal agenda. Our social security system has been transformed from one which, though targeted and means tested since the mid 1940s, had managed to ensure few were left without some form of income support. Social security is now becoming like the poor law system of 19^thcentury England. Politicians continue to claim that people are paid according to need, when in fact they are paid according to their perceived worthiness. Universality is fast disappearing. Increasing numbers of people are having their income support payments stopped for periods of up to 8 weeks.

Asylum seekers, recently arrived migrants, Aborigines living in regional regions, inarticulate applicants, people with several forms of disabilities (particularly those with mental health issues) and the bureaucratically least sophisticated are the most likely to find their income support payments suspended or cancelled. People are paid not according to who is in need but rather who is in favour.

A universal income would be paid to every permanent resident without any requirement other than they establish that they live permanently in Australia and are legally entitled to do so. It would be paid on an individual basis irrespective of whether they live alone or with others. It would take no account of wealth. People would not be required to demonstrate work willingness or the lack of the ability to work. A basic income would replace all other forms of government provided income support but not affect any other aspect of the welfare state.

What would a UBI achieve

A universal basic income would dramatically clarify the central income support system for all Australians, it would improve equity by ensuring that everyone has access to a livable income. It would end stigma and downward envy because all would have an equal entitlement. Discretion and moral judgement would disappear from income support. It would also remove racism. Unlike the present social security system, there would always be a financial incentive to undertake available work and encourage productive capacity.

Governments would no longer be able to impose obligations upon citizens. Work for the dole would become a distant nightmare. Young people would not be forced to work for a pittance for an employer on the grounds that they are trainees not workers. Employers would have to pay award wages and even above award wages to attract the most sort after workers. Dangerous and undesirable jobs would either be phased out or at least pay a decent wage.

Once a basic income was in place there would be less need for people without income to engage in economic crime because they would have a regular income on which to rely. People coming out of jail would be assured that they too had access to a regular livable income to sustain them until they found work. There would be less need to build jails and the court system would no longer be clogged with petty criminals forced into crime to survive.

But they would leave work in droves

Opponents of basic income claim that if people were provided with a regular income paid at above the poverty line then this would encourage shirking. It is true that many hold such views but all the evidence from trials around the world in places such as Canada, Namibia, India, Kenya and the Netherlands do not support such ill-founded fears.

Hand in hand with this common objection is the question “Why pay millionaires when they don’t need it?” This question is usually followed by the assertion that as “There are limited fund to pay for income support so all available funds should be expended on the poor.”  The answer to the question is that a universal basic income is far cheaper to implement than targeted categorical systems and it will greatly improve tax compliance because welfare tax officials won’t be chasing small overpayments and they can be redirected to go after tax evasion. Paying millionaires makes tax avoidance harder for them. In addition, because there would need to be an income tax imposed on all income additional to the basic income, millionaires would not be net beneficiaries in straight financial terms. Because workers up the average wage would get the basic income and pay tax most would be marginal net beneficiaries.

There is no set amount available to pay for income support. Every budget governments prioritise some welfare groups over others. Universal services attract far greater public support and are likely to see such systems consolidate and improve over time. Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefit Schemes are prime examples.

All Alaskan residents receive a partial basic income and it is has become the most egalitarian state in the union. A basic income paid to all Australians would have a similar effect. People living in more equal societies have better happiness and health outcomes. So were a universal income come to be paid here, both rich and poor would see their health and well-being improve. Everyone would be a winner.

Written 2018

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ABC: No child will live in poverty

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An Australian History of Basic Income

First published on Basic Income Guarantee Australia website, 2004

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Australia: Basic Income and Decency

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Australia: Will Basic Income have a second coming?

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Australia’s Welfare Wars – Book review

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Australians All

written in 2001

Australians all let us regret
we are no longer free,
we’re swimming in the global tide
against the GST.

John Howard racked up the deficit,
not building knowledge nation,
imposing on the poor and Black
his mutual obligation.

Australians all let us regret
we are no longer free,
in Headland and in Woomera
we jail the refugee.

And in the war against the poor,
much to their consternation,
with highest praise for competition
provide incentivation.

The greedy banks have come and gone
and left us with huge fees.
Globalisation’s bottom line,
continuing miseries.

The answer to the Murray’s silt:
genetic manipulation.
The bottom line will suit us fine
that’s global devastation.

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Basic Income

A Basic Income is a form of income support paid to each individual permanent resident irrespective of their wealth, income, gender, race, age, place of residence or marital status. An equal amount is paid to those in employment and those not at work thereby decreasing the potential for downward envy.  Basic Income is not taxed. All existing tax-free thresholds would be abolished and tax would be payable on each and every extra dollar earned. The only eligibility question to be determined is whether the applicant is a permanent resident of Australia. Further details about Basic Income can be found at Basic Income Guarantee Australia or Basic Income Earth Network.

Some researchers have argued that if a Basic Income was put in place workers would stay away from work in droves: whereas others argue the opposite. The only study conducted in Australia into the impact on work willingness (where low-income families were provided with a guaranteed minimum income), showed these families experienced no decline in work willingness.

Much of the argument about the efficiency of a Basic Income has concentrated on the supply of benefits, in the least stigmatising fashion, to all who need them. There are broader aspects of efficiency that can and should be mounted in support of an unconditional Basic Income.

• A Basic Income requires the least interference in the lives of citizens.
• It supplies all permanent residents with equal assistance.
• It is the most inclusive form of income support and the most secure, thus enhancing citizenship.
• It provides sufficient income to allow people to explore their creative capacity.
• It removes many of the obstacles to a reinvigoration of industrial, technical and computing infrastructure.
• It allows the State a fuller understanding of the impact of its other social wage policies.

A universal Basic Income is not a utopian idea. It is an efficient, affordable way to ensure no Australian permanent resident remains in poverty. However, a Basic Income is just that – an unconditional universal income guarantee. It delivers an income floor without impeding productivity. It is a vast improvement on categorical, selective social services. It is an advance on all social insurance and private provision schemes which invariably result in the “individualisation of risk” and as a result create a “do it yourself welfare state”.

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Basic income conference in Ireland

Written in 2008 not published.

Goodbye to Australia forever
and farewell to Botany Bay
I’m off to Europe to find fame and fortune
so please, just get out of the way.

Goodbye to your tired old means testing,
your worn out ideas and obsessional fears
have reduced me to tears
you’ve no idea that they’ve had their day.

I’ll be dealing in Euros and pounds
far away from those small-minded clowns
ensconced in their cities and towns
sustained by sanctimonious frowns.

We’ll be speaking of universal payments
of caring and sharing, preparing and daring
of finding a place for all residents
not searching for malingers and dissidents.

We’ll talk about tomorrow’s citizenship
of social and economic rights for all
for rich and poor, for weak and strong
of equality; and righting wrong.

Basic income is about trusting each other,
neighbour, stranger, friend, sister or brother
to contribute what we should to the general good
and take what we need, not glorify greed.

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Basic Income in Australia: A distant horizon

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Basic income without obligation: Why unconditional income support is preferable?

Abstract

Is the introduction of a universal basic income politically feasible? What is there about a universal basic income which generates such negativity? Is there something wrong about getting something for nothing? What problems do selectivity, targeting, means testing and conditionality create? What is so frightening about paying millionaires the same level of guaranteed income as all other permanent residents? Is providing universal income support a radical social idea? Are income support programs which provide an above poverty line assistance to all permanent residents a useful way of creating the good society? Are there possible downsides to moving in this direction? Is there a better way to abolish poverty, destitution, slough, ignorance and intolerance whilst ensuring a socially desirable lifestyle for all permanent residents? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to direct all available funds to those in poverty?

Let’s answer these questions in reverse order.

Clearly it would cost substantially less to provide income support only to those who are poor rather than providing the same level of income support to all citizens irrespective of need. But this is not the full answer. Categorical / selective / targeted / means-tested programs have never in modern history ever reached all the poor and only the poor. There are many reasons for this. Namely: bureaucratic ineptitude, racism, meanness of spirit, favouritism, political interference are obstacles to identifying all the poor and only the poor. Perceptions of stigma, difficulties of applying, lack of knowledge about entitlement are just some of the reasons why people fail to apply for categorical income support programs. The least bureaucratically sophisticated, the most remote, the least educated, and the poorest of our citizens are the ones most like to miss out on some or all of their income support assistance.

One has only to look at the New Start Allowance (which used to be called Unemployment Benefit) to see some of the problems of categorical / selective / targeted means-tested programs. It is hedged around with conditionality, meanness of spirit and bureaucratic bastardry. The regulations controlling Australian welfare administrations are written in poor house ink.

Goodin & Le Grand noted in 1987 that policies which are specifically aimed at addressing the problems of the poor are poor policies. The reason for this is that, even if it were possible to assist every poor person and only poor people there would not be the public support available to sustain such programs, let alone enhance the level of income support provided. In relation to the New Start Allowance the base level of payment has not, in real terms, been raised since 1994. Since that time the severity of conditionality imposed upon recipients has dramatically increased.

A better way.

A universal basic income because it provides, without any demeaning conditions or enforced obligations, an austere but livable income to every permanent resident, is a better way and a more direct way of ensuring a socially desirable lifestyle for everybody. It ends enforced dependency on any other person because it is paid to each and every individual irrespective of any living arrangement or any other social status. It is paid irrespective of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation or lack of it. It does not take account of any other cultural trait. Because the basic income is not taxed and cannot be garnished by any individual, company or government it provides a known guarantee of sustenance above the poverty line. It ensures the government knows the minimum income support available to the citizenry on which it can then build its other educational, health, housing and disability programs.

It ensures the capacity to voluntarily engage in productive activity or pursue education, craft, vocation or artistic endeavour in a way which enhances freedom from domination without impeding freedom to accomplish.

Advantages and disadvantages of providing an above the poverty line income support.

We have long known that letting people live in poverty increases crime, mental health problems, a sense of hopelessness, removes an individual’s sense of agency, causes marital disruption, decreases capacity to find or hold employment and magnifies despair. But what is less well recognised is that how we act to remove people from poverty can enhance or exacerbate their situation.

Neoliberals are fond of trotting out the cliché that any job is better than no job at all. Julia Gillard, Labor Prime Minister, in the run up to the 2010 Federal election spoke about the simple dignity that a job brings (Four Corners 2011). Such attitudes justify enforcing a readiness to work policy, workfare, work for the dole, mutual/reciprocal obligation, and even the workhouse and outdoor relief policies in of mid 19^thCentury policies in England. They lie at the heart of the worthy/unworthy divide. I will deal later with the specific argument about the risk of moral turpitude arising out of getting something for nothing embedded in ex-prime minister John Howard’s frequent claim that working age people who receive assistance from the state “must give something back”.

The central disadvantage often identified by neo-liberals and their ilk is that if people are not forced / encouraged / nudged / assisted / helped to get job ready or forced to take the first available job then they will become dependent of the state, perhaps for life. Jocelyn Newman who, herself, received two parliamentary and one military pension in retirement, whilst a government welfare minister,commissioned a report entitled The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21^st. Century.

Despite the hullabaloo, no one has been able to identify able bodied people who have been found to suffer intergenerational dependency but the myth is alive and well. Little attention is paid to detailed longitudinal studies which show that being forced to take a poor-quality job does little for unemployed people and, in many cases, worsens their predicament.

A longitudinal study of 1,000 unemployed respondents in the United Kingdom aged between 35-75 recently found that those who obtained low-paying or highly stressful jobs did not enjoy better health than those who remained unemployed. Whereas those who obtained good-quality jobs did enjoy better health outcomes (Chandola and Zhang 2017). This study replicates several of the findings of a seven-year longitudinal Australian study conducted by Peter Butterworth of the Centre for Mental Health at ANU, Canberra, who “found that moving from unemployment to a poor-quality job was actually associated with a significant decline in those people’s mental health and well-being compared with staying unemployed”: Butterworth also found that obtaining a poor-quality job did not increase that person’s chances of subsequently obtaining good quality employment (Long, 2011 p.1).

It would seem to me that what should be taken from these studies and of course the Namibian, Indian, Canadian and other basic income trials is that removing conditionality, abolishing obstacles to employment, providing a secure income and providing opportunities to obtain desired employment, rather than enforcing compulsion, is the best way to proceed.

Is providing universal income support a radical social idea?

Basic income has been around in English speaking circles for more than 500 years since Thomas More’s Utopia was published. Professor Guy Standing, acknowledges More’s contribution before suggesting such ideas proliferated among the Plebeians as early as 462 BC in ancient Greece. Such ideas formed the basis of Australian Aboriginal society and several other non-Western societies for at least the last 70,000 years.

Being old does not ensure that an idea is not radical. But those who would assert that the idea of a universal basic income is a radical idea would have to demonstrate its radical essence and I believe they would hard pressed to do so.

Ensuring every permanent resident has sufficient to sustain a dignified life is an extraordinarily mundane idea. Most leading religious figures have advocated ideas along such lines for the last few millennia.

What wrong with selectivity, targeting, means-testing and conditionality?

The current system of government provided income support in Australia creates many problems for those who receive the “assistance”, those who administer the provision of welfare and the society more generally. Earlier this article considered the fact that the way income support is delivered to the recipient often worsens their situation; as does the failure to provide such support to each and every individual. I am not going to revisit this except to say that in Australia the state fails to convey to recipients that their receipt of such assistance is a right of permanent residence not a handout.

Even bureaucrats with the best intentions will at times exclude some who should be assisted and assist others who don’t have an entitlement. But the bulk of those administering welfare programs designed to assist the poor are not sufficiently trained, are under constant pressure to find reasons not to pay and are forced to operate within extraordinarily tight budget constraints. They are rewarded for rejecting claims and put under pressure if they are seen as generous. Anyone who feels I may be exaggerating the propensity of middle managers and frontline workers to respond to inappropriate incentives should reflect upon the findings of the Banking and Don Dale Royal Commissions and the robo-debt fiasco.

Means-testing creates disincentives to find poorly remunerated casual/precarious employment, poverty traps, and frequently penalises those who do undertake part-time employment by not allowing them to write off the expenses associated with work and/or by clawing back from the welfare benefit anything from 50 to more than 100 percent of the income earned from employment.

But a major problem with selectivity / targeting / means-testing and conditionality occurs at a societal level. Such programs undermine social solidarity, evoke downward envy (Tomlinson 1999), devalue citizenship and undermine generosity of spirit. The entire neo-liberal philosophical emphasis is devoted to enhancing a dog eat dog competitive spirit by not relying on others (particularly the state). Such non-reliance on others which neo-liberals mistakenly term “self-help” is in reality a fig leaf for the neglect of less fortunate citizens. At its most extreme it is a call to glorify the survival of the fittest economic players. The end result is a mean-minded society without a soul.

Funding millionaires and billionaires.

It may come as a surprise to find me arguing that an above the poverty line basic income should be paid to every individual who is a permanent resident in a country rather than directing assistance only to those in the greatest financial need.

The basis of my argument is that a universal basic income is an entitlement of citizenship/permanent residence. Its essential characteristic is that it is an inclusive payment supplied without conditions but as a right. Millionaires and billionaires are citizens and therefore have an entitlement. So, paying them an identical amount as everyone else underlines their identity as an Australian permanent resident with the same rights and obligations as other Australians.

Whilst the basic income itself is not taxable all other income, from whatever source, is taxable.  Those Australians without any other income would not pay income tax but more affluent Australians would be paying tax on their incomes. In financial terms, millionaires would be paying many times more in tax than they received from the basic income. Other working Australians, up to those earning the full time average wage, would find they were receiving slightly more than at present or about the same once a basic income was in place. Less affluent Australians would be the main net beneficiaries following the introduction of a basic income.

Something for nothing.

Neo-liberals are quick to assert that getting something for nothing creates a moral hazard. They suggest it frequently leads to the slippery path of enduring dependency, slough and licentiousness. But it would appear that such temptations are, as far as the well-to-do are concerned, only likely to affect those on low incomes.

Well known basic income advocates, Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark, in 2018 at page 223, ofAgainst Charity, pointed out that “Very rich people tend to push the notion of meritocracy as deservingness, which they equate with justice so, therefore, there is nothing unjust about their wealth.” Earlier at page 138, having discussed colonialism and genocide they write “The rich are quick to point out that we cannot inherit our ancestor’s sin. Indeed. But how can they then be entitled to the fruits of those sins: to their huge inherited advantage in power and wealth” which derive from dispossessing the original owners.

It would appear that getting something for nothing under some circumstances is a good thing so long as such beneficence does not accrue to non-affluent people.

What generates the negativity?

The first generator of negativity is that a universal basic income is an innovation of the existing system. Change brings resistance. Australia is a multicultural nation and the reasons why people from differing ethnic groups might support or oppose the introduction of a universal payment will vary. First and second-generation migrants will have differing reasons to support or oppose a basic income. Indigenous Australians, who are one of the groups, most frequently adversely affected by the current situation are not a homogenous group and won’t express a unanimous opinion.

The age of Keynesian economics has, for the moment, been superseded by the rise of neo-liberal (economic fundamentalist) monetary ideas. The followers of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Milton Friedman’s Chicago School economics are the true radicals they have managed to overthrow orthodox social solidarity thinking and in doing so have brought us the global economic recession, precarious employment, declining unionisation, stagnating wages, skyrocketing profits and all the other joys of their dog eat dog world.

Whilst neo-liberal ideas prevail negativity towards generous universal income support systems will continue.

Is the introduction of a universal basic income politically feasible?

For something to be political feasible it needs to be financially feasible and sustainable into the future, able to be explained, reasonably easy to implement and capable of attracting widespread support. Once the people lead the politicians will follow.

Australians have never been as financially well-off as they are at present. An above the poverty line basic income is financially affordable in Australia. It is not a question of affordability but one of willingness to move towards a more equitable society. This does not mean that there would not need to be a substantial rearrangement of the existing tax system. Those earning above the average full time male wage would be required to pay substantially more tax than they do now. Tax avoidance by big business would need to be pursued with alacrity.  The black economy engaged in by many small businesses would need to be substantially decreased. Carbon and other pollutants would be taxed. Family trust and other avoidance/evasion mechanisms would need to become a thing of the past. There may be a need to reintroduce death and gift duties. But even taking all this into account the rate of tax on earned incomes would still be far less than the combined benefit claw-back and tax paid by some of the poorest Australians today.

Several Australian writers and activists are making valiant attempts to explain this system to their fellow citizens. There is not currently widespread support for a universal basic income but the ground swell is building. The 2020 Basic Income Earth Network Congress will be held in Brisbane, jointly hosted by the University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology. This will bring leading basic income advocates to our shores and generate increased interest in the topic.

Bibliography.

Chandola, T. and Zhang, N. (2017) “Re-employment, job quality, health and allostatic load biomarkers: prospective evidence from the UK Household Longitudinal Study.” 10^thAugust.

International Journal of Epidemiology, dyx150, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyx150

Four Corners. 2011 “The real Julia”. Australian Broadcasting Commission. February 7.

Goodin, R. & Le Grand, J. (1987) Not only the Poor:The Middle Classes and the Welfare State. Allen & Unwin, London.

Long, S. (2011) “Bad job worse for your mental state than no job at all.” ABC, PM. Program, 9^thJune. http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3240169.htm.
Newman, J. (1999) The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21^st. Century. Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra.

Raventos, D. &Wark, J. (2018) Against Charity. CounterPunch, Chico CA.
Standing, G. (2017) Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen. Pelican, United Kingdom.

Tomlinson, J. (1999) “The politics of downward envy.” Union Songwebsite
http://unionsong.com/reviews/envy.html

Written 2018

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Berating the unemployed for their failure to find non-existent work

Written in 2002

The announcement by Mr. Larry Anthony Minister for Community Services that the unemployed are to have the number of jobs for which they must apply each fortnight doubled, coupled with the extension of the dole diary requirements makes little sense in the context of the Australian labour market. There are 8 to 10 people looking for work for each job vacancy. There are 800,000 Australian children living in homes where neither parent has paid employment. The 200,000 long term unemployed have not remained without work because of their failure to fill out dole diaries or apply for 10 jobs a fortnight.

The reason people become and remain unemployed has more to do with issues such as the demand for labour, the types of skills which are in demand, the preparedness of industry and government to create jobs than it has to do with personal failures of individual unemployed people. The reasons some people do not have the skills which are in demand at any particular point in history has little to do with unemployed people’s preparedness to work. Many older unemployed people have work skills which are no longer in demand precisely because they have been in continuous employment with employers who did not foresee the need to re-skill their workforce. Many younger unemployed people have not acquired the currently desired skills because they trained for or were skilled up for jobs which have now disappeared.

Why then would the Howard Government set out increase the job search and dole diary requirements forced on the unemployed? Do they believe the overwhelming majority of unemployed people have little interest in finding suitable employment?

Clearly they believe that some unemployed people need to be compelled to look for work. They believe that forcing people to fill out a dole diary somehow equips people to find and hold jobs. The Howard Government continues to believe that forcing people to work for the dole also has beneficial effects upon unemployed people’s capacity to get work. They believed that making it compulsory for young people with literacy and numeracy difficulties to attend training would increase their literacy and numeracy skills. The themes are remarkably constant; compulsion for the unemployed is good: and recent pronouncements indicate there is a feeling in this Government that it should be extended to people with disabilities and lone parents.

However this endorsement of compulsion for the marginalised, the unemployed, sole parents, people with disabilities is not a mindless endorsement of compulsion for everyone. The rich and the better off sections of the middle class are not to be coerced but rather encouraged via tax cuts, subsidies on their private health funds, incentives and so forth to increase their wealth. The Howard Government claims some historical connection with 19^th century liberals like John Stuart Mills famous for his essay on liberty. Their desire to compel is not universal. They are not, in this instance, coming out as social bondage freaks.

It is the conservative rather than the liberal tradition which so distrusts the poor that it insists on compulsion of those who seek assistance is necessary not only for the maintenance of good order but also for the salvation of the poor themselves.

There are some problems which the latest increased compulsion of unemployed creates for our society. No matter how the compliance with the new regime is implemented it denigrates all unemployed people simply because it implies that within the reserve army of labour there are some who, are not only a drain on the economy by applying for the job search pittance, but also some are not meeting their obligation to seek work. Mr. Anthony’s statement is an admission that this Government, though on a life long search for dole cheats, is incapable of ensuring that it has eliminated all dole bludgers from amongst those unemployed people lucky enough to be paid the Job Search allowance.

Assuming that the Government is correct and that some unemployed people are not “genuine job seekers” then the overwhelming bulk of the unemployed are “genuine job seekers”. The “non-genuine” are not likely to be offended by the denigration of all unemployed people – nor are they likely to caught by such crass compliance techniques. However many of those who are desperately seeking work will be deeply offended by the suggestion they are dole cheats.

There will be an increase in violence as a result of this announcement. Firstly this will be the final straw of some unemployed who don’t have stomach for the increased indignity which the Howard Government is heaping on them. Some of them will suicide – creating a short term saving for this Government. Still others, unable to confront their real oppressor, will lash out at members of their family.

Some, at the point where they are “breached” for failing to meet the latest compulsion whim of the Howard Government, will lash out at the officer who interviews them and may assault that or several officers. They will not then be paid benefits – resulting in a short term saving to this Government. Of course the “offending non-complier” will be jailed at 10 times the cost of unemployment benefit but that cost or a lot of it will be transferred to some state government treasury. Other unemployed people, who are struck off Job Search or New Start, will have no other option but to try to survive through illegal activity.

It is however possible that some of the unemployed will do the analysis. They will realise who their real oppressors are. They will realise that the members of this government, who support increasing the indignity inflicted on unemployed people, are the direct oppressors of the unemployed. They might act unilaterally or they might join with others in a concerted attack on those who would oppress them.

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Beyond the new paternalism: Basic security as equality – Book Review

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Book Review – Social Policy in Australia: Understanding for Action

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Book Review: How to argue with an economist

by Lindy Edwards, Cambridge University, Cambridge. 2002
In Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol.39 No.3 pp.362-363. 2004.

The first 8 chapters of this book convinced me I was holding in my hands a truly subversive text. Subversive in the sense that it is a remarkably readable explanation of the economic fundamentalist agenda. It is a book about economic policy without economic jargon. I could envisage this text being read by factory workers and discussed over the lunch breaks, by housewives in the suburbs, by senior school children and at tertiary campuses around the country. I saw it, at a minimum, providing Freirian ‘conscientization’ and perhaps even leading to the widespread development of revolutionary consciousness. Some of the midsections of the book started to pall and the last half was simply tiresome.

I was perplexed my mood swings as I proceeded through the book. Firstly I was excited by the fact that the author was an economist who had worked in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. She had known the economic fundamentalists who have helped transform this country from one that provided a reasonably caring social welfare system into a competitive society that is now turning on its most vulnerable citizens and (under the misnomer of ‘mutual obligation’) demanding they give something back in return for their welfare pittance. Edwards has taken the intellectual message of Paul Omerod’s The Death of Economics, Michael Pusey’s Economic Rationalism in Canberra, and Stuart Rees, Gordon Rodley and Frank Stilwell’s Beyond the Market and has made it accessible in the fine tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith. She acknowledges the dismantling which the economic fundamentalists have inflicted upon community support structures in the name of increasing social capital. These first 8 chapters need to be read by anyone who is struggling to understand how the economic fundamentalists have succeeded in eroding the basic humanity of everyday Australians.

Lindy Edwards provides at page 24 a very useful description of the mechanisms by which ideologies influence social policy. She has the capacity to explain complex phenomena simply. For instance, she encapsulates the concept of downward envy brilliantly when she writes:

The Coalition captured the ‘what about me? sentiment’. It cunningly devised the campaign slogan: ‘For all of us’. In its first term in office it made theatre of cracking down on the unemployed, Aborigines, immigration and minority groups. Unable to demonstrate any understanding of people’s aspirations, it settled for showing an understanding of their vices (p. 17).

Edwards quotes with approval (p.54) the classical liberal scholar, John Stuart Mills’ attack on the concept of self-interest when he wrote:

Each of these men has, no doubt, acted from self interest. But we gain nothing by knowing this, except the pleasure, if it be one, of multiplying useless words…it is idle to attribute any importance to a proposition which, when interpreted, means only that a man had rather do what he rather do.

In the middle of the book as Edwards attempts to explain the behaviour of the mandarins of the central co-ordinating agencies of the Australian Federal Government, she accords these bureaucrats a morality which I don’t think they deserve. Albeit it is a morality which grows out of their promotion of the notion of self-interested individuals acting to fulfil their self-interest as a way to make the world better for everyone. If that is morality I’d fail Ethics 1.

Edwards herself roundly criticises competition policy (pp.40-43, pp.66-67), the jargonised use of the concept of social capital (p.89), compulsory literacy training (p.53), market society (p.107, p.128, p141, p.157) as well as the non-explanatory power of ‘self-interest’, yet somehow is reluctant to stick it in boots and all to her erstwhile colleagues in Prime Minister and Cabinet.

My disenchantment with the last half of the book is essentially that it fails to utilise the insightful, indeed potentially revolutionary, analysis in the first part of the book. It is unlikely to incite its readers to leave their armchair for the streets. Lindy Edwards would have been able to substantially improve the usefulness of this book had she been able to put to one side her economic mindset and integrate a progressive political analysis into the later sections of her text. Perhaps if she was reluctant to ask people to throw themselves in front of the Prime Minister’s car, she could have urged them to throw themselves in front of their computers and start harassing our political leaders and their economic fundamentalist advisors.

Still the bulk of this book is a well reasoned and useful analysis of the problems economic fundamentalism creates for citizens wanting to live in a humane caring Australia. Edwards, if she were to undertake a revision of this text, would be well advised to read some progressive political and ethical tracts.

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Book Review: Social policy, public policy – From problem to practice

By Meredith Edwards (with Cosmos Howard and Robin Miller), Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2001.

Professor Meredith Edwards’ latest book written with two colleagues makes an important contribution to understanding the process of making social policy at the Federal Government level in Australia. It will find a place on the shelves of any serious student of Australian Government decision making, teachers of social policy processes, lobbyists and others interested in affecting the outcomes of social policy debates.

It is a remarkably readable book despite its propensity to slip into acronyms at every opportunity. In the book’s defense it does supply a “List of Abbreviations” immediately prior to the start of Chapter 1, as well as a useful “Glossary” of frequently used technical terms which beginning students in social policy will find particularly helpful.

Edwards, a one time Senior Public Servant and now an academic, has been producing thoughtful work on income support, household composition and the linkage between these issues since the early 1980s. This book is written in a much more accessible style than some of her earlier work. The authors describe four important changes in social policy undertaken during the Hawke/Keating period in office. It is an insider’s account of the policy debates.

The issues chosen “all started with a fairly simple idea: a single youth allowance, a child support levy, a graduate tax and a job compact”(p.10). “In these four cases,simple ideas were advanced that appear to have had a certain power of attraction and may have helped in the motivation to find a path through the problem of reform…. In each case, not surprisingly, the policy solution was not as originally proposed” (p.178).

The four policy areas which the book canvasses were extremely important developments at the time of their introduction and will continue to be of central concern for the next Australian Government interested in addressing equity. The issues Edwards and her colleagues chose to discuss in detail were: unifying income support schemes for young people, the introduction of the Child Support Agency, the imposition of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and ‘solving’ unemployment via Working Nation. Edwards was intimately involved in developing each of these policies.

The book has an introductory and a concluding chapter on the policy process in which the authors argue that good policy process involves identifying the issues, policy analysis, consultation, arriving at a decision, implementation and evaluation. In the final chapter she argues that the organisational structure and the character/skills of the players has considerable influence. Edwards et al. stress that in all these policy processes the values of the main decision makers and their advisors was a central ingredient. The authors note another determining feature of the policy process when they write; “A common overriding constraint on ministers was the budget ‘bottom line’” (p.181).

The major strength of the book is that it provides a clear rendition of what the Canberra policy insiders considered they were doing at the time of implementation. It stays remarkably true to the prevailing perceptions of the issues as they were interpreted at the time. The right wing Labor bureaucratic/political context in which these policy process occurred is the ideological construct which is imposed on this history of the process. Edwards is determined to present herself and many of the other inside players as concerned by equity /efficiency issues rather than trade-offs. In this sense it is a sympathetic history of Labor ministers, their policy advisors, their consultants and the senior ranks of the public service.

The major weakness of the book is that it largely ignores the way ‘equity’ debates concerning such things as: what constitutes a suitable amount of income and the imposition of ‘reciprocal obligation’ initiated by Hawke/Keating Labor paved the way for the Howard Government to compel: ‘Dole Diaries’, literacy training, ‘Work for the Dole’ and other ‘mutual obligations’. By adopting such an approach it avoids the criticism that the analysis is overly influenced by hindsight.

The text is interspersed with extracts from a diary, of activities, Edwards kept at the time. At its best this technique gives a sense of real life to the process of policy formulation but sometimes reads like “Dear Diary today DV was not nice to me” which is fine for those of us who were not fond of DV. But many, trying to remember who the inside players were, may find this technique is a bit of a drag.” I presume that the extracts from the Diary with the initials rather than the name is provided to give a sense of authenticity.  I found it annoying.

Given the likelihood of a Beazley Labor Government before the end of 2001, it seems certain that the political agenda will include: searching for an adequate income support system for all and particularly young people, finding a way to pay for post school education on the way to creating a Knowledge Nation, improving the system of child maintenance and creating full employment.  As the policy process proceeds in these areas analysts will be better informed if they have read Edwards, Howard and Miller’s history of the debates under the previous Labor administration.

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Book Review: The real worlds of welfare

Goodin, R. Headey, B., Muffels, R & Dirven, H. The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge University, Cambridge. pp.358.

Review published  Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol 35. No. 2, May 2000.

Robert Goodin and his fellow authors have succeeded in writing a very readable book which compares the social welfare systems of the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. Many Australian human service workers might think to themselves “How nice but what has that got to do with us?”

The book does indeed have considerable relevance to the situation on the ground in many Australian employment, training and welfare agencies. It should become a useful text in human service undergraduate and post graduate programs. This is particularly so as the current Government in this country is becoming increasingly preoccupied with “mutual obligation”, “social coalitions”, “social contracts”, its self created myth of “welfare dependency” and decreasing social welfare budget outlays.

The three countries covered in this book were chosen because there was a decade of comparable panel data available which allowed the authors to explore issues of economic growth, efficiency, poverty, inequality, social integration, stability and autonomy. In addition the United States welfare state represents the liberal form, the German a corporatist regime and the Dutch a social democratic style of welfare.

As this is not a review of a detective story I can reveal Goodin et al conclusions about their comparison of these different welfare states without spoiling your enjoyment of the book. They make the point that frequently in social policy debates it is asserted that there is an inevitability of trade offs between economic growth, efficiency, poverty, inequality, social integration, stability and autonomy. But what they found was the Dutch social democratic welfare regime equalled or exceeded the performance of the corporatist Germans and the liberal US system “across all these social and economic objectives.”

Such findings have considerable relevance to directions an informed Australian nation would choose to take as it sets out to change its system of welfare services. The Australian welfare state might once have had considerable social democratic aspects but has, in recent times (along with New Zealand), moved closer to the US liberal regime.

The careful cross country analysis of panel data presented by Goodin et al allows researchers to follow real people’s experiences of work and welfare. In the past cross country analysts have been forced to compare aggregated statistical samples. Importantly, the Goodin et al look at individuals has found that it is an exceedingly small percentage of people who remain on welfare indefinitely under any of the systems investigated.

This finding flies in the face of the current Australian Government and Federal Opposition’s preoccupation with “welfare dependency”. Those of us who have been researching social citizenship, Basic Income and unemployment have long appreciated that “welfare dependency” rhetoric as utilised by Newman, Howard, Swan, Abbot and Latham is just a verbal weapon with which to savage unemployed people and a useful tool in the struggle to delegitimise the Australian welfare state. Unfortunately “welfare dependency” as rhetoric will remain powerful because it provides the uncaring with a justification for their punitive treatment of the unemployed and other social security recipients.

The above is just one example of the usefulness of Goodin and his fellow writers analysis. There are many other insights to be gained from the numerous tabulations and graphs in this book by those interested in moving the Australian welfare state back towards a more caring and comprehensive regime.

But the really important message from this book is that whether one is seeking to promote economic growth and efficiency, stability, autonomy or to decrease poverty and inequality then the social democratic welfare state along the lines of the Netherlands exceeds the performance of the German corporatist or the US liberal regimes.

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Bullets not words

Written circa 2005
(after reading the Howard Government’s plan to cut welfare expenditure)

Your words wound with such dexterity,
creating a chasm of depressed enormity.
You mouth the platitudes of economic efficiency
about how you aim to abolish welfare dependency.
It fills our hearts with an intense despondency.
You speak as if I am to blame for my redundancy.
I can’t read. Does that mean I caused my illiteracy?
My mother’s lover left – so I caused my illegitimacy?
Forget the umbilical cord tight around my neck-
I, not the lack of oxygen, caused my deficit.
Forget unsafe work practices – what the heck,
my actions , not those of the boss, led to my disability.
as perpetuator and victim rolled into one
I must accept the full responsibility.
I acknowledge that it is a shame,

but…

it is the right of victims everywhere to accept the blame.
We cant expect government to help us shoulder the burden
so instead of expecting to be treated with dignity
we’ll have to learn to knuckle under, and with due humility,
be grateful for the imposition of your mutual responsibility.
Only the most ungracious would call it – tyranny.

But,

there are some among us who say that it’s not right,
some comrades claim the time has come to fight;

but…

we are not equipped with distorting words that lie
so if we enter into battle then some of us will die.
You might think us stupid, but we’ve done the sum
there are more of us than you when all’s said and done.
We want rapid fire social justice
and we want it on the run
and the best way to get that is
with bullets and a gun!!!!!

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Challenging the concept of participation income

Paper given at the NSW ASSID Conference at the University of Wollongong
5-6/7/2002

The themes of the Howard Government: ‘social capital, social conservatism, social coalition, mutual obligation and participation income’ all undermine the concept of rights and more worryingly erode previously established social security entitlements.  McClure (2000[a], [b]) heralded the extension of the breaching of 300,000 plus Centrelink clients annually (ACOSS 2001). Initially those breached were mainly young unemployed people and, to a lesser extent, single parents. But the Howard Government has signaled its intention to extend its imposition of mutual obligation to single parents and those with a disability.

The unifying constant in ‘social capital, social conservatism, social coalition, mutual obligation and participation income’ as it relates to policy outcomes for people with a disability, refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, Indigenous people, unemployed individuals and single parents is the replacement of rights with a benefit /obligation compact.

This paper will consider ways in which people with disabilities and their allies can:

• build alliances with potential counter hegemonic forces,
• learn from similar struggles of other denigrated and marginalised groups,
• confront those who are working to undermine universal human rights and existing entitlements,
• confound efforts to ensnare them in an obligatory envelope which will impede their liberation, and hopefully
• join the fight for the rights of others and for themselves as a part  of their struggle for full citizenship.

The background

The Howard Government’s themes of: ‘social capital, social conservatism, social coalition, mutual obligation and participation income’ increasingly impact upon people with a disability. These themes have also surfaced in relation to Indigenous Australians, migrants, temporary refugee visa holders and asylum seekers.

Indigenous Australians survived the invasion, dispossession, genocide, protection, exclusion, assimilation, integration, self-management, and the promise of self-determination which was held out by the Keating Government as part of its plans for reconciliation. They have recently found out that Indigenous self-determination, in the opinion of the Howard Government, undermines ‘National sovereignty’. They have instead been offered the Howard/ Herron/ Ruddock’s (2002) prescription of ‘practical reconciliation’ provided they are quiescent about Indigenous sovereignty / native title and land rights issues.

The Keating Labor Government, with Gerry Hand as Minister for Immigration, introduced a six month waiting period before migrants could claim social security benefits. The incoming Howard Government extended this waiting period to two years. Hand also installed the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers who arrived on our shores without valid visas. This policy, which has been ruthlessly enforced by the Liberal Government, is in breach of a number of international agreements which Australia has signed and ratified. The Howard Government has also adopted the practice of issuing three year temporary visas to asylum seekers once they have been found to be refugees. This policy increases refugees’ uncertainty, prevents family reunion and is frequently socially debilitating (Lock, Quenault and Tomlinson 2002).

When the Whitlam Government came to office it raised the rate of payment for16 year old unemployment beneficiaries to the adult rate. During the early 1970s, with increased use of automated machinery and an economic downturn, there was a significant loss of jobs usually done by young people. By the last year of the Whitlam Government there was a considerable rise in the level of youth unemployment. Clive Cameron and Bill Hayden responded to this by suggesting that the young were becoming “dole bludgers” and “work shy” (Windschuttle 1981, pp. 180-190).  This attack on young unemployed people paved the way for the Fraser Government’s denigration of all unemployed people and particularly the young without work who were again paid youth level unemployment benefits. This inexorably led, during the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments, to Brian Howe’s increased tightening of eligibility across a range of social security payments from 1986. This has now led us to Howard’s onslaught on social security payments to the young (Horin 1998, p.10) culminating in his “Oh so” Common Youth allowance. Until the mid 1980s 16 year old people with severe and permanent disabilities were paid full adult disability pensions. In 2002 such a young person living at home  receives only 60% of the adult rate.

Few people with disabilities have been active in wider income support and citizenship struggles. When ‘work for the dole’ and other impositions of the ‘mutual obligation’ policy were seen to apply only to young unemployed people, people with disabilities and their agencies did little to resist the Government’s imposition of obligations upon the young. Now people with disabilities, previously unmindful of John Donne’s caution, find that ‘The bell tolls for thee.’

Part of the problem – part of the solution

In 1977, two posters in the shop front window of the Darwin Unemployed workers Union read “Hitler had the Jews, Stalin had the Kulaks, Fraser has the Unemployed.” and “Drive carefully 3,000 Unemployed People walk Darwin streets.” The first poster drew attention to the then Government’s negative stereotyping, marginalisation and persecution of unemployed people – the second to the extent of unemployment and the presence of unemployed people as community members.

