Peter Whiteford:
In Australia we spend about 3% of gross domestic product on age pensions currently, and by the middle of the century with the ageing of the population that’s projected to increase to 4.5 to 5% …
[The Scandinavians] spend a lot more than Australia [on welfare], but they [spend it] on childcare and labour market programs [—] on ways of getting people into work and keeping them in work, as opposed to retiring and withdrawing from the labour force.
[Because their] systems … support participation and … employment [they also] support the funding of the welfare state. …
[We] target to the lowest income groups more than any other country in the OECD …
[The] amount of money in terms of social security that we spend on the poorest 20% of the population is 12 times as much as we spend on the richest 20%.
[In] the next nearest country — New Zealand — that ratio’s about less than half of what it is in Australia. …
Francis Castles:
Australia has [arguably] the most coherent and consistent welfare state of any country in the western world in as far as virtually all its benefits have the same character:
- they’re flat rate,
- they’re not very generous …
- they are invariably means tested, and
- they’re funded from the general exchequer rather than by contributions. …
Australia’s welfare state is … considerably smaller than most western states …
[According to the OECD Australian expenditure] was the lowest of all the advanced states [on]We spend less as a percentage of our national income … than the United States … Japan [or] Greece.
- pensions,
- unemployment benefits,
- housing support,
- childcare,
- [aged care] and
- health.
When the [Hawke] Labor government came into office in 1983 … we were spending … just above 10% of GDP on those things …
[We’re] spending something like 16% now and that hasn’t changed [significantly] since the Howard government came into office …
[We’re] not big spenders at all.
[We do welfare] in a very egalitarian [and frugal] way.
The money we spend is very focused on those who need it.
The downside is that [because it is funded] from general revenue … people are very resistant to paying … for it …
[It is perhaps because] our welfare state is less generous to those in need than other countries [that Australia has become an increasingly] less equal place than it was in the … 1950s and ‘60s.
(Australia's welfare state, 25 November 2012)
Contents
The Australian Welfare State
Pussy Riot
Brave New World
Syria: A Multilevel Conflict
The Benefits of Losing the War on Drugs
Rear Vision
Annabelle Quince & Keri Phillips
- Palestinian Politics, 16 December 2012.
- Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 9 December 2012.
- Australia's welfare state, 25 November 2012.
Francis Castles: Emeritus Professor, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University.
Peter Whiteford: Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.
Francis Castles:
Instead of waiting for people to be in trouble, the idea was to do something about making sure they didn’t get into trouble in the first place.
[Trying] to prevent there being poverty in the first place.
[That’s] where the notion of our system of arbitration came.
If you could legislate and enforce a living wage … that covered the needs of most [worker and their dependents], then there wouldn’t be much need for welfare state payments.
[The] premise was that there’d be fullish employment.
The people who would need to have a welfare state [were those] outside the workforce [—] the old and the invalid.
… Australia was a pioneer in setting up age pensions …
Keri Phillips:
The Labor governments of the 1940s introduced a national unemployment benefit, a child benefit, and a pension for widowed, separated and divorced women.
But the attempt to set up a universal health system was stymied by the election of the Menzies government in 1949. …
Britain … introduced its National Health System in 1948. …
[In] Australia, spending on the welfare state [was] 4% of GDP [from] the early 1930s [until 1972] with the election of Gough Whitlam. …
Peter Whiteford:
[From] the end of the Second World War up to the 1970s unemployment was [generally] below 2% … and the average duration that people were out of work was about six weeks.
[After] the mid-1970s, unemployment in two years doubled to 4% and then it went up to 6% in a couple of years after that.
[This] rise in unemployment [was] associated with industrial restructuring and reductions in tariff protection for Australian industry. …
[The] Whitlam government [introduced a] supporting parents benefit …
And the Fraser government introduced family allowances and cashed out tax rebates.
Keri Phillips:
After Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser’s conservative government dismantled Medibank, but a universal health system returned with a new name [Medicare] with the election of Bob Hawke in 1983. …
When Bob Hawke was elected, Australia’s spending on family payments was about 60% of the OECD average.
