tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/social-policy-1892/articlesSocial policy – The Conversation2023-12-06T15:53:41Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2182062023-12-06T15:53:41Z2023-12-06T15:53:41ZUniversal basic income: Wales is set to end its experiment – why we think that’s a mistake<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563366/original/file-20231204-19-2f6mm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5184%2C3841&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Welsh UBI for care leavers pilot runs until 2025 and won't be extended beyond that date. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-hand-taking-british-money-uk-2328478975">Alex Segre/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Welsh government has <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/wales-not-continue-paying-care-27990859">announced</a> that its universal basic income (UBI) project will not be continued after the initial pilot ends in 2025 because of the cost.</p>
<p>The trial involved paying monthly payments of £1,600 each to a group of 635 care leavers. The scheme, which began in 2022, was offered to all young people leaving the care system at the age of 18.</p>
<p>The scheme has yet to be fully evaluated, but initial feedback has been positive. And given <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n193">the success</a> of many similar projects around the world, there is a good chance it will have significantly improved the wellbeing of the participants, who are a particularly vulnerable group.</p>
<p>If the pilot were to be expanded, we could learn more about the long-term impacts of UBI and its advantages across the population, including whether it could actually save money. But not continuing the scheme risks squandering these potential benefits and losing the momentum that might make it possible for UBI to be rolled out more widely. And all before we even know how successful the pilot has been.</p>
<p>A UBI is a sum of money that is periodically paid to all people equally and unconditionally. Many of its advocates <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0032329213483106">argue</a> that because it provides people with a stable income, it allows them to focus on personal development, family life, education and their contribution to society instead of worrying about money. </p>
<p>However, some of its opponents <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/100137b4-0cdf-11e8-bacb-2958fde95e5e">argue</a> that UBI is too expensive to implement, discourages people from working and that people should not have something for nothing. </p>
<p>Wales contends with high and long-standing levels of poverty, with some areas having the <a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/poverty-wales-2020">highest</a> in the UK. That has been <a href="https://phwwhocc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/PHW-Cost-of-Living-report-Eng-04_10_23.pdf">exacerbated</a> by the economic fallout of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. </p>
<p>Some vulnerable groups are particularly affected by poverty. Among those are care leavers, who tend to face <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cfs.12421">challenges</a> such as lower educational attainment, higher health and housing needs, substance misuse and an increased risk of committing crime – all of which can cost the state.</p>
<p>The Welsh government’s UBI pilot was launched to address the particular challenges faced by young people leaving local authority care or foster care and transitioning into adulthood. It runs until May 2025 with the final evaluation, <a href="https://cascadewales.org/research/the-welsh-basic-income-evaluation/">conducted</a> by Cardiff University, expected in 2027. </p>
<p>The pilot was recently <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/praise-for-basic-income-pilot-for-care-leavers/">praised</a> by Wales’ minister for social justice, Jane Hutt, who described receiving “fantastic feedback” from participants. Indeed, the programme’s provisional uptake rate of 97% surpasses that of any other opt-in UBI scheme globally. </p>
<p>There has also been international <a href="https://www.wcpp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Basic-Income-Conference-Highlights-Pack.pdf">interest</a> in the Welsh pilot from experts in Europe and Canada. And other <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20499736-seed_preliminaryanalysis-seedsfirstyear_finalreport_individualpages-2">pilots</a> from across the world, including the <a href="https://www.stocktondemonstration.org/">USA</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/07/finnish-basic-income-pilot-improved-wellbeing-study-finds-coronavirus#:%7E:text=The%20researchers%2C%20who%20conducted%2081,loneliness%20than%20the%20control%20group">Finland</a>, have shown how a UBI improves wellbeing, including improved mental and physical <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n193">health</a>. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-universal-basic-income-pilots-havent-led-to-policy-change-despite-their-success-180062">no country</a> has ever introduced a UBI despite those many examples. This has been largely because of the perceived costs and public opinion about giving people money for nothing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-universal-basic-income-pilots-havent-led-to-policy-change-despite-their-success-180062">Three reasons universal basic income pilots haven't led to policy change – despite their success</a>
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<p>Wales’ first minister, Mark Drakeford, appeared to be open to a more permanent place for a UBI in <a href="https://record.senedd.wales/Plenary/12457#C382219">October 2021</a> before the project was launched: “Our pilot … will give us valuable information for the future about how the concept of basic income could apply to other groups more widely across the Welsh population.” </p>
<p>Launching the scheme <a href="https://www.gov.wales/wales-pilots-basic-income-scheme">in 2022</a>, Drakeford described it as “radical”. And Jane Hutt said it was “globally ambitious” and the cost-of-living crisis meant “new ways of supporting people who are most in need” were necessary.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">First Minister Mark Drakeford launches the Welsh care leavers UBI pilot in 2022, describing it as “radical” and “innovative”.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Economic concerns</h2>
<p>Two years on and the Welsh government is now concerned about the cost of a UBI. It says that its <a href="https://www.gov.wales/written-statement-welsh-government-response-uk-autumn-statement-2023">own budget</a> has seen real term cuts in recent years. </p>
<p>Despite this, its decision not to roll the programme out beyond the end of the pilot is a missed opportunity, in our view. The evaluation from the Welsh pilot is likely to provide crucial insights into the impact of UBI on various aspects of care leavers’ lives. This should help to inform future policy and practise for other parts of the social security system too. </p>
<p>Given the multiple challenges faced by care leavers, the long-term benefits of poverty reduction and improved wellbeing appear likely to outweigh the economic concerns. For example, <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/13/10/e075831">recent research</a> in the UK has shown that UBI could substantially improve mental health in young people and therefore reduce the costs to the NHS. And this could extend well beyond care leavers – which we could find out if the project was expanded.</p>
<p>But our worry now is that the results from this pilot will simply be shelved, just like all the others across the globe. There will be a Senedd election in May 2026 and by the time the results of the pilot’s evaluation are due in 2027, the political landscape will have moved on once more.</p>
<p>There’s a danger that because the project is not being extended beyond the pilot, the results from the upcoming evaluation will be too easy to ignore and forget. Instead, Wales should capitalise on the insights gained from this pilot to fully establish just how transformative UBI could be in empowering vulnerable people and foster a more prosperous, equitable and resilient future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A UBI pilot in Wales gives a sum of money to young people leaving the care system. But it won’t be rolled out beyond its trial period.Hefin Gwilym, Lecturer in Social Policy, Bangor UniversityDave Beck, Lecturer in Social Policy, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029972023-06-30T14:09:06Z2023-06-30T14:09:06Z‘Dehumanising policies’ leave autistic people struggling to access health, education and housing – new review<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534448/original/file-20230627-31322-i8q760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4160%2C3120&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Autistic people often don't receive the correct healthcare to meet their needs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-woman-many-people-waiting-medical-1033246597">toodtuphoto/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html">Around 3% of people</a> are estimated to be autistic and it is a lifelong disability. Most autistic people experience the sensory world differently, such as places being too loud or too bright. We also typically communicate in a more direct way than is usual.</p>
<p>In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 means that autistic people should receive reasonable adjustments – meaning organisations must make changes to how they provide their services to remove environmental and social barriers. Despite this, autistic people often experience society as highly disabling. We die between 16 and 30 years younger than non-autistic people, and have a suicide rate <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362361318764742">nine times higher</a>.</p>
<p>Autistic people are often misunderstood by non-autistic people who <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613221129123">fail to recognise</a> how autistic people show empathy. This misunderstanding is embedded in many government bodies, which can result in dehumanising policies and services that do not meet autistic people’s needs.</p>
<p><a href="https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63401">We reviewed</a> the evidence from a range of government and non-government research and reviews to understand how well autistic people fair in relation to government services. We looked at the areas described by William Beveridge, founder of the UK welfare state, as <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/coll-9-health1/coll-9-health/#:%7E:text=By%20the%20outbreak%20of%20war,%2C%20disease%2C%20squalor%20and%20want.">“the five giants”</a>: health, education, employment, poverty and housing. Our findings, which focused on England and Wales due to differences relating to devolution, were bleak.</p>
<p><strong>1. Health</strong></p>
<p>Many government services designed to support autistic people are not available without diagnosis. However, in the UK, most autistic people <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613211059674">aren’t yet diagnosed</a>.</p>
<p>We found diagnosis waiting lists were long – for example, <a href="https://cavuhb.nhs.wales/our-services/integrated-autism-services/diagnostic-assessments-for-autism/">more then 20 months</a> for people served by the Cardiff & Vale health board in south Wales. Across England, between June 2021 and 2022, the waiting list for an autism assessment rose from <a href="https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/autism-statistics/july-2021-to-june-2022">88,000 people to more than 122,000</a>. </p>
<p>Even with a diagnosis, autistic people often don’t receive healthcare that meets their needs. Some people don’t even tell doctors they are autistic, because they expect to be treated badly. Of those who have told their GP, more than 75% said their GP didn’t make <a href="https://westminsterautismcommission.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/ar1011_ncg-autism-report-july-2016.pdf">any reasonable adjustments</a>, such as allowing extra processing time during appointments. </p>
<p>Being expected to phone to book appointments is also difficult for <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/2/e056904">nearly two-thirds of autistic people</a>, yet many GP surgeries insist on phone calls to book appointments. Autistic people also report that clinical spaces <a href="https://www.ndti.org.uk/resources/publication/its-not-rocket-science">are painfully bright, busy and loud</a>, which can make it harder for us to explain what is wrong to the doctor.</p>
<p><strong>2. Education</strong></p>
<p>Autistic people often struggle in educational institutions because they rarely meet our needs. This can mean, for example, that autistic children are labelled as “troublemakers” by teachers, rather than disabled.</p>
<p>Despite autistic people accounting for only 3% of the population, around <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/send-review-right-support-right-place-right-time">80% of those sent to pupil referral units</a> are autistic. This has lifelong effects, as <a href="https://lordchrisholmes.com/report-disabled-students-allowance-dsa/">only 8% </a> of students with a “statement of special educational needs” or an education, health & care plan progress to university, compared with 50% of non-disabled people. </p>
<p>For autistic people who do make it to university, the disabled students allowance (DSA) should pay for extra costs – but <a href="https://lordchrisholmes.com/report-disabled-students-allowance-dsa/">less than one-third </a>of eligible students get DSA. In addition, the support provided by universities is often <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14703297.2020.1850320?journalCode=riie20">poor quality or absent</a>, leaving autistic students disadvantaged.</p>
<p><strong>3. Employment</strong></p>
<p>The UK’s <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/15/contents">Autism Act 2009</a> says that autistic people should be supported to be able to work. However, autistic people are <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/disability/articles/outcomesfordisabledpeopleintheuk/2021">less likely to be in work</a> than non-autistic people. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/access-to-work">Access to work</a> is a UK government scheme to pay disabled people for the extra costs of working, but the application and claiming processes are complicated. Of the 42% of autistic adults who say they need help to access work, <a href="https://s4.chorus-mk.thirdlight.com/file/1573224908/61601577629/width=-1/height=-1/format=-1/fit=scale/t=443899/e=never/k=a402a7d4/nas_appga_report.pdf">only 12% are getting it</a>.</p>
<p><strong>4. Poverty</strong></p>
<p>Autistic people are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/AIA-01-2022-0004">more likely</a> to live in poverty than non-autistic people. <a href="https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/39649/dont-write-me-off-campaign">A 2009 report</a> found one-third of autistic people in the UK were not in paid work or getting benefits. One reason for this is that the benefits designed to stop disabled people living in poverty, such as the personal independence payment (PIP), can be hard to apply for, especially for autistic people. </p>
