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AUSTRALIA

An opportunity to invest in Australia's needy

  • 02 July 2014

The medley of benefits, supplements, allowances and schemes that we call welfare in Australia has developed over the years in response to real and pressing needs. It is a system that has helped us take care of one another. Nonetheless, as it has evolved like patchwork, it has grown increasingly complex for everyone involved. Payment levels have not kept pace with the cost of living, and cumulative changes have led to unintended consequences.

This complex system, riddled with inefficiencies and inequity, has its roots firmly in a world long gone. Australia’s welfare system was designed for an era where men were the breadwinners and women worked outside the home only until marriage. Unemployment was generally short term and sporadic, with payments geared to helping individuals or families over a short hump of joblessness. 

Australia is a different place now. Sixty five percent of women work, fifteen percent of families are single parent households, largely headed by women, and unemployment for too many Australians is long term and endemic. We’ve seen the rise of intergenerational unemployment, locational disadvantage and an increasingly complex mix of needs in our communities. Where thirty years ago, people came to community services seeking assistance with paying the bills, finding affordable housing, living with mental ill health, escaping family violence, gambling, alcohol or other drug addictions; it is the norm now for people to present with a cluster of these issues impacting their or their family’s lives.

Our population is ageing. More of us are living longer than ever before, including Australians living with disability. People with a range of conditions can now expect to live decades longer than in previous centuries. Families have become a whole lot diverse than in decades past. Australians increasingly partner multiple times over a lifecourse, so in addition to the rise of the sole parent family, we are experiencing and explosion in family types and complexity. It’s not unusual for children to live in and regularly move between two or more households. 

And of course our labour market has transformed. Teens no longer are pushed to decided “what they want to be” at school, in preparation for selecting one job for life. Workers are required to skill up for work and to continue to develop skills over their working life as jobs change and as they shift industries in response to demand.

These changes all bring challenges for an outdated welfare system. The radical reconfiguring of
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