My underlying concern about the recent Federal Budget and the major parties’ economic and fiscal policies is with neoliberalism.
This includes privatisation, free trade, open markets, deregulation, and reduction in government spending i order to aid the private sector. We find neoliberalism in current political rhetoric mentioning the free market, small government, service delivery, privatisation, the end of the age of entitlement, etc.
Before the recent British election, a group of prominent counsellors, psychotherapists and academics argued that austerity cuts and neoliberal thinking among policymakers were having a profoundly disturbing effect on Britons’ psychological and emotional well-being. They said:
The past five years have seen a radical shift in the kinds of issues generating distress in our clients: increasing inequality and outright poverty, families forced to move against their wishes and, perhaps most important, benefits claimants (including disabled and ill people) and those seeking work being subjected to a quite new, intimidatory kind of disciplinary regime.
Neoliberalism presents some very real practical challenges for faith based non profit organisations in Australia, even if the situation is not as stark as in Britain. In particular, neoliberalism is changing the relationship between government, civil society and the market and sector boundaries are blurring and converging.
For example, the welfare state – traditionally the preserve of the State itself – has been extended through government outsourcing to secular and faith based not for profit and for profit organisations. Outsourcing can create real ethical dilemmas for faith based organisations. The old Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) was privatised more than 20 years ago.
The corruption, inefficiency, punishment and coercion within the current iteration – Job Services Australia – were highlighted in a Four Corners report earlier this year. It showed evidence of paternalism and punitive practices, including restricting the benefits paid to clients who failed to attend consecutive interviews when it was not their fault.
Under rare conditions, sanctions may be needed to change behaviour but should it be faith based wielding the stick? Surely the role of faith based agencies is to offer the promise of the carrot. Let the State take the risk and responsibility for wielding the stick.
It is just as alarming that market economics is intruding into funding models, for example with the involvement of for profit organisations.
In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, Harvard Professor Michael Sandel asks whether the market is equipped to promote human dignity and the common good. Are services delivered by