<p>And for people who manage to apply for PIP, autism falls within the “psychiatric disorders” category, which means they are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-statistics-to-april-2022/personal-independence-payment-official-statistics-to-april-2022#pip-statistics-by-disabling-condition">least likely to receive the award</a> and most likely to lose their PIP upon renewal. </p>
<p><strong>5. Housing</strong></p>
<p>Around <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2021.2004881">12% of autistic people are homeless</a>. As rent typically costs far more than the amount of money awarded in housing benefit, and autistic people are less likely to be in work or have access to benefits, they are more likely to struggle to pay for housing. </p>
<p>This can be made worse by the “<a href="https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/resources/bedroom-tax">bedroom tax</a>”, which is when tenants in social housing have their benefit reduced if they have spare bedrooms. This affects <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19491247.2021.1964253">single people under 35</a> especially, as they are only eligible for the <a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/benefits/benefits_for_under_35s_in_shared_housing">shared accommodation rate</a>. Autistic people can find it hard to live with other people due to their sensory needs, and there are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616718.2014.992681">few one-bedroom properties</a>. </p>
<p>Autistic people who do not have somewhere to live are more likely to be <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201919/jtselect/jtrights/121/121.pdf.">placed in secure residential care</a>, where they are subjected to similar confines to people in prison, by staff who may have <a href="https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/stories/stories-from-the-spectrum-alexis-quinn">limited understanding of autism</a>. They can also be subjected to clinical “treatment” that has the same <a href="https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/29579/23427">questionable origin</a> as <a href="https://www.stonewall.org.uk/everything-you-need-know-about-conversion-therapy">gay conversion therapy</a>, and which guidance states <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/bild/ijpbs/2022/00000012/a00101s1/art00001?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf">should not be used</a>.</p>
<p>The research supporting this approach, known as applied behaviour analysis (ABA), is often riddled with <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676303/full">undeclared conflicts of interest</a>. Those who experience ABA have been found to be <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AIA-08-2017-0016/full/html">more likely to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder</a> (PTSD).</p>
<p>Worse, some autistic people in residential care have experienced <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/28/parents-of-former-mendip-house-resident-claim-they-were-misled-over-scale-of-abuse">abuse by staff</a>. In the most severe cases, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/30/seven-years-winterbourne-view-learning-disabled-people-abuse">autistic people have died</a> due to abusive and/or negligent treatment while in residential care. </p>
<h2>A cumulative impact throughout life</h2>
<p>In every area of government services, we found policies that failed to account for known autistic needs. These failures have a cumulative impact throughout life. A lack of accommodations in education leads to less likelihood of securing accessible employment and greater reliance on benefits and social housing. </p>
<p>To improve this, the policy-making process needs to be made accessible to disabled people so that services meet our needs. This could include ensuring that consultation processes reach out to a broader range of autistic people, and then meet their needs to submit evidence.</p>
<p>It is also important that policy-makers put evidence from the autistic community ahead of evidence provided by non-autistic “experts” who fundamentally misunderstand autism, can have conflicts of interest, and thus can not speak on our behalf. </p>
<p>Autistic lives depend on it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aimee Grant receives funding from UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and the Research Wales Innovation Fund. We wish to thank Dr Gemma Williams and Richard Woods, co-authors of the chapter this article is based on.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Williams receives funding for her PhD studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is affiliated with Autistic UK CIC, where she is a voluntary non-executive director. </span></em></p>A review of government services has found that autistic people are being failed in health, education, employment, poverty and housing.Aimee Grant, Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea UniversityKathryn Williams, PhD Candidate, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2087492023-06-30T04:58:56Z2023-06-30T04:58:56ZAustralia has a strong hand to tackle gambling harm. Will it go all in or fold?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534967/original/file-20230630-25-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C979%2C5973%2C3000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A ban on all gambling advertising within three years has attracted the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/28/ads-for-online-gambling-should-be-banned-in-australia-within-three-years-inquiry-recommends">most attention</a> of the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Social_Policy_and_Legal_Affairs/Onlinegamblingimpacts/Report/List_of_recommendations">31 recommendations</a> made by the Australian parliamentary inquiry into online gambling, which reported this week.</p>
<p>But equally significant are the recommendations to adopt public health principles to prevent gambling harm, to appoint a national online regulator, and for Australian to lead the development of international agreements that “aim to reduce gambling harm and protect public policy and research from gambling industry interference”.</p>
<p>If implemented, the recommendations will advance gambling regulation by several orders of magnitude. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10389-020-01437-2">Preventing harm</a> is a better goal than the current practice of ignoring harms until they become overwhelming. Building a fence at the top of the cliff, rather than providing a fleet of ambulances at the bottom, seems sensible. </p>
<p>Many countries are grappling with regulating unlicensed <a href="https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/blocking-measures-against-offshore-online-gambling-a-scoping-revi">online gambling operators</a> registered in places like Curaçao and the Isle of Man. The only way to effectively address this is via <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/pompidou/-/the-recording-of-the-webinar-on-behavioural-addictions-facilitated-by-information-and-communication-technologies-risks-and-perspectives-is-now-availab">international agreements</a>. </p>
<p>And as with many other harmful commodity industries, gambling operators <a href="https://www.lisbonaddictions.eu/lisbon-addictions-2022/presentations/5-ways-gambling-industry-pursues-influence-policymakers">advance their interests</a> through political influence. They have enthusiastically utilised the tactics honed by the tobacco industry – <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2010.03137.x">lobbying</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-14/how-the-gambling-industry-cashed-in-on-political-donations/100509026">political donations</a> and influencing <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7434195/">research outcomes</a> through funding. </p>
<p>All these aspects need addressing. For example, the inquiry recommends imposing a levy on the gambling industry to fund research. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/place-your-bets-will-banning-illegal-offshore-sites-really-help-kick-our-gambling-habit-126838">Place your bets: will banning illegal offshore sites really help kick our gambling habit?</a>
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<h2>Phasing out advertising</h2>
<p>The proposals to prohibit all inducements to gamble come in four phases.</p>
<p>The first would ban all social media and online advertising. Radio advertising during school drop-off times would also be prohibited.</p>
<p>In the second phase, broadcast advertising for an hour either side of sporting broadcasts would be banned (as Opposition Leader <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/13/peter-dutton-cranks-up-pressure-on-labor-to-further-restrict-gambling-ads">Peter Dutton has argued for</a>). </p>
<p>The third stage would prohibit all broadcast advertising for gambling between 6am and 10pm.</p>
<p>Finally, three years on, all gambling advertising would be gone from our screens.</p>
<p>Not many people will miss it. A 2022 survey by the <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/polling-research-give-junk-food-gambling-ads-the-punt/">Australia Institute</a> found 70% support for such restrictions. The evidence suggests this would be beneficial to young people, since exposure to advertising increases the likelihood of gambling as adults, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/27/children-more-likely-to-become-gamblers-due-to-high-volume-of-betting-ads">with significant harm</a> for some.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sport-is-being-used-to-normalise-gambling-we-should-treat-the-problem-just-like-smoking-205843">Sport is being used to normalise gambling. We should treat the problem just like smoking</a>
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<h2>Important precedents</h2>
<p>The recommendations would set important precedents that can be readily applied to other forms of gambling. These include the principle of establishing a public health-oriented harm prevention policy, a national regulatory system, and enhancing consumer protections to potentially include a universal pre-commitment system. </p>
<p>If online gambling can be better regulated – and it can – why not casinos and pokies? Casino inquiries in <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/la/papers/Pages/tabled-paper-details.aspx?pk=79129">New South Wales</a>, <a href="https://www.rccol.vic.gov.au/">Victoria</a>, <a href="https://www.justice.qld.gov.au/initiatives/external-review-qld-operations-star-entertainment-group">Queensland</a> and <a href="https://www.wa.gov.au/government/publications/perth-casino-royal-commission-final-report">Western Australia</a> have certainly demonstrated the need. So has the <a href="https://www.crimecommission.nsw.gov.au/inquiry-into-money-laundering-in-pubs-and-clubs">NSW Crime Commission</a>’s 2022 inquiry into money laundering in pubs and clubs. Notably, poker machines are estimated to be responsible for <a href="https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/12/1/article-p182.xml">51% to 57% of the total problems</a> arising from gambling. Race and sports wagering account for 20%.</p>
<h2>Industry will resist</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/gambling-ads-ban-called-an-over-reach-/102538120">online gambling industry</a> will do all it can to thwart these initiatives, along with <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/wagering-tv-bodies-slam-proposed-gambling-ads-ban-afl-wary-of-impact-20230628-p5dk4j.html">broadcasters</a> and some <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/scourge-of-the-gambling-epidemic-teal-mp-attacks-afl-over-gambling-ads-20230302-p5coym.html">sports</a> businesses. </p>
<p>Certainly Australia’s unenviable record of being world leaders in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-20/australians-worlds-biggest-gambling-losers/10495566">gambling losses</a> will be threatened if the recommendations are implemented. </p>
<p>The report <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Social_Policy_and_Legal_Affairs/Onlinegamblingimpacts/Report/Chapter_2_-_A_national_strategy_on_online_gambling_harm_reduction">acknowledges</a> wagering service providers have “successfully framed the issue of gambling harm around personal responsibility while diminishing industry and government responsibility”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is too much potential for the gambling industry to be involved in the development of gambling regulation and policy in Australia. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Submissions from the gambling industry reflected this. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://responsiblewagering.com.au/">Responsible Wagering Australia</a>, which represents wagering companies such as Bet365, Betfair, Entain, Sportsbet, Pointsbet and Unibet, suggested the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Social_Policy_and_Legal_Affairs/Onlinegamblingimpacts/Submissions">industry was focused on limiting harm</a>, and mindful of the risks of “problem gambling”. </p>
<p>Indeed, the inquiry’s original terms of reference were about “online gambling and its impacts on problem gamblers”. </p>
<p>The committee changed this to the “impacts on those experiencing gambling harm”. Its report reflects this change, and the majority of submissions and evidence given in <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Social_Policy_and_Legal_Affairs/Onlinegamblingimpacts/Report/B_Public_hearings">13 public hearings</a> overwhelmingly in favour of improved regulation of online gambling product</p>
<p>In the report’s forward, chair Peta Murphy writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am proud to say this Committee has delivered a unanimous report that says, ‘enough is enough’. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sport-is-being-used-to-normalise-gambling-we-should-treat-the-problem-just-like-smoking-205843">Sport is being used to normalise gambling. We should treat the problem just like smoking</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Gambling harm imposes <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/resources/publications/the-social-cost-of-gambling-to-victoria-121/">enormous costs</a> on the community, and on those affected, including families. Examples of these effects are prominent in the committee’s report. Many are harrowing.</p>
<p>There is some way to go before Australia joins Italy, Spain, Belgium and The Netherlands in taking action against gambling interests. But delay means more harm to more people. </p>
<p>The Australian government now has an excellent road map to demonstrate its commitment to the health and wellbeing of Australians. Adopting the inquiry’s recommendations should be a high priority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Livingstone has received funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, the Turkish Red Crescent Society, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government's Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Lancet Public Health Commission into gambling, and of the World Health Organisation expert group on gambling and gambling harm. He made a submission to and appeared before the HoR Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm.</span></em></p>If implemented, the recommendations of Australia’s online gambling inquiry will advance regulation by several orders of magnitude.Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2058432023-05-19T02:54:21Z2023-05-19T02:54:21ZSport is being used to normalise gambling. We should treat the problem just like smoking<p>Turn on the TV and you’re <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/resources/publications/extent-of-and-children-and-young-peoples-exposure-to-gambling-advertising-in-sport-and-non-sport-tv-679/">four times more likely</a> to see a gambling ad during a sports broadcast than during other programming.</p>