In 2001, I was a member of a Brisbane Disability Scholars email network. I regularly circulated material on income security, community work and politics. A couple of days before the election I sent the group the following email:

I have just had a security update from The Office of National Assessment.  It would appear that John Howard has taken Janet and the kids up on to the roof at Kirribilli and is threatening to throw them off the roof unless the Australian people vote Liberal tomorrow.  Clearly Howard is presuming on Australian people’s humanity and compassion. Such offensive illegal queue jumping is to be resisted. There have been people waiting for years in third world countries for the chance to throw themselves off the roof at Kirribilli House. The Navy has been instructed to get him down and take him on a Pacific holiday to Manus or Nauru.

Several satire impaired scholars took umbrage demanding that the network concentrate on “disability issues”. Others in the group wanted a broader discussion of social issues  suggesting that you never know when the words of the prophet will be written on the subway wall – so please keep your eyes wide, open or shut is your choice.

It is important for all of us who want to inhabit a socially caring world to try to understand the interconnectedness between the specific issue with which we are dealing and other social forces. To misquote John Donne “no issue is entire of itself”.

Human rights versus utilitarian rights

Before investigating Howard’s contractual social insecurity system, this paper will provide a brief outline of what a social security system based on universal human rights might look like. I have elsewhere argued that only the provision of a universal Basic Income can prevent Australian Governments undermining unemployed people’s economic security and foisting socially destructive obligations upon them (Tomlinson 2002, 2001[a],[b]).

Whenever payment of income support is conditional upon the recipient fulfilling a particular social action then a government or its agents can use their discretion to determine whether the obligation to comply has been met. If the provider of the income support payment decides the recipient has failed to meet the imposed obligation it can withhold the payment. A universal system recognizes that targeted welfare benefits can never deliver benefits equitably even to those who meet all the eligibility requirements (Boston & St. John 1998). An Australian universal welfare system would, at a minimum aim to abolish Beveridge’s five giants of ‘squalor, want, ignorance, disease and idleness’ (Timmins 1995).

A fully universal Basic Income system would be a flat rate paid to each individual permanent resident of Australia irrespective of whether they lived alone or with others, irrespective of other income or assets and irrespective of their employment or other social status.

Stuart Rees (2000) comments that when a government “emphasises that rights have to be earned, that people can only insist on their rights if they have carried out their social responsibilities…It softens a general public for the idea that rights are conditional, not universal (pp.296-297).”

By contrast, the tradition of human rights which contributed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) advocates a universal standard to protect against the tyranny of the state….In the Rights of Man (1791) Thomas Paine identified a universalist tradition with reference to conditions which gave security to citizens and thereby facilitated a civil society….Advocates of universal rights do not reject the ethicists’ (Utilitarians’) regard  for duties and obligations but they do emphasise that duties and obligations serve to enhance rights; they are not a precondition for them. The universalist argument relies on the assumption that rights are accorded to people because they are human beings. In 1948 the universal declaration was designed to represent the highest aspirations of a common people (Rees pp.297-298).

Arguments which go to solidarity and inclusion are based on a universalist conception of rights and are centred around ideas of mutuality and reciprocity rather than reciprocal or mutual obligation. Universalists base their views on a far more optimistic understanding of humankind than that which informs those addicted to the idea that even the right to sustainable income support is conditional. Much of the motivation which underpins the Utilitarian view of rights revolves around the way risk is assessed (Sztompka 1999, Kemshall 2002). Conservatives have a belief in the inherent imperfection of human beings. This preoccupation with the alleged ‘propensity’ of social security recipients to ‘disappoint’ finds voice in the current ‘dependency’ debates.

The Howard Government’s addiction to an ethical or Utilitarian view of rights which is conditional upon first meeting obligations is a far cry from the form of rights expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the associated Covenants. For instance, Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognises “ the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living”.  Article 8(3)(a) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that “No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour”. Even allowing the qualification in section C(4) of this Article which excludes from the category of forced labour “work or service which forms part of normal civil obligations” much of the Howard Government’s ‘mutual obligation’ agenda is in breach of these international agreements which Australia has signed and ratified.

As people with disability have discovered – post McClure 2000[b] – the imposition of forced labour on one section of the Australian people undermines the citizenship of all citizens because it is uncertain when and to whom such compulsion will be extended. It downgrades the social and economic rights previously available to all citizens.  By ignoring the citizenship rights of those who receive income support it separates them from other citizens.

The requirement that people engage in certain specified activities before they will be paid income support ignores the contribution that many non-employed people already make to their neighbourhood, their families and their society. The Government devalues social security recipients’ voluntary contribution through the suggestion that only approved forms of participation constitute a contribution. It brands social security recipients as less valued whilst simultaneously forcing them to ‘perform compulsory labour’ thus undermining solidarity and civil society. Such compelled activity is the polar opposite of social capital.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the Australian Government’s imposition of ‘mutual obligation’ is that, as Rees (2000 p.297) points out, it reinforces the view that all rights are conditional and that universality has no place in the modern world.  This has the effect of delegitimising universal income support policies such as Basic Income. An unconditional universal Basic Income could prevent a government imposing ‘mutual obligation’ policies on the least affluent. A universal Basic Income is a policy which has the capacity to enhance the liberty and productivity of all citizens. This feature of Basic Income has been recognised for 80 years (Milner 1920 ch.1).

An indecent obsession

John Howard most clearly spelt out his economic liberal and social conservative agendas in his “Roundtable speech” in 1999 and his preoccupation with his form of conservative social coalition in a brief article in the Australian on 12 January, 2000.  Essentially the argument he put forward in May 1999 is that:

Economic policy liberalisation and modern conservatism in social policy share important common values and objectives. …Both recognise the role of markets and of government….Both promote opportunity, incentive and responsibility over dependence and welfarism. And both support the full realisation of individual potential as well as the reality of social obligation. (pp.3-4).

When he writes about his social coalition he employs a classically liberal vision of ‘a social contract’ in which those who receive a payment from the state are required to return something to the ‘society’. The Liberal Prime Minister’s determination to foist onto Australian people his social conservative agenda was an underlying theme in the Reference Group on Welfare Reform Interim Report (McClure 2000[a]). From page 47 to 51 the Report deals with Howard’s social coalition in terms similar to those Howard used. Howard in his 2000 article in The Australian says:

Put simply, it describes a partnership of individuals families, business, government, welfare and charitable organisations each contributing their unique resources and expertise to tackle disadvantage at its source ….  Most of all, the social coalition is firmly rooted in notions of mutual obligation (p.11).

Howard makes no bones about the Government’s attempt to promote conservative social policy administered by the churches operating in close association with business.  Howard’s obsession with ‘mutual obligation’ and ‘dependency’ has been extensively criticised  (Hammer 2002, Goodin 2001,Tomlinson 2001[b], Castles 2001).

The more things change the more they stay the same

Jocelyn Newman (1999), the Howard Government welfare Minister, who instigated the McClure Report set down the track on which the Committee’s train (of thought) was to run and on time. She outlined the Government’s position in her paper “The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21^st. Century”. The present Government would have citizens believe that the only way ‘the scourge of welfare dependence’ can be removed is by compelling recipients of social security to meet specified obligations to the State.

The McClure Committee dutifully reported to the Government in line with their riding instructions. “Participation income support” became the latest buzz phrase. Of course anyone who had studied income support policy in this country immediately recognised it as a simple restatement of the Brian Howe / Bettina Cass active society strategy with the addition of extra compulsion and more ruthless breaching. The Howe / Cass line, in turn, was a reworking of the 1947 unemployment benefit activity test.

At a more general level the thrust of ‘mutual obligation’ is a restatement of the 1908 social security requirement to be of “good moral character.” This was not new either but part and parcel of the less eligibility policy – designed to distinguish between the worthy and unworthy poor – explicit in the 1834 Poor Law. This Law was an updated version of the 1601 Elizabethan Poor Law, which was an attempt to codify the established charity practices of the parishes. As Goodin 2001, Stretton 1996 , Castles 2001 and Tomlinson 2001[a] point out there is a direct line between at least the 16^th. Century English welfare policy and the current Howard Government’s welfare preoccupations. Joel Handler (2002) traces the legislative concern about the undeserving back to the 1348 Labourer’s Act with its express preoccupation with “the sturdy beggar”.

Ray Cassin, senior writer for the Melbourne Age Newspaper, responded to the McClure Report in an article neatly entitled “Let’s just call them leeches and be done with it” in which he makes the point that:

You can be ‘on’ social security in the literal sense of receiving benefits, but this usage does not carry the pejorative flavour of being ‘on’ welfare. The reason is not mysterious: we do not talk about social-security dependency, or social-services dependency because ‘social security’ and ‘social services’ are bound up with an older notion of entitlement, and an understanding of mutual obligation that goes beyond tit-for-tat reciprocity…..

The ideal of mutual obligation underpinning a system of social security is not one of reciprocity, but of obligation borne by all of us to contribute to the support of  people who would otherwise be destitute (The Sunday Age 27/8/2000 page 22).

This quotation from Cassin alerts us to the fact that there has been a significant change to the  legimitating mechanism which underpinned the Australian system of income support in the 1960s when compared to the present day. We have moved from Noblesse Oblige to ruthless compulsion.

The contradiction – a crisis

What the Howard Government fails to understand, primarily because their reading of Althusser (1977), Gramsci (1978), Poulantzas (1978) and Marx (1970) is deficient, is that the ideological apparatus of social control is far more powerful than compulsion  – even compulsion based on fear of starvation. They have sown the seeds of their own destruction and this is the basis that all those who wish to live in a non-censorious world will use to bring down this Government.

The Howard Government may presently have popular support for their slogans of ‘mutual obligation’, ‘work for the dole’, ‘social coalition’ and ‘participation income’ but that popularity is based on a mystification. These terms like ‘welfare reform’ and ‘social capital’ are marketed by the capitalist press to the public as warm, fuzzy and socially stabilizing concepts. This part of the ideological control mechanism is well oiled.

It is the job of the counter hegemonic forces to unpack this language. We need to demonstrate again and again the socially destructive nature of breaching hundreds of thousands of the poorest Australians. We need to point to the homelessness and poverty inducing features of these policies. We need to explain the actual impact on families when their only income is removed because one member did not meet every dictate of some Centrelink operative. We need to demonstrate the socially destructive aspects, the dislocation and the counter productive nature of such policies. Above all, we need to elaborate upon the sheer ruthlessness of policies which drive many to despair, exacerbate mental health difficulties and lead some people to suicide.

Marginalising the marginalised

Those disability scholars, agencies and activists who think that they can just work on disability issues without making links with the Indigenous, peace, union, unemployed, refugees, and other social struggles, succeed only in further marginalising the very issues which are most central to their developing the critical mass likely to force real change in the way people with disabilities are treated (Tomlinson 2001[a], Chapter 7).

Earlier in this paper I made the point that few people with disabilities have been active in the “other societal struggles for a better world” but some people with considerable disabilities have been very active. I will never forget the inspiration a young blind woman provided, as she strummed her guitar and sang, whist marching with other Aotearoan unemployment activists into police lines outside the Auckland Hilton in the  North Island of New Zealand. I was comforted by the fact that she could not see the fear in my eyes, though disconcerted by the realisation she sensed the dread in my heart. Friends in wheelchairs, colleagues with mental health difficulties, and people with limited intellectual capacities are involved in broader social struggles. They provide a model for us to follow.

Building a counter hegemony

Gaining acceptance for the breadth of change which many disability activists would like to accomplish will require that they contribute to the building of a counter hegemony. This will require they make links with progressive unions, political parties, and activist groups. That they become partisans in the struggle for a fairer world.

It was noted earlier that ruthless compulsion not Noblesse Oblige underpins the current system of income support. Whatever reformist gains might once have fallen, like crumbs from the rich man’s table, to humble petitioners will not be, if they ever were, sufficient to result in significant positive changes to the way in which this society responds to people with disabilities.

If disability activists are serious about getting their agenda incorporated into societal structures they will need to help build those new societal structures. It strikes me as a nonsense to suggest that people who say they are working to counter ableist interpretations can ignore racism, sexism, ageism, classism and urbanism. It was Lenin who said “The struggle for one is the struggle for all” but if Marxist Leninism is not quite your cup of tea; remember, that it was the American civil rights campaigner Eugene V. Debs who wrote “I am not free while any man is in chains”.

Bibliography

ACOSS 2001 New Research: hardship intensifies from rise in social security penalties. Media Statement, 13^th. August.
Althusser, L. (1977)For Marx. (trans. Brewster, B.) Verso, London.
Boston, J. & St. John, S. (1998) “Targeting versus Universality: Social Assistance for All or Just for the Poor. in Boston, J. Danziel, P and St. John, S. (eds.) Redesigning the Welfare State in New Zealand. Oxford University, Auckland.
Cassin, R. (2000) “Let’s just call them leeches and be done with it” The Sunday Age 27/8/2000 p.22.
Castles, F. (2001) “A farewell to the Australian welfare state.” in Eureka Street. Vol. 11, No. 1, Jan- Feb.
Eugene V. Debs http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/ge-sams.htm  (16th paragraph).
Goodin, R. (2001) “False Principles of Welfare Reform.” Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 36, No.3, August pp.189-206.
Gramsci, A. (1978) Selections from Political Writings 1921-26, Hoare, Q. (ed. and trans) International, New York.
Hammer, S. (2002 forthcoming) The Rise of Liberal Independence and the Decline of the Welfare State. PhD Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.
Horin, A. (1998) “Dole cut for thousands of young jobless.” Sydney Morning Herald. June,29^{th .} p.10.
Howard, J. (2000) “Quest for a decent society” The Australian 12^th. Jan, p.11.
Howard, J. (1999) “Building a Stronger and Fairer Australia: Liberalisation in Economic Policy and Modern Conservatism in Social Policy.” Address to ‘Australia Unlimited Roundtable.’ 4^th. May Howard, J. (2000) “Quest for a decent society” The Australian 12^th. Jan, p.11.http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/1999/AustraliaUnlimitedRoundtable.htm
Kemshall, H. (2002)  Risk, social policy and welfare. Open University, Buckinghamshire.
Lock, J., Quenault, M. & Tomlinson, J. (2002) Some Reasons Why Australia Should Abolish the Detention of Asylum Seekers. Occasional Paper No.02/1, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney.
Marx, K. (1970) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol 1. (trans. Moore, S. & Aveling, E., ed. Engles, F., Lawrence & Wishart, London.
McClure, P. (2000 [a]) Participation Support for a More Equitable Society. Interim Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform, Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra.
McClure, P. (2000 [b]) Participation Support for a More Equitable Society. Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform, Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra.
Milner, D. (1920) Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output: A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with national productivity. George, Allen & Unwin, London.
Newman, J. (1999) The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21^st. Century. Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra.
Poulantzas, N. (1978) State, Power, Socialism. Camilleri, P. (trans) NLB, London.
Ruddock, P. “Changing Direction.” Paper given at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission’s Setting the Agenda Conference, 26/3/2002, Canberra.
Stretton, H. (1996) Poor laws of 1834 and 1996. Brotherhood of St Lawrence, Fitzroy.
Sztompka, P. (1999) Trust: A Sociological Theory. Cambridge University, Cambridge.
Timmins, N. (1995) The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State. Harper Collins, Hammersmith.
Tomlinson, J. (2002) “Income Support for Unemployed People: Human Rights versus Utilitarian Rights.” Journal of Economic and Social Policy  Vol.6 , No. 2, Winter.
Tomlinson, J. (2001[a]) Income Insecurity: The Basic Income Alternative.
http://www.geocities.com/ubinz/JT/IncomeInsecurity/
Tomlinson, J. (2001[b]) “ The Basic Solution to Unemployment.” Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 36, No.3, August.
Windschuttle, K. (1981) Unemployment. Penguin Ringwood.

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Choose Poverty: The poorest 2 billion people on this planet can’t be wrong – but they can be wronged

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Christian Porter’s Centrelink

You’re 26^thin the queue
and we’re ignoring you
we don’t care what you think
for we are Centrelink.

If you’re unemployed or poor
you can wait outside the door
if you drink or have a bet
we will get you yet
we’ll raise a robo-debt
making sure that you regret
annoying us with your woes
piss-off with your sorrows
but do it nice and quiet
and always be polite
or you’ll be in the shite.

Remember don’t be late
never show your hate
it would make us quite irate
and you’ll never wipe the slate.
If your life is in a mess
don’t share your distress
cause we don’t care
about your despair
best, you just disappear.

mid 2018

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Comprehensive paternalism pursuing autonomy

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Compulsory contributions corrode community

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Dependency: An ideology chasing its tail

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Depending on You: Lets get Basic about income and employment

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Developing a community which might accept people with disability

Paper given at the NSW ASSID Conference at the University of Wollongong
5-6/7/2002 by Michael Bleasdale and John Tomlinson.

Abstract

A number of programs have been developed by governments and welfare agencies which aim to supply services, prepare people for employment or study, create networks of support, and which claim to integrate people with disabilities into the community. There is a growing recognition by government departments of the need to fund individuals rather than services directly, in order to ‘better target’ individual needs. This brokerage funding has the potential to deliver more appropriate support but has yet to translate itself into the provision of services which enhance clients’ power to determine what is happening in their lives. Further, the concentration upon service delivery has led those responsible for the implementation of disability services legislation to take their eye off the broad goal of community inclusion.

So far, the incorporation into the community which has been achieved has been disappointing. Writers such as Morrell (1998) have provided important insights into why people with disabilities should be wary of such incorporation and should question closely the basis on which people with disabilities are offered inclusion. We propose that carefully designed community work programs which are directed by self advocacy agencies and by people with disabilities have the capacity to build community support structures which people with disabilities might find acceptable.

Clearly, there needs to be a substantial restructuring of financial arrangements available to people with disabilities, self advocacy groups, and systemic advocacy agencies before such community work programs could develop the independence necessary to work effectively.

Introduction 

The policy of community integration of people with disabilities began in earnest with the proclamation and implementation of the Commonwealth Disability Services Act 1986. This was followed by the complimentary legislation by states after the Commonwealth State Disability Agreement of 1992 which placed responsibility for a large number of services with the states.  The rights-based credentials of these Acts are not in question, however the effectiveness of seeking broad citizenship rights within the constraints of formal, specialist service provision is questionable, and will be a theme to which we return later in the paper.

Over the last four decades governments of all political persuasions at both Federal and State or Territory levels have moved from institutional to decarcerated disability service delivery. Governments have invariably claimed the best of intentions as the underlying basis for such a policy shift –denying that decarcerated service delivery was preferred because it was cheaper. They have not denied that they hope to save money but invariably claim that ‘the savings’ will be directed back into disability services.  Governments have chosen to term their decarcerated service delivery model ‘community based disability programs’.

This approach was grafted onto the predominant service delivery rhetoric of the time. This rhetoric grew out of theoretical approaches to ‘treatment’ including the Least Restrictive Environment/Alternative (Bachrach 1985), Normalisation (Nirje 1985), and Social Role Valorisation (Wolfensberger 1983). The Australian idea of ‘Community Living’ was based on these ideologies and principles of application.

The movement away from institutional care within large congregate care facilities, into smaller housing units located in the so-called ‘community’ (together with the development of day options to accommodate those who would otherwise attend programs within the confines of the large facility) weakened the degree of support people with disabilities, their families and advocates could garner for a move toward greater human rights for people with disabilities.  Rapley and Ridgeway (1998) have argued that the rights-based aims of the Community Living movement were co-opted by governments which recognised large total institutions were politically unpopular. They also saw Community Living as a mechanism used by governments to pursue economic fundamentalist goals.  In 1977 Andrew Scull in his groundbreaking text Decarceration warned that the real motivation of most governments engaged in deinstitutionalisation processes was to save money and was highly likely to end in the decarcerated receiving fewer services. If anyone has doubts about the accuracy of Scull’s prediction in present day Australia they should read the April 21 transcripts of Background Briefing (2002).

Since the mid 1980s governments in Australia have increasingly adopted an economic fundamentalist mind set (Pusey 1991, Edwards 2001). In welfare services this ideology has manifested itself as ‘fiscal rectitude’ which in turn translates itself as cutbacks in service provision and tightened eligibility for benefits and services. The Howard Government has become obsessed with the idea that recipients of welfare programs have ‘to give something back in return’ (Hammer 2002, Schooneveldt 2002). Post McClure (2000) such ‘mutual obligations’ are being extended to include people with disabilities.  The ‘mutual obligation’ strategy has been criticised elsewhere ( Goodin 2001, Castles 2001, Tomlinson 2001).  It is clear that ‘mutual obligation’ does not address four fundamental problems experienced by people with disabilities. For decades, people with disabilities have campaigned to end:

• the paternalistic way in which the welfare system approaches people with disabilities by categorising them as in need of ‘care’,
• the failure the community to make itself accessible to those who experience impairment;
• the lack of entitlement to basic, specialist services for people with disabilities, and
• the systems refusal to tie individual outcomes to the rights-based aims of the Disability Services Act(s).

This paper will address strategies that we think are necessary to shift the focus back onto community, by directly advocating progressive community work, and arguing for the adoption of funding mechanisms for specialist disability services designed to enable self-determination amongst individuals and collectives of people with disabilities.

Delivering support in the community

There continues to exist the quaint idea that if support is to be provided to people with disabilities who reside in the suburbs then in it should take the form of specialist provision, within staffed houses, special transport and so forth.  This idea is backed up by the common notion that such specialist provisions are necessary in order to include people who are essentially ‘different’ from the supposed norm. Such notions are constantly challenged by members of the disability movement who claim that the existing service provisions are rendered (unfortunately) necessary by society’s failure to provide equally for its citizens, both ‘disabled’ and ‘non-disabled’. In addition, they assert it is the ‘barriers’ that society puts in place which actively prevent access to both the physical and the institutional landscape of the community (Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare 1999).  Reform needs to take place both at the level of the general community and within the specialist disability agencies if people with disabilities are to take their place in the community in a way that allows them to access their human rights.

The economic fundamentalist agenda, expressed through tightened eligibility requirements combined with the ‘mutual obligation’ strategy, is a clear signal that the present Federal Government is heading in the opposite direction to that which might enhance every citizen’s human, social and economic rights.

The tightening of eligibility invariably leads many people with significant disabilities unable to access services which (if provided) would assist them to become integrated into the community. They may also find they are without income support either because they don’t quite fit other income support mechanisms or because they get breached because they fail to meet some imposed ‘mutual obligation’. This further marginalises them. Too many people, living outside of institutional settings, experience community and government neglect at the very time they are told they are receiving community based programs.

We are entirely committed to the least restrictive community option whether that is in an institution or in a community setting. However, we don’t want people with disabilities, their agencies or the government conflating the concept of services provided to people living outside institutional settings with the idea that such programs amount to community incorporation.   The propensity of governments to term decarceration programs ‘community based programs’ has led them either to believe their own rhetoric or simply to mystify the public. Very few agencies supplying services to people with disabilities are supplying community services. They are not engaged in progressive community work either with their clients or with the surrounding community. For the most part they are community agencies only in the geographical sense – the agency is situated in a suburb and their clients are housed in that locality.

What is missing is the:

• sense of community,
• communication,
• community co–dependency,
• community interrelationship,
• community acceptance, and
• sense of place, which goes beyond locality to a feeling of belonging – to a sense of human incorporation.

Many members of the community with whom most clients of disability services interact are, at best, indifferent to the needs and desires of people with disabilities. Some community members are fearful of interactions and others are openly hostile. Just one example: four people with significant intellectual impairments were housed in shared accommodation. An issue which arose for the immediate neighbours was that ‘strange noises’ emanated from the household from time to time. The government disability agency discussed the issue with the neighbours on both sides and those at the back and the matter was resolved. However, a compassion impaired woman who lived across busy the four lane street complained to the Queensland Minister for Housing and he insisted that the four people with disabilities were moved despite opposition from the four people themselves and from the government disability agency. If the agency had been successful in instigating community programs then many members of the community would have ardently opposed such arbitrary ministerial actions. Neighbours would, if community incorporation was working, have ardently opposed the Minister’s disregard for human rights and his denial of natural justice to these four people with a disability.

This incident points to the level of ignorance about the nature of disability at the level of the community. Outmoded attitudes have not successfully been challenged and overturned. The resilience of such attitudes is, in part, due to the continuation of a ‘managed care’ approach to specialist support services coupled with an unwillingness on the part of successive governments to make available to people with disabilities the basic services that can be accessed by other members of the community (eg. legal aid, public transport, schools, employment, etc.).  For years, people with disabilities have highlighted the fact that government departments routinely ignore these issues. French (1994) put it this way:

It should be appreciated that the situation of disabled people in ‘normal’ society is frequently highly abnormal due to prejudice, adverse stereotyping, and the difficulty of adapting to an environment designed for non-disabled living.  For life ‘in the community’ to be successful, therefore, the wider social and economic environment, in terms of housing, employment, transport, education and leisure facilities, must change to accommodate disabled people (p.128).

Strategies to develop community networks that will facilitate inclusion have largely been left to inadequately funded service providers. Their limited impact must be understood within the context of the core activities of those providers.  Our contention is that the goal of inclusion, whilst a right, needs to be facilitated by groups which have a different purpose to formal service providers.

We therefore propose models of community work that can be controlled by disability self advocacy groups. If the community is to become involved, specific community projects (which do not have a direct relation with specialist disability services) will need to be instigated to attract funding from sources, government or otherwise. Self advocacy groups must decide the direction and pace of any such change process.

Inclusion

Our advocacy of programs which could lead to people with disabilities being included in their communities is not starry-eyed, rather we insist that the reasons people are included and the manner in which they are incorporated into communities is of central importance.

As early as 1972, Paulo Freire (p.47), citing Simone de Beauvoir, noted  “the interests of the oppressors lie in ‘changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them’ for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.”  Freire goes on to suggest that welfare recipients:

are treated as individual cases, as marginal (people) who deviate from the general configuration of a ‘good, organized, and just’ society.  The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these ‘incompetent and lazy’ folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality.  These marginals need to be ‘integrated’, ‘incorporated’ into the healthy society that they have ‘forsaken’. The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not marginals, are not…living ‘outside’ society.  They have always been inside – inside the structure which made them ‘beings for others’.  The solution is not to ‘integrate’ them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become ‘beings for themselves’(p 48).

But he warns that “Such transformation, of course, would undermine the oppressors’ purposes” (p.48).

Many writers representing the views of groups marginalised from mainstream society are wary of inclusion. The standard advice such writers give to people offered inclusion is that they should ask: on whose terms, and at what cost, but above all they are advised to remember that inclusion is much more than being made complicit in an indecent act. South Australian disability activist David Morell (1998) considers:

‘inclusion’ in the ‘community’ is not enough. Indeed the very concept does not make sense. The ‘community’ itself is so full of oppression, separation, exclusion, diverse interests and conflict for many of those who are already ‘included’ in it as to render the uncritical use of the concept positively misleading and pursuit of the goal of inclusion disempowering (p.17).

Both Morell and French would concur with Armstrong and Barton (1999) when they contend that, “Inclusion necessitates the removal of the material, ideological, political and economic barriers that legitimate and reproduce inequality and discrimination in the lives of disabled people” (p.214). Armstrong and Barton go on to suggest:

pity and concern are directed at some groups… only rarely are issues relating to social exclusion and discrimination presented as ones concerned with human rights. Instead, a ‘needs’ discourse is adopted, suggesting that difficulties … can be overcome by technical solutions … a ‘needs’ discourse is disempowering because it focuses attention away from the possibility of individuals, groups and communities taking responsibility for undertaking action themselves to bring about change (p. 215).

The intensity of the inclusion debate within disability circles is a symptom of the way English speaking societies regard ‘normality’. Employment and being ‘able bodied’ are widely regarded as closely linked. The central requirement for payment of unemployment benefits is that applicants have to establish they are ‘ready, able and willing to work’. The eligibility requirement for sickness benefits is that applicants have to establish they are temporarily incapacitated for work and for Disability Support Pensions that one is more or less permanently incapacitated for work. Whether seeking work or income support it is necessary to establish one’s capacity to carry out employment tasks. The system of production and society more generally is geared around ‘ability’ or ‘capacity’ to labour. Disability activists assert that this ‘ableist’ ideology plays an important part in centring society around the ‘normal’, ‘able bodied’ lifestyle which in turn relegates to the margins those experiencing impairments in functioning.  In particular, Abberley (1999) contends that:

just because a main mechanism of our oppression is our exclusion from social production, we should be wary of drawing the conclusion that overcoming this oppression should involve our wholesale inclusion in it….

a society may be willing and in certain circumstance become eager to absorb a proportion of its impaired population into the workforce, yet this can have the effect of maintaining and perhaps intensifying its exclusion of the remainder. We need to develop a theory of oppression which avoids this bifurcation, through a notion of social integration that is not dependent upon impaired people’s inclusion (p.53).

One problem we have in many parts of Australia, including NSW, is that the rights of people with disabilities are articulated in the Disability Services legislation as a specialist service function.  To date there has been little real evidence of success in this field, as monitoring and evaluation of service outcomes has focused more on organisational mechanisms such as policies and procedures, rather than any systematic measurement of increase in the participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in many different aspects of their community – let alone their enjoyment of rights.

As the discussion above suggests, disability activists believe that the enjoyment of rights will only come about when the social landscape is rendered more accessible at all levels – environmental, structural and attitudinal – through the ending of discriminatory practices and the enactment of radical social policy that overturn assumptions about the incapacity of people with disabilities.  This does not mean that there is no role for the specialist disability system to play in facilitating inclusion and participation for people with disabilities who need and use such services.  Clearly the existence of such goals within the NSW Disability Services Standards (Standard 5) would indicate that there is very definitely a role to be played.

Funding

There needs to be some serious scrutiny of the methods that may be employed to achieve such outcomes, given both the resource constraints under which services currently operate, and the inability to date of government departments to evaluate services according to their capacity to achieve individual outcomes. The review of the NSW Disability Services Act’s operation supported a move in this direction (NSW Law Reform Commission 1999, Bleasdale and Kayess 2001).

The inter-relationship between participation and inclusion and other key outcomes for people with disabilities, such as choice and decision-making, can only be facilitated by mechanisms that lie outside the control of service providers.  For that reason we are advocating a radical shift in the delivery of formal support programs to people with disabilities. We wish to see a move from a system that provides block grants to disability agencies in return for their delivering a range of programs into which a person might ‘fit’; to one where funds are allocated to a person based on that individual’s assessed need. Agencies would have to deliver support according to what people wanted – or individuals would purchase the service elsewhere.

One of the advantages of utilising individualised funding is its capacity to purchase support services that lie outside the formal disability service system.  Instead of having the government contract with a specialist disability service provider to deliver services, such as the provision of meals and domestic assistance, we would prefer that the person with disability had control of their funds thus enabling them to decide whether to use the disability agency’s services or to purchase a variety of meals and to hire a local domestic cleaner.  This provides both choice and autonomy to the person within a system that is still fundamentally block-funded.  In states, such as Western Australia and South Australia, the allocation of funds for services is based on the assessed needs of the individual.  Issues which predominate are adequacy of levels of support and developing mechanisms to best allocate funds to services, so that they meet their obligations to the service user.  We view this sort of individualised funding as a productive way to meet the self-determination demands of people with a disability, as well as facilitating a relationship (albeit commercial) between them and other members of the community.

Advocating such a change, at least in part, contradicts a position taken by the authors some years ago (Bleasdale, Crumpton, Hardaker and Tomlinson 1996), where the introduction of individualised funding, as a model of support for people with disabilities, was criticised for its inequity of resource allocation, and its capacity to splinter an already fractured disability movement by promoting self interest and individualism over the spirit of solidarity which is needed to further the struggle for basic human and civil rights.

Many of these concerns remain, especially where individualised funding is introduced as one support ‘model’ within a system that is still fundamentally block-funded.  However, where the allocation of funds for services is based on the assessed needs of the individual, the argument as to inequity is not as valid. We view this type of individual funding paradigm as likely to result in a more productive way of meeting the self-determination demands of people with disabilities compared with large-scale lobbying for adequate ‘beds’ within a block-funded system.

Government fiscal stringency, eligibility tightening, economic fundamentalist mind set and ignorance about disability issues has invariably lead to people with impairments being excluded from programs which could assist them. Disability service and advocacy agencies may campaign for increased allocations but this is unlikely to sway government. Only when the broader community becomes sufficiently involved with those, who have a disability and who are excluded from service programs from which they would clearly benefit, will the political pressure on government be sufficient to force increased financial allocations to service agencies.

Lobbying by advocacy groups should shift from focussing solely on the amount of government funds provided to support specialist disability services and concentrate in some substantial degree upon the adequacy of such funding to provide satisfaction to the service user.  The strategy of utilising the experience and expertise within systemic advocacy organisations to secure individualised funding projects, and then to run those projects, has been demonstrated in British Columbia and in the United Kingdom where lobbying resulted in the passing of legislation that enables people with disabilities to receive direct payments with which to purchase their required support.

Our 1996 argument, as to increasing or maintaining solidarity, was probably utopian in a service system attempting to satisfy individuals, whose specific needs varied greatly, unless the service agencies were totally committed to incorporating client and self advocacy groups perspectives at all levels of the agency from service delivery to management. We don’t rule out the possibility of this occurring but the experience so far would seem to indicate that it is a relatively rare phenomena. It now seems to us that the community might be an easier site at which to attempt to build solidarity amongst people who experience a range of disabilities. This would constitute a sound basis on which to move towards inclusion with the wider community.

Society/community

The specialist service system will probably always have a significant role to play in developing specific support programs that aim to address the needs of people with disabilities. The discussion above advocates an approach to delivering such a system that simultaneously enables people with disabilities to exercise self-determination, and creates roles for community members to play within support networks developed by recipients of funds.  However, the main focus must still be upon the development of a community that is capable of really welcoming and facilitating the access of people with disabilities.  The prime feature of community life is interdependency. We all depend on others.

The most powerful political person in this country is surrounded by minders. We all rely on others: the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker. Part of the trade off we each pay for community membership is subjugation of some of our desires. Inclusion is important but we need to take Morrell’s (1998) advice and ask ‘on whose terms?’  The real community work issue for people with disability is not that they are:

• dependent on the State for income support,
• dependent on family, friends and paid staff for physical or emotional support, and
• dependent on community work theory and/or paid community workers.

It is that they need to rely on themselves and comrades to build the sort of community structures which might go some way towards amassing the force necessary to help build the sort of community in which they want to live.

What is necessary to make this happen

The first step in developing a workable community integration program requires government at state and Federal levels to accept that their efforts to incorporate many people with disabilities into the community over the last decade and a half has been at best only a partial success. The next step is for disability agencies to come to a similar realisation. The reason they have not succeeded in gaining community acceptance is not hard to identify. The models of community work theory they have employed, the level of dedication, the amount of money committed to such projects and the ideologies which have underpinned their efforts are simply deficient.

We will deal with the last point first. What is required is the adoption of a liberationist ideology – part of which requires a commitment to confront some at least of the hegemonic forces which drive the construction of the State.

Liberation

It is possible to be orientated towards a liberationist world view in a social vacuum. But in order to operationalise such a propensity it is necessary to ask “What is it which oppresses?” What are the social structures which sustain that oppression and what are the ideologies which legitimate those structures? Australia is structured by race, gender, class, age, locality and the manner in which we respond to people with disabilities. The ideologies which support that structure are racism, sexism, classism, ageism, urbanism and ableism. Each of the hegemonic forces which control this country are imbued with some or all of these ideologies. Those who internalise these ideologies are in turn alienated from their humanity.

Since Gramsci (1977) we have understood that our liberation is dependant upon the development of counter hegemonic forces if we wish to escape oppressive structures. The development of a counter hegemony is dependent on our understanding of the negative impact that the reinforcement of oppressive structures has on those around us and our commitment with those who are oppressed. The first part of this process is analytical, the second is emotional and the third is enhancing our capacity to act in solidarity.

These are the central feature of the process of developing a liberating community work form.  The actual design shape of any liberating community process needs to contain a commitment to act in solidarity with those who are oppressed. The power to determine direction and pace must remain in the hands of those with whom we are acting in a spirit of solidarity.

The social model of disability and community work

In order to situate our proposed model of liberationist community work within a disability context we would want to incorporate the insights which the leading theorists of the social model of disability (Oliver  1996; Barnes et al. 1999; Morris 1991) have provided. We would want to incorporate Carol Thomas’ (1999) feminist insights of Oliver’s social model. We would want to overlay these insights with a rights approach such as is provided by Armstrong and Barton (1999) and would want to incorporate a class analysis similar to that enunciated by Gleeson (1999). In situations where people were working with Indigenous Australians with disabilities we would want the community work process to employ Indigenous workers, be controlled by the Indigenous community and to be informed by the wealth of progressive community work literature which exists in relation to involvement with the original owners of this country (Smeaton 1998, Day 1994, Tomlinson 1978).

There are a number of recent main stream community work texts (Peavey 2000, Kenny 1999) which might provide useful grounding in community work per se. But liberating community work with people with disabilities requires more than a simplistic adaptation of main stream texts. Whether one starts from Paulo Freire (1972) or from a more political critique of society; the central issue in liberating community work is not the creation of ideologues, academics, or technocrats. The issue is about solidarity with and on the terms laid down by those the community work process asserts it is there to assist. A liberating community work process, of necessity, will involve solidarity with individuals who experience disability and with their group self advocacy organisations.

Frightening though it may be, for many community workers, they will have to forego an increasing propensity to describe themselves as ‘empowerers’ and ‘social entrepreneurs’. Community workers who claim to empower others denigrate those they claim to be empowering (McArdle 1999 p.29). They intentionally or unintentionally distort the process in which they are engaged. Community worker can assist others to remove the obstacles to their taking power but they can not give people power. People have to take power for themselves. Those who want to describe themselves as ‘social entrepreneurs’ have so identified with the economic fundamentalist explanations of the world that they are part of the very problem which allows the Howard Government in the 2002/3 Budget to herald the fact that it intends to shift 180,000 disability support pensioners to an unemployment benefit paid at $52 a fortnight less than the pension. This is allegedly being done as a way of helping them back into employment.

People claiming to be working in the interests of people with a disability must build a counter hegemony to this sort of economic fundamentalist mindset if any sense of social and economic justice is be maintained in Australia. It is vital that people with disabilities, their neighbours, self advocacy and peak disability bodies become activists in the struggle to develop communities that facilitate social justice and the inclusion of people with disabilities.  This will involve a number of strategies beyond the political lobbying and policy consultation that currently take up a good deal of agencies’ time. It will necessitate forging alliances with other groups in the community whilst leading specific projects to build mutuality within specific localities.

Liberating community work is about engaging with others in an act of solidarity in an attempt to end alienation, exploitation, neglect and oppression. It is about developing a critique of the existing structures of society and the manner in which those structures  place obstacles in the way of all people developing their freedom, rights and capacity to act in order to enhance their liberty in ways which promote other’s civil rights.