By the time Paul Keating lost to John Howard in 1996, it had doubled. …
Peter Whiteford:
The Hawke government came into office just after a very severe recession …
[Unemployment had risen] from about 6% to close to 10% [over] the eight or nine months before they came in.
[They tried] to combine improving assistance to the poorest with a more well-designed targeting away from higher income groups.
The Whitlam government had started to phase out the income test on age pensions …
[The] Hawke government reintroduced [income and assets tests] on age pensions [and,] in the second half of the 1980s, [income testing of] family allowances …
[Hawke and Keating negotiated] the accord [with] the trade unions.
[They] introduced a lot of measures to assist … workers in the lower half of the income distribution [in exchange for] wage restraint. …
[It] used to be … that if you were a dependent … wife, you would be entitled to a social security payment as a dependent of your husband if he had a disability or became unemployed.
[From] 1995 onwards the Keating government started to phase those dependency payments out …
[They] also started the process of increasing the age pension age for women from 60 to 65.
We’re not quite at 65 yet, but we will be soon.
Keri Phillips:
[This was] a recognition of the transformation … through the sixties and the seventies, with women going into the workforce in increasing numbers …
[Of greater] equality of opportunity when it comes to getting into university, getting training …
Peter Whiteford:
The Hawke and Keating government had increased family payments for low-paid workers by a very large amount.
The Howard government continued that.
They gave a lot of emphasis to helping single-earner families, so it was a bit of a shift backwards from … the end of the Keating period.
The assistance for families was also increased further after the introduction of the GST in 2000, so families with children got more than enough to offset the effect of the GST.
[Again,] in 2003, there were substantial increases in family payments …
[There] was the introduction of Work for the Dole [and] much more stringent requirements on the unemployed to look for work.
[From] 2003 to 2006 there was an extension of these requirements for people to actively look for work [including sole] parents once their youngest child had turned six or seven …
[There] were changes [aimed at] reducing the growth in numbers of people on disability support pension.
Keri Phillips:
As well as the increases in family tax benefits during John Howard’s years in office, a non-means-tested rebate was introduced to encourage people to take out private health insurance.
The baby bonus that came along in 2004 was … available to everyone regardless of income.
Is this what is meant by middle-class welfare? …
Peter Whiteford:- [If you just] look at the cash benefits [— because of] income testing and targeting to the poor [—] we have less middle-class welfare than any other social security system in the OECD.
- If you look at services like healthcare, even education … we have about the same as anywhere else who have universal healthcare.
- If you talk about tax expenditures [that] favour the middle class and higher income groups [—] support for superannuation … private health insurance … negative gearing … salary sacrifice arrangements … [universal] health care [—] then we’ve got quite a lot of middle-class welfare in the tax system. …
Francis Castles:
[In Germany and France] people contribute through their working life through very substantial contributions and then get benefits which are related to their previous earnings or what they’ve contributed.
[The Scandinavians] provide reasonably generous cash transfers from a variety of taxes, not just welfare contributions, and have a wide range of services which are free or substantially subsidised — not just health services, but services like accommodation for the elderly, care for the elderly, day care, childcare …
[The] English-speaking countries have traditionally been more reluctant to spend.
In some of them they’ve simply been reluctant to spend, like in the United States …
[In] Australia and New Zealand, they have premised their … preference for a small tax state on …- trying to control wages outside it and …
- having very strong means testing, which means that the benefits that are provided go to those most in need. …
[Europeans] feel it’s worth contributing because they get higher benefits …
In Australia [taxpayers who are] most able to pay are [also least likely to] ever to get any benefit — they get health, they get education [but] they won’t get, if they’re lucky, … unemployment benefit[s and] the pension [—] because the pension is means tested.
[This gives them a] reason for resisting spending taxes on other people’s benefits …
[The] big problem built into the European welfare states … is that people have contributed … through social insurance and they are [very resistant] to cuts in welfare that are needed to balance budgets …
[They] feel they have a real entitlement [because] they paid for it. …
… Italy and Greece have … very expensive age pension systems.
