Brotherhood Comment April 2009

ISSN 1320 8632A regul Ar upd Ate from the r ese Arch And policy centreApril 2009Social policy, social democracy and the GFCWhat will be the long-term impact The social democratic approach They informed the universalist of the global financial crisis on also assumes a market economy. welfare reforms of the Whitlam Australian public policy? No less However, in a tradition going years. These fell foul of a major a person than the Prime Minister, back to Marx and T H Marshall, downturn in the global economy. Kevin Rudd (2009), has proposed it emphasises that it is more often Will Rudd’s social aspirations meet that we are at ‘a turning point market failure and inequality than the same fate? We don’t think so.between one epoch and the next, weakness of character that empties when one orthodoxy is overthrown citizenship of substance. States In the 1970s and 80s there was and another takes its place’. need to uphold the economic and a very limited understanding of He identifies the old epoch as social rights of citizens as a basis the nexus between economic and neoliberalism and the new as social of genuine economic and social social policy. Welfare reformers democracy. All of this at a time participation. Here exclusion is did not think in terms of social when the federal government has essentially a problem of inequality. services as an economic investment, been establishing social inclusion while neoliberals considered them as a new framework for welfare. ...