Brotherhood Comment August 2005

ISSN 1320 8632A REGULAR UPDATE FROM SOCIAL ACTION AND RESEARCHAugust 2005Shaking the foundations of the ‘fair go’?IR reform and Australian social policy The major story in Australian of growth. Some workers may accompanied by a major growth social policy in 2005 is not have got less but it still saved of an Australian welfare state. welfare, but industrial relations on the need for a high tax-social Between 1980 and 1998, per capita (IR) reform. This might seem an transfer system of the type which real social expenditure in Australia odd claim. Aren’t wages a matter developed in post-war Europe. increased by 83 per cent, from of economic not social policy? US$9,144 to US$15,538. Clearly, Historically the answer in Australia The dismantling of this Australian targeted income support and social has been No. Wages have been way of doing social policy was services are now functioning less as seen as both an economic and gradual. Separating the social wage a safety net and more as our main social issue. Indeed Australia was from the workers ‘restrained’ take- way of sustaining the ‘fair go’. viewed internationally as a unique home pay was a feature of the kind of ‘wage earners’ welfare 1980s Accords, while the use of the So what of the future? Will we state’, where wage regulation, centralised wage system to achieve abandon not just the means but not taxes and transfers, was the award equity finished with the 1993 the goal of the ‘fair go’ society? main ...