Bibliography

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Disability is not a protection against bastardry

Published in Disability Abstracts 1998 and
Green Left Weekly 4^th March 1998 p.15

Sectional interests can gain interim advantage over other less powerful sectional interests.  Disability lobby groups can succeed in getting government to advance the interests of those with a disability over the unemployed and perhaps lone parents in the short term.  The aged might gain a sectional advantaged over the young or those with a disability for a few years.  The mental health lobby might in some instances succeed in expanding services to their constituency at the expense of those with an intellectual disability.  But these are pyrrhic victories.  Such victories lay the foundations for counter attacks by competing interests.  Such advances for one group over the interests of others subjects the ‘victors’ to a siege mentality as they have to wage a rear guard action to defend their small gains against the predatory attacks of the very people who should be their greatest allies in the fight for social justice.  Governments fully understand and are delighted when sections of the welfare industry compete amongst each other because they know that the effort wasted on gaining sectional advantage deflect the citizenry from the major struggle to redistribute from the rich to poor

You’ve got to be blind not to see it

In Australia, since 1908, the Commonwealth Government has paid mean tested pensions to widows, the elderly and people experiencing severe disablement.  Asian Australians were excluded from receipt until the 1940s.  Indigenous Australians had to wait until the 1960s before they were considered suitable to receive such payments.  The ideological justification for making such payments was that the recipients were in need through no fault of their own.  Recipients were required to demonstrate they were in impecunious circumstances  and worthy.  Since the second decade of this century one category of disability pensioners – those who were blind were entitled to a pension even if they had substantial income and assets.  When I first became aware of this anomaly I assume that the preferential treatment the blind received at the hands of the Commonwealth was probably because determining degree of loss of sight was less contested than was determinations of other forms of disability, I also assumed that because by simply closing their eyes politicians could gain an understanding of what it was like to lose one’s sight, and finally I assumed that legislators considered the blind more disabled than quadriplegics.  But, after reading Social Security researcher Allan Jordan’s excellent 1984 report entitled Permanent Incapacity: Invalid Pension in Australia I found that the Government paid blind pensioners irrespective of means precisely because it thought those who had been assessed as having lost 85% of their sight were more likely to obtain employment than were others who determined to be 85% incapacitated from other causes.

So in Australia blind citizens received a basic income paid to them as a right once they were assessed as blind. Widows, the elderly and other citizens who were considered by Commonwealth Medical Officers to be 85% incapacitated were provided with a guaranteed minimum income.  The difference being that the blind received the total amount of the pension irrespective of their relationships with others, their income and their assets. Whereas widows, the aged and other people with a permanent disability had their pension substantially reduced in relation to income and assets and the wealth of partners was also a factor used to decrease the amount of pension income they received.

Benefits

In the aftermath of the Second World War a range of benefits were introduced designed to cover short term unemployment, sickness and other eventualities not covered by pensions.  Beneficiaries were subjected to greater surveillance than pensioners and paid at a lower rate. The unemployed had to pass a test. to establish they were fit, available and willing to work. In the five years I worked for Social Security I encountered many people who had a permanent disability but not of sufficient severity to have them adjudged permanently incapacitated.  They were not able to obtain work and often failed the work test.  Many of these people received no income support ; they were not sick temporarily, they were not fit, and they were not incapacitated within the meaning of the Social Services Act.  They had no support group, they were often described as malingerers or lazy they did not fit any pattern and apart from welfare relief agencies and shelters they received no support.  In a society bases on solidarity and mutual respect it would not have been possible to consign them to the scrap heap.  These were people with disadvantage and disability, yet in the absence of a basic income they often received no income support.  In the main they received no help from the disability movement.

Basic Income

I believe the income support regime provided for blind pensioners was the appropriate approach not just for the visually impaired but for all citizens.  Clearly the basic income which the blind received had no poverty trap, it accrued less stigma, did not interfere in the development of personal relationships, encouraged the blind to increase earned income and to accrue assets.  If it is appropriate to install such an income support mechanism for a group of people whom a Commonwealth Medical Officer determined were 85% incapacitated for work then surely it would be an even more rational policy to implement an identical scheme for unemployment beneficiaries who had to show they were fit available and willing to work.  As Keith Windschuttle in 1981, in his seminal work Unemployment pointed out governments did not do this because of their fear that the unemployed were work shy.  A lynch pin of the ideology of the economic fundamentalism which has infected every Australian Cabinet since Whitlam is that, if the desire is to increase productivity then, the rich have to be rewarded and the poor compelled.

Even if governments were constrained by their compulsive desire to believe that lone parents, the sick, the aged and the unemployed are so determined to live at or below the poverty line that they would avoid work once a basic income was in place it seems strange that they were willing to provide a basic income for blind disability pensioners but not every other disability pensioner.  If the argument for paying blind pensioners a basic income because it gave them an incentive to work then there is even a more compelling argument to provide that same incentive to other disability pensioners whom governments believed would encounter greater difficulties obtaining work.

The failure of the trade union movement and the organisations of the workless to unite and build into the social wage a basic income as the central plank demonstrates how easy it is for the powerful to deflect sections of the working class into pursuing sectional interests.  The aristocracy of the workers, understanding the disproportionate rewards which the rich got through tax subsidies on superannuation set out to joint the gravy train rather than derail it and replace it by a basic income for all irrespective of circumstance.  The welfare and disability lobby groups were busy protecting their sectional interests in what was left of the Australian welfare state from the ravages of the economic fundamentalists.  They too failed to understand that the main government game of shifting wealth from the less well off to the rich and the super rich was under way.

Instead of having a society in which the workers and the workless, the able bodied and those with a disability, where men and women , indigenous and non-indigenous, migrant and Australian born are united and harmonious, we have a society about to be torn apart by a race election, one which pretends the repression of asylum seekers is not occurring, where many workers reckon the unemployed are dole bludgers, where the clash between patriarchy and feminism is daily played out and where the able bodied are indifferent to difficulties of their fellow citizens with a disability.  What we have now is a society in which 8% are regarded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as unemployed, a further 5-10 % are discouraged unemployed, over a third of the full time work force is working in excess of 50 hours per week, half the work force concerned their jobs are insecure, nearly every under 21 year old receiving unemployment benefit is forced forced to survive on an income well below the poverty line.  Young disability pensioners are also forced to live on an income well below the poverty line.  Until the end of the 1980s young disability pensioners received an income above the poverty line.  Then Brian Howe, as Minister for Social Security, decided to distort social justice by reducing the income of 16 year old disability pensioners to 44% of the poverty line to bring them into line with the starvation rates paid to the young unemployed.  Having a severe disability is certainly no protection against bastardry.

Brian Howe may have well been right that many young people in Australia who were adjudge by some eligibility tester at the CES to be eligible for an unemployment benefit payment may not have had very different income support requirements from another young person who received a disability support pension but even if this were the case then the just action would have been to raise the young unemployment beneficiary to the poverty line not to drive the young disability pensioner into poverty.  Australian governments have been extraordinarily successful during the 1980s and 90s diverting money from the poor to the rich and super rich.  The main vehicles for the transfer of funds are tax cuts provided to higher income earners or through share imputation.  Governments can forego collecting as much tax from the rich as a direct result of austerity measures imposed on the welfare and disability clients.  Governments get away with pandering to the rich because our sector is divided amongst itself and alienated from the wider working class.  If we learn nothing else from Lenin we need to understand that at least in relation to income support “The struggle for one is the struggle for all.”

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Disability on Howard’s ‘Animal Farm’

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Do not mention the war or young people

Paper given at the Young People and Poverty Seminar, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 23 May, 2002.

Australian society is structured in terms of age, gender, race, locality, class and by the way we treat people with a disability. Each of these structural features is underpinned by an ideology: ageism, sexism, racism, urbanism, classism and disableism respectively . Together these ideological forces constitute the prevailing world view of the politically powerful in this nation. They constitute the hegemonic ideological paradigm through which the powerful in this country interpret the world and provide the conceptual lens which informs the construction of social policy which the powerful then inflict on the rest of us.

Today I want to argue that the reason young people and young people’s issues can be so effectively marginalised is that there is an intimate connection between the ideological construction which the powerful in this country constantly impose on the relations of production and the outcomes which flow from the relations of distribution. Put simply, the powerful in this country have used the mumbo jumbo of economic fundamentalism to deceive Australians into believing that our country is now a more efficient society.

It may well be true that individual firms are able to produce product more cheaply – but at what cost?  In March 2002, 6.6 % of our workforce was officially recognised as unemployed. The real figure, if discouraged unemployed and underemployed people are taken into account, is, according to Professor Bob Gregory, in the order of 20%. Yet about half the full-time work force is working 10 hours a week unpaid overtime. More and more workers are employed at such low rates that even when in full time work they only receive a poverty line income. The current industrial system is exploitation not efficiency. If Australia is not utilising one fifth of its available labour force and over working half of its full-time work force, this does not amount to an efficient use of available labour.

The hegemonic forces have succeeded in imposing other socially undesirable outcomes on Australian society of which the following are but a few:

• a preparedness to incarcerate asylum seekers – currently 600 of whom are under 18 (Lock, Quenault and Tomlinson 2002),
• an excessive willingness to follow Uncle Sam round the world, meeting lots of nice people then killing them,
• the continued stealing of young Indigenous children via the criminal injustice system (Cunneen 2001),
• the ongoing denigration of young people, and
• the constant enforcement of the loser pays principle in relation to nursing homes , education and community services.

I would like to briefly outline some of the methods which the powerful use to impose their world view. The prime focus is to divide and conquer.

Divide and conquer

Sometimes it is clearly in the short term interests of one relatively powerless group to attack another powerless group. Australian workers attacking migrants, refugees and asylum seekers may believe they are protecting their jobs. Such Australian workers are ignoring the fact that their long term interests may well be undermined by the division between the two groups. They may not realise that migrants tend to increase overall employment whilst at the same time taking some jobs from the little Aussie battler. Any division between workers and the reserve army of labour eventually undermines wage levels.

There are three major components in the divide and conquer process:

• identification with the oppressor,
• ambition, and
• the closed circle of violence.

Identification with the oppressor

Several writers recognise Sigmund Freud as the modern originator of the concept of victims identifying with their oppressor. In more recent times, researchers studying domestic violence have found the concept a useful tool in their investigation of intra-family aggression. A lot of the early work on the mechanisms of identifying with the oppressor arose out of the experience of psychologists who had survived Nazi concentration camps. Paulo Freire (1972) explored the concept in considerable length, see also David Parker (1998).

At one level ‘identification with the oppressor’ is a self-explanatory concept – the people who are oppressed wish to escape that oppression and at least try to ‘be like’ their oppressor. But more is involved than simple imitation. Beyond the notion of identification is the idea of disassociation from the previous self. This often takes the form of denigrating one’s previous incarnation. In extreme forms, as the oppressed metamorphose into the oppressor they behave violently towards those who represent their past incarnation. In colonial situations many ‘natives’ might attempt to pass into the invader/settler society – some might become police or soldiers fighting against members of their own ethnic group.

Today I am using the concept of identification with the oppressor to mean any form of identification with the powerful which incorporates aspects of disassociation from those who are subjected to the direction or control by the powerful.

Ambition

Appropriate ambition tends to be defined by the powerful because they have the opportunity and desire to reinforce their message. They define what is success and what is failure. Individuals and less powerful groups might disagree with that definition but they find it very hard to disseminate their ideas.

A good current example of how economic fundamentalism has influenced community work is the number of conservatives (and even confused leftists) who are rushing to describe themselves as social entrepreneurs. Noel Pearson and the current priest heading the Brotherhood of St Lawrence are but two who wish to emulate the entrepreneurs Christopher Scase and Bondie.

Closed circle of violence

Franz Fanon (1967, pp. 243-250) in his famous book The Wretched of the Earth described why it is that much of the violence in poor communities occurs as a result of poor people attacking other poor people- he explained that much of the violence is a result of the psychological mechanism of displacement. Poor people feel unable to attack the real source of their oppression and repression because the real oppressor is seen as extremely powerful and is often distant. So powerless people displace their aggression onto those who are also powerless, who live close by and who annoy them.

For Howard to succeed he does not need to convince powerless people to physically or even verbally attack other powerless people. Howard succeeds when he gets one group of people to compete at the expense of the other. He does not even need to get people to compete. He succeeds the moment he can get one group of people to feel indifferent about the suffering of another individual or group of people. This is how the closed circle of violence enters most of our lives. That’s why Lenin suggested that if we are to escape such social division we need to realise: “The struggle for one is the struggle for all”.

If we don’t stand shoulder to shoulder with others the powerful pick us off one by one. We may not be a severely impaired 16 year old young person, who is unlikely to ever work, who won’t benefit from further schooling, and who would have received an adult rate disability pension until the early 1990s but who, if they live at home, now has to rely on 60% of the adult rate.

We may not be one of the approximately 200,000 young people who are breached annually by Centrelink for failing to meet some arbitrarily imposed obligation; some of whom find that, once breached, they are unable to afford to live in their existing accommodation and start on the slippery slope towards homelessness.

One by one they pick us off. One by one we become the victims only to find we are then blamed for the victim status they have assigned us. The union movement a long time ago realised that if we don’t hang together then we hang separately. But this is not a new idea. Aesop’s Fables include the story about a sheaf of sticks being harder to break than each stick individually.

Economic fundamentalism, class indifference, sexism, racial superiority, ageism, discrimination against people on the basis of their disability and the failure to ensure that country people have access to necessary goods and services on anything like the terms available in cities—all of these ideologies provide a point of divide, a point of departure and a point of separation. Each of these ideological manifestations separate the self from the other.

For example, in 1999 the young unemployed were divided between those who were literate and those who couldn’t read, between those who could count and those who were innumerate. Howard held those who had difficulty reading writing and adding up responsible for their own predicament. In the talk-back babble which followed there was little recognition that illiteracy and innumeracy derive in large part because the educational system has failed the student. In 2UE’s Laws and Parrot Land there was no recognition that compelling people to become literate or to achieve any other educational outcome is counterproductive. Any educator could have told Howard that compelling young people to become literate creates problems both for the learner and the teacher. Of course, such an analysis assumes the Liberal Coalition Government’s real intent was to help young people gain literacy skills. The real intent may have just been to cut budget outlays by forcing young people off welfare and/or if they stayed to further denigrate and intimidate them. His minister of social welfare at the time Jocelyn Newman (1999) has said “Good economic policy is welfare policy.” Her statement might alert us to one thrust of the powerful in this country.

How does it happen

 The powerful win when we:

• fail to question what is success and what is failure,
• confuse frozen anger with apathy,
• don’t distinguish between feelings of impotence and indifference,
• accept our indifference towards others,
• tolerate greed, or
• ignore mal-distribution.

The moment we avert our eyes from the malnutrition and starvation of 1,000 million of our fellow world citizens or ignore the incarceration of asylum seekers in concentration camps in Australia’s outback or elsewhere it becomes easier for us to turn our backs on Australia’s young people who are homeless. The moment we avert our eyes from the 25 million people in South Africa who can’t afford AIDS treatment it becomes easier for us to ignore the young person with a severe disability who’s trying to get a job. The moment we look away from the young woman who’s just been dismissed from her job we know that we can’t turn to her when we get the pink slip in our pay packet, when we get told to finish up on Friday or when we’re made redundant.

We refuse to listen to John Pilger’s statement that 6 thousand Iraqi children die each month as a result of the blockade of that country which Australia in early 2002 is proudly leading. Some people say that Pilger exaggerates. It may be that only 5,804 Iraqi children will die this month. It may only be 3203 kids who’ll die this month (about the same number of lives lost in the bombing of the World Towers in New York). So when you go home tonight sleep easily knowing that Pilger may have exaggerated – I’m sure that you will feel much more comfortable knowing that your country is only responsible for the deaths of  3203 Iraqi children this month. You might like to tell yourself that it’s not happening and that it’s only Pilger saying that. Unfortunately that is not true. The United Nations children’s organisation has been coming up with similar figures for years. But then again who wants to listen to the United Nations when they are critical of Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous Australians.

We can always find a place to hide behind the flag of patriotism. On that flag is inscribed ageism, racism, disableism, urbanism and sexism – so raise the patriotism banner high and salute.

I was going to sing “Advance Australia Fair” but we aren’t really being fair to many of the people who are desperately fleeing persecution, rape, war and poverty.

Yeh, Australia’s the land of the fair go
ah, were it so –
we give refugees a fair go
provided they go somewhere else.

If cowering close to “the last refuge of a scoundrel” does not appeal to you, you might fall back on argument that:

• “The problem is too big I can’t look after all the young people.”
• “The problem is too big I can’t look after all the old people.”
• “The problem is too big I can’t look after all the starving people.”

The reality is that you individually are not being asked to look after everybody in the world. You are just being asked to care and to do what you can. As American community worker Si Kahn wrote:

It’s not what you were born with
it’s what you choose to bear
it’s not how large your share is
but how much you can share.
It’s not the prize you dream of
but the ones who really fought
it’s not just what you’re given
it’s what you do with what you’ve got.

What’s the use of two good legs
if you only run away?
And what good is the finest voice
if you’ve nothing good to say?
What good is strength and muscle
if you only push and shove?
And what’s the use of good two ears
if you can’t hear those you love?

Between those who use their neighbours
and those who use the cane,
between those in constant power
and those in constant pain,
between those who run to meet us
and those who cannot run,
tell me which ones are the cripples
and which ones touch the sun.

The short term aim

The social support systems in our country have for too long done things to and for people. Often this has meant the real beneficiaries of such ‘helping’ have been the ‘helpers’ themselves. We need to change our focus and start doing things with people, on their terms. Above all, none of us can do it alone – we need to do it together.

We can’t at this stage hope to overthrow the hegemonic forces of economic fundamentalism, capitalist globalism, war, famine and misdistribution.

The best that we can hope for in the short term is to help build a counter-hegemony which might usher in a new world in which:

• country people get a fair crack of the whip,
• old people are worried about what happens to young people,
• every person is concerned about what happens to people with disabilities whether they are old or young,
• gender becomes a point of identification rather than a point of division,
• Indigenous people worry about what is going to happen to those who have come here by one means or another in the last two centuries, and
• those of us who have arrived more recently are determined to see that Indigenous people are respected, that their rights are not transgressed, that their land is not stolen, that their children are not separated from them.

In this new world, Australians will act with determination to ensure that a fair percentage of the world’s refugees and displaced people are welcomed here however they arrive on this shore.

Let’s hope that today is the first day in the struggle to build that new world – for you and for me. It will involve building mutuality – not sameness. We don’t want to build a world that’s drab or censorious – we want to build a world that’s vibrant. A world that celebrates diversity – that knows and acknowledges the other.

Bibliography

Aesop’s Fables “The Bundle of Sticks.”
http://www.pacificnet.net/~johnr/cgi/aesop1.cgi?1&TheBundleofSticks
Cunneen, C. (2001) Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest.
Fanon, F. (1967) The Wretched of the Earth. Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Lock, J., Quenault, M. & Tomlinson, J. ( 2002) “Some Reasons Why Australia Should Abolish the Detention of Asylum Seekers.” CPACS Occasional Paper No. 02/1, March, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. Sydney.
Newman, J. (1999) The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21^st. Century. Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra.
Parker, D. (1998) Anthropology in a Revolutionary Moment: Miskitu Resistance, Anglo Affinity, and the Limits of Gramscian Theory.
http://eserver.org/clogic/2-1/parker.html
Pilger, J. (2002) “ Breaking the silence: war, propaganda and the new empire.” Speech 1^st March at Sydney Town Hall, Sydney.

Suggested further reading for those who want to discover an alternative to Australia’s petty-fogging targeted income support system:
Income Insecurity: The Basic Income Alternative is an E-Book and can be found on the New Zealand Universal Basic Income web site the direct link is http://www.geocities.com/ubinz/JT/IncomeInsecurity/

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Don’t be despondent about ‘dependency’

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Don’t get despondent about dependency

Published in Green Left 28/3/2001 p.10

 Some people in Australia are concerned about dependency.  Dependency is a particular painful brain condition that can only be contracted by those who believe in targeting welfare benefits.

The usual justification for targeting is that it directs the greatest assistance to those in greatest need. Claims are then made that being in need justifies the payment of assistance and that need also explains the basis on which aid is given. One assumption attached to such an analysis is the idea that the amount of assistance provided actually meets the recipient’s needs. The argument is more than a little circular and less than convincing yet it has been used in Australia at least since 1908 as a justification for paying income support.

Targeted welfare is a mid-point in Australian welfare debates, positioned between two diametrically opposed views listed below. The main claim of the targeted welfare state was that it assisted all in need through no fault of their own. This qualification on eligibility for assistance has a long lineage stretching as far back as the 16^th Century Elizabethan Poor Laws. Someone has to adjudicate, in order to apportion blame or righteousness to the applicants for assistance. The discretion exercised, at least on the boundaries, is fraught with uncertainty and imprecision (with regard to the application of the deserving template). Some, in almost identical situations, are more capable of articulating their worthiness than are others.

If you don’t believe in targeting you have two main choices.

• Firstly you could, reject the idea of paying income support to anyone on the basis that if they can’t support themselves they are a drain on the rest of us and that if you pander to such people it could drag the rest of us down to their level. Adherents of this view do not support targeted welfare because they claim it leads people to distort their circumstances so as to fit in with need definitions in order to obtain benefit. They claim that providing unemployed people with income support encourages them to delay seeking work. That is, it rewards the dreaded dependency. People attracted to this view, tend since the 16^th Century to accept that leaving people at the crossroads to starve to death is no longer regarded as good form. In short though the position may have some utopian intellectual appeal but it has no practical use. I find this amusing because the every essence of this abolish assistance proposition is a demand that all people have utility.
• Secondly you could, make all income support universally available.

Supporters of the abolish assistance position and of targeting claim that universal welfare is too expensive. They also suggest that universal provision is inefficient because it provides assistance to many who are not in need. Those attached to the abolish assistance position sometimes argue that universalism creates the worst form of moral jeopardy because it ushers in the nanny state confining all, irrespective of their means to a state of dependency.

Supporters of universalism claim that their system at least ensures that no one in financial need is denied, at least, the opportunity to survive. No-one is dependent because those who have no income (apart from the universal income guarantee) are simply asserting their rights as permanent residents. The income support they receive is identical to that which all other permanent residents receive. In this way universal policies are the epitome of an inclusive social policy. Universalists point out that because there are no means tests there are no poverty traps and no financial disincentives to discouraging engagement in paid work. There is no invasion of people’s privacy and no compulsion. Universalists generally claim that an income guarantee is affordable on three grounds.

• Firstly, the amount of income support likely to be paid is about a survival level – in Australia it is likely that the rate of assistance would be about the Henderson Poverty Line.
• Secondly, the payment of a universal payment ensures that all in financial need are provided with a minimum level of income. Which is surely the base promise of the existing welfare system which claims it assists all in need though sometimes with the qualification that the need has to come into existence “through no fault of their own”.
• Thirdly the provision of a sustaining universal payment ensures the community avoids the flow on costs which accrue in any society which marginalises some of its permanent residents by relegating them to an impoverished existence.

Supporters of universalism suggest governments require only the taxation system to tax those whose income levels are such that they don’t need the assistance. Such a system does away with the confusing and inefficient dual taxation and social security means testing withdrawal rates.

Dependency, so it would appear, if one were to follow much of the welfare dependency rhetoric emanating from both Labor and Coalition Ministers since 1986, can only occur amongst the poor.

But if the government was really concerned about the most pressing dependency issues that confronts our economy then it would turn its attention towards the:

• $14 billion annual hand-out from the Government to industry to subsidise its research and product development,
• tax breaks and other inducements to assistance industry,
• provision of transport  and other infrastructure to assist industry,
• government’s attempts to limit workers’ wage rises to assist industry,
• provision of police to help smash union pickets to assist industry,
• tax breaks and other inducements to assist industry,
• refusal to lower the level of unemployment  though job creation, reduced working hours, etc. which allows industry to maintain (at no cost to industry) a reserve army of labour,
• $3 billion annual subsidy to the private health insurance industry, and
• dependency of the insurance industry, whose extreme dependence on the superannuation contributions of Australian workers amounts to an intense addiction.

A failure of trust helps explain the absence of universal income guarantees; dependency rhetoric is just a mystification

The reason we haven’t got an income guarantee is very simple.  In Darwin I sat at the feet of a long-term unemployed person, a wise man called Strider, who told me that the reason the government refuse to have a universal income guarantee is because it suffers a lack of faith in Australian people. Strider says that governments believe the unemployed “wouldn’t work in an iron lung”.  There is no evidence that supports such conclusions about Australian people who are confined to the reserve army of labour. People don’t want to work in dangerous jobs, or in situations where they are sexually harassed, or in a whole range of situations where they are exploited, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to work.  A universal income guarantee would provide an opportunity for people to participate in a whole range of ways, either in the paid labour force or by undertaking unremunerated work.

The Howard Government whilst claiming to be in the vanguard of the push for smaller government has tied its fortunes to the mutual obligation masthead. This system requires massive intervention in the lives of those who receive income support. The Work for the Dole Scheme and compelled literacy training are just two obnoxious features of the Howard Government’s mutual obligation policy. This socially conservative government compels people to participate in an approved activity in return for receiving income support. This is a long way removed from people voluntarily involving themselves in a community activity. It is like having to sing hymns for your supper in a church run soup kitchen.

Indigenous people, with their Community Development Employment Program, get paid a not dissimilar amount to unemployment benefits. What a wonderful thing that’s doing for them!  It’s turning them into overnight millionaires, solving their health problems, their infrastructure difficulties, their land ownership issues and their commercialisation problems.  Australians don’t have to worry about Aborigines now because now they are “participating” and avoiding dependency simultaneously.  Doesn’t it make you feel good that your country can ignore such problems like the provision of clean drinking water.  The absence of adequate drinking water is the number one health problem in remote Australia. The average age at which Aboriginal people are dying has remained remarkable constant for most of the last 100 years.

In the last decade people coming to settle permanently in this country have found that migrants had to wait 6 months before they were entitled to receive income support equivalent to that of other Australians. The Howard Government extended this waiting time to 2 years. This cut back occurred in the face of evidence that the time when most people are likely to need assistance, whether they migrate from one town to another town or one country to another country, is in the first two years following the shift.

Australians need to trust other Australians and say, “I’m prepared to pay 50% of what I earn in tax, providing that I’ll know that no-one else in this country is without food, housing, education and a decent health system”.  If such a system were to be installed, most Australians would go to bed happy.

One question which universal income support answers is  “how do we keep it simple”?  Most Australians don’t want all the complexity of the existing welfare system. They want the government to come up with an income support system which the least sophisticated in this community can understand. They don’t want to have a system which only the bureaucratic elite can understand.  John Howard, just after he became Opposition Leader in the early 1990s, said families should know what their entitlements are. At present families don’t, social workers don’t, academics don’t, most of the bureaucrats in Social Security don’t know the amount of income support to which permanent residents are entitled.

At present the Australian  welfare system is reductionist. The existing system is driven by a determined ethos, the basic planks of which are:

• what is it we don’t have to give poor people, and
• what is the minimum we can get away with politically?

The Australian welfare system’s budget is allocated out of what is left once we have done all the important things – such as provide subsidies to industry and purchase the latest military toys for the boys.

On top of the attachment to outmoded constructions of a poor law welfare state, the welfare system finds itself in reduced circumstances as a result of the rise and consolidation of economic fundamentalism. One of the major planks of economic fundamentalist theory is the trickle down effect. This is the idea that the rich get richer first and some how they create jobs, which the poor eventually take-up, and in this way wealth eventually spreads throughout the community. Of course the trickle down effect does not promise a move in the direction of equality or equity. Anyone who has a leaking bladder can tell you that their thighs are always wetter than their feet. Alan Anforth, a past Director of ACT COSS, denies that the trickle down effect works. He suggests that an alternative mechanism is in play. He calls it the Suck-up Effect: the rich suck up the money and we suck up to them.

Finally, one of the greatest obstacle to the introduction of a guaranteed universal minimum income in this country is not the economic rationalists.  It is not the politicians.  It’s the social welfare industry with each of the various sectors fighting, not for a unity based on what all poor people have in common, but for the maintenance of minimal economic advantages that some sectors have over others, eg. pensioners versus beneficiaries. This destroys the possibility of a potential unity amongst all those who would be advantaged by the introduction of a universal income guarantee. Social welfare practitioners seem oblivious to the advantage which solidarity amongst all sectors of the least affluent would herald. Each sector is divided from the others by the receipt of minuscule advantages. This denies the capacity of all poor people to present the government of the day with a powerful voting block which could not be overlooked and which would provide a unified rallying point around which to organise. The targeting of welfare not only divides welfare recipients from each other – it drives a wedge between low wage workers and those forced to survive on welfare benefits. If low waged workers and income support recipients accepted their essential unity, they would constitute a very powerful voting block. Such a unity has the capacity to lay the foundation stone for the development of a decent welfare state.

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Economic rationalism or rational economics

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Evidence to House of Representatives Standing Committee on Community Affairs

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Faint praise for a chimera: Selectivity versus universalism in social policy

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Farewell to alms

Paper given at the Beyond Despondency – The UBI Alternative to the Welfare Meltdown Conference, Wellington,  New Zealand  26-28 March, 1998

Prologue

Whether we are speaking about a Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI), a Guaranteed Adequate Income (GAI), a Negative Income Tax (NIT), a Universal Basic Income (UBI) or any other form of social payment which is available to all citizens, and hopefully all permanent residents, we are conceiving of a system of income support which in Lady Rhys-Williams'(1965, p. 163) words puts a floor below which income cannot fall without installing a ceiling beyond which income cannot rise.  In all these  schemes there is a universal right to apply for payment.  Under a UBI there would be a universal payment; whereas with GMI, GAI and NIT the amount of payment received by the individual would be in inverse relation to other income (and in some cases assets) received by that individual.  Some income guarantee schemes use the family, others the individual as the unit of income.

Much of the literature on the subject of income support has compared income guarantees with targeted social welfare payments.  There is a plethora of articles which have dealt with rights/obligations, stigma/or lack of it, work incentive/or work discouragement. Some writers (Gorz 1985, pp.40-47, Gorz and Jordan cited in Van Parijs,1992 p.24) have argued that a fixed number of hours work per lifetime should provide an entitlement to UBI.  Pixley (1993) opposed UBI because it would not ensure people were encouraged to work.  Cass (1995) was more circumspect in her opposition to UBI; she does not insist that income support be dependent upon peoples preparedness to seek employment;  she argues that eligibility rules should insist people become part of the ‘active society’.  Her ‘active society’ incorporates a wider definition of ‘making a productive contribution to the economy’ by engaging in education, training, employment or community service.

Robert Goodin (1992) has argued for a non-presumptuous income guarantee, that is one which requires no specific contribution by the individual.  Such a proposal is opposed by those on the right of the political spectrum because they claim it creates “dutiless rights”(Green 1996,  Selbourne 1994).  Such claims can be viewed as part of a citizenship debate or alternatively as integral to the worst of the welfare worthiness diatribe- either way such claims amount to an enunciation of the writer’s fear that somehow some ‘bludger’ is going to get something for nothing.  Those on the right are content to keep in place privileged windfalls as a result of birth, good luck and innate intelligence.  One of the personal features those on the right would include, as a basis for disproportionate rewards, is hard work (despite the fact that no poor person can get rich by working hard).

On the left there is a tendency to over glorify the importance of contribution / participation [in the current jargon of the faded pink ‘expanding the social capital’ (Cox 1995, Putnam 1993)].  Exactly how enforced participation in the ‘active society’, compelled employment, or meeting some vaguely defined ‘societal obligations’ in return for receiving a basic income improves the functioning of society is unclear.  Experiencing imposition / repression is unlikely to provide the best foundation from which to develop truly liberated citizens.

I share with Goodin (1992), Watts (1995) and several NZ UBI writers (Ritchie 1997, Bradford 1997, Rankin 1997, Goldsmith 1997) the desire to see introduced a universal income guarantee sufficient to sustain all individuals, at least in modest dignity, without attaching obligations to such a payments.  If, as I believe, people want to contribute to the welfare of the collective and through that participation they benefit, the task then becomes one of  removing obstacles to participation rather than compelling people to participate through fear of starvation.  For instance, the provision of affordable child care would allow many with young children the opportunity to participate more broadly in community life.

For too long, many of us in ‘human services’ have suspended our critique of the welfare state as we sought to defend it against the onslaught new right econocrats.  We need to resurrect and intensify our critique of the welfare state for its unnecessary complexity, targeting, constant repressive desire to compel, its ubiquitous search for the unworthy, its marginalisation/delegitimisation of those it calls worthy, and its failure to lift those it ‘assists’ out of poverty.  We need to discover a way to ensure the tax and income support systems receive “from each according to ability” and deliver “to each according to need.”

We need to look beyond the straightjacket of the market economists, reject the parsimony of the welfare state and confront the need for an adequate universal income guarantee not just to escape poverty but to enhance liberty and mutuality as we move towards solidarity and equality.

As those who have been involved in efforts to introduce universal income programs know there are no sound economic affordability arguments against their introduction but there are some major ideological obstacles which we need to surmount.  In this paper I discuss many of these obstacles which we encounter on both sides of the Tasman Sea.

Economic fundamentalism and politicians use of dependency rhetoric

There are some revealing linkages between politicians’ promotion of ‘need’ as the basis of receipt of income support from the state and their adoption of the jargon of economic fundamentalists.  For without the mystifying nomenclature of ‘self provision’, ‘user pays’ and ‘dependency’ to deflect the public’s attention from the real social wage issues, politicians might have to explain why they are not prepared to introduce a universal basic income.  The alleged ‘necessity’ of economic austerity has led to welfare cutbacks, targeting of benefits and redistribution of income of people from lower socio-economic levels to the rich.  

Since the days of the British Poor Law administrations some people without income have been refused help on the basis that “they were not worthy to gather up the crumbs from the rich man’s table”.  The modern welfare state’s reliance upon targeting (either in terms of the categories of those entitled to receive assistance or the eligibility rules which apply within a category) is simply a ploy to limit social welfare expenditure in a manner not dissimilar to the way ‘less eligibility’ has been employed since the 18 th century.

Hand in hand with the assault by economic fundamentalists on public provision of income support and services Australian and New Zealand Governments have promoted the expansion of privatised welfare.  They argue that private superannuation, private unemployment or sickness insurance and private medical insurance lifts an ‘intolerable burden’ from the shoulders of the tax payer.  Governments and economic fundamentalists in these two countries claim that those citizens who pay for such private programs are ‘self providers’ implying that those who don’t privately insure are bludgers on the system.  Many writers (ACTCOSS 1991, Pha 1992, Tomlinson 1995, McAulay 1993, Kelsey 1995) have pointed out these alleged ‘self providers’ receive massive poorly disguised tax-payer funded subsidies.  Such publicly funded handouts go, in the main, to those who least require assistance from the state.

A sleight of hand

Goebles, the head of Hitler’s propaganda machine, understood that it was very much easier to get people to believe the big lie than to accept smaller distortions of the truth. People entering debates tend to accept the context of debates with or without acknowledging that such contexts are set by powerful figures. They then bring their reasoning to bear on the elements of the debate rather than defiantly questioning the foundation on which the debate rests.  Marxists (Marx and Engles 1971, p.31) understand that prevailing ideologies cloud debate in the sense that powerful ideologies lead people to rule some ideas in and others out.  Gramsci (1977, pp. 53,170-172, 185-189, and 1978, pp. 233-235, 255-266, 443-459) developed the concept of ‘hegemony’ to explain the mechanisms by which the powerful ideas of the day constrain the limits of debate.  He suggested that hegemonic ideas tend to be accepted unquestionably whilst simultaneously making other ideas verboten.  Once we accept the earth is flat we know that if you go too far you’ll fall off the edge.

Building the welfare state

During the first 50 years of this century there were two world wars, a world wide depression, major technological changes and somehow in the midst of all this the perquisites of the existing elites came under challenge. Keynesian economics emerged and we witnessed the development of the modern welfare state.  Some socialists argued that the welfare state was the price of peace which the working class had extracted (Mandell 1975 ); others argued that the welfare state was a new form of containment (Cloward and Piven 1974, Piven & Cloward 1971, Galper 1975); whilst still others suggested it was both simultaneously (Gough 1979, p. 55, Miliband 1973, p. 242, Tomlinson 1989, Ch. 5 & 8).

In Australia, Britain and New Zealand the establishment of the presence of ‘need’ was the basis on which goods, services or cash were provided to the poor thus maintaining an intimate connection with the ideologies which informed the practices of the British Poor Law administrations.  Notions of worthiness and less eligibility pervade the administration of welfare.  Since the first decade of this century, there have been attempts in Australia to define categories of eligibility, for example: aged, widowhood and invalidity.  A person who could establish they met such criteria could (provided they were in impecunious circumstances) receive a payment. Yet to receive an age pension a claimant who met these other conditions still had to show that they were of ‘good moral character’.  Even as late as the early 1960s, when I worked for the Department of Social Services, alcoholics were refused an invalid pension on the grounds that they “..were not worthy to receive a pension.”  Married women with children who had “..been deserted without just cause” for 6 months provided they had taken and enforced maintenance action against their husband were eligible for a widows pension. But married men with dependent children in similar circumstances were not entitled to payment.  Nor were women with dependent children who had not received the nuptial blessing from a priest or registry official.

By the late 1970s all lone parents with dependent children who could establish they were not “..living in a bona fide domestic relationship” were eligible for support from the Federal Government.  Efforts to remove tests of virtuousness in relation to social security payments reached their zenith in the first term of the term of the Hawke Labor Government. This loosening of the charity belt had been a gradual process pursued by Labor and Liberal administrations from Chifley to Fraser.  The Fraser Government introduced for families a form of guaranteed minimum income the (Family Income Supplement) which the incoming Hawke Government expanded under the name of the Family Allowance Supplement.  We had finally reached a point in Australian social welfare where for families the absence of income was of itself sufficient grounds to justify the state providing income support.  Income security for families based simply on the absence of other income rather than some moral imperative had arrived on our shores.

The assessing of eligibility for unemployment benefits stood out as the area which retained all the old fears.  In order to receive a payment the applicant had to pass a work test establishing fitness, ability and readiness to work.  Applicants who were involved or whose union was involved in industrial disputation were rejected (Barwick 1997).  Despite the evidence that there were insufficient jobs available for all who wanted work governments behaved as if they believed there were thousands of ‘dole bludgers’ out there somewhere and they had to be found.  Every Australian government since federation has shared with British Poor Law administrators of earlier centuries an overwhelming fetish to compel the unemployed to work.

Despite the way it treated the unemployed, the Australian welfare state, though inordinately complex, had by the 1980s become quite comprehensive in coverage.  Ministers for Social Security repeatedly claimed that ‘no one in need through no fault of their own’ would be refused assistance.  This claim, of course, was exaggerated (Raper 1995).

The economic u-turn

In most developed English speaking countries the 1970s and 80s saw Keynesian economics gradually delegitimised by a resurrected form of economic fundamentalism.  After its emergence from the Economics Department of the University of Chicago, the economic ideology of the greedy took many names supply side economics, monetarism, economic liberalism and in Australian circles economic rationalism.  It was the ideological basis for the greedy to win back the gains made by the needy.

A central thrust of this ideology was that if the goal was increased productivity, then the rich had to be rewarded whilst the poor (read lazy) had to be coerced.  Altruism, cooperation, humanity, solidarity, empathy, equality, mutuality were derided and replaced with competition, survival of the fittest , downsizing, and market efficiency.  Welfare was an anathema to these free wheeling economic libertarians.  Whilst writers such as Castles (1985) had pointed out that, in Australia, we had established a ‘workers welfare state’ – the economic fundamentalists wanted the existing benefit system demolished, suggesting the poor would benefit in the long run as a result of a “trickle down effect”.  They ignored the fact that the poor still needed to eat every day.  That without other assistance a rising tide only lifts ships which are capable of floating and waders who are stuck in the mud, drown.  These econocrats were indifferent to the experience of every incontinent person who could have told them “their thighs are always wetter than their feet”.  As Jane Kelsey (1995) in New Zealand, Richard Titmuss (1976, pp.140-141) and Paul Omerod (1994) in Britain have shown that the rising tide of economic growth does not assist many confined to the lower levels of the labour market nor without other interventions does it assist those excluded from the labour market (Langmore & Quiggan 1994).  Only government apologists and economic fundamentalist ideologues ever believed that economic growth eventually assists everyone.  The most succinct critique was the slogan “Economic rationalism does not trickle down – it sux.”

The claims of the economic fundamentalists to have the answer to each and every question were extreme.  Not only were they experts in economic matters; but taking a lead from Adam Smith their intellectual mentor – whose writings they selectively read (Agyrous  & Stilwell 1996) – they claimed expertise on moral matters.  Their proposed solutions included leaving all questions to the unfettered ‘morality’ of the market.

