An Unlikely Survival

The Politics of Welfare in Australia since 1950

John Murphy

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English

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRES
03 December 2024

History; Social welfare & social services; Welfare & benefit systems; Welfare economics

Exploring over 75 years of Australian welfare policy

An Unlikely Survival takes us through three-quarters of a century of welfare politics in Australia, to contests about political principles, and about what we think is the common good. As both economy and society were transformed, the need for government assistance, alongside the growth of civil society advocacy, became a core part of political debates.

John Murphy traces the evolution of welfare, government by government, from Menzies to Morrison, from the postwar era of full male employment to neoliberalism, deregulation and globalism. He ranges across policy areas well beyond Centrelink payments, from wage fixing to work-for-the-dole, from childcare to middle-class tax benefits, from family payments to superannuation, from aged care to Indigenous welfare, and from Medicare and to disability support.

How did the Hawke-Keating governments square neoliberal economics with reforming social welfare? What did successive governments retain, modify or dismantle? Who were the civil society actors who fought for and against different initiatives? What accounts for the unlikely survival and refurbishment of our welfare system in a world of more diverse families, globalisation, unemployment and the entrenchment of the working poor?

An Unlikely Survival explores, and attempts to answer some profound questions about policy action and social justice in the past and in contemporary Australia and asks- do we actually want a fairer society-and are we prepared to pay for it?

By: John Murphy
Imprint: MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRES
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 1mm, Width: 1mm,
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780522880458
ISBN 10: 0522880452
Pages: 408
Publication Date: 03 December 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

John Murphy is an emeritus professor in politics at the University of Melbourne. For almost forty years he has taught generations of students about Australian history, politics and social welfare. He has published widely on Australian political history, including on the Vietnam war, the politics of the 1950s, and Australian welfare policy up to 1949. His biography of the Labor leader Bert Evatt was shortlisted in 2017 for the Prime Minister's prize for Australian history, and the National Biography Award. In 2011, Half a Citizen, his book based on interviews with welfare recipients and co-written with Suellen Murray, Jenny Chalmers, Sonia Martin and Greg Marston, won the Australian Human Rights Commission Award for non-fiction. His most recent book, with Andrew Rosser, was about social welfare policies in Southeast Asia.