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.
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 […]
Published in ACTCoss News Vol. 8, Number 3, pp. 34-38 1993 At the Federal level the Australian Labor Party has monopolised the rhetoric about social justice in recent times. Over the last five years Brian Howe, in various ministerial guises, has flounced around the country mouthing social justice platitudes before returning to his Canberra bunker […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Thursday, 3 June 2004 In the early 1990s Paul Keating fell for the three-card trick of the private insurance mafia and moved Australia towards privatised superannuation rather than a social insurance system, as is the practice in much of Europe. The Labor government […]
Phillip Mendes (2002) Australia’s Welfare Wars. University of New South Wales, Sydney. Book review by John Tomlinson Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 474-476, 2004. Phillip Mendes has produced a comprehensive account of the policies, the ideologies and some of the players in the Australian welfare state. The book provides an […]
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 […]
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 […]
Social Policy in Australia: Understanding for Action by Alison McClelland & Paul Smyth 280 pages RRP $59.95 Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 41, No. 3, Spring 2006: 375-376. The first two sections of Social policy in Australia are disembodied versions of the Melbourne social policy debate. I was left with impression that anything South of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Monday, 25 October 2004 From the earliest days of human existence when erect hominoids started to spread out from Kenya’s Rift Valley about 2 million years ago, communal activity has been an important component of human societies. Many animal species are successful because […]
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 […]
Published in Disability Abstracts 1998 and Green Left Weekly 4th 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 […]
Green Left. Wednesday, March 28, 2001 – 10:00 https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/25401 also on the BIGA web site. Some people in Australia are concerned about the painful brain condition called dependency. However, the only people who contract this condition are those who believe that the only possible welfare system is a targeted one. The usual justification for targeted welfare […]
Paper given at State Youth Housing Conference, Sydney 4.12.1992 I have heard it suggested that economic rationalism is simply a form of economics based on the work of Adam Smith. The more extreme exponents of economic rationalism have suggested it is a comprehensive rational explanation which if we were to adopt it totally would ensure […]
Reference: Social Security advice on pensions and benefits, Canberra, Wednesday, 18 May 1988 (OFFICIAL HANSARD REPORT) HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Members: Mr O’Keefe (Chairman) Mr Connolly (Deputy Chairman) Mr Blunt Mr Cadman Mr Dubois Ms Fatin Mrs Harvey Mr Johns Mr Katter Ms McHugh Mr Sciacca Mr Wilson The Committee is to […]
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 28th. 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 […]
Mike Dee, Simon Schooneveldt & John Tomlinson, New Community Quarterly, Vol. 3, No.3, 2005 pp. 41-45. They make no differ twixt the absentee swell And the clerk that cut from a “shortage”— Oh! there ain’t no pauper funer-el, And there ain’t no “impressive cortege.” It may be a chap from the for’ard crowd, Or a member […]
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 […]
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, […]
Published in ACTCOSS News Nov-Dec 1987 The Main Report of the Poverty Inquiry was published in April 1975. It made many suggestions for improving the lot of the poorest Australians. The majority of those suggestions consisted of plans to extend the existing welfare system in terms of both amount and coverage. Amongst the many recommendations which have […]
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, […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Monday, 8 December 2008 In Australia, since at least the first decade of the 20th century, the income support system was supposedly based on the “need” of the recipient. Those who were assisted were, in the language of the day, considered to be […]
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 […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Monday, 23 January 2012 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. The above was written by that little known (but oft […]
Published 21/11/2007 in Al-Moharer http://www.al-moharer.net/mohhtm/tomlinson263.htm His prostrate on fire and his heart full of hate, he wants to destroy the entire welfare state. For years, day by day, he’s cut bits away and though he’s been deft, there are parts of it left. He’s slashed and he’s burned and it is depleted but he tells […]
Dear Treasurer, I understand the political imperative of getting the budget in surplus in 2012/13 even though the economic situation in which Australia finds itself does not mean there is any economic urgency to reach a balanced budget. The Government’s decision to reduce lone parents’ payments (when the youngest child turns 8 years of […]
“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?
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Friday, 14 March 2008 Of all the issues which the 2020 Summit in Canberra needs to address the most pressing is modernising Australia’s social security system. The first Commonwealth social security legislation, providing for age and invalid pensions, was passed in Australia in […]
Published in Australian Journal of Social Issues. 2, Winter 2005: 317-318 Francis, or as he is better known in Australia, Frank Castles spent many years as a researcher at the Australian National University. He has recently moved to the University of Edinburgh. He popularised the phrase “workers welfare state” to describe the Australian welfare state […]
Published in New Community Quarterly, 2(2), pp. 36-40. 2004 The themes of the Howard Government: ‘social capital, social conservatism, social coalition, mutual obligation and participation income’ all undermine the concept of universal rights and erode previously established social security entitlements. McClure (2000[a], [b]) attempted to legitimize the extension of the breaching of 300,000 plus Centrelink […]
Paper presented at Queensland State Youth Affairs Network Conference Mackay April 14-16th 2003. Abstract Australia has never succeeded in ensuring all its permanent residents had access to a secure income. In 2003, many people are living in poverty (ACOSS 2003). The Government could guarantee every person sufficient income to lift them above the Henderson Poverty Line […]
Paper given at the Australian Social Work Education Conference, Launceston 14 – 17 July 1984. Recent Editorial comment has been added in RED. Abstract The, Australian social welfare system consists of a confusing array of programs. Politicians and administrators claim that the ultimate aim is to provide a comprehensive caring network which will ensure that […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Wednesday, 29 September 2004 When I started studying social work in the early 1960s I focused on the alleviation of poverty rather than some of the more up-market options being touted at the time. Central to my thinking now, as then, is that […]
Published in New Matilda January 19th 2005 https://newmatilda.com/2005/01/19/there-ladder-my-stocking-opportunity/ The ALP Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, in his address in reply to the 2004 Budget announced that unemployed people, particularly those who are young and unemployed, would be either “earning or learning” (Jennett 2004). In the 2004 election campaign he tied such pronouncements to his “ladder of […]
Prof. Bob Gregory told me at the 7th National Unemployment Conference that Prof Robert Goodin was asked about Blair’s third way. Goodin replied that he did not know what it was but believed it was something that fitted between the second coming and the fourth dimension. written 2002
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Friday, 23 March 2012 In 1875, in his Critique of the Gotha Program Karl Marx suggested that in a higher state of communism a guiding principle of the system of allocation should be “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” […]
Written in Oct 2001 On the 19th August Wayne Swan, Shadow Minister for forcing responsibilities from the State back on to low income earners shoulders, announced that an incoming Labor Government might have to cut family payments to those families who refused to cooperate with his family visitor programs. He said this would be particularly […]
Paper presented at the Area Pacific Central Social Work Conference, Southport, 10/9/2003. Australians have been subjected to increasing inequalities in income and wealth distribution during the last two decades due in large part to the general acceptance of economic fundamentalist ideas and our government’s enthusiasm to embrace deregulation and globalism. Michael Costello (2003), former Secretary of […]
Keynote Paper given at the bi-annual Queensland State Youth Affairs Conference, Mackay April 2003. Over the last 40 years the social welfare system in Australia has experienced a major ideological shift from social democratic noblesse oblige to a compelled conservative compact. I shall examine the underlying forces that have fuelled this change and point to […]
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