Liberty became, for the economic fundamentalists, an extreme libertarian freedom. The individual was freed from all constraint by the collective so as to be able to exploit whoever and whatever for ever – subject only to market forces.  Gone was any concept of liberty as the freedom to achieve within parameters set by society and ecology.  Gone also was the concept that people, without adequate means of support, could have their security and liberty assisted as a result of receiving income support from the state.

The debate initiated by the economic fundamentalists raged on throughout the 1980s and 90s as if discussion of the need to remove the five giant obstacles:

• want,
• disease,
• ignorance,
• squalor, and
• ignorance

which underpinned the construction of the modern British welfare state (Marshall 1979, p.84) had never occurred.

The interplay between economic fundamentalism and welfare

By the end of the 1980s, as Michael Pusey (1991) demonstrated, the senior ranks of the Australian Public Service had become dominated by right wing econocrats who spoke fluent managerialism.  They set about installing regimes where the user pays mentality, downsizing, and targeting welfare benefits became the order of the day.  Driven by a fear that someone might get something they were not entitled to or that a welfare recipient might refuse a job as a blood taster in an AIDS clinic they substantially increased the surveillance of the unemployed and lone parents.  Egged on by the then Minister for Social Security, Brian Howe, eligibility for payment of unemployment benefit was restricted.  In 1986, though more people were unemployed than in the previous year fewer applicants received unemployment benefits due to changes in eligibility conditions (Social Security 1987, p.99).

In a return to the 1960s, lone parents applying for income support were compelled to take and enforce maintenance payments against non-custodial parents.  Similar schemes prevailed in Britain and New Zealand.  The Tax Office became the collector of maintenance payments.  As governments in Britain, New Zealand and Australia found they had not the wit to find or create sufficient jobs for all who wanted work nor to share the available work amongst the entire labour force, they increased their attacks on the unemployed.  Governments are so determined to compel the unemployed to work they refuse to recognise that post industrial capitalism does not require all the available labour (Murray 1997). In New Zealand, as in Australia, the cutbacks of welfare benefits was begun by the Labour(Labor) Party.   New Zealand then elected a National Party Government which slashed welfare payments across the board.  Australia, under Labor and even a Howard Liberal Party, has simply reduced entitlements in a concerted relentless fashion.

.Still in 1998, Australia has retained much more of the social wage than has New Zealand.  This has been due to three factors:

• neither the Hawke nor Keating Labor Governments set out to discipline the workless with anything like the alacrity of their New Zealand counterparts,
• unlike New Zealand, by the time conservative forces captured the treasury benches, the public’s desire for a dose of radical ‘liberal’ economics had started to wane,
• the Australian trade union movement remains more united and stronger than the New Zealand union movement.

However, the welfare state and the associated social wage in Australia has been diminished.  Coupled with the attack on the workless has been a reduction in the employment conditions of workers.  This was done under Labor in Australia through the accord. The incoming Howard Government opted for a more direct attack on working conditions, favoured by the conservatives in New Zealand, through implementing employment contract legislation.  Governments in Britain, New Zealand and Australia have recognised that unless the reserve army of labour is mobilised as a threat to those in work then a solidarity between workers and workless might develop.  The solution proposed by governments in both countries has been to reinstigate the 1930s ‘susso’ schemes which are compulsory work for the dole programs.

The ideological attractiveness of introducing compulsory work for the dole schemes derives from the economic fundamentalist desire to reward the rich and compel the poor.  The suggestion is made that under existing social demogrant type unemployment benefits the workless are claiming “dutiless rights” (Green 1996, Selbourne 1994).  In New Zealand, Social Welfare Minister Roger Sowry announced that he intends in 1998 to refocus social welfare policy “…away from rights and looking at responsibilities for the first time.” (The Jobs Letter 30/1/98).  Similar ideological pronouncements can be identified in the jargon of the Australian Prime Minister John Howard who claims social demogrants prevent the unemployed “being allowed the opportunity to demonstrate they are meeting their mutual obligations to the community”.  What they really mean is “dole bludgers are getting something for nothing”.

The political attraction of work for the dole to governments in these three countries is similar to that of the United States where ‘workfare’ schemes have been in place for a few years.  Ill informed voters object to their tax dollars being wasted on welfare recipients and the unemployed.  They either don’t know or refuse to acknowledge that creating workfare jobs lessens the demand for labour.  This process is called displacement.  They have little understanding that it might be their job which is displaced (Adams 1997). They don’t understand many of the subtleties of this complex issue: they are looking for a simple solution and they simply accept what their political masters tell them.  There is also an attractiveness in these schemes for the mean who feel that they are getting a return on their taxes by forcing the unemployed to work for a pittance, in one sense they are getting ‘something for nothing’ or next to nothing – well at least they are not paying directly for it.

The average voter is unaware that, in the United States, there are major industry contracts being let to companies which not only to use ‘workfare’ employees but also prison labour.  If such compelled labour does not take their job it might undercut their next contract to supply goods or services.  It is perplexing that voters who fear that welfare recipients and unemployed people might be ‘getting something for nothing’ support programs where the voters hope to ‘get something for nothing’ at the expense of the unemployed.

There is a further ideological attraction in compelling those without paid work to undertake work for the dole programs and that is, as Gorz warned us in 1985 (pp.34-38), it helps reinforce the expectation of full time work as the norm thereby ensuring the powerful “maintain the relations of domination based on the work ethic.” (p.35 italics in original).

The sick and disabled were, in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, initially excluded from many of the welfare cutbacks.  In more recent times their benefits have also been more tightly targeted.  In the name of equity and simplicity the payment rate for young people with a severe disability in Australia was drastically reduced under Labor.  The same style of econocrat double speak was utilised when Labor linked unemployment and student allowances.

In Britain, New Zealand and Australia, during the last three months of 1997 welfare and disability payments came under attack by governments.  The Blair (new right) Labour Party in Britain demonstrated its true colours when it substantially cut the payments to lone parents in December 1997.  This resulted in 47 of its members crossing the floor to vote against the Government. The planned cutbacks in disability payments saw the first resignation, in protest, by a Minister in the Blair Labour Government.  The stated reasons for cutting welfare payments or wages in these three countries have been economic necessity. Jane Kelsey (1995) points out that it was the alleged need for economic austerity, which in turn led to the economic cure in New Zealand, which resulted in many years of economic downturn and social disaster (Bradford 1997).  In Australia the economic miracle promised by the Hawke, Keating and Howard Governments has not yet achieved an unemployment rate under 8%.  Yet the Blair Government is setting out to cut welfare benefits in order to comply with the economic discipline ‘imposed’ on countries wishing to join the common European currency.  It is interesting that English speaking politicians always seem to find it easier to cut welfare expenditure than military expenditures or industry subsidies.

The recent nursing homes debate

Australia still has a head start when it comes to proving its economic fundamentalist credentials.  The blind obedience to economic dogma over humanitarian concerns or even smart political tactics was revealed, in the last quarter of 1997, by the way the Howard Liberal Government handled the changes to entry into nursing homes.

The Howard Government earlier in 1997 had used its numbers to overturn Northern Territory legislation allowing voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill people.  When the Howard Government came to decide the basis on which it would allow the frail aged to enter nursing homes it declared that adherence to a ‘user pays’ principle was all important.  Ignoring the fact that most people entering a nursing home die within six months (often within three), it determined that nursing homes could charge any fee they liked (one privately owned home was charging a $250,000 entry fee).  The Government also decreed that people with few assets other than a family home would have to sell it in order to enter a nursing home.  Many elderly became confused and depressed.  Two elderly people in Western Australia suicided leaving a note which linked their death to their uncertainty as to their capacity to be able to afford to enter a nursing home.  One wit at the time suggested that the Howard government was opposed to voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill but supported compulsory euthanasia for the frail aged who required nursing home care.

The present

In Britain, New Zealand and Australia the economic fundamentalists have had great success in redistributing income and wealth from the poor, the working and middle classes, to the rich and super rich (Stilwell 1993, Cassidy 1997, p. 24, Kelsey 1995). We have also seen some convergence in these countries in relation to welfare policies concerning unemployed people, lone parents and people with disabilities.  The language of conservatives in New Zealand and Australia is not very different from that of the Blair new right Labour Party in Britain.  Resonances of Rodgernomics in New Zealand, Thatcherism in Britain, Reganomics in the United States can be identified in the speeches of Labor’s Paul Keating or John Howard in Australia.  Shipley, Howard and Blair all utilise the dependency rhetoric when it falls to them to describe the behaviour of lone parents and the unemployed.  They claim the central issue in relation to welfare policies is the need to move people away from welfare ‘dependency’ to independence from welfare.

Each of these prime ministers is being disingenuous in attempting to suggest that they are really addressing the issue of: ‘dependence’ on welfare or independence from welfare. These prime ministers are attempting to mystify by engaging in this false debate.  They do this because they are not prepared to engage in the real welfare debate – the income security / insecurity debate.  This attempt to deflect attention from core welfare issues has not escaped the attention of poverty activists.  Early in 1997 at Massey University, the Auckland Peoples’ Centre sponsored an alternative conference to the New Zealand Government’s Beyond Dependency Conference.  The Peoples’ Centre Conference was entitled Beyond Poverty.  In October 1997, the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services published a discussion paper on work for the dole schemes in which they exposed many of the flaws in the ‘dependency’ arguments and went on to strongly reject the need to compel welfare recipients to work (Adams 1997).

Independence from welfare equates with aloneness or separation from a shared citizenship.  ‘Dependency’ equates with subjugation to the state or the welfare bureaucracy of the state.  The manner in which the ‘dependency’ debate is carried out in these three countries ignores the complexity of the debate: it allows no consideration of the desire of most people for reciprocity of contribution, mutuality, solidarity, cooperation, nor their desire for a shared humanity.   At the Beyond Poverty Conference I asserted that if ‘dependency’ was the real issue which governments were attempting to address they could abolish ‘dependency’ by introducing a non-presumptuous universal income guarantee (Tomlinson 1997).

Conservatives conduct the debate about ‘dependency’ from the standpoint of the stereotypical unidimensional fully self-serving economic ‘rational’ man (sic).  Feminists have long pointed to the fact that ‘dependency’ is seldom a desired state of being and this in part explains the desire of women to increase their participation in the paid workforce.  When it comes to welfare benefits many female lone parents find that “The state is a more jealous husband than the man the woman has just left.”(Glassman 1970, pp. 102-103).  It is true that those who have no alternative but to rely on income provided by the state depend on that income to survive.  But to extrapolate from this fact to suggest that reliance on publicly provided income ipso facto equates with ‘dependency’ stretches the logic of the argument to beyond breaking point.  Even if one were to accept that behavioural choices are dictated by self-serving ‘rational’ economic choices, there is a need to question why anyone behaving in a fully rational self-seeking manner would choose subjugation to the state’s welfare bureaucracy over aloneness or separation from the interference of welfare bureaucrats.

Clearly politicians in Australia and New Zealand have been impotent in their attempts to solve unemployment.  They have not had the wit to create sufficient jobs for all who want them, nor are they willing to shorten the working week so that the available work might be shared by the entire workforce.  They have been so intent upon ensuring less eligibility imbues the spirit of income support policies that they have not been prepared to put in place a secure income floor for all people.  They have been so preoccupied with the economic fundamentalist dogma that the poor need to be compelled to work, they have not looked for alternatives (Murray 1997).  On top of this they are conscious that the welfare budget is a big ticket item and have become so fearful that costs might escalate if they seriously addressed the issues facing poor people.  Politicians response has been to:

• denigrate the poor with their ‘dependency’ rhetoric, and
• employ economic fundamentalist mean minded tinkerings, such as  increased targeting and surveillance.

There are alternatives:

• walk away from the repressive and outmoded insights which inspired the 1834 Poor Law legislation in Britain,
• realise we are about to enter the 21 St. Century,
• accept that there is no necessary link between work and income support, and
• introduce a universal basic income which makes no presumption about people (Goodin 1992).

Conclusion

If our political leaders were not intent upon deflecting us from examining the real issues in income support they would discuss the way a universal basic income or even a guaranteed minimum income would free every citizen from ‘dependency’. After all, citizens enjoying their full entitlements provided by the state can hardly be described as ‘dependent’.  Rather they are simply asserting their right to receive income from the collective in much the same way as a shareholder relies on dividend income provided by private companies.  At its most basic, economic citizenship is a twofold process which requires the citizen to pay taxes in relation to income gained and to receive income in line with government distributional processes.  Citizens relying on the state to honour its commitment to them could only be described as ‘ dependent’ by those who deny the legitimacy of the state’s role in ensuring that all in a society are prevented from living in poverty.

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For whom mutual obligation tolls

Published by QCOSS CIRCA 2000

Senator Jocelyn Newman released the interim report of the “Reference Group on Welfare Reform” entitled Participation Support for a More Equitable Society on the 28^th. March this year. It duly received considerable hype from right wing media pundits describing it as the way forward for a modern caring and efficient Australia in which everyone would pull their weight. The language of the title like so many recent Howard Government papers barely disguises a confused moral / economy contradiction. Anyone wanting to tease out the implicit conundrum should read Judith Bessant’s (2000) analysis of work for the dole.

The morning after the release of the interim report of Senator Jocelyn Newman’s Reference Group on Welfare Reform Prime Minister Howard said “People want the needy looked after but they don’t want an explosion in welfare spending.” Patrick McClure, CEO of Mission Australia and the head of the Newman’s Reference Group, in an interview on Life Matters a few minutes later was asked about sanctions that might apply to income support applicants if they did not “participate” in the Government’s plans to extend mutual obligations provisions applying to unemployed people to single parents and disability pensioners claimed that there was only one reference to sanctions in the 75 page report. This comment was presumably made in an attempt to assure a frightened recipient population they were not about to lose their benefits. Those Life Matters listeners who had watched the 7.30 Report two days previously would have put McClure comments along side the fact that in the previous 12 months Centrelink had issued 200,000 notices of breach to social security recipients in the previous year. Anyone who bothered to read the Reference Group’s report would have found scattered throughout pages 51-61 references to “compelled participation”, “requirements to participate”, “sanctions…to ensure compliance”, “explicit direction”, ruling out “open choice” in relation to how people participated and to “mutual obligation”.

McClure claimed the idea of extending mutual obligation through participation arose from the Reform Group’s review of New Zealand’s income support system and of Tony Blair’s labour market initiatives. This ignores the fact that:

• in New Zealand the Clarke Labour Alliance Government, supported by the Greens, announced shortly after gaining office its intention to revisit in 2000 the entire National Party Government ‘compelled activity’ programs for income support recipients,
• on the 9 March the relevant NZ Minister, Steve Maharey ended “work-testing for people on invalids benefits. He says the evaluation of the trial held last year showed the policy was ‘completely useless’. He says that people with disabilities want to work and he prefers to put money into positive programmes that remove barriers to their employment. (The Jobs Letter 27 March, 2000, p.3),
• the Blair Government acknowledged its indebtedness to the Keating Government’s Working Nation document (1994),
• in relation to unemployed beneficiaries there has, since the 1947 Social Security legislation, been a work testing eligibility requirement, and
• work relief programs (the Susso) during the 1930’s demanded actual work for sustenance prior to the supply of unemployment relief.

The recent history of ‘compelled activity’ in relation to income support in Australia reveals that the preoccupation with ‘activity / participation’ was very much a part of the previous Labor Government’s approach to unemployed people. Professor Bettina Cass in the mid to late 1980s headed the Review of Social Security recommended in a number of reports that the Department should insist the applicant for unemployment benefits engage in some form of ‘approved activity’. Cass claimed in a number of consultations she undertook that such ‘activity testing’ was designed to assist those most marginal to the labour market retain their benefit. Cass argued that in times of high unemployment the most marginal were likely to fail a strict application of the ‘work test’. Some present at these consultations in Melbourne and Perth argued that, in the absence of universal income guarantees, compelling activity could be potentially detrimental to the interests of the most vulnerable.

In Cass’ defence it should be noted that she was privy to much of the thinking that went on inside Brian Howe’s, the then Minister of Social Security, Office. At the time he was in the process of articulating Labor’s social justice principles of:

Equity
Access
Equality of rights
Participation

These social justice principles came to be issued as part of the Budget Papers and as a consequence came to be widely interpreted as:

• the right to participate,
• right to have equitable access, and
• to enjoy equality of rights.

Throughout the nineties social welfare advocates relied on such principles to assert clients’ right to participate in a range of decisions which affected their lives. The release of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform interim report heralds the metamorphosis of participation as a social right into participation as obligation.

The reality is that the Reference Group has not produced a document which has anything to do with reforming the welfare system, nor was it meant too. The Reference Group’s document is about changing the way the welfare state is constructed.

If you consult your Macquarie Dictionary you’ll find that Change means “to alter” whereas reform used as a noun means:

1. the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, etc: social reform.
4. to restore to a former and better state; improve by alteration, substitution, abolition, etc. to cause (a person) to abandon wrong or evil ways of life or conduct.
6. to put an end to (abuses, disorders, etc.).
7. to abandon evil conduct.

If the Government was attempting to usher in a major, significant, radical change which would, if implemented, substantially improve the conditions for members of the community then, and only then, should it talk about reforming the welfare system.

The reference Group’s report does none of those things it is a simple rendition of the of the Howard Government’s ideological position on social constraint as exemplified in Howard’s Australia Roundtable Speech in late 1999 and his 12^th.January 2000 “social coalition” article in the Australian.

For those human service workers who have watched in horror as Abbot’s statements about “job snobs”, Howard’s schemes of Working for the Dole and compulsory literacy training, and Newman’s ruthless intrigues of Dole Diaries, Dob in Dole Cheats phone lines, and the cutting of thousands off benefits with the oh so Common Youth Allowance (Horin 1998) or through breaching (ACOSS 2000, 7.30 Report 27^th. March 2000) proliferated the thrust of the Reference Group’s document would have come as no surprise. McClure’s Group replicated much of Jocelyn Newman 9^th. November paper, “The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21^st.Century.” which she described as designed to inform submissions to her announced review of Australian social security.

My 14 November submission to this Reference Group noted:

The intention is to cut welfare outlays. The Minister claims the government will not cut the level of specific benefits. If the welfare bill is to be cut then the number of people receiving benefits or the length of time people will receive benefit must decrease. In fact this is a foreshadowed option in relation to lone parents payments and disability support pensions.

When this denigration of the workless started in the mid 1970s official unemployment was less than 4% it now stands at over 7% and a greater percentage of the Australian people than ever before are labour market participants. However we are still asked to believe that the ranks of the unemployed are swelled by those unwilling to work.

Conservatives have an overwhelming need to compel the poor, unemployed, the sick, those with severe disabilities, and lone parents to work or make some other contribution to society if they are to avoid moral jeopardy. Belief in the moral inferiority of the poor is a fine old conservative tradition, such beliefs inspired the 1834 poor laws and were prevalent in 16^th century parish relief efforts in England.

The fact that such arguments (about lesser eligibility, the poor’s fecklessness, the associated need for coercion and the importance of increasing the huge differentials in income between the owning and labouring classes) are a nonsense, does not make them any less valued by Minister Newman. John Kenneth Galbraith ridiculed such arguments by pointing out that “It always boils down to the highly improbable case that the rich are not working because they have too little income and the poor because they have too much.” [Cited in Boreman, Dow & Leet (1999) p.104]

So attached to the view that the poor need to be compelled, this Minister feels herself constrained to suggest that “mutual obligation” needs to be extended to those who the Commonwealth Medical Officer believes cannot be got “back into work or successfully retrained within 2 years”. The same team of incompetents, who dredged up the 1930s susso style “work for the dole scheme” have now turned their sights on those with severe disabilities. The same sanctimonious certainty which allows this Minister to assert that people in receipt of income support need to be compelled before they will make a contribution to their community prevents her witnessing the contribution which many now make without her “mutual obligation” police.

On the first page of the text of Newman’s November “discussion” paper appears the unsubstantiated claim:

“On many indicators, Australia’s welfare system compares well with those of other countries. It combines comprehensive coverage with efficient targeting and effective poverty alleviation.”

It is uncertain as to which countries Minister Newman has chosen to compare us but certainly we don’t compare well with the bulk of OECD countries. Boreman, Dow & Leet (1999) base their comparative study on 16 OECD countries and conclude:

Australia’s spending on social security transfers involving pensions, unemployment benefits and other disability allowances is lower than any of the other countries in our study. A comparative view of total expenditure on the ‘welfare state’ – social security, health education and housing – also locates Australia among the countries least supportive of the welfare needs of their citizens. If the burden of the welfare state is a factor in unemployment, it is a very limited burden indeed in the Australian context (pp.52-53)

At p.7 Newman’s “discussion” paper asserts the objectives of “the modern conservative approach to welfare” is to “assist people appropriately when they are in genuine need, to provide an adequate safety net…(and) to stop people becoming dependent”. No one has ever been able to successfully explain how anyone, without other means of support, is not in “genuine need” of income support.

At p.9 of the “discussion” paper Newman claims that “maintaining equity, simplicity, transparency and sustainability” are her key principles. Yet two paragraphs later she asserts “Simply providing payments to everyone who fits into a particular category fails to recognise the different capacities and potential people have to contribute to their own future.” This is from the woman who at page one of her text praised the efficiency of Australia’s categorical targeting system. The real reason behind such contradictory statements is revealed on the next page when she writes “In short, good economic policy is good welfare policy.”

This Minister’s suggestion that public servants discriminate between different applicants who meet the set eligibility requirements overthrows the entire ‘rights’ basis of Australian social security law since the introduction of the Age pension in 1908. It also confounds the principles of bureaucracy as set down by Max Weber and upheld on a daily basis by the Commonwealth’s own Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Instead of creatively thinking about innovative solutions, the paper sets out with the untested assertion that there is widespread “welfare dependency” and that it is a problem which can only be solved by a combination of “mutual obligation”, making the obtaining of income support more difficult and where people can be found relying in income support removing it by placing time or age limits on receipt or shifting them to less secure forms of income support.

Dependency and “mutual responsibility”

The words ‘welfare dependency’ have taken on connotations of abuse, of failing to meet legitimate responsibilities, and something just short of cheating or defrauding the State. There is nothing mutual or responsible about the Howard government’s concept of “mutual responsibility”. Like dependency it has become jargon, it is political shorthand for saying to those who are seen as politically expendable ‘you wont get the income support to which you were entitled unless you give us something in return’. We all did too little when governments started attacking working conditions and awards of the more vulnerable workers. Now the majority of workers feel insecure in their employment. Too many aged, lone parent and disability pensioners did nothing when “work for the dole” only applied to young unemployed – now that system is being extended to every social security recipient, except the aged but even they should not get too relaxed and comfortable. Yes, mutual responsibility tolls for you.

If living in a compelled, constrained, mutually obligatory society is not your idea of nirvana check out some of the alternatives in the many papers on Basic Income and other forms of income guarantees listed at the New Zealand Basic Income Web Site.

Selected Bibliography

ACOSS (2000) Social Security Breaches: Penalising the most disadvantaged. INFO 204, ACOSS, Sydney.
Bessant, J. (2000) “Civil Conscription or Mutual Obligation: The Ethics of ‘Work for the Dole.'” Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 35, No.1, Feb.
Boreman, P., Dow, G. & Leet, M. (1999) Room to Manoeuvre: Political Aspects of Full Employment. Melbourne University, Carlton.
Horin, A. (1998) “Dole cut for thousands of young jobless.” Sydney Morning Herald. June,29^th.. p.10
Howard, J. (1999) “Building a Stronger and Fairer Australia: Liberalisation in Economic Policy and Modern Conservatism in Social Policy.” Address to ‘Australia Unlimited Roundtable.’ 4 May www.gov.au./media/pressrel/AustralaiUnlimitedRoundtable.htm
Howard, J. (2000) “Quest for a decent society” The Australian 12 Jan, p.11.
New Zealand Basic Income Web Site
http://www.geocities.com/~ubinz/

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Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much.
It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.”

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From paupers to citizenship

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From the Basic Wage to Basic Income: Work, unemployment and justice

In Carlson, E (Ed.) The Full Employment Imperative. 5th Path to Full Employment Conference and 10th National Conference on Unemployment Proceedings: Refereed Papers, 10-12 December 2003, The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales

During the first couple of decades of the 20th Century, European visitors to this country described the combination of the Arbitration system and the Age and Invalid Pensions [1908] and maternity allowances [1912] as “socialism without doctrines” (Roe 1976, p.4, Kewley 1973 Chapter 2). It was the combination of the 1907 Harvester Judgement that installed the Basic Wage in association with the social security system that constituted the foundation stones of  “the workers welfare state” (Castles 1985).

The social security and industrial landscapes of Australia in the first decade of the 21^st Century, with its regimes of self provision, breaching, mutual obligation and enterprise bargaining, individual contracts and deregulation (Castles 2001, LHMU 2003), could accurately be described as “doctrines without socialism”.

The best hope of providing income security for both those in employment and those without work is a universal Basic Income. This paper will interrogate the history and the near future of these issues in terms of security/insecurity and justice.

Why start with the Basic Wage and early Social Security provisions?

This paper will first look at the Basic Wage because the 1907 judgement did more than any previous arbitration decision to provide white male workers and their families with a secure income. It is also important to consider the early social security provisions because they provided the first Federal income support payments to some of those who weren’t in work. Each of these forms of income have strong resides in the 21^st century. The Indigenous population of Australia is discussed in some detail because, though they constitute only 3% of the total population of this country, they experience inordinate levels of poverty and unemployment. Past and present governments have failed to ensure Indigenous people’s access to a secure income, adequate health services or decent job prospects (Hunter, Kinfu and Taylor 2003).

Grounds for payment

When it comes to deciding whether or not to make a payment to an individual, similar questions occur in both the mode of production and the mode of distribution, namely:

• Who would we pay?
• Who won’t we pay?
• Why would we pay?
• Why won’t we pay?

When it comes to the Basic Wage there is a myth that the Harvester Judgement meant employers had to pay a living wage to all workers but did not pay non-workers. Employees were paid because they work, whereas non-workers weren’t paid because they didn’t work.

But we did not pay women workers the full Basic Wage. Women were paid only 54-75 % of male Basic Wage for 60 years [Equal Wage Case 1967]. We did not pay Aborigines anything like the full Basic Wage – many we did not pay at all until after the Second World War (Kidd 2003, 1997, Berndt 1961, Rowley 1970, 1971, Tomlinson 1974 Ch 2). To add insult to injury even when Indigenous workers were in paid employment the bulk of ‘their wages’ were paid to their white ‘protectors’. A significant proportion of such money disappeared. The current “Stolen Wages” campaign is aimed at obtaining some recompense for this (Kidd 2003). The Protection Acts were in place in the Northern Territory and mainland states for the greater part of the last century – in Queensland from 1898 until the mid-1970s.

Again it was 1967 when the Arbitration Commission looked at equal payment for Indigenous workers in Australia. Even after the Commission could no longer justify paying Aboriginal workers less than other employees, there were many downsides experienced [particularly by Aboriginal pastoral workers] (Tomlinson 2003  Ch 6).

Even in 2003 the majority of Aboriginal people living on Indigenous communities don’t have access to employment. As the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, in 2002 reminded Australians that  “without the Community Development Employment Program (an Indigenous ‘work for the dole’ scheme started by the Fraser Government), the unemployment rate in many remote Aboriginal communities would approach 90 per cent.”

Since the earliest days of the colonies young workers have usually been paid less than adult workers. The prime justification offered for such discrimination was that they were learning their trade or occupation. Salary structure of apprenticeships and traineeships reflects such justifications. Young workers today are frequently paid in line with their age rather than their skills. In some forms of work those who are new to the job may well be less efficient than those who have been at it for a longer period. But many of the service industries employ a predominately younger workforce and the efficiency gains made from spending years doing the same tasks are, at best, marginal. There is widespread employer reluctance to accept the idea that a wage/skill parity should replace the current system of youth wages. Such reluctance raises questions about the sincerity of employers’ claims that existing wage differentials are necessary because of skill deficits in younger workers.

Social Security

If we apply the same questions asked in relation to the Basic Wage to social services we find that in relation to payment systems based on categorical eligibility we would get the following answers: “we pay all applicants who can establish they meet the eligibility requirements.” This answer does not address the rights to payment of those who don’t apply even though they might be eligible for payments were they to apply. Clearly there are two hurdles: first application and second proving eligibility. Those who might meet all the requirements but can’t establish they meet all the requirements often find they aren’t paid. Clearly, those who are found not to meet all the eligibility requirements wont be paid.

When we ask “Why do we pay?” a further answer often proffered is that “people are in need.” This is a particularly interesting answer because it meshes so well with a frequent answer to the last question, “Why don’t we pay”. Namely, “We need to distinguish between the ‘needy’ and the ‘greedy’.” This answer is sometimes expressed in terms of “We need to prevent ‘welfare dependency’ to ‘weed out rorters’ ‘stop dole bludging’ or ‘prevent malingering’.” The architects of the social coalition (Howard 1999, 2000, Newman 1999) who have done so much to promote downward envy provide the further rationalisation that if people receive social welfare “then it is only fair that they give something back in return”. Such alleged cures for “welfare dependency” are not unique to Australia (Atkinson 2002, Mead 1997, Murray 1984, Green 1996). The efficacy of such “cures” is equally ardently questioned (Standing 2002, Handler 2002, Mink 1998, Lerner, Clark & Needham 1999, Van Parijs 1997).

This paper will not elaborated upon compelled non-standard work, “welfare to work”, or “workfare” or the like promoted by Lawrence Mead (1997) and others in the United States or David Green (1996) in Britain. I have discussed such schemes in detail elsewhere (Tomlinson 2003 , 2002[a]).

Boston and St John (1998) have established the impossibility of ensuring all who qualify for categorical welfare receive it. They point to the presence of discretion as a major reason. Such discretion is widespread in the present administration of current Centrelink policies (Ziguras, Dufty and Considine 2003, ACOSS 2003, 2002, 2001, Schooneveldt 2002) and impacts most heavily on the most disadvantaged.

Stigma

Whether one wants to go back to some of the classic writers (Polanyi 1945, Piven and Cloward 1971, Jordan 1973, Sennett and Cobb 1973, Waxman 1977) or to move forward to the writings of Standing (2001, 2002) there are similar lessons to draw. Those who want to cut the amount spent on welfare will want to return to the less eligibility provisions of the poor laws to divide the world into the good and the bad, the worthy and the unworthy. Less eligibility reinforces the sense of stigma experienced by those who are forced to rely on welfare. Hence it is likely to discourage many from applying even though they have an entitlement should they have any other alternative. The classic writers have shown that a significant percentage of people choose hunger in preference to welfare. Those who want to ensure that no one goes to sleep hungry will move towards universal provision or at least broad categorical assistance efficiently delivered (Boston and St John 1998, Goodin and Le Grand 1987).

By the early 1970s Australia had come to embrace a progressive European approach to those who found themselves in need of social services and much of the stigma previously associated with receipt of benefits evaporated. There was a significant effort made to improve services to clients, expand eligibility, increase consistency of determinations and decrease poverty from this time under both Labor and Liberal administrations until the late 1980s / early 1990s.

A more jealous husband

The Howard Government’s 1996 election and its determination to win “the culture wars” have seen this nation return to earlier welfare attitudes. There has been a shift towards American welfare values (Standing 2001, Hutton 2002). In recent years the Howard Government has stepped up its dependency rhetoric in a determined effort to delegitimise the claims of many social security recipients. It has coupled this assault on pre-existing entitlements with a rigorous breaching regime designed to enforce what it alleges are “mutual obligations”. This has created situations very reminiscent of those that the American social critic  (Mink 1998 p.35) described when she said:

Across the decades, a principle aim of welfare fixers has been to restore the system’s moral levers….Despite their broadsides against ‘dependency’ welfare reformers have been less concerned that poor single mothers are economically dependent than that they have been dependent on government. They expect that mothers will be dependent but insist that they be dependent on men.

All this is reminiscent of the earlier feminist assault upon the excesses of the imposed obligations of the welfare system when Glassman (1970 pp. 102-103) suggested that the State is capable of becoming “a more jealous husband than the man the woman has left”.

Some forms of income support

Participation Income

Participation Income, sometimes referred to as active labour market policies, is very widespread in the present Australian system of income support. Essentially participation income means if you don’t participate then you are refused assistance. Participation income is a euphemism for the chance to impose an obligation on people who receive government or government-subsidised payments coupled with the paternalistic belief that imposed obligations will assist the recipient to improve their life. Many researchers have described the philosophical underpinnings of participation income as unethical (Kinnear 2000, Goodin 2001, Hammer 2002, Tomlinson 2002[a], [b]) because the only choice offered to welfare recipients is comply or starve. The practical outcomes for those who are breached are socially disastrous (ACOSS 2003, 2002, 2001, Schooneveldt 2002, Ziguras, Dufty and Considine 2003). Evidence is emerging from the United States suggesting that having one’s social security reduced or removed creates increased health difficulties for children of beneficiaries who are breached (Cook, Frank, Berkowitz, Black, Casey, Cutts, Meyers, Zaldivar, Skalicky, Levenson and Heeren 2002).

Professor Robert Goodin (2001 p.198) makes the point that:

If we seriously believe that work is good for you and that it is the state’s legitimate role to force you to do it, then we would have no grounds for confining our paternalism to the poor. Paternalistically speaking, it would be equally important to make the rich work too.

Guy Standing, Director of the Socio-Economic Security Programme of the International Labour Organisation, notes that governments around the world are increasingly using social policy terms to convey false or misleading ideas. He wrote:

The notion of active labour market policy is equally disingenuous. Who could possibly favour being passive if one could be active?  The word ‘active’ seems virile and strong, whereas its opposite, ‘passive’, suggests laziness, and lack of initiative. In fact, usually active policy is little more than having the state telling people what they must do in order to receive some moderate state benefit, directing them to training or job schemes. By contrast, the much derided passive policy entails giving funds to individuals or families with minimal conditions, leaving them to make choices about how to conduct their lives and allocate resources. It could more fairly be described as liberating (Standing 2001 p. 14 [italics in original]).

The Job Guarantee

A job guarantee can only exist when a government is prepared to commit itself to becoming an employer of last resort. In the last thirty years there have been two forms of limited job guarantee provided by Australian governments. The first in the 1970s, under the Whitlam Labor Government, was the Regional Employment Development Scheme, colloquially named the Red Scheme; and the second was the job offer, after 18 months unemployment, under the Keating Labor’s Working Nation package in the mid 1990s. The Centre for Full Employment and Equity (at the University of Newcastle) is promoting the most detailed current Australian proposal for a job guarantee (Mitchell, Cowling and Watts 2003, see also Watts 2002).

Those who are available and capable of doing the work on offer under the job guarantee will be assisted by such a scheme. But the reasons that prevent those who cannot find suitable child care, those who have a disability and those who are discouraged from seeking work under the present employment regime will also prevent them taking up a job under the job guarantee, unless such issues are addressed by the architects of the job guarantee or potential employers.

There is nothing incompatible with making such accommodations under a Job Guarantee program, however deciding who is “disabled” and who is “malingering” creates similar bureaucratic discretionary power as occurs in categorical systems.

Negative Income Tax, Tax Credits, Guaranteed Minimum Income 

Major difficulties in terms of determination/fairness are embedded in each of these systems of income distribution/redistribution. What’s more, the difficulties in relation to fair outcomes, in terms of poverty traps, determination/discretion/discrimination, allocative and redistribution aspects of each of these systems face many questions of a similar nature to those in categorical social security systems. One possible improvement of these systems over categorical income support is that the discretion of bureaucrats to consider social features is more limited in Negative Income Tax, Tax Credit and Guaranteed Minimum Income schemes. Each of these schemes is discussed in detail elsewhere (Tomlinson, Harrington and Schooneveldt 2003).

What is a Basic Income?

A full Basic Income is a universal payment paid to each permanent resident, as an individual, irrespective of their personal or social circumstances.

The idea of a universal Basic Income is not new. The first fully elaborated book-length Basic Income proposal, in the English language, was written by Dennis Milner in 1920. Walter Van Trier (1995) provides a comprehensive account of the history of that proposal and competing ideas for improving the system of income support.

In order to ensure that no-one supported by the present social security system is disadvantaged by the change from social security to Basic Income, the adult rate of the Basic Income would need to be at the single (living alone) age pension rate. This rate would be maintained as at present by indexation with full-time average weekly earnings.  The rate of payment for children will be dependant upon what other income support payments remain after the introduction of a Basic Income (Tomlinson, Harrington and Schooneveldt 2003).

Most existing forms of government-provided social security would be abolished and replaced by the Basic Income. Payments made to meet specific needs, such as allowances paid in respect of caring for a child with a disability, would not be abolished because they are designed to compensate for a specific disadvantage or the extra costs associated with experiencing a disability or both.

Macroeconomic impacts

It is worth noting that the introduction of a Negative Income Tax, Tax Credit, Guaranteed Minimum Income, Job Guarantee or a Basic Income scheme would have considerable macroeconomic consequences. Each of these schemes would transfer considerable income to poorer sections of society and would most likely increase consumer spending. As poorer people save less of the money they obtain than do rich people there would be a net boost to the economy.

The extent of that boost to the economy would depend on the generosity of the payments involved, the extent of universalism of the payment and the income tax rate. Clearly the most universal payment, such as a Basic Income, would transfer income to more poor people than would a Job Guarantee, which would only increase the amount of income obtained by those who accept the Job Guarantee. A Job Guarantee may result in substantially increased production (depending on how it was designed) that might have economic multiplier effects, which a Basic Income would not necessarily create. Some of the stimulus to the economy might be dampened by the rate of income tax imposed as a part of the introduction of any of these schemes. The Government in Ireland believes that it can afford a Basic Income with an income tax rate of 43 percent (Healy and Reynolds 2002, Tomlinson, Harrington and Schooneveldt 2003).

How secure is the system of income support in your country?

In Australia the system of social security is paid for out of consolidated revenue raised from all forms of taxes and charges levied by the Federal Government. Some people have the idea that the taxes they pay throughout their lives is used to pay their age pension when they retire, or their unemployment benefit when they get the sack, or their disability support pension should they become disabled. But their money that Joe Blogs pays in taxes does not sit around somewhere in the Federal Capital slowly gathering dust until Joe become old, unemployed or disabled. Monies that come in to the Federal coffers in 2002/2003 pay for the social services provided by the Federal Government in 2003. There are no earmarked taxes from which social services are paid. During the 1940s and 1950s there was a Welfare Fund but the Menzies Government abolished it in the early 1960s (Smith 1993 pp. 54-55). The taxes raised today pay the social services today.

In Europe government controlled social insurance funds ensure the majority of full time workers against major income loss in the event of non-voluntary unemployment. But again, the bulk of money paid out to unemployed workers in 2003 is raised by workers’ contributions to “unemployed insurance” in 2002/2003, though some money may be drawn from existing insurance reserves.

Most Australians in work are, apart from paying their taxes, required to pay into private superannuation. The major players in the insurance industry control such funds. Claims are in substantial part paid out of reserves. At least 10% of superannuation funds are as safe as the shareholdings in the, now bankrupt, insurance company HIH. Paying into privatised superannuation funds is as fulfilling as becoming a late joiner in a pyramid selling scheme: “Amway your way to happiness”. There is no guarantee that the majority of contributors to privatised superannuation schemes will receive anything like a reasonable return on their investment. Many will not recoup the monies they paid in and a significant number may not get any money from their superannuation on retirement (Hayes 2002 p.1). The majority of superannuation funds lost money in 2001/2 and the majority of “non-industry” funds lost money in 2002/3.

If private superannuation schemes were such a brilliant idea the politicians would insist that their government guaranteed superannuation funds were transferred to the private sector. The unions were sold a pup when they agreed to trade off salary increases for an expansion in the social wage. Privatised superannuation was just a part of that trade-off. I warned about the insecurity of privatised superannuation over a decade ago (ACTCOSS 1991). Howard has dismantled much of the social wage the Hawke/Keating Governments offered the unions as a trade off for reducing their wage demands. Medicare is no longer universal, there have been cutbacks in social security provision, the Arbitration Commission, like many other industrial safeguards, has been placed on a tight leash. The industrial landscape is now dominated by individualised work contracts, enterprise bargaining agreements and deregulation in increasingly casualised, part-time and precarious employment (LHMU 2003).