<p>The number of gambling ads on TV has grown from <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/resources/publications/extent-of-and-children-and-young-peoples-exposure-to-gambling-advertising-in-sport-and-non-sport-tv-679/">374 a day</a> in 2016 to <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/about-us/news-and-media/948-gambling-ads-daily-on-victorian-free-to-air-tv-in-2021/">948 in 2021</a>. The Australian Football League and National Rubgy League have an “official wagering partner”, whose logo is displayed prominently. Individual clubs have sponsorship deals with gambling companies, displaying their logos on team jerseys.</p>
<p>It’s something Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agrees is “<a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/politicians-say-tv-gambling-ads-are-problematic-but-banning-them-will-do-little-experts-say/j4aapxz57">annoying</a>”, after Opposition leader Peter Dutton <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/13/peter-dutton-cranks-up-pressure-on-labor-to-further-restrict-gambling-ads#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CI%20announce%20that%20a%20Coalition,to%20get%20it%20implemented%20now.%E2%80%9D">proposed a ban</a> on gambling ads an hour before and after sports matches. </p>
<p>At present, <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/gambling-ads-during-live-sport-broadcast-tv-and-radio">a voluntary code governs</a> when these <a href="https://www.freetv.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Free_TV_Commercial_Television_Industry_Code_of_Practice_2018.pdf">ads can be shown</a>. Generally this means they are not allowed until after 8:30pm. But as any parent will tell you, this won’t stop <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/resources/publications/extent-of-and-children-and-young-peoples-exposure-to-gambling-advertising-in-sport-and-non-sport-tv-679/">sports-mad kids</a> seeing them. </p>
<p>Children are regularly, and heavily, exposed to these ads. Parents are alarmed at the changing way their children view sport. It’s not just about the game, or the players, or the teams any more. Now children recite <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/resources/publications/child-and-parent-recall-of-gambling-sponsorship-in-australian-sport-67/">bookmaker brands</a> and the odds as they discuss the weekend’s sport.</p>
<h2>Normalising harmful behaviour</h2>
<p>As with cigarette marketing in decades past, sports sponsorship and advertising has been the primary mechanism for the aggressive “normalisation” of gambling. It presents betting on your team (especially with your mates) as the mark of a dedicated supporter.</p>
<p>Associating a product with a popular pastime, and with sporting or other heroes, is a clear tactic of harmful commodity industries from tobacco, to alcohol, fast food, and gambling. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/news-and-media-releases/articles/study-shows-betting-ads-influencing-childrens-attitudes-to-gambling">Alarming evidence</a> is emerging that shows how young people are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/27/children-more-likely-to-become-gamblers-due-to-high-volume-of-betting-ads">influenced by this marketing</a>. This includes evidence that <a href="https://aifs.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-03/2302-overview_gambling-participation-harm-views.pdf">young people’s exposure to gambling ads</a> is linked to gambling activity as adults.</p>
<p>Gambling ads are effective in persuading people to make specific bets, and to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-11/sports-betting-online-group-chats-young-people-gambling-research/101945456">encourage their friends</a> to sign up.</p>
<p>Young men are particularly susceptible. More than 70% of <a href="https://aifs.gov.au/research/research-snapshots/gambling-participation-and-experience-harm-australia">male punters aged 18 to 35</a> are at risk of harm, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Proportion of Australian adults who gambled and were classified as being at risk of gambling harm in past 12 months." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526973/original/file-20230518-29-bqho0n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526973/original/file-20230518-29-bqho0n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526973/original/file-20230518-29-bqho0n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526973/original/file-20230518-29-bqho0n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526973/original/file-20230518-29-bqho0n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526973/original/file-20230518-29-bqho0n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526973/original/file-20230518-29-bqho0n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Proportion of Australian adults who gambled and were classified as being at risk of gambling harm in the past 12 months.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://aifs.gov.au/research/research-snapshots/gambling-participation-and-experience-harm-australia">AIFS</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<h2>What other countries are doing</h2>
<p>These concerns have now lead to multiple countries prohibiting gambling ads altogether. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sportcal.com/betting/sports-betting-advertising-restrictions-planned-in-netherlands/">The Netherlands</a> will ban all TV, radio, print and billboard gambling ads from July, with strict conditions on online advertising. A ban on club sponsorship will come into effect in 2025. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/belgium-bans-gambling-advertising-july-1-2023-03-09/">Belgium</a> is going further, ban gambling ads online as well from July. It will ban advertising in stadiums from 2025, and sponsoring of sports clubs in 2028.</p>
<p><a href="https://euroweeklynews.com/2021/08/31/spain-ban-gambling-advertising/">Spain</a> imposed a blanket ban on gambling advertising in 2021, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/gambling-act-review-how-eu-countries-are-tightening-restrictions-on-ads-and-why-the-uk-should-too-199354">Italy</a> in 2019.</p>
<p>In the UK, the Premier League last month agreed to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/apr/13/premier-league-clubs-ban-gambling-sponsors-on-front-of-shirts-from-2026-27">ban bookies’ logos</a> from player match shirts, though critics argue this barely addresses <a href="https://theconversation.com/premier-leagues-front-of-shirt-gambling-ad-ban-is-a-flawed-approach-australia-should-learn-from-it-204105">the scale of the problem</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/premier-leagues-front-of-shirt-gambling-ad-ban-is-a-flawed-approach-australia-should-learn-from-it-204105">Premier League’s front-of-shirt gambling ad ban is a flawed approach. Australia should learn from it</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>How to denormalise harmful behaviour</h2>
<p>“Denormalisation” was a key strategy of <a href="https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-5-uptake/5-24-denormalising-smoking">tobacco control efforts</a> in Australia. These are now seen as a massive public health success, with smoking and associated disease rates dropping dramatically. </p>
<p>There are at least two aspects to denormalising harmful products. </p>
<p>The first is to reduce the avenues through which the product can be promoted. With <a href="https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/tobacco-control-toc%7Etimeline#:%7E:text=1976%20%2D%20bans%20on%20all%20cigarette,increase%20in%20the%20tobacco%20excise.">tobacco</a> this includes even regulating the packaging. For gambling, getting rid of all forms of gambling promotion during sporting events is the obvious first step.</p>
<p>It’s also important to have counter-marketing. When Victoria banned tobacco sponsorship in 1987, it established the <a href="https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-history#:%7E:text=We%20were%20established%20by%20the,of%20sport%20and%20the%20arts.">Victorian Health Promotion Foundation </a>, funded by tobacco taxes, initially to support teams that had lost sponsorship. </p>
<p>If gambling ads were banned, it would be logical to replace at least some of the bookies’ ads with messaging that helps people avoid a gambling habit, or get help if they already have an issue.</p>
<h2>What needs to be done</h2>
<p>If the current <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/onlinegambling">parliamentary inquiry into online gambling</a> makes recommendations in line with submissions from concerned citizens and non-government organisations, we can expect an extension of current restrictions. This should include banning ads in line with Peter Dutton’s suggestions.</p>
<p>It would also make sense to go further than just more restrictions on broadcast ads, to include online and social media promotion. </p>
<p>Even though gambling companies spend most of their marketing dollars on television, use of <a href="https://responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/resources/publications/the-receptivity-of-young-people-to-gambling-marketing-strategies-on-social-media-platforms-1155/">social media</a> is increasing, with alcohol and gambling ads that deliberately <a href="https://fare.org.au/facebook-and-instagram-are-bombarding-young-people-with-targeted-alcohol-gambling-and-unhealthy-food-ads/#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20observed%20that%20alcohol%2C%20unhealthy,points%20collected%20about%20each%20child.%E2%80%9D">target young people</a>. This is despite platforms like Facebook saying it <a href="https://www.facebook.com/business/help/345214789920228?id=434838534925385">doesn’t allow targeting</a> for online gambling and gaming ads to people under the age of 18.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-odds-youll-gamble-on-the-grand-final-are-high-when-punting-is-woven-into-our-very-social-fabric-124157">The odds you’ll gamble on the Grand Final are high when punting is woven into our very social fabric</a>
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<p>A program of successive marketing restrictions, moving towards total prohibition, can give the broadcast industry, and the sporting codes, time to line up new sponsors. </p>
<p>There is a need for national uniformity, with a national regulator to replace current clunky arrangements. And only the federal government has any hope of making social media adhere to regulation. </p>
<p>We gained enormous benefits from removing tobacco advertising from our TV screens and billboards. We have the opportunity to protect a new generation from further serious, avoidable gambling harm. </p>
<p>No one can say Australian sport is worse off without tobacco ads.</p>
<p>Providing a clear timeline for the end of gambling ads will give our professional sports organisations the incentive they need to find an ethical solution that avoids entrapping a new generation in gambling harm.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, the Turkish Red Crescent Society, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government's Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Lancet Public Health Commission into gambling, and of the World Health Organisation expert group on gambling and gambling harm.</span></em></p>No one can say Australian sport is worse off without tobacco ads. We can protect a new generation of young sports fans from harm by following other nations’ lead – and phasing out gambling ads.Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2016622023-03-14T19:05:40Z2023-03-14T19:05:40ZPerrottet’s child trust fund policy dusts off an idea last tried by UK Labour<p>The “Kids Future Fund” promised by NSW’s Premier Dominic Perrottet if his government is re-elected on March 25 is an idea discussed by social policy experts since the 1990s but rarely embraced by politicians.</p>
<p>Britain’s Blair Labour government introduced a similar policy in the early 2000s but it lasted just eight years before being scrapped as part of budget cutbacks. </p>
<p>Perrottet’s <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/perrottet-promises-major-future-fund-for-children-at-liberal-launch-20230312-p5crds.html">promise</a> is to put $400 into a trust fund for every child aged up to 10 years old (and then for every child born). The government will then match contributions made by the child’s parents (or grandparents) up to $400 a year until the child turns 18. </p>
<p>The trust account can only be accessed after age 18, for two purposes only: to help buy a home; or for education, including tuition fees, learning materials, computers and tools needed to get a qualification.</p>
<p>The estimated cost to the NSW budget over the next four years will be A$850 million.</p>
<p>The Perottet government says this could mean every child born in NSW from this year could have, at age 18, a trust fund worth about $28,500. But this depends on co-contributions and a generous rate of interest. It assumes a 7% return, though the announced policy is that the state government will guarantee a 4% return. </p>
<p>The government’s direct contributions will be:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>$200 a year to any family receiving Family Tax Benefit A (normally available to families with one child earning up to <a href="https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/income-test-for-family-tax-benefit-part?context=22151">$108,892</a> a year, or more for larger families)</p></li>
<li><p>up to $200 more to recipients of Family Tax Benefit A, if matched by the parents (or grandparents) </p></li>
<li><p>up to $400 a year for everyone else, if matched.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Parents will be allowed to contribute up to $1,000 a year (presumably to take advantage of the interest rates). Contributions can be made after age 18, but won’t be matched. </p>
<p>Those who only get $200 a year will, using the same formula as the government, have a fund worth a little more than $7,000. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/other-australians-dont-earn-what-you-think-59-538-is-typical-162251">Other Australians don't earn what you think. $59,538, is typical</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Origins of asset-based social policy</h2>
<p>The idea of “trust funds” for children has become more popular since the 1990s, and is most associated with the work of US social researcher <a href="https://brownschool.wustl.edu/Faculty-and-Research/Pages/Michael-Sherraden.aspx">Michael Sherraden</a>. </p>
