Introduction

The focus of this book is on social security and the lived effects of welfare conditionality in Australia and New Zealand. Our choice of terminology is deliberate. In normative terms, social security systems should facilitate a basic level of economic security by providing a source of income for individual citizens, regardless of their labour market status. In this sense, a social security system is a collective means of risk pooling and an expression of social citizenship in a modern welfare state. It is important to outline the normative basis for social security up front, particularly when public discourse about those who at some point in their lives depend on state income support is frequently derogatory. Terms like ‘dole bludger’ or ‘scrounger’ give contemporary expression to much older moral divisions between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. These labels also have deep and lasting effects for those who are subject to them. Stigma, shame and the internalisation of negative messages about so-called ‘welfare dependency’ damage social security recipients’ sense of self and contribute to feelings of exclusion from society (Patrick, 2017). Discourses about social security and welfare reflect various changes in social security policy goals.

One of the key changes in social security systems in the Anglophone world has been a shift away from poverty relief and towards labour force participation as a central policy aim. Related to this shift, work activation requirements and associated welfare conditionality (behavioural conditions attached to the receipt of payment) have increased in many countries over the past two to three decades (Clasen and Siegel, 2007; Patrick, 2017). Understanding this change entails acknowledging that the means and the ends of social security systems serve competing constituents and interests. Increased behavioural conditionality attached to the receipt of payments, for example, can receive popular support from the broader public, who have come to accept the conventional wisdom that ‘getting tough’ on social security recipients is both morally justifiable and ultimately beneficial for recipients. This belief persists despite a lack of research evidence to support or substantiate it. As is outlined in the chapters of this book, evidence about the costs and benefits of conditionality has had very little bearing on social security policy settings in Australia and New Zealand.