John Buchanan - Inclusive Growth in Australia

PAUL SMYTH is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Melbourne, and General Manager of the Research and Policy Centre at the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne. This joint position involves leading research and the development of policy around partnership solutions to Australia's social problems. His work combines policy development and research at the BSL with teaching and research at the University's Centre for Public Policy.

JOHN BUCHANAN is Professor and Director of the Workplace Research Centre (WRC) in the Sydney Business School. In recent years, John's research interests have focused on changes associated with the demise of the classical wage earner model of employment. He is especially interested in new approaches to integrating industrial relations, social and economic policies to achieve simultaneous improvements in productivity and fairness.

Edited by Paul Smyth and John Buchanan

Social policy as economic investment

First published 2013 by Allen & Unwin

Published 2020 by Routledge
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Copyright in this collection Paul Smyth and John Buchanan 2013
Copyright in individual chapters with their authors

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ISBN-13: 9781743311301 (pbk)

Francisco Azpitarte
Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research and Brotherhood of St Laurence

Marian Baird
University of Sydney Business School

Grant Belchamber
Australian Council of Trade Unions

Simon Biggs
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne and Brotherhood of St Laurence

John Buchanan
Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney

Hielke Buddelmeyer
Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Gerald Burke
Monash University

Gary Dymski
Leeds University Business School

Saul Eslake
Bank of America, Merrill Lynch Australia

Julie Froud
Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Roy Green
UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney

Anthony Harris
Centre for Health Economics, Monash University

Alexandra Heron
University of Sydney Business School

Michael Horn
Brotherhood of St Laurence

Sukhdev Johal
Royal Holloway, University of London

Don Scott-Kemmis
UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney

Paul Smyth
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne and Brotherhood of St Laurence

Pradeep Taneja
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

Peter Whiteford
Crawford School of Government, Australian National University

Karel Williams
Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Serena Yu
Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney

Paul Smyth and John Buchanan

The aim of this book is to stimulate a new public conversation about the future of social policy in Australia. Look around at the quiet escalation of policy activity: the growth of family payments, paid parental leave, national disability insurance, education funding reforms and so on. It began almost by stealth, has never had a clear political narrative to sustain it and remains incomplete. Today, it is almost as though Australians do not know how to talk about social policies in a positive wayespecially when they involve more government action. At one level, this is a deep-seated colonial legacy. In the nineteenth century, we did want 'a world without welfare', and never quite got used to the necessity of the welfare state that developed from the mid-twentieth century. More recently, of course, the economic reform paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s so inflated the role of markets that the old colonial aspiration got a new lease of lifesmall as it might have been by international comparison, our miniature welfare state appeared to face a future of permanent austerity. The national conversation was dragged down into the clichs of 'welfare wars', 'poverty wars' and 'ending welfare as we know it'. Today, however, there has been a fundamental renewal of thinking about the role of social policy across the globe, and Australia needs to catch up. This book reports on these international paradigm shifts as a basis for building a muchneeded and more constructive national debate about the positive roles social policy might play in twenty-first-century Australia.

It is significant that the turn of the social policy tide began in the period of the Howard government. The new social reform impulse transcends party political divides. Key initiatives were the escalation of family payments but much more importantly the emphasis on investment in human capital in the National Reform Agenda. This book identifies the latter as hallmark policy reform of the new global social policy agenda. A regular flow of social innovation has continued under Laboralbeit in the somewhat ill-defined framework of social inclusion. Curiously this social policy revival has occurred with little ideological fanfare or party political contest, and often seems to have resulted from little more than electoral self-interest. This book will suggest that we are in fact witnessing a policy shift of much deeper importance.

The Australian experience can be seen as symptomatic of a worldwide movement away from the neoliberal policy model of the late twentieth century to a new paradigm that has at its core the quest for a better integration of economic and social policy. In developed economies, this movement can be followed in the transition from the 'welfare state' to the 'social investment state', while in development economics it is recognised as the move from the 'Washington consensus' to what the World Bank has dubbed 'inclusive growth'. We have taken this latter term up into our book title because of the way in which the concept of inclusive growth emphasises the importance of the interdependence of social inclusion and economic growth. The strong economy requires strong social foundations as much as the good society itself needs a firm economic base.