<p>As the <a href="https://oxfordre.com/socialwork/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.001.0001/acrefore-9780199975839-e-25;jsessionid=2392C83833A7B4B57A879F516A740C01">Encyclopedia of Social Work</a> puts it, the idea is to build assets complementary to traditional social policy based on income. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In fact, asset-based policy with large public subsidies already existed (and still exists) in the United States. But the policy is regressive, benefiting the rich far more than the poor. The goal should be a universal, progressive, and lifelong asset-based policy. One promising pathway may be child development accounts (CDAs) beginning at birth, with greater public deposits for the poorest children. If all children had an account, then eventually this could grow into a universal public policy across the life course.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That this idea emerged in the US may reflect the fact wealth there is more unequally distributed than in most other OECD nations. The least wealthy 60% of Americans own just 3% of total wealth, compared with 17% in Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-top-1-of-income-earners-is-an-increasingly-entrenched-elite-170445">Our top 1% of income earners is an increasingly entrenched elite</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Britain’s Child Trust Fund</h2>
<p>There have been a few experimental programs in Canada and the US. But the program most similar to the NSW government’s proposal is the UK’s Child Trust Fund, introduced by the Blair Labour government in 2003. </p>
<p>This provided every child born after August 2002 with an endowment at birth of £250 and an extra £250 for children in families with household income less than £14,495 (the threshold for receiving the full Child Tax Credit, the UK’s <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP03-90/RP03-90.pdf">equivalent of the Family Tax Benefit</a>). </p>
<p>In 2006 the UK government announced all eligible children would receive a further £250 at age seven, and those from lower-income families an extra £250 on top of that. </p>
<p>All returns were tax-free, including interest payments and capital gains. Parents could add up to £1,200. Except for a few emergency situations, funds could be withdrawn only after a child turned 18. There were no restrictions on use. </p>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-of-teenagers-missing-out-on-child-trust-fund-cash">6 million</a> child trust funds were opened between 2003 and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/may/24/child-trust-funds-scrapped">2011</a>, when the scheme was closed to new recipients by the government headed by David Cameron.</p>
<p>Recipients began to access funds in 2020. It remains unclear if the scheme <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-of-teenagers-missing-out-on-child-trust-fund-cash">benefited those it was meant to help</a>. As many as 1 million accounts have been classed as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/aug/25/child-trust-fund-savings-lost-money-claim">addressee gone away</a>”. Those from poorer families are the most likely to be unaware they have a trust fund.</p>
<h2>Issues and challenges</h2>
<p>This highlights the greatest uncertainty about the benefits of the Perottet government’s proposal. How long will it last?</p>
<p>Another criticism is that the money could be better spent on families with children now rather than in the future. To be fair, however, the Perottet government is also promising measures including a full year of free preschool, five days a week, for every child.</p>
<p>But important details are lacking. For example, it appears the plan is to hold the money in some form of government-controlled account, with the funds “<a href="https://nswliberal.org.au/kids-future-fund">being invested</a>”. With the UK scheme, accounts simply had to be with an approved financial institution. If the accounts are run by the NSW government, will they count as public assets?</p>
<p>The NSW scheme presumably will not involve tax-free status, since only the federal government has this power.</p>
<p>And even with the contribution paid to families receiving Family Tax Benefit, it is still clearly not as progressive as the UK scheme – where low-income families received deposits twice as much as higher-income families – or as beneficial as the original US proposals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201662/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Whiteford receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee.</span></em></p>Important details are lacking in how the Perrottet government’s promise of a ‘Kids Future Fund’ will work. Here’s what we know.Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1799942022-03-30T10:58:32Z2022-03-30T10:58:32ZFive lessons the pandemic taught us about ending homelessness permanently<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455036/original/file-20220329-21-1619phl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C65%2C4007%2C2591&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/poor-tired-depressed-hungry-homeless-man-1016111287">Srdjan Randjelovic / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One surprising success story to come out of the pandemic was how many countries and cities were able to significantly reduce street homelessness. Lockdowns enabled governments to treat homelessness as a public health emergency and act swiftly to accommodate and support people experiencing homelessness.</p>
<p>There were two key fears when it came to homeless populations and the pandemic. First, that those who couldn’t stay at home risked spreading the virus. Second, that those experiencing homelessness would be stigmatised as vectors of the disease, while also being cut off from access to food, support and shelter. Providing emergency accommodation, much of it in private rooms, and taking steps to prevent new homelessness helped alleviate these fears.</p>
<p>Our new <a href="https://www.homelessnessimpact.org/post/homelessness-what-can-we-learn-from-pandemics-surprising-success-story">report</a> from the <a href="https://www.homelessnessimpact.org">Centre for Homelessness Impact</a> and <a href="https://covidandsociety.com/ippocities/">IPPO Cities</a>, part of the <a href="https://covidandsociety.com/">International Public Policy Observatory</a> (of which The Conversation is a partner), details the lessons we can learn from COVID about how to end homelessness in the long term. </p>
<h2>1. Ending homelessness is a realistic policy goal</h2>
<p>The combination of the right political will and funding shows us that street homelessness can be all but eliminated very quickly. This happened for a period in the UK, where 40,000 people <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2021/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2021">moved out</a> of emergency accommodation into longer term accommodation between March 2020 and November 2021.</p>
<p>The public health necessity of housing those experiencing homelessness created a political imperative for radical action. Many governments provided <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/59f07e67422cdf0001904c14/623db6e695e2c41a94eeeab4_CHI.IPPO.Pandemic.pdf#page=13">dedicated funding</a> in the initial phase of the pandemic, vastly increasing the resources available to tackle the problem.</p>
<p>While not all gains were permanent, the fact that this took place at all shows that the goal of ending homelessness permanently is realistic. </p>
<h2>2. Suspending eligibility criteria helps</h2>
<p>Reducing homelessness also means removing the barriers for people to get help. Governments often distribute resources like housing support based on <a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/get_help_from_the_council/who_qualifies_for_housing">set criteria</a>, like whether you are supporting a family. But the pandemic shows us that a more universal approach – offering housing to everyone regardless of their specific circumstance – works much better.</p>
<p>Prior to COVID, the UK excluded certain people from accessing publicly funded accommodation based on immigration status or for other reasons of having “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/23/migrant-rough-sleepers-in-england-will-be-housed-over-winter-says-government">no recourse to public funds</a>”. This meant some homeless people, many of them sleeping rough or in shelters, had little prospect of resolution. Removing this restriction on eligibility allowed those previously existing under the radar of local authorities to <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/59f07e67422cdf0001904c14/623db6e695e2c41a94eeeab4_CHI.IPPO.Pandemic.pdf#page=10">access services</a> and be housed and counted for the first time. </p>
<h2>3. Collaboration is key</h2>
<p>Ending homelessness can’t be done by the government alone – it requires collaboration with the voluntary and private sectors who have the specialist expertise, on the ground know-how and resources necessary for effective action.</p>
<p>The widespread shuttering of the leisure travel industry led to an available stock of private sector hotel rooms which were then used to house people. This public-private cooperation allowed individuals to be housed in their own rooms, which was also important for preventing transmission of COVID. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An advertising screen on a Manchester street showing public health guidance to Stay Home." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455059/original/file-20220329-28-e5opsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455059/original/file-20220329-28-e5opsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455059/original/file-20220329-28-e5opsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455059/original/file-20220329-28-e5opsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455059/original/file-20220329-28-e5opsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455059/original/file-20220329-28-e5opsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455059/original/file-20220329-28-e5opsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The instruction to ‘stay home’ wasn’t possible for everyone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/manchester-uk-november-23-2020-king-1863002869">John B Hewitt / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was also coordination between different services not previously as directly involved in housing and homelessness. In <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/59f07e67422cdf0001904c14/623db6e695e2c41a94eeeab4_CHI.IPPO.Pandemic.pdf#page=18">London</a>, health workers provided initial health screenings, while mental health professionals gave support to homeless people in accommodation.</p>
<p>Making this kind of collaboration permanent, as well as shifting away from the use of shelters and communal hostels and towards single rooms, is necessary for a permanent end to homelessness. The provision of own-room accommodation during the pandemic increased people’s sense of <a href="https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/lessons-learnt-councils-response-rough-sleeping-during-covid-19-pandemic#new-ways-of-engagement">dignity and self-worth</a> in addition to preventing COVID transmission.</p>
<h2>4. Eviction bans work</h2>
<p>Many countries also took action to help those at risk of becoming homeless by introducing eviction bans, which protect tenants from being forced from their homes.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/59f07e67422cdf0001904c14/623db6e695e2c41a94eeeab4_CHI.IPPO.Pandemic.pdf#page=28">Houston</a> in the US, a programme to support people at the point of eviction directed 2,895 individuals away from risk of homelessness into alternative housing. A separate rent relief programme supported tens of thousands more tenants at risk of becoming homeless. Together, these <a href="https://www.homelesshouston.org/2021-homeless-count-results-suggest-the-cchp-kept-numbers-down">measures</a> also allowed existing resources to be targeted at those who were currently without a home.</p>
<p>While making a comprehensive eviction ban permanent is perhaps not possible, the pandemic shows it is a helpful tool in preventing new homelessness.</p>
<h2>5. A clear mandate is needed</h2>
<p>COVID showed us that ending street homelessness is possible with the right political will and corresponding funding. Designating it as a public health crisis provided a necessary and clear mandate that unlocked the tools to take decisive action. </p>
<p>However, many of the gains made during lockdowns have not endured. Homelessness in <a href="https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.publishing.service.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F1050300%2FStatHomeless_202109.ods&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK/">England</a> in the period July-September 2021 had returned broadly to <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/59f07e67422cdf0001904c14/623db6e695e2c41a94eeeab4_CHI.IPPO.Pandemic.pdf#page=14">pre-pandemic levels</a>.</p>
<p>For the kind of concerted action which worked during the pandemic to become more permanent, many countries will require a change in approach, including an expanded role for the state.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://www.homelessnessimpact.org/">Centre for Homelessness Impact</a> and the <a href="https://covidandsociety.com/ippocities/">IPPO Cities</a> are hosting an online roundtable event to discuss the lessons of the pandemic for ending homelessness on Thursday 31 March 2022, from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm. Sign up <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/after-emergency-pandemic-measures-on-homelessness-whats-next-tickets-274915207787">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179994/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Williams works for the International Public Policy Observatory, of which The Conversation is a partner organisation.</span></em></p>Governments acted swiftly to reduce homelessness during the pandemic. Their actions could tell us how to end it permanently.Jeremy Williams, Research Associate, International Public Policy Observatory, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1751902022-01-20T13:44:59Z2022-01-20T13:44:59ZWhy getting Congress to fund help for US children in poverty is so hard to do<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441563/original/file-20220119-25-12btsg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=268%2C1073%2C7478%2C4071&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strongly supported the 2021 expansion of the child tax credit.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-speaks-at-a-press-conference-on-news-photo/1328914081">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-care-about-the-build-back-better-act-hearing-peoples-personal-stories-might-change-that-172023">Build Back Better bill</a>, the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s domestic policy, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/19/22776638/house-democrats-pass-185-trillion-social-spending-bill">cleared the House of Representatives</a> by a <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/582300-house-passes-175t-spending-plan-in-hard-fought-democratic-win">slender margin largely along party lines</a> in November 2021.</p>
<p>Legislative progress came to a sudden stop a month later when Sen. Joe <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/fox-news-sunday-12-19">Manchin announced, in a Fox News interview</a>, that he would not support it. Without the West Virginian’s vote, Senate Democrats lacked the majority they needed to pass the bill.</p>
