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Marketisation and the dual welfare state: Neoliberalism and inequality in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Ben Spies-Butcher
Ben Spies-Butcher*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
*
Ben Spies-Butcher, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia. Email: ben.spies-butcher@mq.edu.au
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Abstract

Australian social policy has seen apparently contradictory developments over the period of economic restructuring. Social spending has increased based on a highly redistributive model while inequality has grown. This article explores the relationship between Australia’s experience of economic restructuring and the political dynamics of an emerging ‘dual welfare state’. Importantly, the article argues that Australian reformers did not reject the state per se, nor egalitarianism as an objective. Instead, reform sought to combine greater competition with compensation, generating larger inequalities in market incomes alongside growing social spending. The article explores how Labor combined neoclassical ideas about competition with a commitment to a ‘small state’ version of social democracy. This did moderate inequalities through the period of restructuring, but it also altered the dynamics of political contestation. The article provides two typologies to understand this political dynamic, arguing forms of marketisation opened the door to a political contest over the nature, rather than the extent, of public provision, while the model of targeting reinforced paternalist tendencies inherent in neoliberal reform.

Keywords

H53D31D47Income distributionmarkets and marketisationmeans testingneoliberalismsocial policywelfare state
Type
Symposium Articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 25 , Issue 2: Symposium - Some Impacts of Neoliberalism , June 2014 , pp. 185 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2014

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