But they don’t actually have much for people of working age and they don’t actually have much for poor people.
In Greece they currently spend 12% of GDP on age pensions and before they reformed their system a couple of years ago they were projected by the middle of the century to be spending 26% of GDP on age pensions. …
[The] reason why they spend so much on age pensions is [because] it’s virtually the only form of welfare apart from the healthcare system.
[If] you don’t have a job you live at home with your parents …
[Southern] European countries have unsustainable pension systems, partly because they allow people to claim their pensions at too early an age.
Peter Whiteford:
[In] Australia we have contributions in the superannuation system but in the social security system we don’t have any contributions at all.
[You] get benefits [after you've been a permanent resident for at least for 10 years. …]
[The] increase in commonwealth assistance for public housing [under the Rudd-Gillard government] was probably one of the largest increases for a couple of decades.
[They increased] age and disability pensions … following the Harmer Review in 2009.
[That] increase in [the] age pension was the largest single increase … for single people in Australian history [and is] likely to have had a very significant impact on poverty amongst pensioners.
[The] age pension age [has been increased from 65 to 67 …
[They have introduced] paid parental leave. … - India's economic accelerator, 28 October 2012.
- Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, 21 October 2012.
Richard Sakwa: Professor of Russian and European Politics, Head of School, University of Kent.
Irina Papkova: Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations and European Studies, Central European University.
Michael Bourdeaux: Canon and Founder, Keston College, England.
Julie Fedor: Post Doctoral Fellow in History, Cambridge University.
Annabelle Quince:
In February [2012,] five members of the Pussy Riot punk group staged an illegal performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour … in Moscow.
The performance lasted … 40 seconds before it was stopped by church security …
[The] group were later arrested and charged with hooliganism. …
Richard Sakwa:
In the tenth century the Russian [Prince Vladimir] put forward [a religious] tender.
[Each of the] major religions put in a bid to become the national religion of what was [then] the Kievan principality.
[The Muslim bid failed because of the prohibition against alcohol.]
[The Jewish offer was rejected] because of pork eating and other issues.
[Finally,] a representative from Constantinople made their pitch and that seemed to suit everything.
So Russia … became a Christian country [in] 988. …
[Peter the Great (1682–1725)] abolished the Russian patriarch [and] established a synod … effectively, a Ministry for Religion. …
Irina Papkova:
[For the next] 200 years or so the Russian Orthodox Church was run by the Russian state. …
Michael Bourdeaux:
[Lenin] was brought up as an atheist and hated everything to do with religion. …
The power of the church was broken at one stroke by [a new law passed in] January 1918 [soon] after the revolution.
[That] inaugurated the first great purge against the church …
[When] Stalin came [to] power and he carried on the persecution in the late 1920s. …
Richard Sakwa:
[Under] the Bolsheviks over 200,000 priests, bishops and others were killed …
Michael Bourdeaux:
The acting head of the church after the death of Patriarch Tikhon was Metropolitan Sergius.
[He was] almost certainly tortured in prison.
And on the 29th of June 1927 he signed a declaration …Metropolitan Sergius
[This] became the paradigm … for church-state relations from 1927 [until the present day. …]
Let us publicly express our gratitude to the Soviet government for the interest it’s showing in all the religious needs of the Orthodox people.
We want to be Orthodox believers and at the same time to recognise the Soviet Union as our fatherland, whose joys and successes are our joys and successes, and whose setbacks are our setbacks.
Every attack directed against the Soviet Union is resented by us as being directed against ourselves.
Julie Fedor:
After Hitler had invaded in 1941, Stalin [made] an effort to use [the church] as a means of boosting … the Soviet war effort [during the Great Patriotic War. …]
[He] met with church hierarchs in 1943 and offered them various concessions [including] the right to re-establish the office of the patriarch …
[Later in the] Soviet period … the Orthodox Church [became] heavily infiltrated by the KGB …
[This] is one of the things that the Pussy Riot performance was … trying to draw attention to …
[The Church] hierarchy [worked] with the Soviet authorities on their … public campaigns …
[Though] there were some priests who then led … a revivalist movement from below. …
They were enormously attacked …
Julie Fedor:
Under the 1993 constitution the Russian state is a secular state … and all religions have equal rights under the law.