<p>Manchin raised <a href="https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-statement-on-build-back-better-act">concerns about inflation</a> and objected to several of the measure’s <a href="https://electrek.co/2021/12/20/the-real-reason-joe-manchin-is-sabotaging-the-us-clean-energy-plan/">energy provisions</a>. He also had qualms about a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/manchin-privately-raised-concerns-parents-would-use-child-tax-credit-n1286321">program that had been temporarily helping</a>, according to one estimate, over <a href="https://wvpolicy.org/346000-west-virginia-children-eligible-to-receive-first-monthly-child-tax-credit-payment-next-month/">90% of the children in his state</a>: the expansion of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-lifting-children-out-of-poverty-today-will-help-them-tomorrow-157656">child tax credit</a>.</p>
<p>As far back as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/bidens-goal-to-permanently-boost-support-for-families-echoes-a-failed-nixon-proposal-from-50-years-ago-will-it-take-off-this-time-162314">Nixon administration</a>, the federal government’s efforts to give low-income families financial assistance have repeatedly sparked the same debate: How can the government, at a reasonable cost, provide adequate benefits for children in need and strong work incentives for their parents or guardians?</p>
<p>Solving this problem, as <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leslie-Lenkowsky">I observed</a> long ago as a graduate student studying the Nixon plan and a similar one debated in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1962638">depends more on political calculations</a> than on economic analysis.</p>
<p><iframe id="4tHWI" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/4tHWI/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>A 1-year trial run</h2>
<p>The Biden administration’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/11/politics/biden-sign-covid-bill/index.html">$1.9 billion COVID-19 relief bill</a>, which Congress passed in March 2021, included a single-year expansion of the child tax credit.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://smartasset.com/taxes/all-about-child-tax-credits">benefit for families with children</a> originated with a <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/child-tax-credit-overview.aspx">tax package Congress passed in 1997</a>. Lawmakers subsequently modified it several times, often with bipartisan support. Prior to 2021, the most recent update was part of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax reform package.</p>
<p>Biden’s version gave <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0177">most U.S. families</a> a credit against taxes of $3,000 for each child from age 6 to 17, and $3,600 for those younger than 6. Lower-income families could obtain this credit as six monthly cash payments from July to December, reserving the rest of the money for a lump sum at tax time in 2022. The <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2022/01/14/no-child-tax-credit-deal-in-sight-as-monthly-benefits-lapse/">monthly payments ceased</a> in January 2022.</p>
<p>Previously, the credit was delivered at tax time only and maxed out at $2,000 per child. Families with very low incomes, but not those without any earnings at all, were eligible only for up to $1,400 in payments. A big change in 2021 was that even parents without any earnings, who therefore owed no taxes, could get the maximum benefit.</p>
<p>This change alone, Columbia University researchers estimated, <a href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/monthly-poverty-july-2021">reduced the number of children in poverty by 25%</a> after payments began in July. That research team predicted that greater declines would be likely once more families claimed their benefits.</p>
<p>The Build Back Better bill would have extended the child tax credit expansion for another year. But Manchin, along with many Republicans, said he believed the Biden administration’s real goal was to make it permanent – a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/child-tax-credit-expansion-gets-push-from-democrats-ahead-of-biden-speech-11619550470">goal of many Democrats in Congress</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.aei.org/poverty-studies/new-evidence-on-the-benefits-and-costs-of-an-expanded-child-tax-credit/">Conservatives viewed</a> the long-term adoption of a more generous child tax credit, which would cost an estimated <a href="https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-estimates-permanent-build-back-better">$1.6 trillion over 10 years</a>, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s calculations, as too expensive. They also feared that it might reduce employment among low-income families, even though <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/08/battle-over-bidens-child-tax-credit-its-impact-poverty-workers/">social policy experts disagree on the extent to which that would happen</a>.</p>
<p>Republican lawmakers have generally favored a more targeted approach that would restrict payments to the low-income families that <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/finance/585380-child-tax-credit-expiration-adds-pressure-for-democrats">needed them most and had at least some earnings</a>. They were unwilling to let go of the system adopted in 1997, which prioritizes work incentives over helping the neediest families.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia stands behind closing doors." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441564/original/file-20220119-15-cmbwao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Has Sen. Joe Manchin closed the door on a more expansive child tax credit?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-joe-manchin-leaves-the-senate-chamber-following-a-vote-news-photo/1237665439">Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Competing priorities</h2>
<p>A version of that system was in effect until 2021 and is again in place for the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/parents-can-no-longer-count-on-monthly-child-tax-credit-payments.html">2022 tax year</a>. It did not allow <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45124">families with less than $2,500 in earnings</a> to receive any portion of the child tax credit as a payment and then no more than $1,400, if eligible.</p>
<p>Before Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill, higher-earning families could still use the credit of $2,000 per child to lower their taxes until their incomes reached the $200,000 mark for single parents and <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-tcja-change-taxes-families-children">$400,000 for married couples with children</a>, at which point the credit phased out.</p>
<p>By contrast, the Biden administration’s version provided its larger tax credit not only to low-income families but also to those with modified adjusted gross income above $75,000 for single filers, $112,500 for head-of-household filers and <a href="https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/603116/who-wont-get-monthly-child-tax-credit-payments-not-every-parent-is-eligible">$150,000 for married couples filing a joint return</a>. Above those amounts, it reverted to the previous version until it phased out entirely.</p>
<p>If a program gives more generous help to families with children that have little or no income, as the Biden administration’s did and most Democrats are demanding, it could wind up giving larger tax credits to a much higher number of working-class and middle-class Americans as well – making the program costlier. In the face of an economy-devastating pandemic, the Biden administration and Congress ignored this trade-off last year. They are clearly <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2022/01/14/no-child-tax-credit-deal-in-sight-as-monthly-benefits-lapse/">having trouble</a> doing so again.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2021/10/25/expanding-the-child-tax-credit-effects">Wharton School analysis</a>, 70% of the budgetary impact of the child tax credit expansion the House approved would result from tax cuts for families in the middle three-fifths of the income distribution. </p>
<p>American families with children among the top fifth of earners would get a little less than 12%, with the bottom fifth getting the remaining 18%, Wharton’s economists projected. </p>
<p>In other words, families who are by no means poor are getting the bulk of money made available by the temporary expansion of the child tax credit. </p>
<p>To fix that – and to orient the aid in line with what Republicans are calling for – benefits could be sharply reduced for families with higher earnings. But this would effectively increase tax rates among these families. Alternatively, if the amount of the credit were diminished, it would do less in terms of poverty reduction.</p>
<p>[<em>There’s plenty of opinion out there. We supply facts and analysis, based in research.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-no-opinion">Get The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<h2>A path forward</h2>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-explore-changes-for-child-tax-credit-to-win-manchins-favor-11642169936">Democrats are already examining ways to modify</a> the child tax credit expansion to win Manchin’s support for reinstating it.</p>
<p>But I believe that a better alternative might be to leave the child tax credit alone, letting the more robust version for the 2021 tax year remain expired.</p>
<p>The previous version, enacted as part of the <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-tcja-change-taxes-families-children">Trump administration’s tax reform package</a>, is in effect again for the 2022 tax year. It will <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/additional-child-tax-credit.asp#citation-10">continue only through the 2025</a> tax year, at which point the policy is slated to expire and be replaced by an even <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/child-tax-credit-overview.aspx">earlier and less generous version</a>. Congress should, in my view, now try to make that child tax credit permanent, while also seeking ways to improve its effectiveness that have broad backing.</p>
<p>Until 2021, the child tax credit provided modest assistance for low-income families with children and, perhaps more importantly, had satisfied those worried about work incentives and cost. It was not perfect, but it was better than nothing and, not least of all, politically acceptable.</p>
<p>It’s a good starting point for future improvements.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175190/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leslie Lenkowsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Proponents of using the child tax credit to alleviate poverty need to reach an agreement with those who insist that it must encourage low-income parents to work.Leslie Lenkowsky, Senior Counsellor and Professor Emeritus of Practice in Philanthropic Studies, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1634612021-06-29T12:05:39Z2021-06-29T12:05:39ZInfrastructure spending has always involved social engineering<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408430/original/file-20210625-14120-1cg8b11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C4815%2C3575&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 1872, John Gast painted 'American Progress,' showing trains and roads spreading across the American West.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_Progress_(John_Gast_painting).jpg">John Gast, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The effort by Democrats and Republicans in Congress to find agreement over a federal infrastructure spending bill has hinged on a number of factors, including what “infrastructure” actually is – but the debate ignores a key historical fact.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/infrastructure-plan-opinion-poll/">widespread public support for public investment</a> in building and repairing roads and bridges, water pipes and public schools – as well as providing more elder care and expanding broadband internet access. All of those were part of President Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-unveils-dollar23-trillion-infrastructure-plan/ar-BB1f9oDy">initial US$2.3 trillion infrastructure plan</a>, announced in March 2021.</p>
<p>Republicans criticized the plan in part because of disputes about how to pay for it all, but also by saying that its inclusion of paid sick leave, efforts to fight climate change and investments in child care and medical care were <a href="https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/mike-kelly/2021/04/09/joe-biden-should-leave-social-programs-out-infrastructure-proposal/7129159002/">not really “infrastructure”</a> but rather “social programs.”</p>
<p>A smaller plan may be passed in a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-senate-infrastructure-deal-731487d7540cdf7e48c27124c43cc2d1">new compromise agreement</a>, but as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HfGQnXEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">historians</a>, we believe it’s important for Americans to understand that infrastructure investment has always involved social programming. That has inevitably meant that it benefited some and disadvantaged others. In our view, Americans have been far too hesitant to acknowledge that many infrastructure projects, whether consciously or through neglect, have hurt communities of color. </p>
<h2>Infrastructure in American history</h2>
<p>It’s true that the most basic or traditional understanding of national infrastructure has focused on transportation. Benjamin Franklin, the nation’s <a href="https://www.history.com/news/us-post-office-benjamin-franklin">first postmaster general</a>, was at the head of a long line of policymakers and presidents to highlight the construction of roads as a way to build the nation’s economy. </p>
<p>They knew it was important for farmers to get goods to market and for our nation’s residents to be able to get timely news from distant locales. Passable roads helped tie the 13 Colonies together. <a href="https://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHyper/DETOC/transport/canal.html">Canal</a> building <a href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/back0103.cfm">road building</a> and then the construction of <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?459416-5/railroads-american-culture-19th-century&event=459416&playEvent">railroads</a> were key elements of both building the economy and the nation itself. </p>
<p>As those roads and railroads spread throughout the U.S. in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, they also carried new waves of migrants into land inhabited over millennia by Native Americans. Those migrants brought diseases and violent land seizures, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/">pushing out Native Americans</a>.</p>
<p>For example, in the 1820s, white planters moved into the land taken from the Creeks and other tribes in what is now the Deep South. Millions of enslaved African Americans who had built strong families and communities within the brutal confines of slavery were torn from their homes in the Upper South, some by planters moving to take up cotton land in the new territories, and others by slave traders who purchased enslaved people and sent them to be sold in the <a href="https://slate.com/transcripts/cnVqejZJVVVGTXR4VmFoVVkvWUoyc1MzRnZvVlhuVkhmemdaL3RkZ2hXaz0=">cotton South</a>. </p>
<p>Some roads and <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/TRR">railroad projects</a> were aimed at displacing or removing Native Americans from their homelands as part of a larger social agenda to force them to either <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/">assimilate</a> or “disappear” – a euphemism for cultural destruction. </p>
