Social inclusion/exclusion: a faulty paradigm for a strong welfare state?
Ruth Phillips
University of Sydney
Contact Email:   r.phillipsedfac.usyd.edu.au

The social inclusion framework adopted by the new Labor government has not only been liberally expressed as a means of reorientation of the Australian welfare state but as a catchall phrase for broad social change - a recipe for social cohesion? Asserted as a reframing of the social exclusion policy framework adopted by the UK Labour government, recently reframed in the establishment of the Social Exclusion Task Force and the Communities and Local Governments Initiative, Australia’s social inclusion approach is yet to be measured against outcomes or even tested as a theoretically rigorous approach for addressing social policy problems. So far we have seen national policy machinery put in place and the emergence of a strong social inclusion discourse as the required ‘social policy speak’ that, in many ways replicates, the social justice agenda of the latter years of the Hawke/Keating regime. The key difference between social justice and social inclusion as social policy framework rests with the place equality takes in both its theorisation and realisation.

Utilizing three case studies, this paper applies a critical analysis to social inclusion policy and the fundamental problems that arise when it is tested against what are generally asserted as the pillars of a strong welfare state.

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