Employment is the most common way of avoiding poverty; yet, it is a decreasing option for many who find themselves marginalised in the labour market. There has always been a reserve army of labour but these days its ranks are swelled by those recently compelled by more stringent enforcement regimes of activity testing, “mutual obligation” and “participation income”. At the same time, more and more people are working full-time and living in poverty as a result of “workfare”, traineeships and such like employment options.

In Indigenous communities a form of “work for the dole” the Community Development Employment program  (CDEP) has been operating since 1977 (Coombs1994 pp.162-170). In many communities real unemployment levels are in the order of 80 to 90% once the CDEP is recognised as a form of welfare rather than an employment option. Underdevelopment, disillusion and poverty are a common consequence in many Indigenous communities (Tomlinson 2003 Ch. 6). If CDEP is the answer then we are asking the wrong question. Like workfare and “work for the dole” programs in the wider community CDEP can’t help people escape poverty for the very reason that in such remote areas there are few, if any, full time award rates jobs available (Borland, Gregory and Sheehan citied in Cowling, Mitchell and Watts 2003 pp.2-3). People on the CDEP are paid at poverty line levels and in the absence of alternative income sources that is where they remain.

Social security and social insurance systems in many parts of Europe, in Australia and elsewhere have, as a result of the neo-liberal onslaught, been increasingly targeted, eligibility conditions tightened, obligations added and stigma increased (Standing 2001, Hutton 2002, Handler 2002).

No form of social provision can absolutely ensure security, or even consistency, over time. Governments change and subsequently alter entitlements. This is increasingly happening in Europe with limitations on the conditions of entitlement for unemployment insurance (Standing 2001). Even so, government provision of income support has to be substantially more secure than private provision partly because it is capable of spreading the risk (that there will not be funds available to pay income support) over an entire population. Universal Basic Income schemes are more secure than categorical social security because every one gets the payment so everyone has at least some interest in maintaining the value of the payment (Le Grand and Goodin 1987).

An interesting dilemma

Much of the literature dealing with the concept of Basic Income notes that a Basic Income severs the nexus between income and work. A recent Centre for Full Employment and Equity Working Paper (Cowling, Mitchell and Watts 2003), which sets out to compare the virtues of a Job Guarantee with a Basic Income, was entitled “The right to work versus the right to income”. This paper argues that a full employment strategy, beyond generating sufficient hours of work to satisfy the preferences of the labour force, requires that full employment: “not threaten the distribution of real income”, “have inflation control mechanisms built in”, be accessible to the “disadvantaged” and “must not violate the social attitudes towards work and non-work” (pp. 8-9): a very conservative agenda indeed.

The social prescription explicit in the current participation income system in England (Atkinson 2002) has a lot in common with the present Australian participation income system. Both governments coerce unemployed worker to accept any available work. Neither of them guarantees a job to those eager to work as does a job guarantee. A Job guarantee, which refuses to pay income support to those who wont accept available jobs on offer, shares features with the present Australian Government’s breaching of those they deem to have failed to meet their “mutual obligations”.

Australia has experienced the captains of industry gaining disproportionate rewards – the ratio between Chief Executive Officers’ salaries and those of workers has risen from 3 times workers’ salaries in the 1970s to 74 times workers’ salaries – (Shields, O’Donnell and O’Brien 2003). It is disconcerting to find job guarantee advocates arguing that the job guarantee should “not threaten the (existing) distribution of real income”. In Australia in 2003, where John Howard has imposed his very own form of “mutual obligation” on unemployed people and is moving to envelop lone parents and those with disabilities in similar compelled activities, I would have thought it important that progressive advocates use every opportunity to question the current “social attitudes towards work and non-work”.

Hopefully, this country might adopt measures that would usher in what Claus Offe (1992) calls “non-productivist” social policies, or what the feminist writer Sibyl Schwarzenbach (2002) describes as “reproductive” social policies and thereby end 400 year long obsession with a Lockean production model so that civil and individual satisfaction might be placed in advance of the production of things.

One of the prime motivations that I felt was driving Cowling, Mitchell and Watts’ (2003) paper was the need to ensure that all who wanted paid employment were provided with the opportunity to obtain it.  If I am interpreting the motivations of the authors correctly, this suggestion itself confronts a widely held view about work and non-work in Australia. Namely, employers choose which and how many employees they want to work for them and that those potential workers who are surplus to demand should find other ways of surviving.

An examination of the preoccupation with employment and, particularly, the work income nexus reveals that this work income nexus is linked to a wider ideological debate. This nexus is a metaphor for a far broader collection of social preoccupations about desert. One might ask is it work or income that is the just desert?

Certainly the implementation of a fully universal Basic Income would succeed in relegating to the dustbin of history the work income nexus but it would do much more. It would sever the connection (at least in relation to fundamental income support) between income and worth. Those Basic Income advocates from Milner (1920) through to more recent supporters (Van Parijs 1997, Lerner, Clark and Needham 1999, Murray 1997, George 2002, Handler 2002, Standing 2002, Tomlinson 2003 ) have set out to erase the stigma-inducing stain of the poor laws’  system of less eligibility with its distinction between who is worthy and who is unworthy.

Basic Income advocates are not unmindful of the necessity to produce sufficient goods and services so as to develop the capacity to pay all, including those who don’t directly add to productive capacity, an income sufficient to sustain them. Milner (1920) specifically addressed the issue of those, whom he indelicately termed, “slackers” (in Chapter 6) and inefficient workers in Chapter 3. Like most, if not all, Basic Income advocates he did not think that work disincentives created by the presence of a Basic Income were likely to cause widespread work avoidance or productivity problems. It is interesting how many “participation income” proponents (Atkinson 2002), “job guarantee” supporters (Cowling, Mitchell and Watts 2003), “tax credits” for workers supporters (Phelps 2000) are troubled by the spectre of Philippe Van Parijs’ (1997) “free loading surfers”. Such an analysis drives the Howard Government’s preoccupation with “welfare dependency” and “mutual obligation”. Joel Handler (2002) points out that these concerns can be traced back to the possibility enshrined in the 1348 Labourers Act that welfare relief might assist “sturdy beggars”. Concepts such as “mutual obligation”, “participation income” and the “deserving/undeserving” dichotomy have a very long history indeed.

The fact that arguments (about “welfare dependency”, lesser eligibility, the poor’s fecklessness, the associated need for coercion and the importance of increasing the huge differentials in income between the owning and labouring classes) are a nonsense, does not make them any less valued. John Kenneth Galbraith ridiculed such arguments by pointing out “It always boils down to the highly improbable case that the rich are not working because they have too little income and the poor because they have too much (Cited in Boreham, Dow & Leet 1999 p.104)”.

It is one thing to assume that work is such an unmitigated blessing that governments have a duty to provide the opportunity to work to all those without employment. But proponents of participation income (Howard 1999, Newman 1999, McClure 2000) engage in an interesting twist of logic. They suggest that when governments are incapable of providing, or unwilling to provide, the opportunity to work to all those without employment but are prepared to pay a social security benefit then those who are not able to find suitable employment have an obligation to accept any available employment or to make some other government approved contribution in return for this pittance. This is a transfer of obligation from the government to the unemployed individual. There is nothing mutual about such “mutual obligation”.

Cowling, Mitchell and Watts’ (2003) paper seems to be asserting that if Government were to provide a guaranteed job that those who claim unemployed benefits must accept such an offer. At last years’ conference I argued that once a Basic Income was in place, a sensible additional social wage component would be to supplement the Basic Income scheme with a job guarantee scheme (Tomlinson 2002[b]). Then there would be income for all, as well as work for all who wanted it.  Under such a system, people could not be coerced to work on the threat of starvation (Goodin 2001).

If there is going to be a significant effort to provide jobs for all who want paid work, then many of those jobs will be in the educational, community, education and welfare sectors, as was suggested by Langmore and Quiggin (1994). In each of these sectors, the prime requirement of any worker is that they are committed to serving the interests of their clients. Coerced workers could not be usefully employed in such sectors.

Conclusion

The increasingly casualised and precarious nature of employment means that it alone cannot be relied upon as a way to ensure an income above the poverty line. The increasingly targeted social security system with expanded breaching and imposed obligations has removed any security from the social welfare safety net. Private provision, whether by unemployment insurance, superannuation, or employment, cannot ensure income security for the bulk of the population. A job guarantee cannot, on its own, ensure that all are lifted beyond poverty. Only a fully universal Basic Income is capable of ensuring that all permanent residents are provided with an income above the poverty line.

Bibliography

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More Info

From the Poor Laws to welfare wars

Following his 1996 election victory, Prime Minister Howard set out to sculpture the social landscape of Australia.  In 1999 in his Roundtable Speech Howard clearly laid out his prescription of economic fundamentalism and social conservatism. To many on the left, this speech evoked memories of FJ Holdens and white picket fences. Few had any idea of how far back this Prime Minister would go for a model of his ‘social welfare safety net’.

In 1996 Hugh Stretton gave the Fifteenth Sambell Memorial Oration entitled ‘Poor laws of 1834 and 1996’.  He opened his address by saying ‘Both meanings of the title are intended: laws to deal with British and Australian poor at different dates, and also laws of poor quality.’

In the early 1960s I undertook a social work degree and was told by the lecturers that the Australian social security system eschewed the British system of poor law relief and in particular the division which the poor law system made between the deserving and undeserving poor. My lecturers suggested that, in place of such a stigmatising categorisation, the Australian social security system attempted to discern those who were eligible for legislated benefits and those who weren’t. That, whilst our system had some continuities with Britain, the Australian social security system had been influenced by Bismarck’s social insurance reforms in Germany, the labour movement’s ideas about egalitarianism and universal rights. Certainly such relatively progressive ideas were part of the intellectual underpinnings of the system of social security at the time. These ideas were to become a central component of the Whitlam Government’s efforts to reinvigorate the welfare state between 1972-75.

In 1965 I went to work for the Department of Social Services as it was then called. It was not long before I was to encounter homeless men being refused ‘Invalid Pensions’. Their letters of rejection read, ‘You are not deemed worthy to receive a pension on account of your alcoholism’. The Act and associated regulations specified that applicants for pensions had to be ‘of good character’ to receive a pension. This wording remained unchanged until Bill Hayden became Minister for Social Security in the Whitlam Government. The system of emergency assistance and eligibility for most of the ancillary welfare services accessed by my clients distinguished between the deserving and undeserving at every turn.

In 1975 the Australian Journal of Social Issues published an article of mine entitled ‘The Importance of Being Worthy’. This article pointed to the frequent use in Australian social welfare of the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving applicant. Clearly whilst some social security payments, for example Child Endowment, were universal and without asset or means tests, most were available only to limited groups of people. Indigenous Australians living on missions and settlements were excluded from many social security payments.

1975 was the year that the first main report of the Henderson Poverty Inquiry recommended that Australia adopt a guaranteed minimum income. It was also the year of the Whitlam Government’s dismissal.

The politics of division

The political party system of government, by its nature, creates schisms in the body politic. The parties set out to establish their differences from each other. Sometimes the differences between the parties are a matter of style (tweedledee and tweedledum Labour and Liberal policies on asylum seekers in 2002) and sometimes there are ideological chasms dividing the various parties (Communist and Liberal Parties in the 1960s). Political parties consciously attempt to attract supporters for their policies and to denigrate those who are attracted to the other party’s platforms.

In recent years John Howard and his colleagues have intentionally set out to divide sections of the population from other parts of the society. His first really successful campaign was to change the Native Title Act in 1998 in the wake of the Wik Judgement.  In that campaign he drove a wedge between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians and succeeded in pushing through the Parliament legislation which took the ownership of land which the High Court had found to reside with the traditional owners and transferred elements of that ownership to pastoralists, miners and farmers (who the High court had found did not have title). His most successful campaign, that which undermined the rights of asylum seekers, occurred in the run up to and aftermath of the 2002 election.

In addition to both these campaigns there have been two less racist, but equally relentless struggles being waged  to divide the population. The first is the constant assault upon the trade union movement and the second is the denigration of welfare recipients.  It is to the later of these two struggle to which I will return shortly.

The essence of the politics of division is to alert people to aspects of difference, to suggest that presence of difference equates to the existence of a threat, and finally to create in the minds of both sections of the recently divided that in relation to this particular issue there can only be one winner, that someone has to lose, and that the struggle is important – if not crucial. It is always easier to drive in the wedge if there are distinguishing features in the two groups; race and gender work a treat. It can be helpful if there are historical residues present, say in relation to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people or bosses and workers. But any potential divide will do. One component usually present in such division is envy. Clearly every worker can conceive of being envious of his or her over-paid CEO. Howard’s greatest success is that he has managed to get the better off to become envious of any benefit poorer Australians obtain.

Downward envy

The Howard Government, in 1996, started its attack on welfare recipients by targeting young unemployed people. It began by suggesting that young unemployed people were not interested in finding employment and lacked job skills. Howard’s solution was to impose a ‘work for the dole’ scheme upon them. In many ways this scheme was a reimposition of a 1930s Depression program that had forced unemployed men to do civic works in return for providing them with sustenance. During the Depression the scheme was given the nickname of ‘the susso’. There was a similar scheme the Community Employment Development Program (CDEP) that had been instigated on Indigenous communities in 1977 as a way of avoiding paying unemployment benefits.

At the time of the introduction of the ‘work for the dole’ program I wrote:

Chain Gang

Work for the dole
well ‘Bless my soul’
what an interesting idea.
You would have thought
that someone ought
to have thought of that 
before this year.

Didn’t they try to do it in 1929?
Wasn’t it then the susso scheme?
When men had to leave their families
to go the great out back?

It was the stamp of feet
on the dusty street,
which ensured that they would eat.
The Susso was what it was called
and civilised folks were quite appalled
that men were forced from town to town,
with a swag on their back
and an old corn sack,
as they headed for the great out back.

They have a scheme just like it
for those who are born black;
they work from home,
aren’t forced to roam,
’cause they live in the great out back.
Of course we only pay a pittance,
a charitable remittance,
but what do you expect in the country
when you live so far from town.

The one good thing I have to say
is the Government has promised  it will pay
three dollars an hour for a twenty hour week.
Now that’s the going rate.
Dole bludgers don’t be late!!!
It will only apply to the young,
and of course the rural poor,
and the run down areas of cities
where unemployment is a running sore.

I expected Liberal Party stalwarts and other bourgeois elements to applaud this imposition upon young people who were unable to find work but was amazed by the widespread working class support that such policies evoked. Even some pensioners and older unemployment beneficiaries joined the chorus of approval for the song sheet which read ‘make all the young dole bludgers work, don’t let the young dole bludgers shirk’. Some of us tried to remind them of Angela Davis’ call for solidarity

‘If they come for me in the morning, they’ll come for you at night’. We pointed to experience of Pastor Martin Neimoller, who suffered Nazi persecution, and who had written:

First they came for the Communists,
but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,
but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews,
but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.

Solidarity eluded us. It was not long before the Howard Government succeeded in abolishing unemployment payments to the 16-18 year old Australians not at work and not in training. It also extended the ‘work for the dole’ program to older unemployed people. It is now in the process of extending, to lone parents and disability support pensioners, their very own forms of mutual compulsion.

And all the while the denigration of those reliant upon social security payments grows shriller. The Howard Government claims it is assisting social security recipients to avoid the scourge of ‘welfare dependency’. Part of such ‘assistance’ included the imposition of 386,946 breaches on social security recipients in the financial year 2001-2. This left many without any form of government income support for periods of up to 6 months (2).

The Government claims that it is generating public support for the ‘genuinely needy’ in our community by expressing such ‘tough love’ towards those who might commit such heinous crimes as being late for a Centrelink appointment or not filling in their dole diary properly.

The opposite is now true. Those lucky enough to have paid employment are increasingly questioning the desirability of paying unemployed people a benefit because by doing so it means their taxes go to pay for it. Many people are now applauding Howard’s suggestion that if disability support pensioners, lone parents and people who can’t find employment are to be provided with poverty line income support that ‘it is only fair that they give something back in return’. This is downward envy. This is socially divisive. More importantly, those working class ‘battlers’ who complain the loudest are acting against their own long-term best interests. They are the workers most likely to be displaced from employment by the increasingly globalised and casualised industrial arrangements that are sweeping Australia. They are the very people who stand to gain the most from a secure, universal and generous income support system, such as an unconditional Basic Income (3).

Those opposed to living in such a socially divided society or who abhor the extent of downward envy in their neighbourhoods need to act. They must examine the genealogy of such values so as to be in a position to explain them in order to combat them.

From where does support for the imposition of obligations upon welfare recipients derive?

Given the link to the poor laws division between the deserving and undeserving poor which was present in many aspects of income support in the Australian system I went back to Karl Polanyi’s classic 1945 text The Great Transformation.  There are certainly similarities between the Polanyi’s description of the 1834 and 1601 Poor Laws and the system of welfare administration under the Howard Government. Polanyi’s elaboration upon the 1795 Speenhamland system of outdoor relief also echoes through the current debates (4). In Before the Welfare State, Ursula Henriques describing the 1601 Poor Law discusses secular Puritanism concluding that:

The association of words which implied that the destitute, especially those who could be called “able bodied”, were destitute by their own fault quietened the conscience of those who suffered from or feared the growing cost of poor relief…the whole moral justification of the deterrent workhouse was that it would drive those able to work into finding employment (p. 23).

Henriques suggests that in the run up to the introduction of the 1834 Poor Law ‘harsh attitudes were commonest amongst the lesser ratepayers…This “petty bourgeoisie”  had the strongest temptation to repudiate those whom the cost of helping was high (p. 24)’.

Cambridge historian Anne Digby in her book Pauper Palaces investigated the 18^th and 19^th centuries poor law administration in Norfolk. She concluded that there was considerable variation over time and from parish to parish: from the gentry’s benevolent paternalism to ‘local farmers (who) administered poor relief to further there own ends as employers (p.229)’. Digby argues that the poor and the landholders generally favoured out door relief to indoor workhouse (some times called the ‘house of industry’). The reason being that, though the food was often of a high standard in the workhouses, the authoritarian regimes imposed in such places demolished the freedom and dignity of the inmates. Digby does acknowledge the widespread and prolonged unrest in many parts of Norfolk, and in many workhouses, and the general resistance of people to become pauper inmates of such places, yet the thrust of much of her analysis is aimed at demolishing the picture of such workhouses painted by East Anglian poet George Crabbe in the late 18^th century:

Your plan I love not, with a number you
Have placed your poor, your pitiable few:
There, in one house, throughout their lives to be,
The pauper palace which they hate to see:
That giant-building, that high-bounding wall,
Those bare worn walks, that lofty thund’ring hall!
That large loud clock, which tolls each dreaded hour,
It is a prison with a milder name,
Which few inhabit without dread or shame. (5)

Conclusion

Australia may not have reached the stage in its welfare wars that present practices rival the stigma of the workhouse. But the terror inflicted on asylum seekers and their children by locking them up for indefinite years behind razor wire in the desert or on some pacific atoll, where they are addressed by numbers not their names, subdued with guns and teargas and where many guards show indifference to their plight has strong residues with the workhouses of 17^th –20^th Century in England.

The current treatment of Australian citizens who have committed the dastardly act of failing to remain employed may not have sunk to levels of depravity inflicted upon out of work labourers in 18^th and 19^th century England but the Howard Government refuses to provide income support for many who fail to meet every letter of the raft of obligations imposed upon them.

Many employed citizens gleefully envy the poverty line income support provided those struggling to survive unemployment, precarious or part-time employment in an increasingly uncaring world. They happily dob in their neighbours to Centrelink enforcers as several Howard Government Ministers have encouraged them to do.

Indigenous Australians die on average 20 years younger than other Australians (6). About 80 percent of Indigenous Australians living in rural and remote Australia have few opportunities to obtain any award-waged work. They can at best hope to get a CDEP job paid at welfare benefits rates (7).

Stigma is again a frequently used tool to ration access to welfare benefits. The solidarity between worker and workless, city and country people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens, refugees or asylum seekers and other Australians that remains exists in spite of the Howard Government.

It’s the armless and the harmless
the senseless and the lame
who always pay the social cost
who always get the blame.

It’s the snivellers and the chisellers
The swindlers and the vain
ripping off the profits
and it’s always been the same.

When I speak of social justice
you ask ‘What will it cost us?’
Advance Australia fairly,
Advance Australia squarely,
and let us reach the further shore
in the best way that we can .(8)

In 2003, Liberal and Labor politicians proclaim the virtues, in an increasingly competitive world, of the ‘social coalition’, ‘social capital’ and ‘third way entrepreneurial’ adventures as a way to expand ‘human capital’. Such jargon distracts attention from the failure of Australian governments to provide health, social security and educational policies of a sufficiently comprehensive nature to create a caring, socially just society which would allow all the opportunity to achieve their full potential. The rhetoric of ‘reciprocal obligation’, ‘mutual obligation’ and ‘participation income’ deflects Australians from the need to provide an unconditional Basic Income which has the capacity to revitalise our social citizenship by ensuring that no permanent resident in this country is forced to live on a below poverty line income.

Footnotes

(1) The use of the term ‘welfare wars’ derives in part from the title of a recent social welfare text: Mendes, Philip. ‘Australia’s Welfare Wars.’ Sydney, University of New South Wales, 2003.
(2) ACOSS. Jobless fines hold up welfare reform, Australian Council of Social Services. 15^th July, 2002.
http://www.acoss.org.au.info/2002
(3) Information on the campaign to introduce an unconditional Basic Income in Australia can be found at Basic Income Guarantee Australia
http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au/index.jsp

This site also provides links to many International Basic Income sites.
(4) Marshall, John Duncan. The Old Poor Law 1795-1834. London and Basingstoke, Macmillian, 1968 concurs with Polanyi’s analysis.
(5) Crabbe, George. Cited in Digby, p.1.
(6)Australian Bureau of Statistics & Australian Institute of Health and Welfare ‘The Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Peoples.’ Canberra, ABS Cat. 4704.0, 2003.
(7) Abbott, Tony. “Bridging the Incentive Gap.” Australia Unlimited Conference, May 4, 1999. http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/speech/Incentive%20Gap.
(8)  Tomlinson, John.

Works Cited

Davis, Angela. If they come in the morning… London, Orbach and Chambers and Angela Davis Defence Committee, 1971.
Digby, Anne. London, Pauper Palaces. Henley and Boston,Routledge,1978.
Henderson, Ronald. Poverty in Australia: First Main Report. Vols. I & II.  Canberra, Australian Government, 1975.
Henriques, Ursula. Before the Welfare State: New York, Longman, 1979.
Howard, John. ‘Building a Stronger and Fairer Australia: Liberalisation in Economic Policy and Modern Conservatism in Social Policy.’ Address to ‘Australia Unlimited Roundtable.’ 4^th. May, 1999.
http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/1999/AustraliaUnlimitedRoundtable.htm
Niemoller, Martin. Poem 1939
http://scott.hayes.org/thoughts/niemoller.html
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. London, Victor Gollancz, 1945.
Stretton, Hugh. Poor Laws of 1834 and 1996. Melbourne, Brotherhood of St Laurence, 1996
Tomlinson, John  ‘The Importance of Being Worthy’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 10, No. 3, August 1975.

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Globalisation will save the nation

“Globalisation is what makes the world go round”
this chap in a suit told me as I sat on the ground.
Why then are billions starving?” I replied.
“Come now it’s not that bad” and then, in an aside
he suggested, “They are not starving, they’re waiting.
Waiting for wealth to slowly trickle down to them.
As the rich get richer they they’ll create jobs and then
and then we’ll all live happily ever after.”

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God on our side

During the latter part of the Second World War, once the tide had turned had turned against Japan, the Chifley Labor Government became concerned that Australian troops might return home not to a hero’s welcome but to unemployment. There was wide spread concern that the very people the Australian Government had trained to kill might, if confronted with the widespread unemployment many had experienced during the 1930s Depression, start culling surplus Labor politicians. Chifley’s response was to attempt to ensure job creation, expanded tertiary educational opportunities, setting up a Commonwealth employment finding service (which became known as the CES) and paid unemployment benefits. Ex-service personnel who had suffered disabling injuries were found jobs operating lifts in Department stores or as clerks in government departments.

The dismantling of the CES is now complete. If all that had happened was that one agency of government with its contradictory roles had been replaced by an improved bureaucracy there would be little concern. However, what we are witnessing is the end of the secular welfare state. We saw in the first round about 40% of the old CES clients staying with the government owned Employment National. This has been reduced to 1%. In the first round of contracts for profit companies got the loin’s share. but now the largest job agency in the Job Network is the Salvation Army’s Employment Plus. Closely followed by the Anglicans’ Mission Australia. The Catholic and United Churches also have been awarded a significant stake in the carve up. These Christian churches have extensive investment in nursing homes hostels, schools, child care, disability and other social welfare agencies.

Reports in the 29^th December Sydney Morning Herald and in Johnathan Singer’s 19^th January Green Left reveal these churches are demanding new employees have a Christian commitment. Australian welfare services are being returned to the pre-Whitlam period where conservative church agencies dominated much of the charity, emergency relief and service delivery. They did it on the cheap and the results they produced are revealed in reports of the

• Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s report into the stolen generations entitled Bringing them home,
• the abuse of the Nearacol and other orphanages
• forced adoptions,
• the brutal treatment of unmarried mothers who were not allowed to see their babies in many Salvation Army and other church run maternity units,
• the incarceration of young women who were sexually abused by their fathers on the grounds that they were in “moral danger”, and
• the pitifully small contribution the churches were able or willing to make to poverty alleviation.

The reinforcement of ‘Christian’ attitudes amongst employees of these agencies will produce the next round of silent, compliant accomplices to the denigration of those most marginal to the interests of the government. Since the mid 1970s they were likely to find advocates amongst secular human services workers, union delegates and other officials of good will who used to be able to rely on due process, natural justice, whistle blower legislation, public service regulations and union protection.

The abuse of children in orphanages, schools and other organs of the church by nuns and priests, was witnessed. It was known about but just like in the case of police observing police bashings there too a code of silence replaces the code of conduct.

Written circa 2002

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Greed is (not) good

ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate

Posted Tuesday, 10 February 2009

Governments around the world are falling over themselves to engage in a Keynesian-style pump-priming of their economies. Until the mid-1970s Keynesian economics dominated fiscal thinking in Australia and much of the English-speaking world. Then came the neo-conservative economic fundamentalist-drive, led by Milton Friedman: Thatcherism in Britain, Reaganonomic supply-side economics in the United States, Rodgernomics in New Zealand and John Howard’s fiscal conservatism in Australia. In Australia, there were some promoters of economic fundamentalism whose grip on reality was so loose that they called their beliefs “economic rationalism”. There was no shortage of overpaid economists prepared to deride counter-cyclical pump-priming of the economy or anything else which sounded reminiscent of Keynesian thought.

There were always a few, like economic journalist Kenneth Davidson and Economics Professor Frank Stilwell, who clung tenaciously to a belief that Lord Keynes had a substantial contribution to make to modern economic thinking. But throughout the 1980s and 1990s the “greed is good” crowd, as aptly portrayed by Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 film Wall Street, proliferated. In the run-up to the 1993 election, John Hewson, who led the Liberal Party to defeat, repeated the mantra that “greed is good”.

The problem, which the elevation of greed to a moral virtue creates, is not so much the intense personal rivalries, or excessive competiveness it engenders as the lack of solidarity and downward envy (see Tomlinson, J. (1999) “The Politics of Envy.” Union Song Site) which emerge in the minds of those who are attracted to such a debilitating philosophical position. It matters not one jot whether it is:

• President Clinton enforcing time-limited welfare assistance on supporting parents;
• John Howard introducing “Work for the dole”, with more severe breaching regimes for supporting parents, or restricted eligibility conditions for Disability Support pensions; or
• Jenny Macklin’s Intervention in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

Once people come to accept the corrosive belief that because they don’t get government assistance to help raise their children or cope with a disability then no one should. And if they do then it should be doled out like charity from the parish poor box. Such people forget that they get tax cuts and government superannuation subsidies which the poor don’t get, nor do they seem to notice that they aren’t poor and they don’t have a disability.

It is not so long ago that our Treasurer was running around telling anyone who would listen that the inflation genie was out of the bottle. Then he argued that, because of the resources boom, Australia was well placed to avoid the worst of the world’s recession. In the wake of the downturn in international trade and the slowing of demand for our minerals, it would now seem that we may not be as well insulated as we once thought. Share and house prices are falling, unemployment is rising, inflation is falling, we are heading for budget deficits, business confidence is low and ordinary workers are worried about the coming economic downturn. Those with private superannuation investment accounts have seen the value of their savings shrink. They look at an older generation of retirees who have indexed superannuation pensions and wonder how it is that many of the recently retired were conned into investing in accumulation accounts. Worse off still are those who have invested in developers or retailers who have gone into receivership.

In 1976, the Hancock Committee recommended to the Australian Government a national superannuation scheme which would have been a taxpayer-funded social insurance superannuation scheme similar to that of New Zealand and several countries in Europe. Hancock’s idea was not embraced and superannuation was put on the back burner until the Hawke/Keating government introduced a compulsory private superannuation scheme. Many of those currently seeing their private superannuation savings dribble away might reflect on the advantages of universal payments over individual investment accounts.

During the Howard years those who looked closely at the social security system in Australia witnessed just how easily various categories of recipients could be scapegoated. First it was the young unemployed who were subjected to the euphemistically named “Mutual Obligation” regime. Eventually all recipients were subjected to the regime. The many categories of social security benefit with their differing rates and eligibility conditions make it nearly impossible to generate solidarity across the entire range of recipients. Downward envy was cleverly employed by Howard and his associates to divide those in paid work from those outside the labor market.

During times of war and economic depression/recession many learn or relearn the lesson of Aesop’s fable about the four oxen and the lion and remember that “united we stand, divided we fall”. Instead of having many types of welfare payments, retirement incomes, student allowances, family payments, privatised superannuation, tax cuts and rural assistance schemes, all with their different levels of payment, we could have a system of Basic Income which paid every permanent resident an above poverty line income. This would ensure there was a financial floor beneath every individual and family in Australia without imposing a ceiling beyond which no one could rise.

In addition to ensuring economic security, because a Basic Income is an equal payment which is paid unconditionally as a right of residency/citizenship, such a universal payment enhances egalitarianism and feelings of social solidarity.

Whether it is President Obama calling on the US Senate or speaking to the population at large he is asking all Americans to make a sacrifice in the common interest. Similar mechanisms are in place in the Australian context when Prime Minister Rudd speaks about fiscal stimulus measures to support the economy. Leaders around the world when they speak to their people about the need to work together to escape the current recession are evoking the spirit of Aesop’s fable. President Obama explicitly criticised Wall Street banking executives for awarding themselves $20 billion in bonus payments at a time when the tax payer is bailing out failing banks.

Greed does not even seem to be good for rich banking executives. They don’t seem to understand that it has been their behaviour which has, at least in part, led to the current economic meltdown. Unless a more egalitarian solidarity begins to emerge then the chances that US bankers and their physicians will heal themselves is slim indeed. Alaska has a small Basic Income scheme in place and it is the most egalitarian of the states of the United States.

The idea of introducing a Basic Income for every person on the entire planet seemed very optimistic a couple of years ago, but if the US is going to cure its Wall Street bankers of their excessive bonus problem then it could find that a worldwide Basic Income might help. Bankers might just come to see that humanitarian ideas are productive rather than being an obstacle to sustainable growth and capital accumulation. The real advantage which a worldwide Basic Income delivers is healthier populations which could increase production of more tradable products and more self-sustaining food production. This would increase world trade and with that help lift many nations out of this recession.

I fear, however, that the lack of trust and the fear that someone else is getting something for nothing will stand in the way. That is, the “greed is good” mentality still lingers in the minds of the power elites. Too many of them think it’s all right for privileged individuals to get something for nothing – that is how they’ve lived their entire lives – but it is abhorrent that poor people should get justice, equality, decency, and humanity; let alone something for nothing.

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Guaranteed Minimum Income: Obstacles to income guarantees

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How dare we?

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How did the attempt to abolish poverty become a war against the poor?

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Howard rediscovers the family

He’s now got a passion for compassion
he sent us reeling with his feeling
when he tried to sell us, or was it tell us
that you don’t need communion with a union
we’d increase contact with an individual contract
and if we were at a loss we could listen to the boss
because he’s our family’s friend in the end.
If we are feeling pain standing out in the rain
it’s not economic strain but family gain.

Mutual obligation fixes constipation
and working for the dole purges the soul.
Howard will never fail if you’re old and frail
when it comes to kero baths* he does it for the laughs
and to show that Liberals really care – so there.
Now he’s got a passion for compassion.
He’s cute and warm and never meant to harm,
he’s our family’s friend – where will it end?

I’ve got a notion that he’s pissing in the ocean
if he thinks we’ll believe him then he’s dreaming.

*Howard’s minister for the aged defended a Sydney Nursing Home bathing the elderly in Kerosene baths.

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Howard’s table

Written in 2002

I want to tell you a story;
it’s a bit like a fable
about the crumbs that fall
from off the rich man’s table –
they scatter far and wide.
They’ll never be enough to enable
justice to prevail.
All the hand-outs and the hand-me-downs
can’t give equality,
they’ll never be enough to provide
income security.
I thank you for your condescending words
and your philanthropy
I noticed how you look up to them
and how you look down on me.
I thank you for the lukewarm soup –
for your generosity.
I look forward to the day
that I’ll be secure enough to say
“Stick your charity”.

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I wish I had had this book when teaching social policy

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In search of the dole bludger

The preoccupation with the fecklessness of those who find themselves excluded from paid employment has been a consistent feature of the Australian income support system. This preoccupation has given birth to a number of myths such as:

• they’d find a job if they really looked
• Abbot’s job snobs  – they are too fussy
• they should shift to where the work is
• they realy are working but claiming benefits too
• they wouldn’t work in an iron lung,
• they are not job ready, they are lazy
• the benefit system is too generous at 21% below the poverty line

Defining the dole bludger

Instead of seeing people who could work but who choose not to as problem individuals, were we use a social model of citizenship then we would conceive of this as a problem for society. The solutions sought under a social model of citizenship would be along the lines of what changes would be necessary to society in order to incorporate such people into the workforce.

What advantaged accrue to our society as a result of continuing to identify problem individuals and concentrate on them as individuals? Does the whole society benefit from this process or only some sections of society?

Do powerless people benefit or only the powerful?

In some societies the solutions proffered are meant to:

• rehabilitate these problem individuals,
• punish these problem individuals,
• ignore these problem individuals,
• accept these problem individuals,
• try to incorporate them into other aspects of society, or
• redefine the problems which the society recognises the individual is experiencing.

By preserving with the concept of problem individuals we create some problems for the society. By making “work” whether in the market economy or “preparedness to work” in the benefit system as the defining characteristic of inclusion our society has constructed its own burden.

There may have been a time when we really did need all hands to the pump- when ever person in any society was needed in the labour market if we were to avoid disaster. Those days are long passed. Since the mid-1970s the market has been totally incapable of absorbing all the available labour in this country.

Instead of defining social citizenship (particularly the entitlement to income support) as something that is earned, it would be possible to see citizenship as something that is an entitlement for all born in a particular country and all who after migrating to a country meet the requirements of citizenship.

Citizenship means in its simplest form “You are one of us you have the identical rights and duties as have all other citizens. It is an act of inclusion. Citizen’s right to vote and other political rights can only be removed in this country if an individual commits a serious crime. But when it comes to targeted social services entitlements  take on a special form, our government has no difficulty constraining people’s accesss to services and even basic income support.

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Income guarantees, social justice and environmental sustainability

Paper delivered at Ecopolitics X ANU, Canberra 26-29 September 1996.

Australia’s current Social Security system is a hotchpotch of programs which purport to provide a social welfare safety-net.  The Labor and Liberal Parties are committed to expanding “self provision” in times of unemployment, illness and retirement.  Once policies such as privatised superannuation are widely implemented, support for publicly provided income maintenance will be eroded thus undermining the social wage and social justice. Further, this economic rationalisers’ dream of everyone providing their own income support will increase exploitation of the natural environment, and leads to a decline in the provision of long term technological, educational and social infrastructure as those in a position to maximise profit taking during their working life will do so rather than forgoing immediate returns in the interests of future productive capacity or environmental sustainability.  Self provision of income support requires people to maximise their contributions to funds during their working life in order to maximise their income in retirement.

This paper presents an analysis of the efficacy of existing income maintenance provisions, evaluates the myth of “self provision” and argues for the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income as the basis for building a socially just and ecologically secure future.

Existing income maintenance provisions

Policy debates around the existing system of income support in this country have recognised that the present Australian system has grown out of long reliance on employment (Castles 1994) to provide basic income security for the bulk of the working class and that the Commonwealth funded social security is meant to provide a pretty tatty safety net through which many people fall when they encounter hard times.

The present system of income support has been criticised for:

(a) being paid at an inadequate level,
(b) failing to provide an adequate safety net because it does not ensure all those without other income receive assistance sufficient to maintain themselves at least at the poverty line (Raper 1994),
(c) treating people in equivalent financial need unequally (Perry 1995),
(d) undermining citizenship (Watts 1995 a,b),
(e) creating dependency (Crosio 1994 contra Watts 1994, 1995 b)

(f) failing to create the opportunity which could free people to utilise their creative or productive potential (McDonald 1995, Tomlinson 1991, 1995 c , Tomlinson & Lincoln 1995)
(g) being poorly understood with resulting low take-up (Raper 1995),
(h) being unnecessarily complex (Joint Committee of Public Accounts 1983), confusing (Raper 1995),
(i) overly targeted / regulated (Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Training 1992,Tomlinson b),
(j) stigmatising (Baldwin 1995) and
(l) causing work disincentives because of excessive withdrawal rates on earned income (Economic Planning Advisory Council 1988).

The existing system of income support conforms substantially with the blue print set down by the Labor Government in 1947.  The Poverty Inquiry (Henderson 1975) set up by the Liberal Coalition Government and expanded by the Whitiam Government provided the only government funded independent review of the entire system of income support since 1947. Henderson recommended replacing the existing system of income support with a guaranteed minimum income (Henderson 1975 a, Chapter 6).  There have been other constrained reviews such as that conducted during Brian Howe’s time as Minister for Social Security (Cass 1986, 1988).

By the time Labor left office the system failed to provide security and was becoming more tightly targeted / regulated (Tomlinson 1995 a,b).  It was not capable of providing a sound basis on which to build a modern Australian citizenship ( Watts 1995 a, b, Tomlinson 1996, Cox 1995) and had become obsessed with the need to ensure that individuals became self providers of income support (Tomlinson 1995 b). The arrival of the Howard Government has increased this push towards self provision – newly arrived migrants are no longer entitled to rely on publicly provided income support until two years after arrival.  Moves have been foreshadowed to limit the time young people in particular can rely on government unemployment benefits (Bessant 1996, Thompson 1996).  It would seem that the current Australian Government is determined to replicate The New Zealand Experiment so comprehensively criticised for ignoring social costs by Jane Kelsey and Sue Bradford (Kelsey 1995, Bradford 1996).

Self provision

In the general income support debate the central policy questions have revolved around: categorical targeting (Mitchell, Harding & Gruen 1994) and deciding which unit of income is appropriate for payment the individual, family or household (Hayden 1975, Edwards 1976, 1984).  These questions have become enmeshed in the simplicity versus complexity debate, much time has been spent discussing comprehensiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, adequacy, affordability and the propensity for government provided welfare payments to create dependency (contra Watts 1995 b).  The less eligibility debates have centred around means and asset testing, the need to ensure no disincentives to work or engage in other approved activities and most importantly the question of self-provision versus publicly supplied income support.

This last feature in the present decade has centred around replacing government benefits and pensions by replacing them with superannuation, and to a lesser extent privatised unemployment insurance (Latham 1996).  Like many other aspects of income support it was a re-run of much earlier debates.