<p>Private companies received enormous public subsidies from the federal government – often in the form of Native-occupied land – to build railroads through the Plains. When they did so, they explicitly sought to exterminate bison both to prevent dangerous collisions with locomotives and to starve the Native peoples <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-buffalo-killers/482349/">resisting Western expansion</a>. </p>
<p>In 1867, the <a href="http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/stbuff.Html">Kansas Pacific Railway</a> held bison-hunting events in which the car would slow so passengers could slaughter the large animals from their windows. That same year, an Army official famously <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pVGrAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=Kill+every+buffalo+you+can!+Every+buffalo+dead+is+an+Indian+gone&source=bl&ots=R9On_o9HnQ&sig=JGxsXQ0W0NZ4QqBzJIPaqvdx6zs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY0aWIo9fMAhUG4yYKHZ-vAs84ChDoAQgnMAI#v=onepage&q=Kill%20every%20buffalo%20you%20can!%20Every%20buffalo%20dead%20is%20an%20Indian%20gone&f=false">quipped</a>: “Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” </p>
<p>Other projects may not have been intended to be so overtly malicious, but their effects were no less harmful to the societies they affected. There is no evidence, for example, that those who took land from the Creeks gave any thought to the lives of enslaved Virginians, but the resulting interstate slave trade <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/life-in-black-and-white-9780195118032?cc=us&lang=en&">devastated the communities that enslaved Virginians had built over the preceding century</a>. </p>
<p>The infrastructure projects – the building of the roads – were intended to contribute to the nation’s economic development and to benefit white citizens who built prosperous plantations in the Mississippi Delta. They accomplished that. But they did so at enormous, and largely unacknowledged, cost to communities of color.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A historic view of Detroit, Michigan, showing the city bisected by an interstate highway." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408672/original/file-20210628-17-8tgwqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1955 photograph of Detroit, Michigan, shows the city bisected by a newly built interstate highway.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/resultsDisplayImg.cfm?img=mi_ford_1955.jpg&results=">U.S. Federal Highway Administration</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Infrastructure as social policy</h2>
<p>The tradition of carrying out social transformation through transportation projects – both what got funded and how it was designed – continued with the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/?dod-date=629">National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956</a>, which built the nation’s web of interstate highways.</p>
<p>The massive new roads had benefits, <a href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/history.cfm">tying the sprawling nation more closely together</a>. But they also divided existing communities, often in ways that exacerbated racial and class inequities. </p>
<p>Some of those highways, such as I-26 on the <a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/news/local_state_news/why-highways-were-designed-to-run-through-black-communities-sc-faces-historic-dilemma-again/article_576f3fce-0976-11eb-a46c-635e6fad5d38.html">Charleston</a> peninsula in South Carolina, cut straight through or successfully isolated <a href="https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2021/04/12/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways/">African American</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/america-highways-inequality/">Latino communities</a>, and even destroyed homes and businesses to make way <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of-highways-in-american-poverty/474282/">for pavement</a>.</p>
<p>The result created “physical barriers to integration” and often worked “to physically entrench racial inequality,” as New York University law professor <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/984784455">Deborah Archer told NPR</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Building an infrastructure of inclusion?</h2>
<p>The history of American infrastructure development has always been linked to social development, with productive consequences for some and often-disastrous effects on others.</p>
<p>The compromise bill that will go before Congress is inherently both an infrastructure bill and a social policy bill, regardless of how politicians describe it. It will provide long-awaited and much-needed funds to build new roads and repair dams to foster economic development and may extend broadband to the various communities that have been <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-19/where-the-u-s-underestimates-the-digital-divide">left out of the digital economy</a>. But those benefits may not come equally to Americans of all races and economic classes. </p>
<p>People are already attuned to how infrastructure can hurt local communities as much as it can help them. For instance, America’s biggest current environmental battle is being fought in Minnesota, where <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/infrastructure/559660-americas-biggest-environmental-battle-erupts">Native American activists</a> oppose the construction of yet another fossil-fuel pipeline that threatens the waterways and ecology of the entire region.</p>
<p>As history shows, infrastructure simply cannot be considered separately from social programs. Trying to do so makes it less likely that leaders and society as a whole will notice, or seek to improve, the social consequences of what gets built – to those who benefit, and those at whose expense the development may come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Government investment in roads, railroads and other public services has always involved social programming, both for good and for ill.Erika M Bsumek, Associate Professor of History, The University of Texas at AustinJames Sidbury, Professor of History, Rice UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1535232021-04-19T18:59:55Z2021-04-19T18:59:55ZStudent achievement depends on reducing poverty now and after COVID-19<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395049/original/file-20210414-19-7w6vqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C82%2C4970%2C3428&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A crossing guard stops traffic as students arrive at École Woodward Hill Elementary School, in Surrey, B.C., Feb. 23, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is no doubt that COVID-19 has significantly impacted our lives, including schools and education. Temporary closures of <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/08/sg_policy_brief_covid-19_and_education_august_2020.pdf">school buildings have highlighted how</a> factors outside school systems affect schools’ capacity to meet students’ needs and support academic achievement. For example, elementary schools can only successfully deliver online education if children have an <a href="https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-expands-list-of-essential-workers-who-qualify-for-free-emergency-child-care-1.5280865">adult or responsible caregiver with them</a> or they have a reliable internet connection.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/academic-resilience_e22490ac-en">a large body of research</a> that underscores the importance of particular <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/school/50293148.pdf">policies that can support low socio-economic students</a> as well as policies
that align with the most effective education systems globally.</p>
<p>These areas include investing in quality early childhood education, providing adequate mental health and technology support to benefit children in primary and secondary school and funding for post-secondary students. Policy in all these areas can be considered <a href="https://www.unicef.org/social-policy/social-protection">social protection</a> policies. According to UNICEF, such policy reduces “the lifelong consequences of poverty and exclusion.” </p>
<h2>Early childhood education</h2>
<p>A national child-care strategy has been <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/is-universal-daycare-actually-good-for-children/">hotly debated within Canada</a> for some time. Yet despite its detractors, we do know that <a href="https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/early-childhood-education-and-care-25_en">countries such as Finland</a> — where all children under the school age are provided with the option of early childhood education and care — are consistently <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-PISA-Effect-on-Global-Educational-Governance/Volante/p/book/9780367884529">lauded globally</a> for high student achievement and post-secondary attendance.</p>
<p>In general, <a href="https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/sweden-norway-iceland-and-estonia-rank-highest-family-friendly-policies-oecd-and-eu#:%7E:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%2013%20June%202019,and%20Ireland%20rank%20the%20lowest.">countries with the most family-friendly policies</a>, such as paid maternity/paternity leave and subsidized or free early childhood education, recoup these initial investments through a better-educated citizenry. They also tend to have <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264073234-en.pdf?expires=1611074454&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=56B6DB3F47C521E67605A3519DFAE2FC">smaller achievement gaps</a> between the highest and lowest performing students, or are trending in a positive direction — a result that bodes well for policy-makers interested in promoting equity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman passes a closed day care." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392638/original/file-20210330-19-12irtu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392638/original/file-20210330-19-12irtu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392638/original/file-20210330-19-12irtu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392638/original/file-20210330-19-12irtu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392638/original/file-20210330-19-12irtu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392638/original/file-20210330-19-12irtu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392638/original/file-20210330-19-12irtu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman passes a closed child care centre in Toronto on April 10, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mental health, technology infrastructure</h2>
<p>COVID-19 has accentuated the challenges that many students face in kindergarten to Grade 12. The shift to <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/education-coronavirus-covid-poor-learning-remote-unfair-unequal/">remote learning</a> and the increased need for <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/children-s-mental-health-care-neglected-in-fight-against-covid-19-parents-say-1.5130738">mental health supports</a> have impacted children and families. </p>
<p>Added to this, those children who lack access to <a href="https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA134-3">appropriate technology or a stable internet connection</a> or a <a href="https://theboar.org/2020/09/poll-shows-75-of-students-had-no-access-to-quiet-study-spaces-during-the-pandemic/">quiet place to study</a> at home face even further unprecedented hardships. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, these types of challenges are exacerbated for students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Their families require direct <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/child-poverty-to-rise-above-pre-covid-levels-for-at-least-five-years-in-high-income-countries-including-canada-unicef-825917244.html">social protection policy interventions</a>.</p>
<p>In Canada, power over social policy is divided between the federal and provincial governments, but <a href="https://covid.fcm.ca/resources">municipalities also play an important role in the fight against poverty</a>. They provide the infrastructure that ensures that students and their families have an opportunity to succeed: social housing, emergency shelters, subsidized child care, transit passes, and library and recreation services. </p>
<p>Some municipalities have advocated for issues around <a href="https://fcm.ca/sites/default/files/documents/resources/submission/ending-poverty-starts-locally.pdf">reducing poverty</a>, <a href="https://canurb.org/citytalk-news/how-can-the-right-to-housing-equip-local-governments-to-end-homelessness/">affordable housing and homelessness</a>, and <a href="https://fcm.ca/en/focus-areas/broadband">broadband connectivity</a> for smaller communities, and helped put these on the national agenda.</p>
<h2>Higher education</h2>
<p>Canada boasts one of the highest post-secondary enrolment rates in the world. Indeed, the proportion of adults aged 25 to 64 who completed college or university <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/81-604-x/81-604-x2018001-eng.pdf?st=eVZbCkES">increased to 57 per cent in 2017 from 46 per cent in 2005, the highest rate among OECD countries</a>. </p>
<p>While these results should be celebrated, the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19 and the child <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2020066-eng.htm">poverty gap</a>, which has increased incrementally between 2015 and 2018, should cause urgent concern. These factors will directly threaten the prospect of university and college attendance for students from lower socio-economic homes and families.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-woeful-track-record-on-children-set-to-get-worse-with-covid-19-pandemic-146815">Canada’s woeful track record on children set to get worse with COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Even prior to the pandemic, the <a href="https://higheredstrategy.com/the-state-of-canadian-pse-2018/">significant decrease in government funding</a> for Canadian universities and colleges over the last decade has resulted in increased costs and <a href="https://cfs-fcee.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Factsheet-2015-05-Student-Debt-EN.pdf">student debt</a>, and deterred many students from pursuing a post-secondary education. The latter is in stark contrast to Nordic countries such as Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland – where post-secondary education is free or at a low cost. As a consequence, these countries are seen as <a href="https://eucham.eu/best-european-countries-for-business-2020/">desirable places for business</a>.</p>
<p>While many may bemoan tax dollars being used to fund post-secondary students, the economic and social benefits are clearly justified – particularly given the increasing human capital demands of a knowledge economy. </p>
