A01=John Murphy
aged
Aged Pension
asylum
Australia Unlimited
Author_John Murphy
basic
Basic Wage
Ben Chifley
benevolent
Benevolent Asylum
Category=JKS
Category=NHM
Category=NHTB
child
Child Endowment
Civil Society
colonial social reform
Commonwealth Pensions
comparative welfare systems
contributory
Contributory Insurance
Contributory Model
endowment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Harvester Judgment
historical development of Australian welfare
insurance
Invalid Pensions
labour movement politics
Male Basic Wage
Maternity Allowance
National Welfare Fund
NSW Labor
NSW Legislative Assembly
NSW Parliament
pension
poverty relief Australia
RSSILA
scheme
social policy history
St Leonards
targeted welfare payments
Victorian Pension
War Pensions
War Widow's Pension
War Widow’s Pension
Welfare Reform
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9781409407591
- Weight: 710g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Mar 2011
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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A Decent Provision is a narrative history of how and why Australia built a distinctive welfare regime in the period from the 1870s to 1949. At the beginning of this period, the Australian colonies were belligerently insisting they must not have a Poor Law, yet had reproduced many of the systems of charitable provision in Britain. By the start of the twentieth century, a combination of extended suffrage, basic wage regulation and the aged pension had led to a reputation as a 'social laboratory'. And yet half a century later, Australia was a 'welfare laggard' and the Labor Party's welfare state of the mid-1940s was a relatively modest and parsimonious construction. Models of welfare based on social insurance had been vigorously rejected, and the Australian system continued on a path of highly residual, targeted welfare payments. The book explains this curious and halting trajectory, showing how choices made in earlier decades constrained what could be done, and what could be imagined. Based on extensive new research from a variety of primary sources it makes a significant contribution to general historical debates, as well as to the field of comparative social policy.
Associate Professor John Murphy, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne, Australia