The Australian income support system has since before federation relied on governments raising taxes, some of which, it reallocated to groups whose income was low and whom it considered worthy (Smith 1993).  The Commonwealth has consistently rejected introducing a social insurance model to assist the less well off.  The conservatives attempted to introduce social insurance forms in the 1930s but they were rejected by the Labor Party.  The Hancock Inquiry proposed a national superannuation scheme in 1976 which would, had it been introduced, been a form of social insurance (Hancock 1976).

In the mid 1980s the Hawke/Keating Government driven by a naive belief in economic rationalism (Pusey 1991, Ormerod 1994, Gollan 1993) and spooked by their ill-founded hysteria over aged dependency ratios (oblivious to the fact that overall dependency ratios are the real fiscal determinants of mode of distribution outlays) decided not to introduce a GMI or a national superannuation scheme along social insurance lines or even to broaden the existing categories of the income maintenance program.  Putting their faith in a corrupt private insurance industry, they introduced a privatised compulsory “national” superannuation scam (ACTCOSS 1991, Pha 1992, Tomlinson 1995 a, b).  They exacerbated this situation by increased targeting of existing benefits and applying more stringent work/activity testing.  The Current Liberal Minister for Social Security has now intensified pressure on the unemployed by insisting they maintain a “where I looked for work” diary and by setting up a “dob in a dole bludger” hot line in her Department.

This current Australian superannuation model is the epitome of the economic rationalists’ dream of self provision.  Unlike the Hancock (1976) proposal, there is no basic benefit paid to people with disabilities and others who are unable to contribute.  The rich do very well out of it: their benefits are subsidised by PAYE taxpayers, total, tax concessions on Superannuation amount to $8 billion a year (ABC 1996) the poor find their contributions eaten up in administrative costs, some contributors have found their contributions have just disappeared through fraud (ACTCOSS 1991).  This form of privatised superannuation discriminates against the marginalised, the sick, women, casual workers, low skilled workers, Aborigines whose only work has been the Community Development Employment Program and other people who experience long periods out of the work force.  The current form of privatised superannuation continues the inequalities of peoples’ working life into the post work phase of their lives.

It is a misnomer to call the Australian system of superannuation “self provision” rather it is inverse Robin Hoodism where the government of the day robs the poor in order to subsidise the wealthy.

There is a growing recognition that: (1) many members of the working class when employed may receive a wage not much above the Henderson Poverty Line. (2) Commonwealth income support payments leave many recipients living below that Line.

Income forgone paid into compulsory superannuation increases difficulties for low income earners even when they are employed. (ACOSS 1994 pp. 22-30)

Universal income guarantees

The guaranteed minimum income debate in Australia began in the early 1970s (Braybrook 1970, Horne 1970, Scott, 1972, Benn 1981, Henderson 1975 a, b, Priorities Review Staff 1975, Liffman 1978, Tomlinson 1973).  By 1973 the then Minister for Social Security, Bill Hayden indicated the Whitlam Government’s intention to introduce a guaranteed minimum income (Hayden’1973).  The Main Report of the Henderson Poverty Inquiry recommended a two tiered guaranteed income which would be based on the family as the unit of income thereby superseding most of the categorical income support payments available to low income earners (Henderson 1975 a, b).  The essential ideas inherent in the Henderson GMI proposals had been outlined by a British Liberal economist Lady Rhys-Williams in 1943.

The arguments for and against introducing universal income guarantees in Australia has waxed and waned since that time.  Modern income guarantee proposals have taken three main forms, the first two found early expression in Britain: GMI ( Rhys-Williams 1973) and Basic Incomes (Jordan 1973, 1987, McDonald 1992, Parker 1991, Secretary of State for Social Services 1972) and negative income tax (NIT) an American derivative (Rolph & Break 1961, p. 404, Friedman 1962 Chapter 4, Theobald 1963, Lampman 1965, Moynihan 1973, Williams 1972).  There has been a fourth form of income guarantee as was expressed in the Special Benefit legislation in Australia 1947-87 (Tomlinson 1989), currently in France where it is called Minimum Integration Income (French Embassy 1988) , and as was suggested in the United States of America by Tobin (1965).  This last form of income guarantee is a catch-all safety-net.

Ecological outcomes arising out of income support choices

Environmentalists have been strong advocates of income guarantees, they have utilised social equity / distributional reasoning and have argued that income guarantees have the capacity to diminish western society’s drive for excessive productivity (Watts 1994, Van Parijs 1992).  This environmental argument is subsequently employed by those who see the work/hedonism trade-off as an important determinant of income policies and as grounds for opposing the introduction of a universal income guarantee (Whiteford 1981, Saunders 1981 contra Saunders 1994, Stilwell 1993, pp. 85-88. , Tomlinson 1989, Watts 1994).

There are reasons why environmentalists should support a GMI or an adequate Commonwealth system of income support on ecological and economic sustainability grounds.  One such argument for this is that both the present social security system and even more so a GMI result in intergenerational cash transfers.

In the case of a GMI, because this system would be more widely understood, such transfers between generations would be more transparent than with categorical systems.  On the other hand superannuation and other forms of self provision mean that the person’s capacity to extract the maximum economic advantage from the employed period of their life determines the amount on which they will have to draw in the post work phase of their lives.

Self-providers have substantial economic reasons for opposing environmental measures which will, in the short term, limit their income and hence decrease their personal superannuation pay out.  Those who rely on a GMI or other forms of tax payer funded income support payments have their economic security intimately connected with long term national economic sustainability.

The short term economic reason which might incline self providers with the raison d’etre to engage in unsustainable environmental exploitation becomes less compelling once self providers realise that their long term economic security and social comfort in later years is also intimately connected with the economic and environmental sustainability of the nation as a whole and that there is a finite limit to the earth’s productive capacity.

During the last century there has been a massive increase in population and production throughout the world.  Within the last decade world marine food production has started to decline as has the number of hectares of the world’s arable land.  Environmentalist have declared that allowing population and production to continue to expand until we reach a point where the finite capacity to produce is reached is self destructive.

Further  they maintain that well before that point is reached widespread species extinction will occur and humans’ quality of life diminish (Ehrlic & Ehrlic 1992).

In Australia during the last two centuries invading humans and feral animals have been responsible for half the mammalian extinctions in recorded history ( Amos, Kirkpatrick, & Giese 1993, contra Chisholm & Moran 1993).  They have turned the Murray Darling River system into a sewer, removed 90% of the rain forrest, had major impacts on coastal fisheries (Kailola et.al. 1993) and degraded much of the arable land.

During the Hawke period in office the Government made the first tentative steps to recognise the fact that without environmental sustainability there could not be economic sustainability (ESD Working Group 1991).  Unfortunately, like Brian Howe’s social justice strategy, environmental sustainability became a stand alone policy unconnected to anything else.  Such stand alone policies are hung out on the flag pole just so they can be pointed to during election periods or at times when party activists try to recall why they joined the Party.

Whilst it may be possible, in the short term, to marginalise environmental sustainability and social justice policies – the longer it is done the greater will be the ultimate social, environmental and economic impact.  We are still at a stage in Australia, and throughout the world, where the social justice questions could be addressed by abolishing the military and through developing equitable distributional strategies (Wheelwright 1991, Hunt 1987, Smith & Smith 1983, Debus & Merson 1977, George 1980,1990, Chomsky 1988, Peck 1987).

Social comfort

There are quality of life reasons why prime aged workers have a vested interest in ensuring environmental sustainability at the time they retire.  During retirement people have far more time available to visit the places they have only talked about during their working life.  Whilst many Australians still do the big overseas trip shortly after leaving employment for the last time, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of citizens who now choose instead to visit Kakadu, the Bungle Bungles, Ayres Rock, the Great Barrier Reef and many other wilderness areas, about which they could only dream when they were wage slaves.

Because retirement for most older Australians equates with limited income, time on their hands and declining health they often rely on doing things either around the house or within a few kilometres of it.  Many of these activities involve supplementing the household income.  Vegetable gardens are established, fishing becomes much more confined to local beaches and rivers.  Gone are the days when they could afford or could handle larger vessels which carried them to distant ocean reefs.  They develop more awareness of the problems of over exploitation of local areas – frequently leading campaigns to stop professional fishing in their area or to prevent other environmental degradation.

They come to clearly understand the connection between devastation of locally occurring natural resources (which they now need to utilise) and the economy.  This awareness is increased every time they buy bait and can’t catch a feed in the local creek or have to drive to distant fishing spots in order to ensure tomorrows breakfast.

Universal income guarantees, viable environments and economic sustainability

The environment is the one thing which we all own in common (though we each exploit it individually and differently).  The environment is the ultimate basis of present and future wealth.  Through distortions such as “self provision”, we depart from acknowledging it as the producer of our common wealth.  Privatised superannuation “self provision” operates in Australia at the moment in such a way that those who receive the greatest financial rewards throughout their working lives are the ones who get most from the superannuation system in retirement.  They are often the very same people who are engaged in the greatest exploitation of the natural environment.  They are frequently the employers (or managers) who in their ruthless extraction of surplus value (Bottomore, et. al. 1983 pp. 472-476) are least conserving of other humans’ health and well being.  The mystifying rhetoric of “self provision” is designed to disguise the rewards which go to those who take the most from the common pool of environmental wealth.

At the time of the enclosures in England a poet expressed this same idea:

“The law locks up the men and women
who steal the goose from off the common
but leaves the larger villain loose
who steals the common from the goose.”(anon.)

Governments in a democracy can’t indefinitely impose unpopular policies.  Citizens respond to the issues in terms of the way they see their interests being best served.  This does not imply that people only act from an egotistical perspective, they may well act out of altruism, and still have their perceived best interests being served.  The socioeconomic structures position all of us – determining how we see the world, how we perceive our interests.

For a long time it has been recognised that the degree to which people are prepared to defer gratification is dependent upon the certainty they have that deferment will actually result in gratification (Ternowetsky 1980 chapter 5, Loney 1986).  Australians’ appreciation of politicians and their public servants’ reliability in honouring promises can be judged from the humorous response which follows in the wake of statements like “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you”.

If people are placed in a situation where their economic security in their retirement ( a period for most people where they have limited control of income generation) is intimately connected to the amount they can accumulate during the employed period of their lives then most will attempt to maximise their income during their paid employment period.

On the other hand, were people told that during the paid work period of their lives they would pay contributions/taxes to sustain children, disabled and retired members of their society and that their retirement income would be provided by the younger generations when they entered the workforce then different structural pressures would exist.  The egocentred might at first only want to pay to maximise the earning capacity of younger citizens arguing that the elderly were going to do nothing for them.  But even the most ego centred individual might realise that to adopt such an uncaring attitude towards senior citizens might set an unfortunate precedent for the time when they reached the end of their working life.

Future economic prosperity is totally dependent upon having an environment both natural and industrial which has the capacity to continue to produce sufficient wealth to maintain standards of living.  If retirement income is dependent upon those in employment paying their taxes which are then redistributed to the young and the retired this results in the basic social structure being in place to encourage all permanent residents to develop environmentally sustainable exploitation and to ensure that investment is made in industrial, educational and technological infrastructure.

Even with a system of retirement income being provided by way of self provision the total amount of income available for all retired people will ultimately be determined by the state of the environment and the continued investment in educational industrial and technological infrastructure.  However the social structure would not be in place which would encourage self-providing workers to forego income in the interest of future generations.  Self provision reinforces egotism by providing clear economic advantage to those who set out with a beggar thy neighbour attitude to maximise their personal economic well being.

Future directions and problems

The focus of struggle ahead for those interested in universal, adequate, comprehensive, easily understood and socially equitable forms of income guarantees will be to run the fight up to reactionary forces (well intended or otherwise) who wish to retain the existing forms of income support and simultaneously confront the economic rationalists who would reduce the amount and scope of government provided income support through the promotion of privatised self-provision on the one hand and stigmatised welfare relief on the other. (Jamrozik 1994, p. 102, Rees, Rodley & Stilwell 1993, Vintila, Phillimore & Newman 1992)

If we are going to win such a struggle we are going to have to build broad community support far beyond the confines of the social welfare industry, trade union and progressive community politicians – in particular we need to garner support from environmentalists and the uncommitted.

Much of the current social / environmental debate in Australia revolves around employment versus conservation, increased production versus species protection, and other issues which pit sensible ecology against social equity.  These issues are not necessarily oppositional.  The Greens, the Democrats and some members of the Labor Party (Langmore & Quiggan 1994) realise the connection between public provision of retirement incomes and sustainable economic development.  The one million Australians who play some part in environmental protection organisations are potentially the most powerful source of support for the introduction of a GMI.

The challenge for those interested, in the promotion of social justice is to form a united front combining progressive human service workers, the non-aligned and most particularly environmentalists, to increase awareness of the environmentally sustaining nature of income guarantees over “self-provision”.  Such a coalition would build an Australian society committed to economic and environmental sustainabilty.  It would be an Australia committed to the promotion of human rights and social justice.  In Lady Rhys-Williams words it would “provide a floor below which no body would fall without imposing a ceiling above which no body could rise”. (Glyn p. 163)

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Income Maintenance

John worked in the Department of Social Security in 1964-65 and again in 1968-73.

His 1989 PhD thesis examined the political obstacles to the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income in Australia.

He was the Director of the Australian Capital Territory’s Council of Social Service from 1988-93.

He has lectured on income maintenance in all of Australia States and Territories and was a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Queensland University of Technology from 1993-2006.

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Income Security

John’s first social work job was with the Department of Social Security in Brisbane in 1964. He was then and continues to be concerned that people have sufficient income to live a dignified life, have access to adequate shelter for themselves and their children and to feel that they are safe.

Over the years his ideas as to how such goals might be achieved have changed from an initial ideal that ensuring people were assisted to gain access to specific social security benefits or pensions for which they had an entitlement, through to promoting the idea of providing a guaranteed minimum income, before becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the concept of providing every permanent resident with a universal basic income. You can see some of his ideas evolving here.

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Income support for Australia: a proposal

The choice in Australia is stark. Citizens can let governments continue down the existing economic fundamentalist path towards even more minimum income support, increasingly targeted, with greater selectivity and increasingly compulsory ‘mutual obligation’ or they can work to convince government that it should adopt a more liberating, universal, unconditional income support system.

Social theorists suggest we have passed over to a post modern state. Science is reaching into the recesses of the universe and the darkest depths of the oceans. Military experts consistently vacate the moral sphere in favour of smart bombs. Therefore one might expect human beings, at least in what we quaintly call the developed world, to have an advanced understanding of the basis on which we supply income support to the least affluent in our community. After all we have the capacity to measure the negative effects of poverty and maldistribution. We are surrounded by economic and social modellers who claim predictive capacities for their constructions at which the architects of the modern welfare state, like William Beveridge, could only marvel. Yet in Australia we still maintain an income support system remarkably similar to that which prevailed in Britain at the time of the 1834 Poor Law legislation.

I propose we abolish the entire patchwork of government provided income support programs and replace them with a universal Basic Income paid to each individual who is a permanent resident. Such an income guarantee would be paid irrespective of wealth, marital status, preparedness to work, child minding responsibilities or the lack of them, education, moral virtuousness or any other social feature. In order for the payment to act as an alternative income support system the level of payment would need, at a minimum, to be set at the rate of the single age pension. This form of basic income is affordable and could be implemented within one year of the government agreeing to legislate for its introduction. But first let’s consider the history of income support and the reasons to change from the current system of income support.

A glimpse of past income support programs

In feudal England a number of support systems existed for members of the community who fell on hard times – their extended family in the first instance, others in the village with a surplus, the lord of the manor or the church. Strangers might not be helped and could be banished from the village and left to die at the crossroads. Each area had its own helping characteristics. However, before one was assisted others in the village had to have sufficient resources to help, there was an expectation of ‘mutual obligation’ and one had to be in good standing with other community members. In times of widespread crop failures these local helping systems broke down.

Not much changed in relation to the way poor people were helped until towards the end of the 18^th Century. At Speenhamland, Berkshire in 1795 a number of landlords were unable to pay sufficient wages to ensure their farm labourers had an adequate income to sustain themselves and their families. The system provided a fixed scale of relief in line with the size of the labourer’s family and the price of wheat. In return labourers were required to continue to work. The scheme involved topping up the wages paid by the individual farm owners.

The scheme was criticised by workers organisations because they saw that the minimum assistance had the capacity to become the going wage and that it was a subsidy to employers. Many trade unions to this day have opposed income guarantee schemes on similar bases. Others criticised it as a form of ‘work for the dole which they saw as undermining the dignity of paid labour.

The early 1800s saw the continuation of in-door work houses (principally for widows, orphans and invalids) and for the able bodied out-door charity relief work to assist those unable to gain paid employment. These schemes relied upon two principles: the first was determining who was worthy to receive assistance, and the second principle was less eligibility, that is any assistance provided had to be of a lesser amount than could be obtained through paid work.

Many of the moral attitudes which led to the creation of work houses (which later came to be known as poor houses) and the outdoor relief schemes persist to the present day. The ideologies implicit in the system of 18^th and 19^th century welfare relief continue though the methods of delivery have changed. For instance, following the reforms in Bismarck’s Germany, relief in kind was increasingly replaced by cash with some attempt to codify what eligibility /worthiness meant in practice.

The Australian Welfare State

In 1908 legislation was passed to pay age and invalid pensions to those who met the required eligibility criteria. Until 1973 applicants for social services could be refused payments because “they were deemed not to be of good moral character”. In the 21^st. century eligibility requirements for social security no longer have such explicit moral requirements but the way in which need / eligibility is construed in the legislation implies approval for some social actions and disapproval of others. Eligibility still equates with worthiness.

When, in the 1930s, confronted by 30% of its male labour force unable to find paid work it was to an outdoor work relief system that Australia turned. The ‘Susso’ scheme involved single and sometimes married men being required to move from town to town looking for work and in its absence engaging in make-work jobs for local councils in return for their sustenance. This ‘work for the dole’ idea was reintroduced for young unemployed people by the Howard Government in 1997 and is in the process of being extended to older unemployed people, sole parents and Disability support Pensioners.

Governments have since 1908 been concerned to ensure that income support payments are not a more attractive alternative than paid work and have legislated extensive restrictions on who can and who can’t get paid. The unemployed, to be paid a benefit, have to be willing, ready and able to take any paid work. They can be compelled to move from their home town, undertake training however inappropriate, and so forth. Less eligibility lives. The existing system is widely perceived as a hand out when what is needed is a hand up.

There has been a parallel debate

While the Australian welfare system has evolved from the Poor Laws to poor laws there has been another debate proceeding apace. That debate draws different conclusions from the Speenhamland experience. It finds in Speenhamland a kernel of trust in others, a way to get the productive needs of society met through utilising the available labour and the provision of a base below which no one would fall.

In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto which heralded a system where the basis of production and distribution would be “From each according to ability and to each according to need”. Though such a system has not been implemented in any country the promise of the Manifesto has presented a challenge to all other systems of income distribution since that time. Bismarck’s reforms were measured against the Manifesto. The early Australian welfare state was described by visiting European social scientists as ‘Socialism without ideology’.

Though some aficionados suggest earlier writers, I think the earliest fully elaborated comprehensive income guarantee plan was put forward by Dennis Milner in a book called Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output: A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with national productivity. After a brief flurry of activity by him and his fellow Quakers the idea submerged until British Liberal economist Lady Rhys-Williams in 1943again raised it. Her book was called Something to look forward to. Lady Rhys-Williams’ aim was “To provide a floor below which no one could fall without imposing a ceiling beyond which no one could rise.” The economic fundamentalist writer Milton Friedman claims that year also as the time during which he developed his ideas on his form of income guarantee (the Negative Income Tax) but it took him a further 18 years before he published his ideas.

In 1975 Professor Ronald Henderson in the First Main Report of the Poverty Inquiry, borrowing heavily on Lady Rhys -Williams’ ideas, advocated a Guaranteed Minimum Income for Australia.

Since that time many different forms of income guarantees have been promoted around the world. The major point of difference is the degree to which authors wish their income guarantee to ape the welfare income support system with its various categories of payment and means test or instead argue that income support should be in the form of a truly universal payment to all as a right of citizenship.

Perhaps now is the time to say “Farewell to Alms”

The system of basic income which I advocate would be paid to each individual over the age of 16. A different rate would need to be struck for younger children. The only eligibility requirement being that applicants establish their status as a permanent resident.

This system would replace all other income support systems, be paid fortnightly and at least at the rate of the single age pension. It would be paid by the Tax Department. All tax free areas would be abolished. Tax would be paid on the first through to the last dollar earned. People, unlike most social security and family allowance recipients now, would always be financially better off for every extra dollar earned. If Australia really wants a deregulated labour market then it should introduce such a system. At present it has a highly deregulated mode of production on one side of the equation. On the other side Australia maintains one of the most confusing and contradictory yet highly regulated (targeted) social safety nets in the world.

A basic income would be simple, comprehensive and understandable. It would remove financial disincentives to seek employment. Above all it would be liberating of labour and intellect. It is now time to remove the constraining withered hand of welfare. It should be replaced by a determination to reach back to those of our fellow citizens lagging behind us in order to provide them with a hand up.

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Income support for unemployed people: Human rights versus utilitarian rights

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Individual rights, collective rights and Basic Income

Written in 2008

Abstract

Basic Income proposals, at least in their 20^th and 21^st century western manifestations, most commonly involve a payment made to individuals rather than to families, households or any other group of people. Because of this, the concept of a Basic Income runs the danger of being criticised as promoting individualism over collective solidarity. Standing (2004, pp.23-33) provides a detailed discussion of such claims.

Choosing the individual as the unit of payment allows a Basic Income to ensure both individual autonomy and collective well-being primarily because of the unconditional and universal nature of a Basic Income.

The payment of a Basic Income to individuals rather than to families (or some other group) not only enhances the autonomy of all individuals, it provides the best basis for promoting the interests of families, households, villages and entire nations. A Basic Income promotes collective solidarity without paternalistic intervention in the lives of individuals.

Introduction

Means-tested / categorical payments, irrespective of whether individuals or families are the unit of income, have the capacity to create divisions between sections of society. A notorious example of this was the Howard Liberal Coalition Government’s claims that unless lone parents and unemployed people gave something back to society in return for receiving poverty-line income support, they were free loading (Howard 1999, 2000). Such claims generated a downward envy in the minds of many working class people (Tomlinson 1999). This in turn allowed the Coalition Government to add disability support pensioners to the list of people to be accused of not providing something back to the government in return for their benefit.

In the mid 1960s I was employed as a social worker in the Commonwealth department responsible for social security payments. There I encountered many situations where individuals were refused a welfare payment because of their relationship with a partner who was expected to support them. There were also times when a person might become entitled to a payment by establishing they were the partner of someone who qualified for an age or disability support pension. It seemed to me then as now that the individual should be the unit of payment in relation to applying welfare means tests as well as for calculating income tax.

In Australia, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, poverty emerged as apolitical issue (Stubbs (1966), Henderson Harcourt, and Harper 1970). The McMahon Liberal Coalition Government responded by setting up the Henderson Poverty Inquiry to research the issue. In 1972 the incoming Whitlam Labor Government greatly expanded the Inquiry. The first main report of the Inquiry entitled Poverty in Australia was released in 1975 and in Chapter 6 Henderson advocated introducing a guaranteed minimum income and proposed using the family as the unit of income (further discussion of this history can be found at Tomlinson 2003, Chapter 9). The Labor Government was initially supportive of the idea but soon became preoccupied with trying (unsuccessfully) to survive.

During this brief period of Labor rule (1972-75) a number of other reports were released which impinged on the income maintenance and tax debates. One, the Asprey Committee on Taxation, held that: “The right to be taxed as an individual has always been accorded in Australia. At a time when women are playing an ever greater role in the economic and other affairs of society, the withdrawal of this right would certainly be regarded as a retrograde step. (p. 134)”. In fact, at the time, the taxation system did allow an income earner to claim deductions for medical and educational expenses incurred by children and unemployed spouses. In 2008 in Australia there are several family tax benefit schemes and taxation avoidance mechanisms such as family trusts.

Another contemporaneous report which had relevance in relation to income maintenance, proposed that Australia develop a social insurance superannuation scheme along similar lines to New Zealand (Hancock 1976). The Hancock scheme would have provided a form of social insurance providing no fault accident coverage and income support in old age. In the late 1980s the Labor Government greatly expanded the privatized superannuation industry by making it compulsory for employers to pay superannuation payments for most workers. During 1991 the Australian Capital Territory’s Council of Social Service, in an aptly titled monograph “The Super Tax Rort”, criticised the expansion of the privatised superannuation industry. Privatised superannuation, as Gerard Hughes (2008) has demonstrated in relation to Ireland and New Zealand, undermines egalitarianism when compared with social insurance and other government controlled pension systems.

For most of the 20^th century in Australia the industrial arbitration system took account of the family. The “family wage”, later more commonly referred to as the “basic wage”, was introduced nationally in Australia by the 1907 Harvester judgement in the Arbitration Court. This “family wage” was intended to be sufficient to support a man, his wife, and three children. The introduction of the family wage in Australia clearly provided the average man who was lucky enough to be in regular unionised employment with the “capacity” to support a wife and a small number of children. Such a policy could be implemented because of the then widespread acceptance of a sexual division of labour (in terms of men’s and women’s jobs). The Harvester judgement simply confirmed existing gender discrimination. It was to condemn the female workforce to a wage rate of approximately 54 to 70 per cent of the male rate for over 50 years. Cass (1983, p.62) reports a study of women workers in Australia in 1928 which showed that 30 per cent were helping to support or totally supporting other family members. Whelan (1979, p.55) notes that at the time of the Harvester judgement, 45 per cent of male workers were single. It was not until 1974, with the Commonwealth Arbitration Court’s equal pay decision and the signing of two International Labour Organisation Conventions by the Whitlam Government, that the principle of equal wages for equal work was accepted nationally. Widespread gender segmentation in employment means that women, on average, still earn considerably less than men (Broderick 2008).

Intra-family income transfers

One of the myths which had sprung up about families was that in most, if not all, there is an equitable sharing of wealth: or at least that everybody receives sufficient, provided there is something for all to share. This myth requires its adherents to adopt a belief in a form of trickle-down economics. No real attempt had ever been made to verify the fact that income in households was indeed shared equitably. At the time it provided a very comfortable belief for those who argued the importance of maintaining family structures.

In 1975, the Australian Government’s Taxation Review Committee, headed by Mr Justice Asprey, found that a high degree of sharing “is by no means universal. In some marriages, and not by any means only unhappy ones, almost completely separate patterns of spending and enjoyment may be the rule.”(p.135). Later work by Meredith Edwards (1981) clearly established the inequitable nature of many intra-family transfers; she worked hard to end the myth that providing funds to one family member ensures that all family members are adequately renumerated.

Whilst governments maintain the myth of the stereo-typical nuclear family (with its presumed equitable intra-family transfer of income) it is not necessary for them to address the reality of the frequent inequalities which are prevalent inside families. If governments were to accept the presence and frequency of the massive inequalities in intra-family income transfers, they would be hard pressed to justify basing income maintenance policy on the presumption that all members of a family will be looked after if one member receives sufficient income to allow him or her to provide for all. They would be forced to recognise that if equity or equality was the intended goal of social welfare policy, even if limited to equal treatment of the poor, then it would be necessary to create policy around individual equity rather than persevere with the myth that providing money to one member of a family will result in equitable treatment for all family members.

Whilst governments can maintain the pretence that intra-family transfers are equitable, or at least not the business of government, they are protected from the need to account for the lack of total cover in income maintenance policies. Governments get away with the vague suggestion that the current package of welfare benefits, when coupled with wages policies, ensures there is a safety net below which no-one falls. It was the conservative Canadian Senator Hugh Segal, at the 2008 Basic Income Earth Network Congress, who pointed to the fact that:

The case for the status quo in present governments’ approaches might be sustainable if it could be argued that the present spider web of programmes (sticky enough to entrap but not strong enough to support) had produced real progress; less poverty overall; higher levels of return and enhanced productivity in the labour market; greater independence and increased consumer confidence. Sadly, there is no such productive progress to report (pp. 3-4).

I first became aware of the intensity of this collective/individual debate in relation to income support payments in the early 1990s when I met with the national director of Catholic Social Services in Australia, seeking his support for the introduction of a Basic Income. He strongly supported the then (and still existing) Australian social security practice of paying means tested benefits and pensions using the family as the unit of payment. He felt that such practices helped keep families together. As I write this paper I have recently returned from the 2008 Basic Income Earth Network Congress in Dublin which was hosted by CORI (the Conference of the Religious of Ireland) which has many similar functions to Catholic Social Services in Australia. CORI has been advocating for a Basic Income paid to individuals since the mid 1990s.

Only the most dogmatic would hold that paying a government benefit to an unemployed spouse would weaken the marriage bonds. Available evidence shows that marriage break-up amongst people who are unemployed happens substantially more frequently than for those who are employed. Anything which decreases the financial pressures on families experiencing unemployment is likely to increase feelings of certainty and security and as such, it would be likely to help sustain marriage.

It has been argued that the major attraction for government of adopting the family as the unit of payment of income maintenance is that it transforms an individual in need into a person who is dependent upon a spouse or a parent and therefore is no longer in need of support from the State. During the 1970s when the United states of America took its most serious look at introducing a Negative Income Tax (a form of income guarantee), it was the issue of the ‘dependency’ of women which most worried the Senate Committee on Finance who were vitally concerned to know “if the incentives built into the negative tax would stem the rising Aid for Dependent Children outlays by getting women to work more (Williams 1972 p. 41, see also Moynihan 1973)”. This is a frequent theme in United States’ welfare debates (Mink 1998, Leonard 1997 pp. 19-20).

I shall shortly attempt to expose the essential patriarchal assumptions which inform the choice of the family as the income unit. This is particularly the case in societies where males are the main income earners in a family.

The essential point developed so far is that if the intention of the income maintenance system is to promote equity and to maximise opportunities for all family members then it is counterproductive to use the family as the unit of payment. The only viable alternative to the family is to use the individual as the unit of payment in both the social security and taxation systems.

Paternalism

Standing has written at length about the damaging impact of paternalism in the lives of those reliant upon the state for income support. In his 2002 text Beyond the New Paternalism, he makes the point that by the last quarter of the 20^th century the concept of the “right to labour almost collapsed” due to widespread unemployment but that by the end of the century “a remarkable chorus of politicians and commentators were preaching that everyone had a duty to labour. People had to be responsible and to contribute, and unless they took jobs or took training to prepare for jobs, they were undeserving of state support (p. 9).”

Goodin (2000 p.58, 1988) explains that, whilst the commanding ethos of the post war welfare state relied on the assumption that the collective would meet the basic needs of vulnerable individuals, it was not intended that any individual should totally escape the need to be self supporting, whenever possible. Goodin (2001 p.198) makes the point that: “If we seriously believe that work is good for you and that it is the state’s legitimate role to force you to do it, then we would have no grounds for confining our paternalism to the poor. Paternalistically speaking, it would be equally important to make the rich work too.”

Hugh Stretton (1996) and others (e.g. Goodin 1988 p. 7) see in the imposition of individualised obligation and eligibility determinations a return to the charity system of the Poor Laws, so aptly described by Polanyi (1945). Whilst stigma is a problem embedded in every targeted welfare system (Boston and St. John 1998, Tomlinson 2003 Chapter 2), it is in relation to 19^th century English workhouses that it is most clearly observed. Sanborn (1899), cites Charles Lamport (1870) to support this point:

Its practice is, that no destitute person, however meritorious, can benefit by this organization without having to pass under something very like the old Roman yoke. On the one side of the Caudine forks, a man stands erect, self-respecting and respected, and with name unstained; on the other side he crouches, a changed and degraded being. He has become a social pariah, hopes destroyed, spirit crushed, reputation gone. Society, before it yields what it dare not refuse, so embitters the morsel by contempt that neither giver nor receiver is blessed in the act.

When comparing the security which a Basic Income provides with the uncertainty inherent in paternalistic welfare regimes Standing (2006) wrote:

…we are talking about basic security as an economic and social right. This is essentially a republican or claim right, developed by Rousseau, Thomas Paine and others. …A right…is unconditional in behavioural terms. You do not have a right if you have to do x, y and z in order to have an entitlement. …

Second, we are talking about basic security. Basic means it must be meaningful, not a gesture…

Third, for basic income security, the income must come in a form that is nonpaternalistic. It should not be given to you as a discretionary gesture, in the goodness of somebody’s heart; it is not charity. It must be in a form that you can decide how to use it. It must be individual and must be equal (pp. 5-6).

The Macquarie Dictionary defines “paternalism” as: “the principle or practice, on the part of a government or of any body or person in authority, of managing or regulating the affairs of a country or community, or of individuals, in the manner of a father dealing with his children (Delbridge, Bernard, Blair, Peters, and Butler 1991 p. 1300).”At an individual level the word “paternalism” evokes an image of a stern, concerned father acting in what he perceives as the best interests of his perverse children. But women as well as men have happily imposed their views on the lives of others. Jocelyn Newman when she was a welfare minister in the conservative Howard Liberal Coalition Government released a discussion paper purporting to set out The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21^st Century but any fair-minded reading of that paper shows her intention was to encourage people to find an alternative to ‘living on welfare’ in order to prevent ‘dependency’ upon the government. It is little wonder that Minister Newman was so concerned about preventing dependency in others – when she retired she received three generous parliamentary pensions – one in her own right and two wives’ pensions in respect to both her deceased husbands. One had been a member of a state parliament and the other a Federal parliamentarian.

Amanda Vanstone as Minister for Immigration intervened adversely in the lives of many asylum seekers in a manner which was only slightly less oppressive than her male predecessor, Phillip Ruddock. Jenny Macklin, currently Minister of Indigenous Affairs in the Rudd Labor Government has maintained many of the policies of the Howard Government’s Northern Territory Intervention, particularly the practice of “quarantining” half the social security payments of Indigenous people on 73 Northern Territory communities so that the money can only be spent at specified stores on a limited range of goods approved by the government. This “quarantining” provision necessitated the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act when it was introduced by Mal Brough during the last year of the Howard Government (Altman and Hinkson, 2007).

The Macquarie Dictionary defines “maternal” as to having the qualities of being a mother (p. 1098) and “paternal” as befitting a father (p. 1300). Interestingly, the word “maternalism” is not part of the English language. Governments, even governments made up predominantly of men, have no gender. Yet there is no word to describe the exercise of female authority in government. We maintain a clear distinction between concepts of matriarchy and patriarchy, yet the distinction between maternal authority and paternal authority apparently evaporates once governments come to exercise authority over the less privileged in society. Maggie Thatcher, a “Lady not for turning”, nick named “The Iron Maiden”, is a commonly conjured image of a dominating female political figure in the West. Indra Gandhi is probably her closest counterpart in the East.

In attempting to locate a word without the gender connotations of “paternalism”, it seems to me that what Standing and Goodin call paternalism is a form of domination and at times dictatorial intervention in the lives of others.

Obviously people don’t need to be compelled to do what they intended to do. Paternalistic supporters of workfare, like Lawrence Mead (1968, 1986, 1997), who assert that they help the poor escape their poverty and dependency (by forcing them to take low paid workfare jobs) because that is what the poor really want for themselves, have a hard case to make. One of the earliest critics of such assertions was Franz Fanon, who, in his The Wretched of the Earth, asserts that:

colonialism therefore did not seek to be considered by the native to be a gentle, loving mother who protects her child from a hostile environment, but rather as a mother who constrains her fundamentally perverse offspring from managing to commit suicide and from giving reign to its evil instincts. The colonial mother protects her child from itself, from its ego, and from its physiology, its biology and its own unhappiness which is its very essence (1967 pp. 169-170).

In the case of the Northern Territory Intervention, the paternalists in the Howard and Rudd Governments are restraining their unruly Aboriginal charges not so much in the Aborigines’ own interests but allegedly in the interests of the Aboriginal people’s children. Government ministers seem blissfully unaware that since the earliest days of the colonial adventure in Australia government policy claims to have been directed at saving the Aboriginal children because the adult Indigenes were considered by whites to be beyond salvation (Tomlinson 2007). In relation to Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers during the Howard Government, it would be impossible to argue that the Government was acting in the interests of the asylum seekers. Clearly it was acting in the interests of the Liberal Party and the majority of the established citizenry.

Life with a Basic Income

For well over a decade it has been recognised that a major problem facing advanced economies is the existence of too many workers chasing too few private sector jobs (partly as a result of the economic fundamentalist success in drastically cutting the number of public service jobs) (Rifkin 1994, Omerod 1994, Gorz 1999, Boreham, Dow & Leet 1999, Stilwell 1999, 2000). Stigmatising, selective, targeted, categorical welfare payments, coupled with ‘mutual obligation’ and other compelled activity scenarios, are tackling a problem – the trouble is that they are tackling the wrong problem.

Stigma is embedded in every targeted welfare system, mainly because of the detailed inquisitorial nature of assessing who is and who is not “worthy” to receive the payment. The more discretion given to the dispenser of assistance the greater the danger of abuse by the assessor and the less certainty of eligibility there is in the mind of the applicant.

The cost of existing systems is systematically underestimated. …(they) are riddled with poverty traps, unemployment traps, savings traps and behavior traps that are arbitrary, inefficient and inequitable. This is partly because of the selective, means-tested and behavior-conditioned schemes. It is also partly because of the growing flexibility of working patterns and lifestyles. The response of bureaucrats and politicians almost everywhere has been to tighten conditions for entitlement and extend paternalistic controls (italics in original, Standing, 2004 pp.24-25).

A Basic Income, because it provides a known financial advantage for every extra dollar earned, abolishes both poverty traps and work disincentives (Lerner, Clark & Needham 1999 pp. 20-21). Gorz (1999 p.85) claims “The universal, unconditional grant of a basic income is, therefore…the best instrument for redistributing both paid work and unpaid activities as widely as possible (italics in original).”

It seems an absurd proposition made by economic fundamentalists that the mode of production has to be deregulated for the sake of ‘efficiency’ but that the system of welfare redistribution should be increasingly regulated. Such ways of assessing eligibility result in a very inefficient method of benefit delivery because of:

• the intrusive nature of enquiries which need to be made,
• the degree of detail required to be ascertained, and
• the multiple variables which need to be taken into account in such a process.

Autonomy as solidarity

A Basic Income promotes collective solidarity without paternalistic intervention in the lives of individuals. In 1975 Jeffry Galper suggested that:

Contrary to the present reality, the ideal situation would be one in which the individual’s maximum contribution to the society as a whole would be, simultaneously, exactly that person’s maximum contribution to his or her own self-development. In a truly humanized society the ideal towards which we would strive would be the elimination of the duality between actions which primarily benefit the individual actor and those which benefit others (p. 48).

A Basic Income paid to individuals would ensure the married were not disadvantaged compared with the unmarried. By providing a financial incentive, it would encourage family formation and stability – but would not of itself enforce any particular view of appropriate morality. It would allow family members who felt that continued cohabitation was intolerable to leave and set up on their own or in co-operation with others. Thus, the selection of the individual as the unit of payment increases freedom, diversity and individualism, all of which are central liberal values.

A Basic Income is a universal payment which does not evoke ethnic divisions and destructive competitiveness. Because it paid equally to all individuals, as a right of permanent residence, it does not encourage a politics of downward envy (Tomlinson 1999).

Escaping poverty

Recently there have been several Australian social welfare agencies advocating for an increase in funding for single age pensioners. They have drawn attention to the plight of this predominately female group, although there is a significant group of single men who are having difficulty surviving on Australian social welfare payments. Currently a single pensioner gets paid 60 per cent of the pension rate for a couple.

It might appear at first glance that this issue could be addressed by using the family as the unit of income for calculation the pension rate. A superficial look at the situation might suggest that the problem could be overcome by leaving the partnered rate where it is but substantially increasing the single pension rate. But this would have a number of undesirable consequences.

