Neoliberalism has transformed work, welfare and democracy. However, its
impacts, and its future, are more complex than we often imagine.
Alongside growing inequality, social spending has been rising.
Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After
Liberalisation asks how we understand this contradictory politics and
what opportunities exist to create a more equal society. It argues an
older welfare state politics, driven by the power of industrial labour,
is giving way to political contests led by workers within the welfare
state itself. Advancing more equal social policy, though, requires new
forms of statecraft, or ways of doing policy, as well as new models of
organising.
Drawing on examples of social policy change since the 1980s, the book
explores how seemingly similar reforms reflect distinct political
dynamics and facilitate different social outcomes. The examples reflect
the main aspects of liberalisation - conditionality of benefits,
marketisation of services and financialisation of the life course.
Across each domain, it identifies examples that fit the 'neoliberal'
frame and alternatives that appear to subvert it. From family payments
to Medicare, social protection advanced using remarkably similar policy
tools to those associated with liberalisation. The book identifies two
competing welfare state projects. A 'dual welfare state' of hidden
subsidies to privatised welfare alongside increasingly residualised
public systems that stigmatise recipients, and a hybrid model of
marketised universalism that uses novel forms of statecraft to socialise
risk while advancing competition.
Rather than explaining how Australia fell pray to neoliberalism, the
book identifies an ongoing struggle between competing visions of
liberalisation. 'Dual welfare' deepens inequality by concealing the
distributional effects of state policy, building a sizeable coalition of
largely older voters, insulated from the insecurities of precarious work
and benefiting from rising house prices. Hybrid policies, it argues,
emerged at the intersection of sympathetic bureaucracies and strong
social pressure. Central to both are workers within the welfare state
and the unions that represent them. The analysis recasts divides based
on generation and education as reflecting the increasingly central role
of social reproduction within the paid economy, and the strategies of
care workers to have their skills and value recognised. The analysis
opens opportunities for new models of solidarity based on an ethic of
care.