[This] is somewhat in contradiction with a law on religion that was passed in 1997, whereby a special recognition was [given to Orthodoxy for its] contribution to Russian history and culture. …
[This] was done partly as a result of [lobbying by] the Moscow patriarchate in response to the waves of foreign missionaries that were coming into Russia after Russia opened up after the collapse of the Soviet Union. …
[They] lobbied the Russian state for a law that would limit missionary activity.
[In] 1997 Yeltsin had just come off a very contentious election where he almost lost to the communists.
[During that election] he asked the Russian Orthodox Church [for support.]
The patriarch came out and said that if you’re a Russian voter you should vote against the communists because [they would bring back] the same policies that they had for 70 years, so you should vote for Yeltsin.
[The] 1997 law was [the Church's reward. …]
Michael Bourdeaux:
[President Putin has] described himself as being a baptised believer.
[What he] wants to see is a strong Russia.
[Most Russians] bewail the fact that when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia lost its status as a world power. …
One of the tools that [Putin] has used for the re-establishment of that status is the Orthodox Church — strong church in a strong Russia. …
[The] Russian state gets justification for its actions from moral support of the Orthodox Church. …
Julie Fedor:
In February, just before the presidential elections, [Patriarch Kirill] came out and publicly supported Putin’s re-election campaign. …
[He asserted] that true Orthodox believers do not take part in street protests …
[That] this is a non-Orthodox and thus a non-Russian thing to do.
[Religion is] being used for the purposes of demonising and delegitimising the idea of political opposition in Russia. …
[There is a strong linkage] between Russian Orthodoxy and cultural and national identification …
[Roughly] 75% of Russians identify as Orthodox, but this is … largely a cultural identification.
[The number who actually] attend church [is] much lower than that. …
Michael Bourdeaux:
The Pussy Riot group in Moscow were protesting against … the too cosy relationship between the church and the state …
[The] Orthodox Church [has been politically] divided over this issue. …
And for the patriarch to call [for the] maximum sentence, which probably would have been seven years of imprisonment for these women, for a 40-second demonstration, was completely over the top.
Without this overreaction the whole event would have been long since forgotten.
[They’ve] become a model … for rebellious youth around the world. …
It’s gone viral on the internet. …
The whole issue that they wanted to publicise has now been publicised … beyond their wildest expectations.
Annabelle Quince:
The original two-year sentences given to the three members of the Pussy Riot group were appealed.
One member of the group was freed on probation and the sentences of the other two [were] upheld. - Hugo Chavez, the unlikely president, 7 October 2012.
- Australia's eugenic heritage, 30 September 2012.
Isobel Crombie: Senior Curator of Photography, National Gallery of Victoria.
Alison Bashford: Associate Professor of History, University of Sydney.
Henry Reynolds: ARC Senior Research Fellow, School of History and Classics University of Tasmania.
Isobel Crombie:
[In the 19th century, there was] a belief that Australia could actually breed a whole new type of person.
This was particularly centred … around Queensland.
It was felt that the circumstances in Queensland were particularly conducive towards really cleaving this whole new body from the stock of Mother England …
[A] new type of person would be born up there who was particularly healthy, particularly fit, that the climatic conditions in Australia would allow the development of this new form.
Annabelle Quince:
[The] first major piece of [federal] legislation passed by the new commonwealth parliament, the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 … laid the foundation for the White Australia Policy. …
Alison Bashford:
That law [excluded] racial others from Australia. …
[Others were excluded] on the basis of their mental [and/or] physical health. …
[This was] driven by eugenic ideas …
[We needed] to keep these people out of Australia [because:]- they will become … a public charge — they will cost us; [and]
- if they [entered] the population [these] so-called undesirable traits [would be passed] on to the next generation.
[You were required to go] to a doctor in England [to] get a certificate that [said:]Have you been in a lunatic asylum recently? …
Isobel Crombie:
Have you got syphilis?
