Building a simpler system to help jobless families and individuals: what are the consultations telling us?
David Thompson and David de Carvalho
Jobs Australia and National Catholic Education Commission
Contact Email:   ddcncec.catholic.edu.au

In December 2002, Ministers Amanda Vanstone and Tony Abbott, who jointly chair the Welfare Reform Consultative Forum, released the Commonwealth’s discussion paper, “Building a simpler system to help jobless families and individuals”. The release of the paper marks the second phase of the Government’s so-called welfare reform process and addresses a major recommendation of the McClure Report, namely the need to simplify the income support system for working-age people.

The Government has embarked on a period of consultation that involves focus groups with income-support recipients, written submissions, and sixteen round-tables with representatives of the community and business sectors, academics and think-tanks. The round-tables are being hosted by members of the Welfare Reform Consultative Forum. The process aims to stimulate high level discussion around the objectives and principles that should underpin any changes to the income support system for working-age people, the scope of any reform (i.e. whether and to what extent to integrate the social security system with the tax and wages systems), the design features and overall structure of the system, eligibility, participation requirements, support services and the trade-offs involved in pursuing any particular path of reform.

In this paper, two members of the Welfare Reform Consultative Forum who have been involved in hosting the roundtables give their impressions of the process and summarise the main messages coming through. At the time of writing this abstract, each of them had hosted two roundtables. While it is therefore too early to say what the final outcome will be, it is clear at this early stage not only that there is a substantial level of suspicion about the Government’s motives, but at the same time there is a strong view that fundamental reform is necessary if the system is to promote social inclusion and greater financial independence by recognising and rewarding the efforts of people to increase their social and economic contribution through participation in the labour market.

The paper also explores the question of whether “welfare reform” is the most appropriate label for the major changes to social policy settings that are called for at the current time.

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Copyright © 2003 Social Policy Research Centre.