Social Security



Spending on social security and welfare accounts for more than a third of the Commonwealth budget. Because of its size, it has been one of… Read More ›

[Budget Forum 2019] Future Budgets Are Going to Have to Spend More on Welfare, Which Is Fine. It’s Spending on Us

Just as starfish are not fish, strawberries are not berries, and Chinese Checkers are neither Chinese nor checkers, the Newstart Allowance does not really offer… Read More ›

Increase in Newstart Allowance Long Overdue

A key aim of the welfare system in Australia is to provide a buffer against unexpected or unpredictable events that reduce one’s income stability. Relationship… Read More ›

Welfare Entry and Exit After Marital Separation Among Australian Mothers

Peter Fisher, Treasury under-secretary in George W. Bush’s administration, once memorably described the US government as “a gigantic insurance company (with a sideline business in national defense… Read More ›

Why Social Policy Counts

Thirty years after Prime Minister Bob Hawke famously promised that by 1990 no Australian child would live in poverty, Bill Shorten has promised that, if… Read More ›

It’s Not Just Newstart. Single Parents Are $271 per Fortnight Worse Off. Labor Needs an Overarching Welfare Review

In his 5 October comment on Austaxpolicy, Relax. The Divide Between the Taxed and the Taxed -Nots Isn’t New and Doesn’t Buy Elections, Peter Whiteford… Read More ›

Is the Proportion of Net Benefit Recipients a Concern? A Reply to Peter Whiteford

It’s unsurprising that a large number of people pay no net tax. Might government benefits, and government employment, be a self sustaining machine – one… Read More ›

Relax. The Divide Between the Taxed and the ‘Taxed-Nots’ Isn’t New and Doesn’t Buy Elections

“We have reached a tipping point,” the secretary-general of the OECD said in 2015. “Inequality can no longer be treated as an afterthought. We need… Read More ›

Good Times, Bad Times

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