Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
of poverty to the individual themselves, and leads to responses that focus on
overcoming perceived individual deficits such as laziness, lack of skills and moral
hazard.
The reframing of welfare in Australia has prompted increased calls for the
‘activation’ of welfare recipients by engaging them in welfare-to-work or ‘workfare’
programs. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, a series of reforms to the provision
ofunemploymentsupporthaveresultedinanincreasedfocuson‘activating’and
upskilling the unemployed. This has involved, for example, the introduction of
activation measures from 1986 (e.g. a requirement to register with the then
Commonwealth Employment Service) and an ‘activity test’ 56 in 1989 as a condition
of social security payments. 57 Since then, active participation requirements have
continued to be strengthened through a range of incremental reforms to social
security and employment services.
This relatively recent history sits in contrast to the approaches of past
Australian governments, particularly between Federation and the Second World
War, which moved towards a focus on the demand (rather than supply) side of
the unemployment ‘equation’. In particular, historical policies primarily sought to
boost the availability of jobs through mechanisms like job guarantees and full
employment, and ensure suitable work conditions. Policies since the late 1980s
have, instead, recast the unemployed as the core ‘problem’ and site of possible
intervention. Australia’s current remote-employment program, the Community
Development Program, provides one example of how this sort of framing can
influence social policies and have significant implications for participants who are
subject to strict and coercive program rules.
Case example: Community Development Program
The Community Development Program (CDP) currently operates in 60 remote
regions across Australia, which include more than 1,000 separate communities. 58
The program supports ‘job seekers in remote Australia to build skills, address
barriers to employment and contribute to their communities through a range of
activities’. 59 According to the minister for indigenous affairs, Nigel Scullion, the
program also aims to ‘put an end to sit-down welfare’ and transition unemployed,
remote-living (mainly) Indigenous Australians into employment. 60 By July 2018,
32,000 individuals were participating in the program, about 80 per cent of whom
identified as Indigenous. 61
56 This required recipients of unemployment benefits to undertake job-search and job-preparation
activities.
57 Deeming 2016.
58 DPM&C 2018a.
59 SSCFPA 2017, 6.
60 Scullion 2014.
61 DPM&C 2018a.
698