<p>The negative effects of reduced government funding have been growing for some time in Canada. We must continually monitor and address how financial challenges exacerbated by COVID-19 in the long-term affect post-secondary education.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/low-funding-for-universities-puts-students-at-risk-for-cycles-of-poverty-especially-in-the-wake-of-covid-19-131363">Low funding for universities puts students at risk for cycles of poverty, especially in the wake of COVID-19</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It is essential for governments to adopt effective policies far beyond schooling to ensure that the most vulnerable student populations are given a realistic opportunity to excel from kindergarten to Grade 12 and in post-secondary education settings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louis Volante receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Don A. Klinger has received funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Livianna Tossutti and Melissa Siegel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Comprehensive early childhood education, mental health support, internet connectivity and post-secondary funding are part of reducing the consequences of poverty so all students may excel.Louis Volante, Professor of Education, Brock UniversityDon A. Klinger, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Te Kura Toi Tangata Division of Education; Professor of Measurement, Assessment and Evaluation, University of WaikatoLivianna Tossutti, Associate professor, Department of Political Science, Brock UniversityMelissa Siegel, Professor of Migration Studies and Head of Migration Studies at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and UNU-MERIT, United Nations UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1444922020-10-06T01:23:20Z2020-10-06T01:23:20ZAnalysis shows how the Greens have changed the language of economic debate in New Zealand<p>When Health Minister Chris Hipkins recently quipped that the Green Party is “to some extent the <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300076180/the-last-day-of-the-coalition-parliament-wraps-up-with-brutal-jokes-and-moments-of-gratitude">conscience of the Labour Party</a>” he was not simply referring to polls suggesting Labour may <a href="https://www.colmarbrunton.co.nz/what-we-do/1-news-poll/">need the Greens’ support</a> to form a government.</p>
<p>Hipkins was also suggesting Green policies help keep Labour honest on environmental and social issues. So, what difference has the Green Party really made to New Zealand’s political debate?</p>
<p>Drawing on a study of 57 million words spoken in parliament between 2003 and 2016, our <a href="https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/16249">analysis</a> shows the presence of a Green party has changed the political conversation on economics and environment.</p>
<p>In the recent <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/nz-election-2020-watch-the-full-jacinda-ardern-and-judith-collins-newshub-leaders-debate.html">Newshub leaders’ debate</a>, both Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins agreed that “growing the economy” was the best way to respond to the economic crisis driven by COVID-19. </p>
<p>Their responses varied only on traditional left-right lines. Ardern argued that raising incomes and investing in training would <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/121505783/budget-2020-more-than-2-billion-to-get-kiwis-into-jobs-post-covid19">grow the economy</a>. Collins suggested economic growth should be advanced by increasing consumer spending through <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12365947">temporary tax cuts</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, Green parties in New Zealand and elsewhere have long questioned the impact of relentless growth on the natural resources of a finite planet. Green thinking is informed by <a href="https://timjackson.org.uk/ecological-economics/pwg/">ecological economics</a>, which aims to achieve more sustainable forms of collective prosperity that meet social needs within the planet’s limits.</p>
<h2>The language of economic growth</h2>
<p>The impact of this radically different view can be observed in New Zealand parliamentary debates. When MPs from National and Labour used the word “economy” they commonly talked about it in the context of “growth” (“grow”/“growing”/“growth”). </p>
<p>On average, National MPs said “growth” once every four mentions of “economy”. Labour MPs said “growth” once every six mentions. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/arderns-government-and-climate-policy-despite-a-zero-carbon-law-is-new-zealand-merely-a-follower-rather-than-a-leader-146402">Ardern's government and climate policy: despite a zero-carbon law, is New Zealand merely a follower rather than a leader?</a>
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<p>Green MPs used “growth” once every 20 mentions of “economy”. When they did mention growth it was primarily to question the idea and to present alternative ideas about a sustainable economy. </p>
<p>Our analysis of the most recent parliamentary term (2017-2020) is ongoing.
However, while Labour has recently introduced “<a href="https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2019-05/b19-wellbeing-budget.pdf">well-being</a>” into discussions of the economy, it is striking how the COVID crisis has reinvigorated the party’s traditional focus on growth economics.</p>
<p>The research also shows Green MPs mention “economy” primarily in relation to the environment, climate change, sustainability and people, rather than in relation to growth. Their distinct focus is on the connections between the economic system and the environment. </p>
<h2>From Labour to the Greens</h2>
<p>Despite <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/97083457/why-cant-the-greens-be-more-green">criticism</a> that the Greens have not focused enough on “environmental” concerns, Green MPs used words related to environment, climate and conservation more frequently than Labour or National MPs over the 13-year study period. </p>
<p>For example, after controlling for the number of words spoken by each party’s MPs in parliament, Green MPs mentioned “climate change” four times more than National or Labour MPs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz-election-2020-survey-shows-voters-are-divided-on-climate-policy-and-urgency-of-action-146569">NZ election 2020: survey shows voters are divided on climate policy and urgency of action</a>
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<p>This represents something of an historical shift. Atmospheric warming and CO₂ were <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/115821159/a-comprehensive-analysis-of-climate-change-debate-in-new-zealands-parliament">first talked</a> about in parliament by Labour MP Fraser Coleman in 1979. And Labour’s Geoffrey Palmer was the first prime minister to place climate change on parliament’s agenda.</p>
<p>But it has been the Greens who have maintained the momentum, using their speaking opportunities in the House to hold governments to account, including progressing legislation on the <a href="http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2019/0061/latest/LMS183736.html">Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019</a>.</p>
<h2>Making women’s voices heard</h2>
<p>The Green Party has also made a difference to who speaks. By <a href="https://www.greens.org.nz/greens-will-ensure-gender-balance-cabinet">institutionalising gender balance</a> in their leadership and party organisation, and in the way they select their party list for each election, the Greens have consistently elected a higher proportion of female MPs than the other parties. </p>
<p>Historically, female Green MPs have contributed significantly to debates and policy action on inequality, child poverty, Treaty of Waitangi issues, gender equality and action on domestic violence.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-are-consumers-willing-to-pay-more-for-climate-friendly-products-146757">Climate explained: are consumers willing to pay more for climate-friendly products?</a>
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<p>This is significant. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168018816228">Analysis</a> of political language globally, particularly on social media, has shown that politicians who identify as women and people of colour are subject to far higher rates of verbal abuse than their male counterparts. This is also the <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300096675/twitter-toxicity-and-the-2020-election">experience of female MPs in New Zealand</a>, including women representing the Greens.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yvDQLKIZcHQ?wmode=transparent&start=4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Quantity of life or quality of life?’ A 1972 election ad from the Values Party, political ancestor of the Greens.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>A history of disruption</h2>
<p>Minority parties often struggle to maintain their identity in coalition arrangements with larger parties, but the Greens have retained a unique position in New Zealand. </p>
<p>In 1972 the <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/36610/the-values-party">Values Party</a> became the first “green” party to contest a national election anywhere in the world. Former Values activists, including the first Green Party co-leaders Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald, were later successful in taking the Greens into parliament.</p>
<p>The language of green politics in New Zealand and the questioning of growth can be traced back to these origins. Language and words are significant as vehicles for articulating new ideas and provoking transformative action.</p>
<p>Linguistic analysis therefore shows how influential the Green Party has been in presenting alternatives to the idea that economic growth based on unlimited use of New Zealand’s natural resources is a sustainable option.</p>
<p>If Chris Hipkins is correct and the Greens are Labour’s conscience, it is because
they have effectively disrupted a historical near-consensus among the major parties that economic growth is the only driver of prosperity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the parliamentary record shows, the Greens have been the only party to consistently challenge orthodox ideas about economic growth and prosperity.Geoffrey Ford, Lecturer in Digital Humanities / Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science and International Relations, University of CanterburyBronwyn Hayward, Professor of Politics, University of CanterburyKevin Watson, Dean of Arts and Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401352020-07-09T12:16:59Z2020-07-09T12:16:59ZWhen states pass social liberalization laws, they create regional advantages for innovation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346212/original/file-20200707-194427-3370sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=166%2C58%2C2755%2C1895&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marriage equality supporters in 2006 probably had no idea the law they advocated would spur innovation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/proponents-of-gay-marriage-hold-signs-outside-the-news-photo/71424729">Darren McCollester/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What conditions lead to world-changing innovation? It’s an important question for business and government leaders.</p>
<p>Contrary to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/myth-of-the-genius-solitary-scientist-is-dangerous-87835">traditional notion of the solitary scientist</a>, new products, services and technologies are rarely conceived by a single person. Instead, they’re developed and refined through feedback from colleagues, end users and collaborators. So it’s not surprising that characteristics of the social context can influence innovation. </p>
<p>But how can you create the social context that facilitates innovation?</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5JSGP1sAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">My collaborator</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jMB68cgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">and I</a> zeroed in on the idea of looking at social liberalization policies – laws like those that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, for instance – as a measure for a more open and diverse social environment. We found that states that implemented socially liberal laws <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2778">significantly increased patenting</a> – and anti-liberalization policies reduced it.</p>
<h2>Measuring the effect of social context</h2>
<p>As a proxy for openness to diversity and different ideas, my colleague and I focused on two policies: legalization of same-sex civil unions and legalization of medicinal marijuana. We also looked at one type of policy we termed “anti-liberalization”: abortion restrictions. The staggered implementation of these laws state by state between 1994 and 2006 let us examine their effects on the rate and direction of innovation.</p>
<p>When policymakers at the regional and national level enact these kinds of policies, it’s often with the goal of influencing the social and political environment. Michigan, for example, is reviewing the impact of <a href="https://mibiz.com/sections/economic-development/michigan-s-push-to-expand-lgbtq-civil-rights-comes-amid-key-federal-lawsuits">civil rights laws on economic productivity</a>. They may be unaware, though, of the potential impact on innovation, an aspect that’s largely been left out of the discussion.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2778">We found that</a> the legalization of same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships increased state-level patenting by 6%. The legalization of medical marijuana increased patenting by 7%.</p>
<p>In contrast, the passing of each additional abortion restriction reduced patenting by about 1%.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346213/original/file-20200707-194405-hufwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Marchers calling for restrictions on abortion rights in 1995 likely wouldn’t anticipate the impact on innovation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-anti-abortion-demonstrators-many-with-signs-behind-news-photo/675653610">Mark Reinstein/Corbis Historical via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>There are a couple of thorny challenges when it comes to assessing the relationship between the policies and innovation. For instance, could the same factor be behind both the passage of the law and also the changes we observed in patenting? The staggered implementation of these laws state by state allowed us to compare states with different levels of openness to diversity while controlling for time-varying state-level factors that may separately influence innovation, like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/urb.2004.0005">education</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-7218(10)02008-3">R&D spending</a> and other economic conditions and political orientation. </p>
<p>The possibility of reverse causality is another concern. Were states with higher patenting rates more likely to implement socially liberal policies in the first place? Are we simply capturing a continuation of trends that started before these laws were passed? We ruled this option out because when we looked at state-level patenting rates before and after policy changes, we found no evidence of increased patenting before the implementation of the two socially liberal policies.</p>
<p>Along with other statistical tests we performed on the data, these factors gave us confidence that it’s the policies themselves driving changes in sentiment, which are reflected in increased innovation.</p>