What needs to be recognised is that many unemployed people, sickness beneficiaries, students and others on various forms of allowances are forced to live on social welfare payments far below that which single aged pensioners receive. In recent years the criterion used to determine who is paid a disability support pension and who is placed on a Newstart unemployment benefit has been considerably tightened. This now means that people with severe disabilities who are considered capable of working 15 hours a week are forced to meet the eligibility requirements which apply to all unemployed people.

In Australia the single age pension rate is set at about 25 per cent of average weekly earnings and this is also about the rate of the Henderson poverty line. In many European Common Market countries the poverty line is set at about 60 per cent of average weekly earnings and many countries pay social welfare at about that rate.

To address poverty in Australia, the real issue is not about fiddling with the unit of income but rather substantially increasing the rate of payment of social welfare to bring Australia more into line with the European Common Market countries.

If equity was a serious consideration: A conclusion

Were Australia to move away from its history of a “needs based” means-tested social welfare safety net towards a poverty prevention scheme (such as a Basic Income), then many of the serious inequalities and inequities, which are rife in the existing social welfare system, could be addressed.

Even if it were fair to insist that fully fit unemployed people meet certain participation requirements before they would be paid a Newstart unemployment benefit, there is no equity in insisting that someone who is only considered capable of working 15 hours a week meets identical participation requirements.

Aboriginal people die on average 17 years younger than other Australians. In Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, three-quarters of Indigenous male and two-thirds of Indigenous females die before the age of 65 years compared with the Australian population as a whole where one-quarter of males and one-sixth of females deaths occur before that age (ABS and AIHW 2003, p183). The age pension is paid at age 65 for men and at a slightly younger age for women. Three-quarters of Aboriginal men die before they can qualify for an age pension. So even though Aboriginal people have the same entitlement to receive an age pension the outcome, when compared with other Australians, is neither equal nor equitable.

The bureaucratically-sophisticated easily manoeuvre their way around Centrelink’s requirements and get paid their benefits. Those who are poorly educated, people with severe mental health or addiction difficulties and those who are less bureaucratically-sophisticated (though they are often suffering greater financial hardship) are frequently breached for 8 weeks or have their payments indefinitely withheld.

De Wispelaere and Stirton (2008) suggest any administratively efficient social policy scheme “must tell us (1) how one becomes eligible to receive the grant; (2) who amongst the general population ought to receive the grant; and ( 3) how we ensure that those who are eligible (and only those) effectively receive their entitlement (p. 4)”.

Often there are considerable similarities between people who have a combination of a partial physical impairment, a minor metal health or personality problem and a recent poor work history. Yet the type of benefit they are paid can vary widely depending on who they see and how they are assessed:

• one person could be rejected on the grounds they won’t meet their participation requirements,
• another could be considered as not capable of working 15 hours a week and provided with a disability support pension,
• another could be found to have a temporary illness and placed on sickness benefit,
• another could get Newstart unemployment benefit, and
• another might just have had their 65^th birthday and so be given an age pension.

Then, given that the Australian system uses the family as the unit of income, even if the person meets all the requirements for payment of a benefit or pension but they are living with a partner, the partner’s income and assets will determine whether the person actually receives any payment. Given such disparity in possible outcomes for applicants, there is no way that Australian governments can claim they are capable of eradicating poverty whilst they persevere with the existing system of welfare.

Paul Spicker (2007) notes that many of the Northern European welfare systems which most effectively deal with poverty are social protection systems rather than poverty alleviation schemes, and he assert that “If a system is based on support for everyone, poor people will also be helped. If it supports only the poor, some are likely to be excluded (p.136).”

It is a nonsense to suggest that the inordinate complexity, invasion of privacy, stigma inducing practices of the Australian social welfare system results in a fair distribution of payments in line with people’s needs. It is not possible to know if what occurs is equitable or reasonable. “Need”, like beauty, is in the eye of the assessor. No two people will come to identical assessment of need. But we do know that the Australian social welfare system does not treat all applicants for assistance equally.

De Wispelaere and Stirton (2008, p. 5) claim that Basic Income schemes, because they are universal and entail no conditionality apart from establishing residency, are unlike participation income schemes and many targeted social welfare programs in that they avoid the problem of having to tightly define standards of eligibility.

Is a Basic Income capable of treating all applicants for assistance equitably? The answer is of course “No”. But it is capable of treating everybody equally. A Basic Income, provided it was paid (using the individual as the unit of income) at a rate above the poverty line, would abolish poverty. Governments would be in a position to know how much income support they were paying to each and every permanent resident of the country and would be far better placed than they are now to work out what extra goods and services are required in order to promote equity and social justice throughout the land.

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Key Words
Basic Income, individualism, collective wellbeing, autonomy, paternalism.

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Inequality and Peace

I don’t want to build my wealth on the dispossession of others.
I don’t want to create my health at the expense of others.
My liberty can’t emerge by subjecting you to tyranny.
Your starvation cannot satiate my hunger.
To the extent that the world is unfair, unjust and unequal
only the privileged can change that situation peacefully;
only they have the power to relinquish their advantaged position.
The poor, the disadvantaged, marginalised and displaced
can change the world – but they can’t change it by giving up privilege.
They can and will combine to destroy the powerful,
to force change and overthrow systematic injustice.
If we are to live in a peaceful world then we all have to play a part.
We need to confront injustice, inequality, inhumanity and tyranny
each and every day, here, there and everywhere.
Those who have the most have the most to offer
and if they don’t offer to share they are to blame for the violence.

Written 2003.

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Is it social inclusion or social illusion?

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Is this mutuality? No, but it is mutual obligation

Published in Parity not sure when.

One solution to poverty, as the sage suggested would be to ‘get the hungry to eat the homeless’. However such a solution seems to have fallen from favour in most countries many centuries ago. As too had the idea that strangers could be left at the cross roads outside the village to starve. By the Elizabethan period, in the 17^th Century, a system of poor laws based on the parish had been established to assist the very poor in their communities. Such Elizabethan poor laws were, according to British researcher Karl Polanyi, predicated on a number of interwoven ideas:

• productivity was not to be interfered with, so the amount of welfare assistance provided was to be less than could be obtained from working; this process has come to be known as the principle of less eligibility,
• only ‘the worthy’ were to be assisted, out of a sense of duty to those who ‘through no fault of their own’ had been injured or otherwise prevented from working,
• this, of course, meant rejecting the undeserving poor, and
• as funds were limited, assistance was to be directed to those in most need, whilst ensuring people met their responsibility to the Parish and simultaneously felt grateful for the pittance they received.

Such views about the functions of welfare provision have a resonance in current Australian income support debates. In 1988 Professor Robert Goodin argued that “what distinguishes a welfare state from a poor law state is that agents of a welfare state must have no discretionary power over those resources that the state allocates for the relief of people in distress”. Goodin’s view of appropriate welfare services is not to be found in Jocelyn Newman’s pronouncements on what she calls ‘welfare dependency’, nor her fear that such ‘dependency’ is widespread and about to become intergenerational. Prime Minister Howard consistently refers to helping the ‘needy’ by maintaining the current austere social safety net whilst ensuring that unemployed people meet their ‘mutual obligations’. Some Labor parliamentarians such as Mark Latham and Wayne Swan seem equally fearful that Australian productivity is about to be swamped in a sea of ‘welfare dependency’.

In late August the Final Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform was welcomed by the Government, Labor and the Democrats. Michael Raper, president of ACOSS, saw it being a bridge over troubled waters -even if it had a few planks missing. The mainstream press response has been generally positive, praising the way in which the Reference Group had attempted to reinterpret Howard’s hardline ‘mutual obligation’ as expressed in the 200,000 of the poorest Australians subjected to benefit cuts for ‘breaching’ a Centrelink dictate, his ‘work for the dole’ and his attack on young illiterate unemployed people. The press took heart in the Report’s suggestion that sanctions should be a last resort and that the emphasis should be on a ‘partnership between income support recipients and the government designed to encourage participation in the economy and society’.

It is true that in the section of the Report dealing with ‘mutual obligation’ there was a recognition that “Some responses (to their interim report) argued that placing conditions on income support diminishes citizenship rights to an adequate minimum income.” However this did not stop the authors of the Report claiming “Nevertheless, compulsion will be required for a minority of income support recipients and to ensure that governments, businesses and communities meet minimum standards in ensuring access to economic participation opportunities.” At least 200,000 income support recipients in the last 12 months were breached by Centrelink -for them compulsion is an ever present threat. Government however has no legislative provisions in place which can compel “businesses and communities meet minimum standards in ensuring access to economic participation opportunities”. It would seem reasonable to ask what organisation is going to materialise so as to be in a position to compel governments to ensure “access to economic participation opportunities”. The Australian Government’s response to the reports of the United Nations Human Rights and Elimination of Racism Committees concerning the present Government’s breaches of international agreements, which Australia has signed and ratified, was to tell the UN to stay out of ‘Australia’s business’. Given such a response I am at a loss to identify the vehicle which the Reference Group thinks will compel the Australian Government to ensure economic participation.

This is in fact the crux of the mutual obligation debate: legal powers exist to compel income support recipients to reciprocate. But those who receive income support have no way of compelling the Government to meet its ‘reciprocal obligations’ which the Report identifies as being necessary if there is to be increased participation in the economic and social life of the nation. Under the title of Participation Support for a More Equitable Society the Reference Group advocates removal of the current legislated right of people with parenting responsibilities to not work until their youngest child turns 16 years. This right been reduced to when the youngest child turns 6 years after which they will be required to attend yearly interviews. Then when the child turns 13 parents will have to demonstrate how they intend to access economic participation opportunities. A variant of ‘work for the dole’ or other compelled activity will be extended to some Disability Support Pensioners.

The trade off that income support recipients are offered is a single rate payment for all ‘working age’ recipients plus a number of add on payments to: ‘increase participation’, cope with special ‘needs’, family circumstances or disabilities. Howard’s introduction of the oh so Common Youth Allowance saw 46,000 16-18 year olds have their payments diminished or cut completely. Such reductions in benefit has occurred under both Labor and Liberal administrations since 1986 when ever common payment regimes have been installed. There is no reason to believe something different will happen this time. The Government has loudly proclaimed it will retain the value of benefits but, since 1986, such promises have always been given before the cuts occurred. Even if the rates are not cut recipients are having the conditions under which they receive payment eroded by the imposition of compelled activity.

If there is a logic in having the same base rate for all ‘working age’ recipients why should it not be extended to older and younger people. Many people older than 65 years work as do many under the ‘working age’. There are two reasons why this has not been done, firstly the age lobby is united and powerful compared with working aged groups who have been divided amongst themselves; and secondly to include the young would mean relating to the reality of a group who have been successfully marginalised. On top of this it would mean having to admit the present income support discrimination against the young is unjustified.

The Reference Group Report may have portrayed a kinder face of ‘mutual obligation’ than the Government has, hither too, been able to present; but it has not been able to escape the inherent miserly conservative agenda which has been part and parcel of the administration of welfare services in this country since the invasion. The parish has been replaced by the Commonwealth but the values of the Elizabethan poor laws still stick to the soles of our shoes.

It is as if governments believe there is no other way to ensure a productive society other than to compel those who have the least opportunities. Just take one example: wealth taxes are an anathema to the rich in this country so we don’t have wealth taxes in the form that many OECD countries have. But we do have wealth taxes. They are called asset tests and are imposed on many forms of social security payments. Our wealth taxes are applied at the very time when people are experiencing financial crises and result in only small savings to government outlays. It would be possible to tax all wealth and vastly increase government revenue.

There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to play a part in society and the economy. Compulsion can be replaced with trust, enablement, mutuality and assistance. People will take opportunities to engage. Only those addicted to a poor law view of the world want to force the poor to sing for their supper. There is nothing wrong with having one rate of social security income support for all permanent residents in this country -but it does not need to come with strings attached. There is no need to link work readiness and income support. In 1975 Professor Henderson recommended a Guaranteed Minimum Income. Nowadays many are promoting the introduction of a universal Basic Income paid to each individual and at a rate at least that of the age pension. Once such a program was in place Governments would no longer be able to threaten the livelihoods of those most marginal to the productive process. For this to happen it will require Australian’s to choose between a poor law state and a welfare state.

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It’s the same the whole world over

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Jocelyn Newman

You know she’s got cancer?
Yes but it’s in remission.
I wonder how she’ll feel when she meets her maker
and is asked what she’s been doing for the last 5 years?
She will no doubt reply:
making the unemployed keep dole diaries,
cutting 46,000 young people off benefit
hectoring the unemployed, single mums
and those bludgers on disability pensions.
Then God will tell why she is in remission –
She was giving cancer a bad name.

Written circa 2002

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John Howard is destroying our welfare

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John Howard’s VSU

QUT, Student rally against Voluntary Student Unionism 2005.

Where do you start with John Howard, the lies about asylum seekers throwing children overboard, the lies about weapons of mass destruction, the lies about the Australian Wheat Board…

… no I can’t cover all the lies there are so many…

so I’ll just describe some of the things he’s done which affect students directly.

He has kept the income support payments so low that many younger students are trying to survive on 44 % of the Henderson poverty line.

Until 1997 HECS fees contributed about 20% of the cost of a degree. The Nelson changes will raise that to 44% without the surcharge and up to 56% if the surcharge is applied.

The decreasing Commonwealth contribution to the cost of running universities means that Universities are under pressure to either increase costs on students or cut the quality of services and education that students receive.

The bigger your HECS debt the longer it will take before you can hope to establish a family, buy a home or even afford a decent car.

Nelson set out to destroy your guild so that you will have less chance to pressure this Government to behave responsibly.

These days most student have to work as well as study.

The Government has removed the protection against unfair dismissal. It has set out to destroy the Arbitration Commission and the system of Award wages which were the foundation stone of the Australian workers welfare state. Wages are being slashed and many are being forced to work in unsafe conditions.

I know that there are other speakers will cover some of these issues in greater detail and so I want to concentrate on the issues which affect some of the poorest Australians. The Government is now imposing increased requirements on students and other social security recipients before they will be paid.

The Government has attacked disability support pensioners, lone parents and the unemployed – particularly the young unemployed. Many of the people who have a disability, are sole parents or are unemployed are students too. In 2002 the Government imposed 386,946 breach penalties on social security recipients. This left many without funds for 26 weeks.

The changes to the disability support pension which come into effect in July will mean that many disability support pensioners will be $93 per week worse of than at present. A single parent (with two children the youngest of whom is over 8 years of age who is working 15 hours per week) will be $ 86 per week worse off.

If they are also students they stand to lose even more.

The changes will mean Full time students will get the lower paid Austudy rather than Newstart, those with disabilities wont get the pensioner educational supplement of $31.20 a week on top of the other cuts.

As far as John Howard and his Government are concerned ten years, ten long years they’ve lived ten years too long.

Billy Connolly reckons that John Howard fulfils only one useful function:
He shows us what Harry Potter will look like when he gets old.

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Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water

It was the first day of March 2018. Though the aftermath of the Barnaby scandal was still washing around Parliament House and the people all along Northbourne Avenue in Northern Canberra were still mopping-up following an act of God, I dared to turn on the radio. With some trepidation, I set the dial to the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast program and Fran Kelly was speaking with a government minister who goes by the pseudonym of Dan Tehan. He was speaking about the Turnbull Government’s intention to reintroduce legislation to legalise compulsory drug and alcohol testing of New Start recipients. Who if they were to be found to have partaken of drugs or alcohol would be subjected to an “income maintenance” regime which would put 80% of their below-the-poverty-line income for things of which his government approved.

This “income maintenance” regime is a similar to that which Coalition and Labor Governments have forced upon Aboriginal people on 79 communities in the Northern Territory since 2007. It appears that their error of judgement was to allow themselves to be born Aboriginal and to be still living on their tradition lands rather than choosing to disappear. By such wilful action they were not only presuming on non-Indigenous humanity but were simultaneously presenting an obstacle to non-Indigenous people gaining ownership of land which they might like to acquire.

Tehan’s proposed drug testing regime “income maintenance” is also similar to a cashless welfare card scheme so enamoured by the likes of Twiggy don’t-give-blackfellas-money Forrest, billionaire and miner of Indigenous land. The cashless welfare card has been imposed in the East Kimberleys and Port Augusta because Indigenous people are a considerable percentage of residents there. There is another region where such vile policies are pursued and that is Logan City because Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders, Pacific Islanders and Maoris constitute a substantial part of the population there.

Dan Tehan told Fran Kelly that the Government was wanting to drug test New Start recipients “to help them help themselves”.  Despite Fran’s valiant attempt to alert him to the downsides of compulsory drug and alcohol testing of welfare recipients he pressed on undeterred. Fran noted that the Australian Medical Association, several drug rehabilitation academics and rehabilitation agencies have pointed out that compulsory testing and treatment is likely to interfere with rehabilitation. Tehan was too stupid to listen to her or acknowledge the possibility that the experts might know something that he, an arts graduate majoring in political science who also has a master’s degree in foreign affairs and trade, did not know. Perhaps he got to know a thing or two about drugs as minister for veteran’s affairs or minister for defence materiel. Or it could be that he is just bloody minded and ignorant.

The ABC should know that children listen to the Breakfast Program and that children should not be subjected to displays of such oafish stupidity by people purporting to be cabinet ministers. I despaired and went to town. Upon returning I fool heartedly turned on the radio to listen to the ABC’s PM program.

There were the dulcet tones of the hysterical senator Michaelia Cash from Western Australia screaming about the young women working in Bill Shorten’s Office about whom she had heard some rumours and if senator Doug Cameron did not stop asking her who in her office leaked to journalists, news about Federal police raids about to take place on the office of a union, she would use parliamentary privilege to spell out rumours she had heard about the young women.

Well what are we left with, Tehan might well make an excellent minister assisting the prime minister on ANZAC Day celebrations but he is totally unsuited to be minister for social security. Turnbull would assist every citizen were he to permanently station Tehan in the carpark at Anzac Cove and provide a demountable in which he could live 13 months of each year. Nothing can save Michaelia Cash from her own ugly mouth and mind. Every time she opens her mouth she detracts from the sum total of human decency. She should be permanently stationed at the old Lang Hancock lease in the town of Wittonoon.

written: 2/3/18

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Justifying Basic Income

Written in 2005. Don’t think it was published

In Real Freedom for All Philippe Van Parijs says paying a Basic Income to everyone, irrespective of whether or not they make a contribution to production, is justified because the knowledge endowment and previous technological advances are frequently unacknowledged and may be are unknowable which are used by those individuals who make intellectual or technological “inventions”. Under the present system such inventions if patented provide that individual with wealth. In any case such past knowledge endowment or previous technology is not owned by the individual making the invention but is owned by every member of the society collectively.

This analysis is an adaptation of Thomas Paine’s 1795 (in Agrarian Justice) justification for providing an income guarantee to every member of a society because all own the wealth which flows from privatising the collective ownership of the land of the nation.

On the other hand, those in the “participation income”/ “mutual obligation” corner who want to make payment of income support dependent on the individual receiving income support “giving something back”. They insist that those assisted have to be prepared to enter / re-enter the workforce or make some other contribution to justify payment. This is their way of preventing “free loaders” “abusing” the “generosity” of the beatified “taxpayer”.  With all the subtlety of a door to door salesperson about to offer a set of free steak knives with the next purchase, the “participation income”/ “mutual obligation” crowd also suggest that they are not so much motivated by a fear that some unemployed person might get “something for nothing” as by a “desire to seek the inclusion” within the warm embrace of mainstream society of those whom neither government nor industry can find employment.

Australian disability activist David Morell (1998) considers;

‘inclusion’ in the ‘community’ is not enough. Indeed the very concept does not make sense. The ‘community’ itself is so full of oppression, separation, exclusion, diverse interests and conflict for many of those who are already ‘included’ in it as to render the uncritical use of the concept positively misleading and pursuit of the goal of inclusion disempowering (p.17).

This point is reinforced by Abberley (1999) who contends that:

just because a main mechanism of our oppression is our exclusion from social production, we should be wary of drawing the conclusion that overcoming this oppression should involve our wholesale inclusion in it….

a society may be willing and in certain circumstance become eager to absorb a proportion of its impaired population into the workforce, yet this can have the effect of maintaining and perhaps intensifying its exclusion of the remainder. We need to develop a theory of oppression which avoids this bifurcation, through a notion of social integration that is not dependent upon impaired people’s inclusion (p.53).

Amongst the ranks of “participation income “advocates are the “workfare”, “time limited welfare” disciplinarians of the poor, whom the charitable or overly tactful would call paternalists (Standing 2002). Within this group there are people like Lawrence Mead, one of the ideological defenders of the Wisconsin welfare cutbacks. Mead claims that forcing people into poverty line work is good for them because somewhere down the track they will eventually get better paid jobs. Mead claims his “help and hassle” regime forces poor people to do what is “not only in their best interests, but what they really want to do anyway”. His argument conveniently ignores the fact that poverty line workfare “employees” drive wages down, that low minimum wages in the US and the length of time people stay on the bottom rung of the wage ladder confounds Mead’s claims (Johnston 2005).

Mead’s, John Howard’s and Tony Blair’s Third Way path to poverty alleviation via righteousness and mutually obligated inclusion is predicated upon the idea maximising national production though the imposition of obligations upon the very people who are most marginal to the productive process – those for whom government and industry has failed to find employment. We are asked to believe not only will such policies enhance production but that will make single parents and unemployed people happier.

Such claims about the increased personal satisfaction flowing from imposed obligation would seem to run counter to liberal and social democratic philosophies about individual freedom. Individuals are often, if not always, in the best position to determine what would make them happy. Individual left to their own devices will maximise the opportunities they wish to pursue. If self-actualisation for poor people was really what drives mead and the “mutual obligation” crowd then they would be attempting to impose the maximum personal liberty on recipient of income support.

It is hard not to believe the imposers of obligations upon those most marginal to the productive process are not behaving like the Little Red Hen in the fairy story who turned down requests from the other farm yard “animals who wanted to share the bread she made after having ignored all her requests for help in making it” (Van Parijs 1997, p.133).

Bibliography 

Abberley, P. (1999) “The Significance of Work for the Citizenship of Disabled People.” Abstract. Vol. 3, No. 3, December.
Johnston, D (2005) “ Stroke the Rich.” The San Francisco Chronicle 11^th April
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/041105Y.shtml
Morell, D. (1998) “The Long View from Conferenceville.” Abstract. Vol.2, No. 1, March.

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Left-overs

Written circa 2000

“5,000 fewer jobs in Centrelink will make the Department more responsive.”

NASA had just announced that it was putting its Mars flights programs on hold following the loss of two recent missions, it was also reviewing its motto “Cheaper Faster Better” on the back of a report which found that NASA’s excessive cost cutting had substantially contributed to the demise of both Mars flights.

Basic income and citizenship

Many writers have argued that a minimum income guarantee should be a right of citizenship. Most, when questioned on this point, say that they would include all people who have permanent residency. As the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre puts it:

Our support for the (Universal Basic Income) UBI has always been on the basis that it should be a basic right of residency, a recognition that we are all stakeholders in society and that a UBI would provide choices and flexibility for people to participate in and contribute to society (1998, p.6).

I share the view that all permanent residents of a country should have an entitlement to a Basic Income and would argue that in a mature democracy in relation to the need for and the right to be provided with a basic income of both citizens and permanent residents are not significantly different.

Ensuring both citizens and permanent residents have a right to a basic income is an act of inclusion, even incorporation. Installing a UBI will be a small step not a panacea for all social ills.  Even if we succeed in putting in place in our country a universal basic income this will only mean the removal of one obstacle (albeit an important one) to introduction of a socially just society.  For as disability activist David Morell (1998), warns “Citizenship is more than ‘inclusion in the community’.” (p.16) He says:

‘inclusion’ in the ‘community’ is not enough. Indeed, the very concept does not make sense. The ‘community’ itself is so full of oppression, separation, exclusion, diverse interests and conflict for many of those who are already ‘included’ in it as to render the uncritical use of the of the concept positively misleading and the pursuit of the goal of inclusion disempowering (p.17).

A Basic Income is just that – an income floor guaranteed to all permanent residents.  For it to be meaningful it has to be set at a level sufficient to ensure everyone sufficient to maintain them above the Henderson poverty line.

Economics of surplus: are we attacking the wrong problem?

It would matter little what level of unemployment existed in Australia if we were able to find a way to provide all permanent residents with a basic income sufficient to sustain them provided we were prepared as individuals and as a society to allow people to define their own social meaning outside the paid workforce and to be willing to recognise others evaluation of their importance to self.  

Perhaps this is a pipe dream in a country where:

• the Federal Government’s response to the High Court’s exposure of the myth of terra nullius and the Court’s determination that native title and lease holders rights could co-exist but that where the two conflicted the existing rights of leaseholders prevailed, was to remove indigenous people’s rights over property in order to “provide certainty to pastoralists and miners” (in fact to expand the existing property rights of national and transnational owners of capital),
• the Prime Minister John Howard chose the National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) Week to push through Native Title Amendment Act in the Senate,
• we participated in an eight year blockade of Iraq – the imposition of sanctions in that country resulted in the death of over 1 million Iraqi children (Arbuthnot 1998, Simons 1998), and connived with the Indonesian dictatorship in the subjugation of East Timor for 23 years,
• we seem more intent upon negotiating Multinational Agreement on Investment (MAI) treaty (DEETYA 1998 p.10)than in meeting the United Nations foreign aid targets so as to help assist the 1,000 million people living on the brink of starvation,
• the nursing home user pays regime which the Government imposed on frail aged Australians undermined the confidence of the majority of the elderly (Macklin 1998),
• we display an uncaring attitude towards fellow Australians experiencing disadvantage and disability, and
• we denigrate people excluded from paid employment reinforcing the impression that we as a nation are oblivious to the suffering of our less advantaged comrades.

If we are to build an alternative way of relating to our fellow citizens then we will need to jettison much of the economic rationalist ideas which now clutter our intellectual saddle bags.

Stripped of its finery economics is about how we exchange our surpluses, whereas as a science it has somehow been transformed into an economics of scarcity where everything is expressed in monetary terms. …We have created the shadow of scarcity, the polar shadow of which is greed. This is fuelled by  the dominant world paradigm based on rationality and self-interest. … Fortunately we are not always rational and will cooperate when we really come to know and trust each other and have the power and resources to implement solutions. This is the foundation to an economics of abundance – of labour, goodwill and renewable resources (Fricker 1998, p.1).

The last part of this paper will examine the obstacles to the development of such trust.

The bludgers wouldn’t work in an iron lung

The most frequent response I have encountered when discussing the introduction of a Basic Income with people who have not thought a lot about Australia’s system of income support is: “If everyone could get ‘the dole’ for doing nothing then none of the bludgers would work they’d just go and lie in the sun on Surfers Paradise beach.”and when I ask: “Why do you think that?”  They say “Well I wouldn’t go to work if I could get away with it.”  Usually when pushed on this response people say that they’re bored with the work they are doing and would like to have time to write, read, do further study, spend more time with the family, do more interesting work or that they just need a break.  But at the moment, they are working too hard or doing too much unpaid overtime (which they claim they to need to do either to keep their job or to do their job well).  If pushed further many admit that going to work provides meaning in their lives and that they work, for reasons in addition to economic necessity. They may even agree they couldn’t manage anything like their current standard of living on an income at the Henderson poverty line and would work to maintain their  current consumption level.  Some accept that in large part their identity is tied to their conception of themselves as someone who works, who produces, who contributes to the society and even to the type of work that they do.  Almost invariably, when they reach that point of analysis, they revert to their first statement “Yeah, I’d still work but if you had a Basic Income in place, we’d be overrun with dole bludgers and very soon there’d be hardly anyone working and the whole society would be bankrupted.”

The issue of work withdrawal and affordability has been debated ad nauseam and there is no compelling evidence to support the assertion that people provided with a UBI would desert work in droves. (See NZUBI Web Site, Van Parijis 1992, VCOSS and Good Shepherd 1995, Tomlinson 1989, Ch. 3, 1991, Watts 1995, contra Pixley 1993).  Nor is there any evidence that a UBI is unaffordable (Rankin 1998, VCOSS and Good Shepherd 1995).  There is an  abundance of  contrary evidence to the assertion that if a UBI were in place then people would leave work in large numbers and that a UBI would be unaffordable. The interesting feature is the resilience of such beliefs.

An explanation

The most compelling explanation of the resilience of these myths is that it is our failure to trust ourselves which in turn leaves us unable to trust others.  Our reluctance to trust ourselves or to trust others to continue to contribute to the society derives from a central conservative ideological position which conceives of humans as inherently imperfect.  The belief in the flawed nature of humans derives from either the concept of original sin or from the belief that though we might start off life without blemish on our journey we become corrupted -as we are sinned against we learn to sin.  Robert Theobald (1998) suggests that “Today we are largely driven by a belief in original sin; we feel that most people, most of the time will behave destructively unless constrained by coercive power” (p.1).

The lack of optimism about fellow humans found in the ranks of those who oppose the introduction of a UBI, their conservatism, their need to blame and coerce the least affluent / advantaged, their denigration of the very people from whom they extract surplus capital and the those who constitute the reserve army of labour, is only matched by their fervent desire to exploit to the maximum the environment and their fellow humans for individual gain (Tomlinson & Lincoln 1995).  The exploitative belief structure which seems to be driving both economic rationalist and anti-UBI agendas is a unique, sometimes contradictory, blend of classical conservative and market liberal thought.  It takes unto itself beliefs in the sanctity of privately owned property yet can legislate to abolish indigenous people’s property rights (Native Title Amendment Act 1998).

The Benthamite principle of greatest good for the greatest number is supposedly arrived at as the end result of intense individualised competition. Liberty is, for economic rationalists, a freedom from restraint. Freed even from the restraint of tradition, good form or the ‘common good’. The promotion of the individual’s right to exploit, which economic rationalists define as freedom, reduces the ‘common good’ to the end results of trickling down prosperity – a urinary  rather than a unified economic theory.

The promotion of ‘self provision’ over collective provision suits those with the capacity to provide for themselves but is a statement of intending neglect of those unable to afford to provide for themselves. Beyond this basic criticism of self provision several writers (ACTCOSS 1991, Pha 1992, ACOSS 1998)have pointed out that many of those who are allegedly providing for themselves are quite wealthy individuals who receive a considerable subsidy from the state. The better off superannuates receive far greater assistance from the state than do pensioners.

The very Governments (of the United States, Britain, New Zealand and Australia) who are flirting with an international treaty to guarantee international capital (MAI) protection are those engaged in removing existing rights of workers and welfare beneficiaries.  They want industrial relations deregulated but want to maintain the highly regulated modes of distribution.

The adoption of economic rationalism and globalisation with its associated downsizing and job exportation, its user pays and self provision, its denial of citizenship (exemplified in Maggie Thatcher’s “There’s no such thing as Society” statement) coupled with the plunder by transnational corporations of the third world’s labour and ecological resources constitutes this celebration of extreme individualism.  All of this goes under the name of world best practice. In the Australian context world’s best practice means:

• cheapest: accomplished by non-unionised labour, long (12 hour) shifts, lack of environmental protection, gutting of award conditions, unsafe work sites-all of which add to the increased likelihood  work place injuries, that is industrial murder,
• deregulation,
• competition,
• individualised contracts,
• low paid, casual / insecure of employment, in a word in immiseration.

There is an alternative and that alternative starts with the introduction of a Universal Basic Income.

Bibliography

ABS, Australian Bureau of Statistics (1996)  Labour Force. Cat. No 6202.0.
ACOSS,  (1998) Budget Priority Statement 1998-99. ACOSS, Sydney.
ACTCOSS, (1991) The Super Tax Rort. ACTCOSS, Canberra.
Arbuthnot, F.  (1998) “Dying of Shame.” New Internationalist.  Jan/Feb, pp.12-13.
Auckland  Unemployed Workers Rights Centre (1998) “Common Misconceptions about the Community Wage (Workfare)” Mean Times. Vol. 9 Issue 1, June, pp. 6-7.
Cass, B. (1988) Income Support for the Unemployed in Australia: Towards a more Active System. AGPS, Canberra.
Castles, F. (1994) “The Wage Earners Welfare State Revisited.” Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol.29, No.2.
Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs ( DEETYA), (1998) “Cross-border investment: Rules of the Game.” News on Higher Education. Vol.1, No. 1, June, p.16.
Easton, B. (1997) The Commercialisation of New Zealand. Auckland University, Auckland.
Ficker, A. (1998) “Beyond Scarcity and Greed.” Paper given at the Beyond Despondency  Conference, Wellington. 26 -28 th. March.
Gorz, A  (1995) Paths to Paradise: On the liberation from work. Pluto, London.
Green, D. (1994) Community Without Politics. Institute of Economic Affairs, Health and Welfare Unit.London.
Horin, A. (1998) “Dole cut for thousands of young jobless.” Sydney Morning Herald. June,29^{th .} p.10
Kelsey, J. (1995) The NewZealand Experiment: A World Model for Structural Adjustment. Auckland University & Bridget Williams, Auckland.
Langmore, J. & Quiggan ,J. (1994) Work for All: Full Employment in the Nineties. University of Melbourne, Carlton.
Macklin, J. (1998) Current House Hansard. [Australian Federal Parliament] 24^th.
March. pp. 1,004-1,010.
Morrell, D. (1998) “The Long View from Conferenceville.” Abstract. Vol. 2, No. 1, March, pp.16-19.
Murray, M. (1997) “…And Economic Justice For All”: Welfare Reform for the 21^st. Century. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk.
Native Title Amendment Act 1998.
Nolan, R. (1997) “Compliance and Control in the Newstart Program.”  in Tomlinson, J., Patton, W., Creed, P. & Hicks, R. (eds.) Unemployment: Policy and Practice. Australian Academic, Brisbane.
NZUBI (1998) New Zealand Universal Unconditional Basic Income Web Site. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/ubinz.html#ubinz.
O’Brien, M. (1998) Social Responsibility: Whose Agenda. Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre, Auckland.
Omerod, P. (1994) The Death of Economics. Faber & Faber, London.
Pha, A. (1992) How Super is Super. Socialist Party of Australia, Surry Hills.
Pusey, M. (1991) Economic Rationalism in Canberra. Cambridge University, Cambridge.
Rankin, K. (1998) Keith Rankin Web Site http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1223/
Rees, S., Rodley, G. & Stilwell, F. (1993) Beyond the Market. Pluto, Leichhardt.
Riches, G. (ed.) (1997) First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politics. Macmillian, London.
Ryan, W. (1971) Blaming the Victim. Vintage, New York.
Selbourne, D. (1994) The Principle of Duty. Sinclair- Stevenson, London.
Simons, G. (1998) The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice. Mcmillan, New York.
Stilwell, F. (1993) Economic Inequality: Who gets what in Australia. Pluto, Leichhardt.
Stromback, T., Dockery, M. & Ying, W. (1998) Labour Market Programs and Labour Market Outcomes. Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, Parkville.
The Jobs Letter (New Zealand) (1998) No. 77, 27^th  April, p.2.
Theobald, R. (1998) “A New Vision and How to Achieve it.” The Healing Century. 10^th May, ABC. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/events/rttrans6.htm.
Tomlinson, J. (1989) Income Maintenance in Australia: The Income Guarantee Alternative. Ph.D Thesis Murdoch University, Perth.
Tomlinson, J. (1991) “Work and Income Guarantees.” Social Alternatives. Vol 10, No. 3, pp.5-8.
Tomlinson, J. (1997) “There but for the Grace of Wealth go I.” in O’Brien, M. & Briar, C. Beyond Poverty. Peoples Centre & Massey University, Auckland.
Tomlinson, J. & Lincoln, R. (1995) “Guaranteed Minimum Income and the Environment.” Just Policy. No. 4 September, pp.59-63.
VCOSS & Good Shepherd (1995) Income Support in an Open Economy: Basic Income Revisited. VCOSS & Good Shepherd, Melbourne.
Watts, R. (1995) “Unemployment and Citizenship: Reconstituting Social Policy in the Twenty First Century.” in Hicks, R. Creed, P. Patton, W. & Tomlinson, J. (eds.) Unemployment: Developments and Transitions. Australian Academic, Brisbane.

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Let’s get Basic 

I think this was a paper given at a Coffee Unemployment circa 2001.

Income insecurity is a constant preoccupation of citizens surviving on low incomes. Categorical, selective, targeted welfare payments which exist in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States have not succeeded in abolishing Beveridge’s five giants of ‘squalor, want, ignorance, disease and idleness’ (Timmins,1995). The modern welfare state, in the countries mentioned, does not guarantee all permanent residents a secure income. Each of these countries has toyed with the idea of introducing generalised income guarantees for all permanent residents. Such partial income guarantees which have been installed have had eligibility requirements attached to them which demand either proven incapacity to labour, work willingness or some socially approved basis for not working (such as sole parenting or age).

With the exception of some reasonably generalised family tax credits or family welfare benefits there has been a move away from broad income support policies towards more targeted forms of categorical income arrangements. As the promise of generalised income support receded, governments in these English speaking western countries have introduced compelled activity as part of the eligibility requirements for entitlement to income support. In New Zealand, following the 1999 election victory, the Labour / Alliance Government began slowly dismantling much of the compelled activity superstructure of their conservative predecessor’s income support system. This is the first step away from the ‘Third Way’ activity requirements, workfare, Wisconsin ‘reforms’, ‘work for the dole’, and ‘mutual obligation’ preoccupations of a series of governments in these countries. The governments which most ardently push a ‘mutual obligation’ agenda are the very ones who are preoccupied with ‘welfare dependency’. Ray Cassin, chief leader writer of The Sunday Age, reflecting on this phenomena points out that:

You can be ‘on’ social security in the literal sense of receiving benefits, but this usage does not carry the pejorative flavour of being ‘on’ welfare. The reason is not mysterious: we do not talk about social security dependency, or social-services dependency because ‘social security’ and ‘social services’ are bound up with an older notion of entitlement, and an understanding of mutual obligation that goes beyond tit-for-tat reciprocity….

The ideal of mutual obligation underpinning a system of social security is not one of reciprocity, but of obligation borne by all of us to contribute to the support of people who would otherwise be destitute (2000 p. 22,see also Cass 1995 p. 38).

The constant claim of government spokespeople in Australia when defending the existing categorical benefit system is that (through an austere safety net) it assists all in need. However the breaching of 200,000 social security recipients in the 1999/2000 financial year plus the extension of ‘work for the dole’ and other compelled activities demonstrates the tenuous security experienced by those receiving social security.

Once writers might have argued for an income support proposal on the grounds that its introduction would enhance equity, equality, justice, or because it removed an anomaly, lessened stigma, made claiming easier for recipients, provided similar benefits to all in like situations or increased recipients’ feelings of security. A universal unconditional Basic Income does all these things. However the consolidation of economic fundamentalism in the last decade now means that economic efficiency arguments are often the only propositions listened to by government ministers. There is nothing wrong with having to establish the utility of any proposal but what has changed is that arguments which go to the usefulness to clients of any income support program are relegated to the periphery of government concern. Narrow economic efficiency arguments now take centre stage. Consequently this chapter will set out universal Basic Income’s claim to being the most efficient way to provide a guaranteed minimum income to all permanent residents in a way which enhances both national productivity and personal creativity.

From 1918 until 1922 Dennis Milner, Mabel Milner & Bernard Pickard campaigned for the introduction of a Basic Income (Van Trier 1995 Part 1). As Walter Van Trier (1995) and Philippe Van Parijs (1992[b] p. 25) reminds us, ever since the first book length plea for Basic Income written by Milner (1920) economic efficiency arguments have played a major role. Milner wanted to ensure the inadequacies of the British poor law system were overcome, to enhance national productivity, and to provide a more equitable base from which workers might negotiate wages (Van Trier 1995 Part 1). Many of the issues dealt with here are synonymous with those which preoccupied the Milners and Pickard. Milner did not see the introduction of a Basic Income as the be all and end all just one step on the way to a more secure life for all citizens. Milner entitled his book Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output: A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with national productivity. Milner (1920 ch.2) argued that the amount of funds available for distribution should be 20% of national production as this would provide a share of the nation’s wealth for all permanent residents whilst encouraging all to produce more to raise the value of the dividend.