Have you got epilepsy in the family? …
[In] England, eugenics [had] to do with the hierarchy …
[There were those who were] at the top of the [eugenic] tree [—] the aristocratic people.
[And then there were the] poorer people [who were termed] ‘degenerates’.
[People] who had mental illnesses.
In Australia, it becomes much more about a kind of racial nationalism …
[There was also much debate] about what [was] termed at the time as ‘miscegenation’ [ie] the breeding … between Indigenous populations and white populations …
[There] was a great fear about what this would mean for the composition of the country. …
Henry Reynolds:
At the time [of federation] the overwhelming view … was that evolutionary forces would see that the Aborigines would disappear.
[They] were a primitive people, and no matter what you did, they would eventually disappear. …
[However, by the 1920s is was clear] that the Aboriginal population was not declining.
[The] half-caste population [was, in fact,] rapidly increasing.
[Furthermore, there] were large numbers of children, the average age of the half-caste population was much younger than the mainstream settler population …
[They] had a problem they had not expected. …
There was a [widespread] conviction … right up until the 1930s [that] the product of racial mixture was almost certain to be inferior …
[They] would be a burden on society …
[And] above all, they [would weaken] the race.
[This period] was dominated by [social] Darwinian thinking, that countries and nations survived by struggle and they survived by fitness.
[It was believed that] your racial fitness would be fatally compromised by too much inter-mixture of non-white blood. …
Annabelle Quince:
So who were the Australians were attracted to eugenic ideas? …
Alison Bashford:
[There were quite] a few of the scientists [who came] out of agriculture, biochemistry, physiology [who might have applied their knowledge of] animal breeding … to their notion of what makes a good society. …
[There were] psychiatrists and doctors …
[And politicians] like Richard Arthur … a Member of the [New South Wales'] Legislative Assembly [who wanted] to use the available legislative means to create … a better society in Australia.
Isobel Crombie:
[It’s] simplistic to conclude that they were Antipodean Nazis …
[They were people who] were genuinely concerned … particularly post-World War I, about the directions that this country was going in. …
Alison Bashford:
When you read literature from the period, when you read newspapers, when you read letters, when you read press reports, medical journals, eugenics is everywhere: this idea of actively intervening in various reproductive mechanisms to build a better future and healthier future is everywhere. …
Compared to other countries … technical eugenic interventions [like] sterilisation [are] not that successful.
[Where] it is successful is [in shaping] much larger questions of fitness and public health and hygiene and mother and baby weeks, and all those kinds of questions. …
Henry Reynolds:
Something like 30,000 people were sterilised in the United States in the ‘20s and ‘30s.
[There] was extensive sterilisation in Sweden …
Australia didn’t introduce these measures, but they certainly controlled the marriage of Aboriginal people, because they had power to do this under the protection legislation passed after 1897. …
The most significant decision … resulted from the first conference of Aboriginal administrators, in Canberra in 1937.Auber Neville (1875–1954) [Chief Protector of Aborigines, Western Australia]:
[They adopted a] policy of assimilation … of the so-called mixed blood … by intermarriage.
Are we going to have a population of 1 million blacks in the commonwealth, or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were ever any Aborigines in Australia?
(Inaugural meeting of state- and scommonwelath-goverment administrators of Aboriginal affairs, Canberra, April, 1937)
[From] the 1920s [the] Australian authorities [reconfigured their ideas about] the racial origin of Aborigines [and concluded that they] were proto-Caucasians.
They were the earliest of the Caucasian races, so therefore there was nothing genetically wrong with the mixture of Aborigines and Europeans.
So [by assisting] intermarriage, particularly in the north where there were thousands of single white men, [they could] produce a settled population in North Australia [without endangering racial purity.]
The Aborigines could be bred out.
Half-caste girls would be taken from their families, they’d be raised in institutions where they’d be taught useful skills — basic education, domestic skills — and then they would be married to these feral single white men right across north Australia …
Annabelle Quince:
During the last part of the twentieth century, medical science developed tests to determine the genetic health of an unborn foetus, allowing parents the option of terminating a pregnancy when the unborn child has a disability or an abnormality.
