Access, administration and politics : the Australian social security system and Aborigines

Abstract

This work is about Australian government social security policy towards Aborigines. It begins by outlining the move from the legislative exclusion of Aborigines from the social security system in the early part of this century to their gradual legislative inclusion between 1941 and 1966. The rest of chapter 1 is devoted to clarifying my conceptual approach to the notion of policy and to outlining an approach to the study. In it I argue that policy needs to be understood in terms of patterns of governmental commitment over time, rather than as something that can be comprehended in particular documents, such as legislation, or in the words or actions of particular participants, such as government ministers. As a consequence, policy needs to be studied and analysed as it emerges from the strategic interactions of all those involved in a particular shpere of governmental activity. This approach to the study of policy commits me to examining the established patterns of governmental commitment against which recent relations between Aborigines and the social security system have emerged. For this reason, the rest of part I of the work provides background material on the general dynamics of Australian social security administration and on general governmental approaches to Aborigines. Parts II and III of the work provide a detailed empirical account of recent relations between the social security system and Aborigines. Building on a distinction between patronal and legal bureaucratic access structures for the poor, part II analyses the changing roles and resources of participants involved in this area of government activity. Chapter 4 identifies the way in which social security payments to Aborigines were, until the 1960s, largely incorporated into the existing highly patronal special purpose state-level Aboriginal welfare systems. Chapter 5 traces the transformation of this pattern of servicing through a growing DSS awareness of and commitment to it new Aboriginal clientele, while chapter 6 identifies the effects on Aboriginal access to social security payments of changes in the non-government Aboriginal welfare sector. Part III of the work inquires more closely into the processes through which this general policy change has occurred. It examines a number of specific debates in recent years over the application of particular aspects of the social security system's rules to Aborigines. Chapter 7 examines instances of the breakdown of standard DSS procedures when applied to Aborigines. Chapter 8 recounts debates over the application of the social security system's family income units to Aborigines. Chapters 9 and 10 are concerned with various aspects of recent debates over Aboriginal eligibility for unemployment benefit. Part IV of the work returns to the overall concern with policy maintenance and transformation. Drawing on the details of parts II and III, it attempts first to identify the general nature of the transformation of Aboriginal access to social security payments and of the DSS's commitment to Aborigines and second to identify some general characteristics of the processes through which this policy change has emerged.