Why have income support?

The standard justification for the provision of welfare services has been that people needed them and were unable to obtain them by other means. Following the Poverty Inquiry’s recommending the introduction of a Guaranteed Minimum Income in 1975, Bill Hayden, Minister for Social Security in the Whitlam Government, and a supporter of the introduction of a Henderson style GMI (Tomlinson 1989 ch. 6) felt the Australian income support system ‘had grown like topsy’ and needed to be integrated into a coherent whole. He acknowledged the basis on which benefits were supplied was at times difficult to justify and confusing to recipients. Hayden was grappling with many of the same issues which, 25 years later the Final Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform (2000 [b]) acknowledged when they wrote: the current income support system “is overly complex and relies heavily on assumptions about capacity and behaviour that are now questionable” and that pension / benefit / allowance transitions cause life difficulties and unintended incentives and disincentives (pp. 19 & 68).

In Chapter 2 the argument was mounted that ‘needs based’ explanations do not adequately explain why welfare programs are provided. It was argued that such explanations serve to mystify the intent of providers and disguise the real level of need both amongst recipients and those who are refused.

‘Needs based’ provision can be supplied on an individual basis, as occurs in emergency relief agencies. More commonly ‘needs based’ income support in advanced economies is provided to categories of people, such as those who have a disability or who are unemployed. Chapters 3, 4 and 7 demonstrated similarities in the income support needs of people divided by categorical assistance programs and others who are denied benefits. It was also argued that governments and agencies use such ‘needs based’ categorical benefits as a way of limiting the levels of assistance and the amount allocated to relieve hardship. It was further argued that the creation of specific forms of categorical assistance divide recipients from each other, from the wider working class and from their humanity.

Discrimination on the basis of age, locality, race, gender, disability and class structure Australian society. These hegemonic forces impact on all aspects of social life and are clearly observable in income support policy. Young unemployed people are paid at lower rates than older job seekers. In Chapter 5 the failure of the State to provide the bush with anything like the same level or range of services as their city cousins was examined. The methods by which Indigenous Australians have been excluded from the ‘white’ social security system and from economic development were detailed in Chapter 6. Throughout this book there has been considerable discussion of the patriarchal presumption which suggests that the family is the appropriate unit of income for the payment of welfare benefits. Chapter 7 specifically investigated the ableist construction that it is an individual’s impairment rather than the disabling society which should be the point of focus. At one level, this book is a polemic against the elitist presumptions that working class people have a propensity to sink into the slough of ‘dependency’ unless compelled to meet government imposed ‘mutual obligations’.

In Chapter 8 the relationship between welfare provision, categorical payment forms and trust were examined. The argument was put that it is our failure to trust ourselves to do the right thing which leads us not to trust others and which prevents governments introducing a universal Basic Income. Governments in English speaking western countries hedge their bets on income support policies through the imposition of selectivity, categorical eligibility requirements and ‘mutual obligations’. When governments consider:

• threats to productivity,
• work disincentives,
• work readiness of minority racial groups,
• single motherhood,
• working class compliance, or
• the capacity of people with disabilities to work

they rely on the conservative belief in the imperfection of human beings rather than the belief that people treated with dignity will respond constructively. In Australia the Government has excluded recently arrived migrants from applying for the normally available categorical income support payments for two years following their arrival. Examples have been provided of many quite poor citizens who have no income support entitlement from the State because of the increasingly targeted income support policies of the last decade. This has led some to assume it would be impossible to convince Australian governments in the foreseeable future to introduce a Basic Income.

The contradictory belief structure which leads governments to assume that the rich need to be encouraged to produce but the poor have to be compelled to labour lies at the heart of the construction of the income support systems of the countries discussed. The fact that such arguments (about lesser eligibility, the poor’s fecklessness, the associated need for coercion and the importance of increasing the huge differentials in income between the owning and labouring classes) are a nonsense, does not make them any less valued by social conservatives. John Kenneth Galbraith ridiculed such arguments by pointing out that “It always boils down to the highly improbable case that the rich are not working because they have too little income and the poor because they have too much.” [cited in Boreham, Dow & Leet (1999) p.104]

It was earlier suggested that research could go some way towards reassuring governments about the work intentions of the less affluent. Yet it was recognised that because economic fundamentalism holds hegemonic sway, such research would be viewed through this ideological lens. Beyond links to the poor law assumptions about the need for ‘less eligibility’ there are clear connections with public choice theory in the way the governments construct income support policies, insisting that behaviour “is best understood by assuming its motivation is single-purposed, acquisitive and unchanging (Stretton & Orchard 1994 p. 18)”.Coupled with this is the related neoclassical liberal belief that welfare problems “are rational responses to the incentive structures that face individuals. Social harmony will emerge spontaneously only if the appropriate market signals are operative (Barry 1998 p. 58).”

A quick look at two alternatives to Basic Income

Little space has been devoted, in this book, to consideration of privatised superannuation, as has been implemented in Australia or social insurance coverage as exists in many parts of Europe and North America. Superannuation in Australia is an occupational benefit and, by definition, excludes those not in the paid workforce, or those whose spouses are not in the paid work force. It excludes the bulk of the Indigenous population because they are employed under the Community Development Employment Program. It disadvantages those with multiple employers, casual and seasonal workers, women and those on low incomes. Professor Russell Mathews, a leading Australian economist, referring to the Australian system, wrote:

it is difficult to conceive of superannuation arrangements that would be more administratively wasteful, less certain to provide adequate retirement benefits and therefore less likely to reduce the burden of age pensions on government budgets, and more inequitable for both employers and employees (cited by Stretton 1996 p.26).

Social insurance proposals have been considered in Australia but rejected. They have been implemented in many countries but they do not have the capacity to provide a secure income to all citizens because “the benefit rates are generally based on prior wage levels rather than need. They are not designed to provide adequately for those with special needs…The highest rates go to the most privileged…rather than those in most need of assistance (Perry 1995 p. 18)”. In terms of both equity and efficiency both these forms of self provision fail to provide an adequate income support base for all permanent residents of a country.

Efficiency

Given prevailing perceptions of human behaviour, it will not be an easy task to convince governments of English speaking countries to implement a universal income guarantee for all permanent residents. If governments are to be convinced to move in the direction of Basic Income then making available research on productivity, work willingness and ‘dependency’ which confounds their preconceptions will be an important part of the struggle.

Governments in the countries under discussion consistently suggest they are providing social security in an efficient and accountable manner. They are certainly capable of determining the cost of delivering specific categorical benefits to those recipients who are paid. They can and do calculate how much they ‘save’ by cutting people off income support when they do not meet the totality of eligibility requirements for any specific benefit. This is accounting or target efficiency. They seem disinterested in how people who are refused benefits get by, or what social costs are incurred in the wake of decisions to remove income support from such citizens. Target efficiency processes give no measure of how efficient the system of social security is. Because the central issues which should be taken into account when assessing the efficiency of a social security system are not considered.

Some of the system wide efficiency measures, which would need to be taken into account if the efficiency of the system was being calculated, would be:

• are any of the people excluded from the social security system poor,
• how many people who have an entitlement miss out,
• how satisfied are the people who are confined to low levels of income support,
• does the social security system advance social justice for all permanent residents,
• are the human rights of all residents protected (or even enhanced),
• does the system remove all obstacles to inclusion of people with a disability,
• are all genders, ages and ethnic groups treated equally or equitably,
• is there equitable treatment provided to city and country people, and
• does the system of income support provide sufficient security to recipients so as to allow them to contribute to society in ways with which they are comfortable?

Governments sometimes move away from narrow accounting efficiency measures and attempt to look broadly at efficiency in terms of what is happening across an entire economy. In 1993, in the Labor Government’s Green Paper, the Committee on Employment Opportunities declared:

The loss of production through unemployment is the greatest single source of inefficiency in our economy. Unemployment is also the most important cause of inequality and alienation for individuals, families and communities (p.1).

A recent cross-country study (Goodin, Headey, Muffels & Dirven 1999) compared citizens’ response to different income support policies. The three countries considered in detail in this study were chosen because a decade of comparable panel data existed allowing the authors to explore the issues of: economic growth, efficiency, poverty, inequality, social integration, stability and autonomy. The countries chosen for analysis were: the United States where the welfare state represents the liberal form, Germany with its corporatist welfare regime and Holland which has a social democratic style of welfare. Goodin, Headey, Muffels & Dirven (1999) explain:

The classically liberal welfare regime is rooted in capitalist economic premises and confines the state to a merely residual social welfare role. The classically social democratic welfare regime is rooted in socialist economic premises and assigns the welfare state a powerfully redistributive role. The classically corporatist welfare regime is rooted in communitarian ‘social market’ economics and sees the welfare regime as primarily a facilitator of group-based mutual aid and risk pooling (Italics in original p. 39).

Goodin, Headey, Muffels & Dirven (1999 Part 3) make the point that in social policy debates it is frequently asserted that inevitable trade offs occur between economic growth, efficiency, poverty, inequality, social integration, stability and autonomy. But what they found was the Dutch social democratic welfare regime equalled or exceeded the performance of the corporatist Germans and the liberal US system across all these social and economic objectives.

Such findings have considerable relevance to the direction an informed nation would choose if it wanted to change its system of income support services from one grounded on ideological assumptions to one based on substantiated research. The Australian welfare state might once have had considerable social democratic aspects but has, in recent times, moved closer to the US liberal regime of minimalist provision.

The careful cross country analysis of panel data presented by Goodin, Headey, Muffels & Dirven (1999) allowed these researchers to follow real people’s experiences of work and welfare. In the past cross country analysts have been forced to compare aggregated statistical samples. Importantly, as Goodin, Headey, Muffels & Dirven looked at individuals they found an exceedingly small percentage of people who remained on welfare indefinitely under any of the systems investigated. Such findings fly in the face of the current Australian Government and Opposition’s preoccupation with ‘welfare dependency’ and its only known antidote – ‘mutual obligation’.

The really important message from this book is that whether one is seeking to promote economic growth and efficiency, stability, autonomy or to decrease poverty and inequality then the social democratic welfare state along the lines of the Netherlands exceeds the performance of the German corporatist regime which, in turn, exceeded that of the United States liberal regime (Goodin, Headey, Muffels & Dirven 1999 Part 3).

Australia has lost its way on welfare reform

The architects of ‘mutual obligation’ see it as having the capacity to move the social security system away from a rights focus and towards an individualised eligibility determining regime. The Reference Group on Welfare Reform (2000 [a], [b]) so internalised this proposition that they have proposed that even people who meet every requirement for payment of a specific categorical benefit should have the amount they are actually paid affected by how they ‘participate’ in the social and economic life of the community. The Minister in charge of income support is on record as saying “Simply providing payments to everyone who fits into a particular category fails to recognise the different capacities and potential people have to contribute to their own future (Newman 1999 p. 9).” This is the height of inefficient supply of benefits.

The final report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform (2000 [b] p.3) claimed that if nothing was done “Australia may be consigning large numbers of people to an intergenerational cycle of significant joblessness” and went on to prescribe extending compulsory participation from the unemployed to sole parents and Disability Support Pensioners. The Treasurer allocated funds in the 2001/2002 Federal Budget to extend the imposition of ‘mutual obligation’ to these categories of beneficaries.

In late August the Final Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform (2000 [b]) was welcomed by the Government, Labor and the Democrats. Michael Raper, President of ACOSS, saw it being a bridge over troubled waters – even if it had a few planks missing. The mainstream press response was generally positive (contra Cassin 2000), praising the way in which the Reference Group had attempted to reinterpret Prime Minister Howard’s hardline ‘mutual obligation’. The press took heart in the Report’s suggestion that sanctions should be a last resort and that the emphasis should be on a ‘partnership between income support recipients and the government designed to encourage participation in the economy and society’.

It is true that in the section of the Report dealing with ‘mutual obligation’ there was a recognition that “Some responses (to their interim report 2000[a]) argued that placing conditions on income support diminishes citizenship rights to an adequate minimum income (2000[b] p. 33).” However this did not stop the authors of the Report claiming:

Nevertheless, compulsion will be required for a minority of income support recipients and to ensure that governments, businesses and communities meet minimum standards in ensuring access to economic participation opportunities (p. 32, see also p. 40).

In the financial year 1999/2000 at least 200,000 income support recipients were breached by Centrelink -for them compulsion is an ever present threat. Government however has no legislative provisions in place which can compel “businesses and communities meet minimum standards in ensuring access to economic participation opportunities”. It would seem reasonable to ask what organisation is going to be in a position to compel governments to ensure “access to economic participation opportunities”. The Australian Government’s response to the reports of the United Nations Human Rights and Elimination of Racism Committees concerning the present Government’s breaches of international agreements, which Australia has signed and ratified, was to tell the UN to stay out of ‘Australia’s business’ (Garran 2000, p.1, Bessant 2000 [b]). Given such a Government response it is impossible to identify the vehicle which the Reference Group thinks will compel the Australian Government to ensure economic participation.

This is in fact the crux of the ‘mutual obligation’ debate: legal powers exist to compel income support recipients to reciprocate. But those who receive income support have no way of compelling the Government to meet its ‘reciprocal obligations’ which the Report identifies as being necessary if there is to be increased participation in the economic and social life of the nation. Under the title of Participation Support for a More Equitable Society the Reference Group advocates removal of the current legislated right of people with parenting responsibilities to not work until their youngest child turns 16 years. This right has been reduced to when the youngest child turns 6 years after which they will be required to attend yearly interviews (p. 43). Then when the child turns 13 parents will have to demonstrate how they intend to access economic participation opportunities (p. 43). A variant of ‘work for the dole’ or other compelled activity will be extended to some Disability Support Pensioners (pp. 12 -18).

The trade off that income support recipients are offered is a single rate payment for all ‘working age’ recipients plus a number of add on payments to: ‘increase participation’ and cope with special ‘needs’, family circumstances or disabilities (p. 24). The introduction of the Common Youth Allowance saw 46,000 16-18 year olds have their payments diminished or cut completely. Such reductions in benefit has occurred under both Labor and Liberal administrations since 1986 whenever common payment regimes have been installed. There is no reason to believe something different will happen this time. The Government has loudly proclaimed it will retain the value of benefits but, since 1986, such promises have always been given before cuts occurred. Even if the rates are not cut recipients are having the conditions under which they receive payment eroded by the imposition of compelled activity. The report acknowledges that the different benefit structures and advantages, which currently exist, cause confusion and unintended disincentives yet goes on to promote its uniform ‘work age’ payment plus ‘individualised add ons’ which must lead to even greater confusion (pp.22-31).

Perhaps more importantly it fails to advocate a general income guarantee for all ‘working age’ people (p. 22). Its recommendations, in relation to income support, only relate to those who now receive government income support. It stops short of advocating working families tax credits as exist in the United States and Britain and advocated by the Labor Party in Australia (p. 28). The Final Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform (2000 [b]) does not develop the idea of a general income guarantee to all working Australians as was recommended in Perry (1995) and Baldwin (1995). In fact, in this regard, it is a retreat from the Henderson Poverty Inquiries (1975, Vol. 1 ch. 6) recommendations.

The Report fails to successfully address a number of crucial dilemmas which arise out of its main recommendations. If there are advantages in having a uniform base rate of payment for all ‘working age’ income support recipients, why (apart from the imposition of conservative charity values) would there be any advantage in confusing such a structure with several add on payments calculated at an individual level? Many of these add on payments require determiners to apply considerable discretion. For example, assessors will determine what is appropriate participation ‘in the economic and social life of the nation’ for each applicant.

If there is a logic in having the same base rate for all ‘working age’ recipients why should it not be extended to older and younger people? After all, many people older than 65 years work as do many under the ‘working age’. There are two reasons for this: firstly the age lobby is united and powerful compared with ‘working age’ groups who have been divided amongst themselves; and secondly to include the young in such an income guarantee scheme would reverse decades of governments’ attempts to marginalise this age group. On top of this it would mean having to admit the present income support discrimination against the young is unjustified.

The Reference Group Report may have portrayed a kinder face of ‘mutual obligation’ than the Government has hitherto been able to present; but it has not been able to escape the inherent miserly conservative agenda which has been part and parcel of the administration of welfare services in Australia since the invasion. The parish has been replaced by the Commonwealth but the values of the poor laws remain.

There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to play a part in society and the economy. Compulsion can be replaced with trust, enablement, mutuality and assistance. People will take opportunities to engage. Only those addicted to a poor law view of the world want to force the poor to sing for their supper. There is nothing wrong with having one rate of social security income support for all permanent residents in this country -but it does not need to come with strings attached. There is no need to link work readiness and income support. In 1975 Professor Henderson recommended a Guaranteed Minimum Income. This book advocates the introduction of a universal Basic Income paid to each individual and at a rate at least that of the single age pension. Once such a program was in place governments would no longer be able to threaten the livelihoods of those most marginal to the productive process. For this to happen will require governments to choose, in Goodin words (1988 p. 7), between ‘a poor law state and a welfare state’.

A long time coming

It is as if governments believe there is no way to ensure a productive society other than to compel those who have the least opportunities. Governments in English speaking western countries seem obsessed by the cost of income support. The more important question is whether income support is affordable. Generous income guarantees become affordable when the amount of government revenue is raised. Presently governments have a preference for providing minimal welfare rather than increasing taxation. Just take one example: wealth taxes are an anathema to the rich in Australia, as a result there are no wealth taxes (in the form seen in many OECD countries). But Australia does have wealth taxes. They are called asset tests and are imposed on many forms of social security payments. Australian wealth taxes are applied at the very time when people are experiencing financial crises and result in only small savings to government outlays. It would be possible to tax all wealth and vastly increase government revenue and hence be in a position to expand the quality and coverage of income support. Instead governments have been content to let the welfare system evolve from the Poor Laws to poor laws (Stretton 1996).

In feudal England a number of support systems existed for members of the community who fell on hard times – their extended family in the first instance, others in the village with a surplus, the lord of the manor or the church. Strangers might not be helped and could be banished from the village and left to die at the crossroads. Each area had its own helping characteristics. However, before one was assisted others in the village had to have sufficient resources to help, there was an expectation of ‘mutual obligation’ and one had to be in good standing with other community members. In times of widespread crop failures these local helping systems broke down.

Not much changed in relation to the way poor people were helped until towards the end of the 18^th Century. At Speenhamland, Berkshire, in 1795 a number of landlords were unable to pay sufficient wages to ensure their farm labourers had an adequate income to sustain themselves and their families. The system provided a fixed scale of relief in line with the size of the labourer’s family and the price of wheat. In return labourers were required to continue to work. The scheme involved topping up the wages paid by the individual farm owners (Polanyi 1945).

The scheme was subsequently criticised by workers organisations because they saw that the minimum assistance had the capacity to become the going wage and that it was a subsidy to employers (Polanyi 1945 pp. 99-107). Some trade unionists to this day oppose income guarantee schemes on similar bases seeing Speenhamland type income guarantees as Capital’s method of lowering wages or as a form of ‘work for the dole’ both of which they see as undermining the dignity of paid labour.

There has been a parallel debate

Some observers draw different conclusions from the Speenhamland experience. They find a kernel of trust in others, a way to get the productive needs of society met by using the available labour and providing a floor below which no one would fall.

In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto which heralded a system where the basis of production and distribution would be ‘from each according to ability and to each according to need’. Though such a system has not been implemented in any country, the promise of the Manifesto has presented a challenge to all other systems of income distribution since that time. Bismarck’s reforms were measured against the Manifesto.

In Britain the earliest fully elaborated (book length) Basic Income proposal was put forward by Dennis Milner (1920, Van Trier 1995). After a brief flurry of activity between 1918 and 1922, his contribution disappeared from income support policy debates for over half a century. The British Liberal economist Lady Rhys-Williams, in 1943, set out a plan to introduce a guaranteed minimum income. In her book entitled Something to look forward to Lady Rhys-Williams’ aim was to provide an income floor without interfering with earnings. The economic fundamentalist writer Milton Friedman claims he developed his ideas on his form of income guarantee (the Negative Income Tax) during that year but it took him a further 18 years to publish his ideas. In 1975 Professor Ronald Henderson in the Main Report of the Poverty Inquiry, borrowing heavily on Lady Rhys -Williams’ ideas, advocated a Guaranteed Minimum Income for Australia.

Since that time many different forms of income guarantees have been promoted around the world. The major point of difference is the degree to which authors wish their income guarantee to ape the welfare income support system with its various categories of payment and means test or instead argue that income support should take the form of a truly universal payment to all as a right of citizenship.

Modern Basic Income proposals

Amongst proponents of generalised income guarantee there are divisions between supporters of Negative Income Tax (NIT), Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI), and Basic Income. The structural differences of each system were described in Chapter 9. The major difference between each of these income guarantees (in their pure form) and categorical income support payments is that generalised income guarantee eligibility does not necessitate any social requirements. However, many of the generalised income guarantee programs which have been promoted since 1943 have added social requirements, such as the willingness to work.

The major difference between GMI or NIT and Basic Income forms is that the first two are selective and Basic Income is universal. Proponents of NIT and GMI argue that it would cost the State less to introduce their models compared with a Basic Income. It is true that government outlays would be lower under NIT and GMI; but the actual drain on the budget bottom line of an unconditional Basic Income (because of increased tax compliance and ease of administration) might not be much greater than with other forms of income guarantees (Van Parijs 2000 pp. 8-9).

Dennis Milner (1920) set out to create a comprehensive program which would include everyone. He envisaged, in his proposal, everyone – irrespective of circumstances – being guaranteed an income as a right of citizenship (Van Trier 1995). Milton Friedman, when he advocated NIT, wanted to ensure that any income transfers went only to the poor. Lady Rhys Williams wanted to ensure no poor person missed out. Since then the majority of NIT and GMI advocates have wanted to direct the most assistance to those most in need. The arguments about selectivity covered in Chapters 2, 3 & 8 relating to categorical benefits have equal application to selective generalised income support programs.

There are many forms of generalised income guarantee schemes installed in Europe and there are plans afoot in several countries to move in the direction of a Basic Income (Van Parijs 2000). The actual model of Basic Income implemented in any country will depend on what other social wage components are retained and the capacity of that country to afford it. Van Parijs (2000) outlines many options a government might employ to reshape its tax and social welfare infrastructure as part of the Basic Income implementation process.

Until 4 years ago I believed that it would be more politically feasible to introduce a GMI than a Basic Income partly because the perceived cost of such schemes would be lower than for a Basic Income and Don Grimes (a progressive minister in the Hawke Cabinet) informed me that he and many of his colleagues were opposed to providing a guarantee of income support ‘to millionaires’. The other reason for supporting a GMI over a Basic Income is that the money is seen to be directed towards those living on low incomes.

Over the last few years:

• the increasingly targeted income support system,
• the increasing marginalisation of young people,
• the imposition of ‘mutual obligation’,
• the hegemony of economic fundamentalism,
• the income redistribution upwards via tax, education and health systems,
• the exponential growth of the ‘what’s in it for me’ mentality,
• the widespread working class acceptance of incessant calls for lower taxes, and
• the rise of a form of wedge politics designed to denigrate migrants, lone parents, those with a disability and Indigenous people whilst generating an ‘envy’ for the poverty line income they receive

has led me to revisit Goodin & Le Grand’s (1987) suggestion that if the rich do not benefit then the system will be under constant challenge.

The desire to assist those in greatest financial need to the greatest extent conflicts with the desire to treat people equally. The rationalisation that equality is a less important goal than equity explains the basis for promoting selectivity. The realisation that to treat unequals equally is as unjust as treating equals unequally supports the imposition of selectivity. On the other hand Boston & St John (1998 pp. 100-101) assert that if all are assisted equally then poorer people gain more because a dollar is worth more to them than to the rich. Claus Offe (1992), echoing Goodin & Le Grand (1987) describes the universal basic income as ‘economically’ inefficient because it delivers benefits to all when only some need the assistance but is ‘politically’ efficient because “spreading entitlement to benefits to ‘all’ is the inescapable political precondition that must first be met in order to make the arrangement popular with the middle class (pp. 72-73)”. The other problem with arguments to equity is that people differ from each other in what they consider fair. A further confounding feature, if Goodin & Le Grand (1987) are correct, is that poor people will experience greater security of income support if the affluent are included; and because everyone benefits this may lead to increased public support for raising income guarantee levels. That is, more money may go to the poor because more money is going to the rich.

Andre Gorz (1985 ch. 4) proposed a form of guaranteed income dependent upon a minimum contribution of 20,000 hours of labour over a life time. Since then the likelihood of increasing “insecurity of employment for all (Gorz 1999 p. 56)” led him to reject this guaranteed minimum income form and opt for a full unconditional Basic Income (pp.86-87). He specifically rules out any compulsion to contribute by ‘volunteer effort’ to society, as the various ‘mutual obligation’ regimes demand (1999 pp. 86-90). Gorz sees the purpose of the provision of a Basic Income “not to exempt people from doing anything at all, but to open up possibilities for everyone to engage in a whole host of individual or collective, private or public activities which no longer need to be profitable in order to flourish (1999 p. 100)”.

An Australian supporter of Basic Income (McDonald 1995 ch. 10) is critical of Henderson style GMI because of its categorical nature and its welfare style attempt to help those in need. McDonald sees the social welfare approach to income guarantees as attempting to assist those ‘most in need’ whereas a Basic Income has the capacity to ‘prevent need’. McDonald is critical of the social welfare approach to income guarantees because they result in high Effective Marginal Tax Rates due to combined income guarantee withdrawal and income tax rates (pp. 71-77). He believes that for those in work the money derived from a Basic Income will replace some of the income workers obtain from employment (p.72).

As mentioned earlier some trade unionists oppose universal income proposals on just such grounds. Reviewing the Canadian Macdonald Commission’s advocacy of a partial Basic Income set at a very low level, Lerner, Clark & Needham (1999 pp. 22-23, 31-33) saw that the Macdonald Commission plan had the capacity to “promote a race to the bottom in terms of wages and workplace standards as people in below-subsistence poverty competed fiercely for diminishing hours of paid work”. This is why they argue for a full Basic Income. As Standing (1999 p. 104) asserts “Having the assurance of basic income security would actually enable workers to say no with greater ease when confronted with sub-subsistence wages”. For the overwhelming majority of workers the question is not whether the provision of universal income guarantees lowers the amount received as a result of employment or not, nor is it whether there will have to be higher income tax rates needed to raise government revenues to pay the guarantee. The real question is: will workers at the end of each fortnight receive in their hands from all income sources – more, about the same or less than they do under the existing system?

Work done by Rankin (1997, 1998) in New Zealand, suggests that a universal income (with a 39% income tax rate plus the retention of much of the existing social security system) is affordable. Such an income guarantee would ensure that no pensioner or beneficiary would experience any cut in income. It would also mean that low income and no-income workers cash in hand situation would be improved following the introduction of his universal income compared with the present. Rankin envisages such a universal system as laying the foundations for a more generous income guarantee over time. In a recent letter Keith Rankin wrote “In particular, what matters is that the universal payment should be seen as income deriving from collectively owned property and not being a redistributive handout”.

Saunders (1995) suggests that it would be necessary to set the income tax rate at 50% if the intention was to introduce a full Basic Income in Australia. This may well be the case, but because of the payment of the income guarantee to all, if the amount paid as an income guarantee is deducted from the amount of income tax paid then the effective tax rates on earned income for the majority of full time workers would be roughly the same as they are now. Presently in Australia, once a beneficiary has exceeded the ‘income free limit’ the minimum combined tax and social security withdrawal rate is 60% and can be as high as 200%. The highest income tax rate applying to those earning over $60,000 is 47%. The majority of full time workers seem oblivious to the fact that such high effective marginal withdrawal rates apply to social security beneficiaries.

The rate of income tax necessary to fund a Basic Income will substantially depend on the level of other taxes. The rate and composition of the entire tax structure; for instance, consumption taxes (GST, VAT or wholesale sales taxes), customs and excise taxes, the presence or absence of wealth and death taxes will influence the required level of income tax. Alaska, for instance, provides a partial Basic Income funded entirely from a resource tax on oil extraction (Van Parijs 2000 p.4).

Throughout the workforce there is a growing fear of unemployment and a recognition that the prevalence of part-time, insecure and casual employment is increasing. This has yet to translate into a realisation that a Basic Income has the capacity to ensure everyone a secure income. If Gorz (1999) is correct and insecure employment is ‘coming soon to a work place near you’ then the installation of a Basic Income (paid at least at a level which has the capacity to sustain individuals and families in modest dignity) would be a good insurance policy. A universal Basic Income will at a minimum prevent the marginalisation, denigration and alienation to which many governments subject unemployed people. A Basic Income would raise the income of many social services beneficiaries, part-time and casual workers and would simultaneously raise income tax compliance because the taxation department would integrate collection of tax and payment of the guarantee.

Efficiency of income guarantees

Categorical benefits, by their very nature, set out to privilege certain categories of people. These categories may indeed be composed of very ‘needy’ people, but there is no guarantee they are the only ‘needy’ people yet the categorical system of income support assumes that the correct targets have been set and will be met. Goodin (1992) concedes that in a perfect world a welfare system might be able to identify and pay all the poor and only the poor. But the State is often employing surrogate measures and is basing its presumptions about ‘need’ on sociological ‘facts’ which are “uncertain, highly variable and, in any case constantly changing (p. 210)”. Because of this Goodin (1992) asserts that an efficient income support system is dependent upon avoiding such presumptions about human behaviour through the provision of an unconditional universal payment.

This point is reinforced by Perry (1995 p. 26), an Australian Department of Social Security researcher, who writes:

If the overall purpose is to provide for those who cannot, or are not expected to, participate in the labour force and for the unemployed who are looking for work, there are a number of gaps and inconsistencies…While from the perspective of each payment type certain exclusions seem reasonable, looking at the overall list of those with incomes below the social security cut-out points who are not eligible for payment, there does not seem to be any obvious principle distinguishing who is covered and who is not [italics in original].

Elsewhere in this text, Perry points to situations where one individual may have eligibility for one of six different types of benefit with differing conditions, means and asset tests applying (p. 23). The Australian Social Security Act and associated regulations run to around 1,500 pages each (p. 21). She concludes the Australian system of income support is complex, applies inappropriate assumptions, has too many gaps in provision, is insensitive to changing circumstances of recipients and subjects people in like circumstances to different treatment (p. 51). All of these features of the categorical system are the antithesis of efficiency.

When Goodin, Headey, Muffels & Dirven (1999) tackled the question of efficiency of the generous Dutch income support system and its minimalist United States counterpart they found considerable inefficiencies in the far less redistributive American system. Michael Murray (1997), an American supporter of the GMI, criticises the United States income support system for being:

• inefficient as an alleviator of poverty (pp.166-168),
• inefficient to administer because of its compelled activity and other stigma generating policies (ch. 4, p. 194), and
• inefficient because of its complexity (ch. 2, 6).

He considered the United States system of income support so inefficient at ensuring that all poor people received benefits, that when he proposed his suggested form of GMI, he wanted every citizen included except those who applied not to be part of the system (p.158).

Perhaps the most telling argument in favour of the efficiency of a Basic Income is that it provides all with a known minimum level of income which is paid irrespective of any other income source, making any other social policy much easier to implement. For example, if a government increases housing subsidies to make rental accommodation more affordable to social security recipients this can have differential impacts depending on whether the recipient is a pensioner or beneficiary. A further example is provided by Watts (1995[b]) who considers Basic Income a fundamental basis of citizenship, which “can underwrite both the freedom to choose…social transformations [like regendering of work] and can underpin further transformations [like redistributing wage work and shifting to an ecologically sustainable economy] (p. 26)”.

The economic fundamentalist preoccupation with efficient work places, designed to cope with the emerging globalisation, has led employers to downsize, contract out, expand the number of part-time jobs, attempt to deregulate industrial conditions, casualise the workforce, and increasingly use job hire firms. Each of these approaches has impacted on the sense of security of workers by expanding the extent of precarious employment. This in turn has meant that workers and their unions are often more inclined to resist change in the work place than would be the case were an unconditional Basic Income in existence. The reason is simple; at present, the choice for many retrenched workers is between employment and a stigmatised categorical income support system for which they might not qualify. A Basic Income ensures an income floor which provides retrenched workers with the income base from which to move on to other jobs (Van Parijs 1992[b] p.7). That is, the absence of a Basic Income creates an inefficiency in any economy subjected to increasing levels of technological change. It seems an absurd proposition for economic fundamentalists and conservative governments to claim that the mode of production has to deregulated for the sake of ‘efficiency’ but that the system of welfare redistribution should be increasingly regulated.

The ‘less eligibility’ argument, mounted by conservatives from the days of the Elizabethan poor law, suggests that unless welfare benefits are paid at a lower rate than would be obtained from paid jobs then work disincentives will occur. Such thinking continues to dominate policy debates in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Canada and the United States. This, when coupled with the economic fundamentalist mind set (which suggests that minimum wage legislation makes it increasingly difficult for employers to afford to provide jobs for the least skilled) has two impacts; minimum wages are kept low and so subsequently are benefit levels. “In effect, those at the lower end are being asked to fund jobs growth through wage reductions with rising inequality as a key outcome (Bell 2000 p. 253)”.

Van Parijs (1992[c] p.229) claims that because a Basic Income is paid, irrespective of all other sources of income, it can be used by those who desire work as a wage subsidy; yet, because it provides sufficient income on which to live, it does not compel any potential worker to work under conditions which that worker finds unacceptable. He concludes that “Whereas a rising means-tested benefit makes it increasingly difficult for unskilled people to find a job, a rising basic income makes it increasingly feasible (Van Parijs 1992[c] p.229)”.

With the qualification that there may be some jobs offered in any country which are so unsafe and poorly remunerated that no one in their right mind would take them- forcing people to take such jobs by threatening the removal of benefits is unconscionable. If the intention of those who promote categorical benefits which demand work readiness is to force workers to take all available jobs then this aim might be more efficiently achieved through a Basic Income than by the enforcement of ‘less eligibility’. The inordinate invasion of privacy in the lives of applicants for unemployment benefits, the imposition of ‘mutual obligation’ and other stigmatising practices all have to be paid for by governments out of permanent residents’ taxes. If the aim is to ensure that all job vacancies are filled, the provision of an unconditional Basic Income has the capacity to do that without compulsion. This would be both just and efficient.

World wide the major problem facing advanced economies is too many workers chasing too few jobs (Rifkin 1994, Omerod 1994, Gorz 1999, Boreham, Dow & Leet 1999, Stilwell 2000). Stigmatised, selective, targeted, categorical welfare payments coupled with ‘mutual obligation’ and other compelled activity scenarios are tackling a problem – the trouble is that they are tackling the wrong problem. A Basic Income, because it provides a known financial advantage for every extra dollar earned, abolishes both poverty traps and work disincentives (Lerner, Clark & Needham 1999 pp. 20-21). Gorz (1999 p.85) claims “The universal, unconditional grant of a basic income is, therefore…the best instrument for redistributing both paid work and unpaid activities as widely as possible [italics in original].”

The fear that generous categorical payments create work disincentives because the financial margin between working and living on benefits is not sufficient to make people want to work derives out of the public choice perception of human behaviour. It ignores the entire sociology of work research and assumes that the poor have to be compelled if they are to be productive. Most beneficiaries have only the vaguest idea of how the tax and social security combined withdrawal rates operate. Most categorical combined tax/benefit withdrawal rates are so high that they create for many a financial disincentive to part-time work which leads in turn to governments compelling people to take part-time work on threat of loss of all benefits. This is a very inefficient way to construct social policy. With a Basic Income there is always a financial incentive to work- the withdrawal rate is the tax rate – and is, as a result, known and easily calculated.

Attempting to ascertain the degree of impairment experienced by an individual applicant and then paying those applicants who can establish they have met some predetermined ‘level of incapacity to work’ is very costly and an extraordinarily inefficient method of providing income support to those with a disability. People with equivalent levels of impairments often have widely different employment histories (Perry 1995 p.29). It would be more efficient to provide a universal income guarantee if the desire is to encourage productivity / contribution / inclusion by those who have a disability. Australian governments have recognised this in relation to Blind Pensioners (Jordan 1984, Kewley 1973) but continue to subject others who have severe disabilities to stigmatised, selective, targeted, categorical payments.

Robert Goodin (1992 pp.196-197) points out that attempting to determine work capacity by measuring levels of impairment and the adoption of any other unit of payment than the individual creates target inefficiencies because such tests of eligibility are ‘surrogate measures’ – they do not test the things they purport to measure directly.

If income support is paid using the family as the unit of income then many people will not receive an income guarantee. It was shown in Chapter 9 that the assumption that if one member of a family is provided with sufficient income to support the entire family unit then this money will be distributed in an equitable manner is a flawed assumption. Therefore, if a government is interested in increasing the target efficiency of any form of income support (ensuring that those whom the benefit is designed to assist are assisted) then this can only be done by paying the benefit directly to the individual who is the intended beneficiary. This is why supporters of Basic Income insist that each individual should receive the guarantee in their own right. Persevering with the family as the unit of income simply creates target inefficiencies (Goodin 1992 pp.196-207).

Much of the argument in this Chapter about the efficiency of a Basic Income has concentrated on the supply of benefits, in the least stigmatising fashion, to all who need them. A Basic Income regime does away with the need for the entire government income support surveillance apparatus, creating savings to government expenditure. Exponents of a secure equitable income support system would therefore regard a Basic Income as politically efficient.

But there are wider efficiency arguments which can and should be mounted in support of an unconditional Basic Income.

• A Basic Income requires the least interference in the lives of citizens.
• It supplies all permanent residents with equal assistance.
• It is the most inclusive form of income support payment and the most secure, thus enhancing citizenship.
• It provides sufficient income to allow the possibility that people will explore their creative capacity.
• It removes many of the obstacles to a reinvigoration of the industrial, technical and computing infrastructure.
• It allows the State a fuller understanding of the impact of its other social wage policies.

However, a Basic Income is just that – an unconditional universal income guarantee. It delivers an income floor without interfering with productivity. It is a vast improvement on categorical selective social services. It is an advance on all social insurance and private provision schemes which invariably result in the ‘individualisation of risk’ (Lerner, Clark & Needham 1999 p. 11) and as a result create a ‘do it yourself welfare state’ (Klein & Millar cited in Page 1998 p.307).

A Basic Income is not a utopian panacea – it will not abolish all social difficulties. But, it will allow the State to construct its other social welfare, health, education, disability, ethnic and community service policies on a firm and known foundation. It is a far cry from the Communist Manifesto’s promise to create a society based on the principle: ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’. In this regard it may not be the best income support policy, in any absolute sense, just the best income support policy capable of being implemented in the early 21^st century.

Bibliography

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Letter to Wayne Swan, Treasurer

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Make poverty his story

Published in Parity, Vol. 21, No. 1, Feb 2008: 37.

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Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach
will prove to be the most effective — the solution
to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely
discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

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Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach
will prove to be the most effective — the solution
to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely
discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”

  Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

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Moving away from paternalism

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Mutual obligation

Written in 2003

It’s somewhere between
the obscene and unclean
but John Howard is my inspiration.
You work for the dole.
You mortgage your soul,
and he calls that liberation.
Get off your fat arse,
do a job that’s first class.
Yes, work is your obligation.
A hand-up it seems
is just far away dreams
leading to much consternation.
You have to say “Nay,
I don’t want any pay.”
It’s part of building the nation.
Fair pay will not last
it’s a thing of the past,
what you need is incentivation.
It’s somewhere between
the obscene and unclean
but John Howard is my inspiration.
If you’re troubled or sore,
if you’re crippled or poor
then you must show no hesitation.
You must do what is right,
you must work day and night
helping to build this fine nation.
Fair pay so it seems
is a thing of our dreams,
all you need is incentivation.
If you’ve got kids galore
and you’re terribly poor
then work is your obligation.
It’s somewhere between
the unclean and obscene
but John Howard is my inspiration.