Alison Bashford:
[Eugenics] used to be very crude interventions — sterilisation — now it’s [in] who and what kind of human is and isn’t born. - Mission impossible: why Kofi Annan’s peace plan for Syria failed , 16 September 2012.
Randa Slim: Scholar, Middle East Institute, Washington DC.
The division in the regional scene and the division in the international community have contributed, reinforced and strengthened the internal divisions in [Syria.]
[Locally,] you have more than 60% of the Syrian population that is now saying that,We want a different regime.
So you have … real division inside the country. …
We want good government, we want democracy, we want transparency and we want to have a say.
[Regionally,] you have arms flowing to the regime from Iran on one hand and … from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the opposition rank on the other hand …
[The conflict is being fed by] regional players [with their own agendas. …]
[Internationally, within the UN Security Council,] you have a conflict between the P2 [China and Russia] and the P3 [Britain, France and the United States …]
{[In the case of Libya, China and Russia] felt that they were duped … into approving [a military] intervention …
[So now they are] adamant [that] the Libyan precedent [not] be replicated in Syria.}
{[This is] a multi-level conflict.}
[So what is required is a negotiation process] that brings all these players together …
And that takes time. - Finland: the real education revolution, 2 September 2012.
- Disputes in the South China Sea, 17 June 2012.
- The Arab Spring and the shifting sands of Middle East politics, 13 May 2012.
- The story of the Hazara people", 8 August 2012.
- Germany and renewable energy, 29 April 2012.
- Afghanistan: a history of invasion", 8 April 2012.
- African Rebel Leaders, 1 April 2012.
- Illegal drugs, 25 March 2012.
Desmond Manderson: Future Fellow, College of Law and College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Ambros Uchtenhagen: Professor Emeritus of Social Psychiatry, Chair of the Addiction Research Institute, Zurich University.
Alison Ritter: Director, Drug Policy Modeling Program; Associate Professor, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales.
Alex Wodak: President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation; Former Director, Alcohol and Drug Service, St. Vincent's Hospital, Sydney.
Keri Phillips:
US President Richard Nixon declared a ‘war on drugs’ in 1971.
Today … the drug trade is a global industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. …
Desmond Manderson:
In Australia [and] America [the reason that] opium suitable for smoking [was prohibited originally] had nothing to do with the kind of drug it was [or] the dangers of the drug itself; it was because of who used it [eg the Chinese]. …
Keri Phillips:
[Switzerland was] one of the first countries to try heroin-assisted treatment and supervised injecting rooms.
The result?
Ambros Uchtenhagen:- An incredible decrease of new heroin injectors …
- an incredible decrease of death overdose;
- [a] decrease of HIV seropositivity [previously the highest in Europe]; and
- a decrease of drug-related criminality in our cities …
Alison Ritter:
[People] use drugs for all sorts of reasons and what society should be concerned about is the harm associated with that use, not the drugs per se. …
Desmond Manderson:
[The more] you focus on traffickers, the more that the costs of trafficking go up and, therefore, the more that the profits of trafficking go up. …
[The] whole governance of [Mexico and many other South American countries] is being profoundly corrupted by the influence of the American drug prohibition system …
[A system that] has created huge organised crime syndicates that are destroying the fabric of those societies. …
Alex Wodak:
In Australia …- 75% of government expenditure [goes to] law enforcement [— customs, police, courts and prisons] …
- 17% on reducing the demand …
- 10% on prevention,
- 7% on treatment, and …
- 1% on harm reduction.
Really [it’s not three pillars,] it’s one pillar and two toothpicks …
[The] return on the investment of the 75% is very poor — it’s usually negative — whereas the return on the investment in health and social measures and on harm reduction is very positive. …
Alison Ritter:
[There] is no optimum [drug policy].
There is what works at what point at time for a country in a particular context of its own history.
There is [only what works] for a country [at a] particular [point in its] history. …
However … there are some fundamental principles to do with human rights, to do with treating it predominantly as a health and social problem rather than a criminal justice problem. - Making it: manufacturing and globalisation, 11 March 2012.
