Reclaiming social security for a just future : a principled approach to reform (original) (raw)
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Designing Social Security Systems: Learning From Australia and Other Countries
Public Administration and Development, 2014
Social protection systems reflect each country's history, culture and social values, as well as its economic capacity. But, once first established, they can be very hard to redesign as expectations are locked in, and the scale of the systems makes major change a difficult and risky management challenge. This paper describes alternative designs of social security systems and how each addresses the two core objectives of poverty alleviation and income maintenance. Drawing on the 'pillars' typology or framework, the paper describes how different systems are being adjusted to meet changing demographic profiles and economic pressures. It focuses in particular on Australia, which has always emphasised 'foundation pillar' programmes aimed at poverty alleviation and has only recently given emphasis to income maintenance. In doing so, it has chosen a very different approach involving mandated contributions into mostly fully funded schemes where individuals rather than the government and future generations of taxpayers bear most of the risks. Australia has also restructured its schemes for public sector employees. What possible lessons are there for countries at the early stages of design and implementation of a social security system?
Limitations of the Australian Social Security System
Revisiting Henderson: Poverty, Social Security and Basic Income, 2019
In analysing the strengths and limitations of any national social security system it is important to identify the assessment criteria for making any such evaluation. While there are no universally accepted criteria for designing an effective income support system, there is general agreement among scholars and policy-makers that a good system should not leave people living below an agreed poverty level; it should not disrupt work incentives unduly and should be well targeted and administratively efficient (Nolan, 2014). To this, we would add that a social security system should treat people who make claims on the state with dignity and respect. In other words, the administrative apparatus for assessing need and making payments should not result in what Nancy Fraser (1997) refers to as the process of adding cultural insult to economic injury. How the state treats those suffering the injustice of poverty matters in both a moral and material sense. If the process of assessing need and providing income support to individuals or households is overly intrusive and humiliating, as well as being unnecessarily costly in regard to monitoring and surveillance, then the system is not only wasteful, it fails to pass a basic test of decency.
Neoliberal welfare reform and ‘rights’ compliance under Australian social security law
Australian Journal of Human Rights
Recent neoliberal reforms to Australian social security and labour law privilege individual industrial bargaining and adopt a 'job-first' policy for welfare recipients, which exposes them to greater market pressures. This builds on earlier conservative Howard Government reforms, such as the privatisation of job matching services; insistence on mutual obligation and workfare expectations of social security clients; and intensification of loss of payment penalties for compliance breaches. This article examines the extent to which social security decision-making in Australia is favourably influenced by international treaties that include social security among the social and economic rights sought to be protected. It is argued that rights to social security are of their nature weak and sometimes internally conflicted, but this is compounded by their more limited purchase in Australian law. Consequently, international law has been of less assistance in protecting social security rights within Australia than is the case internationally. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization … of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for … dignity and the free development of … personality. [Article 22, Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
Reforming Social Security: Improving Incentives and Capabilities
2008
Over the last decade, Australian social security for people of workforce age has incorporated, in an unduly purist form, neoliberal concepts of contested markets for labourmarket services, individualisation of responsibility/risk for remaining on welfare, a 'job first' approach to exiting from welfare, and the combined pressure of deregulation of the labourmarket and welfare sanctions for breach of 'mutual obligations' to pressure people to return to work. This paper argues that such one-dimensional approaches have added to the economic disincentives for workforce participation, bear harshly on vulnerable populations such as sole parents and the disabled, have a poor record of generating lasting labourforce participation, and are ethically problematic on the basis of a return to 'blaming the victim'. Despite shortcomings of the 'capacity' literature, it is argued that the state owes a moral obligation to develop the human capital of welfare clients, in ways respectful both of their dignity and their rights, consistent with a social citizenship model.
Introduction: Reflecting on the human right to social security
International Social Security Review, 2017
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 asserts that social security is an inalienable human right. Realizing this human right is often considered, simply, as a matter of political will and of administrative aptitude. In these terms, the progressive realization of the human right to social security may be viewed as the outcome of an appropriately-resourced political and bureaucratic process. Such a perspective, however, is clearly inadequate. Characteristically, bureaucracies are designed to cater to the needs of all, based on common procedures and common deliverables designed for the "typical" case. Yet such approaches often lack the necessary flexibility and resources to make a distinction between individuals, which acknowledge their respective differences and needs. To meet the international commitment to progressively realize universal social security coverage, social security administrations are key actors. However imperative this role may be, if the pursuit of this commitment fails to respect people's differences this will put at risk the meeting in full of what is envisioned by the human right to social security. To this end, this special issue aims to foster an understanding that the goal of universal coverage must necessarily also respect and respond to the individual needs of each and every person.
Social Security Administration: Producing Poverty and Punishment
Law and Poverty in Australia 40 Years after the Poverty Commission, 2017
In the chapter on social security in Law and Poverty in Australia: Second Main Report (‘the Sackville Report’), Professor Ronald Sackville throws light on the ways in which social security law and practice can exacerbate poverty. Sackville begins by affirming the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty: First Main Report (‘the Henderson Report’) to introduce a guaranteed minimum income in Australia. But, as Sackville warns, even if the issue of payment adequacy is comprehensively addressed, unfair or ineffective administration of payments could still lead to ‘grave’ outcomes for recipients, many of whom rely on payments ‘for their very economic survival’. In short, social security administration can itself produce poverty and injustice. In the forty years since the Sackville Report, the Australian social security system has undergone seismic shifts. Philip Mendes describes this era as one of ‘backlash’ in Australian welfare policy. These reforms have centred on the retraction of many welfare programs, the imposition of more restrictions and obligations on the receipt of social security, particularly unemployment benefits, and the roll out of a compliance regime designed to detect and punish non-compliance by recipients. These local reforms epitomise a global trend underpinned by waning support for the Keynesian welfare state, once an accepted feature of Western statehood. Whereas Sackville described the dominant view of income maintenance in 1975 as a ‘right … rather than a privilege which can be denied or withdrawn without sound
Social security systems based on dignity and respect
2017
The Scotland Act 2016 devolves new social security powers to the Scottish Parliament. Although its new powers are limited, accounting for only 15% of expenditure on non-pension benefits, the Scottish Government has given an ambitious set of commitments for a devolved system. “Respect for the dignity of individuals” is at the heart of this vision. Social security is recognised in international human rights law as being crucial to the protection of human dignity. While human dignity is a core concept in human rights law, it is a poorly defined one and respect has no legal definition.The Equality and Human Rights Commission contracted Ulster University to look at how social security systems in other countries encompass dignity and respect. This report of their research proposes a legally-grounded definition of dignity and respect and discusses possible means of embedding dignity and respect as core principles underpinning social security in Scotland.
2020
The Brotherhood of St Laurence is a non-government, community-based organisation concerned with social justice. Based in Melbourne, but with programs and services throughout Australia, the Brotherhood is working for a better deal for disadvantaged people. It undertakes research, service development and delivery, and advocacy, with the objective of addressing unmet needs and translating learning into new policies, programs and practices for implementation by government and others. For more information visit <www.bsl.org.au>.