<p>Understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive these findings is important for both executives and policymakers who want to tap into the benefits of innovation to facilitate regional growth. We explored three potential explanations of why innovation increases with social liberalization. </p>
<h2>Mobility, entrepreneurship and attitude</h2>
<p>Maybe socially liberal regions tend to attract more inventors. The <a href="https://creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/4%20Cities%20and%20the%20Creative%20Class.pdf">creative class theory</a> argues that inventors prefer to work and live in regions with more tolerance and openness to diversity. As a result of this theory, states like Michigan have developed “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110611112140/http:/www.coolcities.com/mission.html">Cool Cities Initiatives</a>” that aim to revitalize neighborhoods through more green spaces and community gathering venues to attract well-educated individuals and creative types.</p>
<p>But based on the net flow of inventors in and out of states that implemented socially liberal policies, we found no evidence that these laws attract top inventors to a region. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The second possibility is that socially liberal policies can lead more people to take a shot at entrepreneurship by promoting more diverse social interactions and better access to resources. Given that entrepreneurship requires assembling resources and talent, it’s not surprising that <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/68840">building diverse networks</a> could be vital for starting a business.</p>
<p>Using the number of new firms patenting as a proxy for entrepreneurship, we found preliminary evidence suggesting that liberalization policies are indeed associated with more entry into entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>We found the strongest support, though, for a third mechanism, which draws on the idea that social liberalization policies can influence individuals’ attitudes toward openness and diversity. In turn, this leads to more diverse interactions, including collaborations among inventors. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sianbeilock/2019/04/04/how-diversity-leads-to-better-outcomes/#1566f71365ce">More diverse teams tend to produce better outcomes</a> as a result of more creative problem-solving.</p>
<p>Inventors living in states with liberalized policies had greater collaboration diversity; they tended to form more new collaborative ties, and their collaborators had wider and more diverse knowledge bases. The patents that resulted from these more diverse collaborations were more novel. And they were of measurably higher impact, as they are more likely to be among the top 10% of most highly cited patents.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Diversity of perspectives around the table is a valuable ingredient for innovation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/business-colleagues-in-meeting-with-female-amputee-royalty-free-image/1084168538">10'000 Hours/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Innovation springs from the social context</h2>
<p>The big takeaway for firms is that the social context can shape inventive collaborations, and thus influence innovation outcomes.</p>
<p>While firms traditionally make location decisions based on the human capital in a region, they should also consider a region’s social environment. Indeed, the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-get-anything-done-georgia-politicians-say-do-it-for-amazon-1517308201">broader social context</a> is rumored to have been a factor in <a href="https://atlanta.curbed.com/2018/11/12/18087396/atlanta-gulch-downtown-amazon-hq2-jeff-bezos">why Georgia did not score Amazon’s HQ2 location</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, our research suggests that corporate social responsibility practices that promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace help set the stage for greater innovative productivity. Managers who want to create competitive advantages for businesses should keep these policies in mind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurina Zhang receives funding from the Kauffman Foundation. </span></em></p>Inventors in states with more socially liberal laws on the books end up with more diverse collaborators – and more higher-impact patents.Laurina Zhang, Assistant Professor of Strategy & Innovation, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1301502020-02-20T07:39:03Z2020-02-20T07:39:03ZThe experiences of people with disabilities show we need a new understanding of urban safety<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315789/original/file-20200217-11023-1nhbjya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3235%2C2148&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/blind-person-walking-stick-crossing-pedestrian-633932648">Juan Ci/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Creating safe and secure urban spaces is a core concern for city managers, urban planners and policy workers. Safety is a slippery concept to pin down, not least because it is a subjective experience. It incorporates our perceptions of places and memories, but also norms in society about who is expected to use spaces in the city, and who is considered to be <a href="http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/3924/1/RK_out_of_place.pdf">out of place</a>. </p>
<p>The experiences of people with disabilities offer important insights into the complexities of urban safety, because of the varied encounters with space that impairment can bring. Their experiences show that safety is a fluid concept. Places city planners may consider safe can actually make some people feel unsafe, and what is safe for one person might not be for another. </p>
<p>Over the past two years, we have been carrying out <a href="https://www.ucc.ie/en/iss21/researchprojects/completedresearchprojects/disabilityandthecreationofsaferspace/">research</a> to understand how people with disabilities in Ireland – including people with visual, hearing and mobility impairments - experience urban safety and the impact it has on their everyday use of different spaces. We have found that issues of inclusion and the idea of who “belongs” in particular spaces are important and should be considered alongside more traditional approaches to urban safety.</p>
<h2>Reducing crime by design</h2>
<p>City planners have often been criticised for prioritising “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0739456X16664786">situational responses</a>” to urban safety. These focus on a technical understanding of urban safety as a problem to be solved. Greater police visibility, more lighting and CCTV and the idea that we can <a href="https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/asset/document/designersGuide_digital_0_0.pdf">design out crime</a> from our cities are all examples of situational responses.</p>
<p>While these initiatives may have a place, they often focus on the public realm at the expense of the smaller spaces of people’s lives. They also do not reflect how safety, or a lack of safety, is understood by different groups of city dwellers. There is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09663699725369">no neat match</a> between what crime statistics might say about the safety of an area, and how people actually feel fear and safety in that area. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/research/iss21/TowardsSafer(r)Space.pdf">Our study</a>, conducted across three cities in Ireland, revealed that feelings about fear and safety very much shape disabled people’s experience of their urban environment. In some cases, they can prevent them from using different spaces. People identified a range of spaces and places in the city that felt unsafe. These included public spaces such as transport hubs, bars and nightclubs, shopping centres and deserted spaces.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315956/original/file-20200218-11023-1w2guaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315956/original/file-20200218-11023-1w2guaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315956/original/file-20200218-11023-1w2guaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315956/original/file-20200218-11023-1w2guaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315956/original/file-20200218-11023-1w2guaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315956/original/file-20200218-11023-1w2guaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315956/original/file-20200218-11023-1w2guaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of the people we spoke to had developed strategies to help them feel safe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/blurred-movement-disabled-on-city-street-158045816">blurAZ/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The presence of people they didn’t know or trust, crowds and the inaccessibility of the built environment could make people feel vulnerable in these spaces. In some cases, the absence of people contributed to feelings of insecurity. Others described feeling more unsafe in their homes. This was due to isolation, poor housing design and location and, in some cases, domestic violence. </p>
<h2>Changing perceptions</h2>
<p>What is key here is how people interpreted spaces in terms of fear and safety. Spaces were not fixed as safe or unsafe. One person’s unsafe space could be another’s refuge. Neither can we say that people with disabilities are a group who feel inherently unsafe. The people we spoke to described fear and safety as a result of a range of different of factors coming together at specific times and places. </p>
<p>One man with a visual impairment, for example, described feeling fear in spaces which others might consider to be safe. He recalled an incident when, crossing the road in an urban space in the middle of the day, his concentration was distracted by a group of young people who repeatedly teased and shouted out to him that he shouldn’t cross when he stepped out using a white cane. </p>
<p>Many people had developed strategies and routines to ensure they felt safe in different spaces. This included using learnt transport routes, going out at certain times of day, and only visiting places that they felt were welcoming. These places included restaurants and specific shops where staff knew them, or made an effort to accommodate their needs. Other people only went out accompanied by someone, or used specific technologies when out and about. This included mobile phones, but also – in cases where people had been subject to hostility – the wearing of bodycams as a deterrent. </p>
<p>Thinking about safety in urban planning and policy is more complex than situational responses give credit for. Providing a wheelchair ramp into a building, or better lighting, may indeed assist in creating more welcoming, safer, cities. But it is equally important that urban safety strategies respond to issues of inclusion and justice, by addressing the attitudes which can exclude disabled people from the spaces of their local communities.</p>
<p>The work of Scotland-based charity <a href="https://www.iammescotland.co.uk/">I Am Me</a> on disability hate crime is an example of this. It works to challenge discriminatory attitudes towards disability in schools, while also encouraging service providers and businesses in local communities to sign up to be safe spaces in case a person with a disability feels under threat when out and about. </p>
<p>Urban safety is as much about changing social relations as it is about technical fixes. Disabled people’s experiences show us that it is only by challenging assumptions about who has a right to inhabit urban space that we can create more inclusive, just and safer societies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Edwards receives funding from the Irish Research Council, National Disability Authority, and EU GENDER-NET Plus. </span></em></p>Urban safety is as much about inclusion and belonging as it is about better lighting and CCTV.Claire Edwards, Lecturer in Social Policy and Director of ISS21 (Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century), University College CorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1204712019-09-13T13:18:48Z2019-09-13T13:18:48ZHow benefits rules and family breakdown fuel youth homelessness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292024/original/file-20190911-190061-1pdx970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mother-teenage-daughter-having-arguument-1095397952?src=614pzjwWyUu8Y8uuu96aVA-1-0">Rawpixel.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2017/18 alone, <a href="https://centrepoint.org.uk/media/3069/making-homeless-young-people-count.pdf">103,000 people aged 16 to 24</a> presented themselves as homeless to their local authority in the UK. But while <a href="https://centrepoint.org.uk/media/1700/prevention-what-works_summary.pdf">preventative measures</a> are being implemented to reduce this, a combination of factors that cause youth homelessness is still not being properly addressed: the relationship between poverty and family relationship breakdown – and the role of benefits.</p>
<p>Much of the conversation around preventing youth homelessness doesn’t recognise family conflict being directly related to structural issues such as poverty. It fails to acknowledge that withdrawal of financial support can result in families breaking up and young people becoming homeless. Nor does it recognise that for some young people, due to the way the system works, presenting themselves as homeless may be an almost attractive option.</p>
<p>There are an estimated <a href="http://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/MEASURING-POVERTY-FULL_REPORT.pdf#page=80">14.2m people</a> in the UK in families that are experiencing poverty. Studies have found that <a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/48627/Factsheet_Young_People_and_Homelessness_Nov_2005.pdf">conflict</a> and <a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/data/impact-poverty-relationships">relationship breakdown</a> are more common among lower income families. </p>
<p>Other research has confirmed that the majority of young people become homeless as a result of <a href="https://pureapps2.hw.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/481249/JRF_Youth_Homelessness_FinalReport.pdf">family conflict</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-31510442">relationship breakdown</a>. Further investigation by English charity Homeless Link has revealed that <a href="https://www.homeless.org.uk/.../Young%20and%20Homeless%202018.pdf">49% of young people</a> become homeless due to family breakdown.</p>
<p>Homelessness charity <a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/48627/Factsheet_Young_People_and_Homelessness_Nov_2005.pdf">Shelter</a> has recognised poverty as being a direct cause of family disputes. The charity argues that financial difficulties make it harder to resolve arguments. This can result in the type of family breakdown that causes homelessness. Other charities have meanwhile recognised that structural factors such as <a href="https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachments/Young%20and%20Homeless%202018.pdf">benefit reductions</a> are increasing youth homelessness numbers among low-income families. </p>
<h2>Financial support</h2>
<p>The problem is that young people are unable to claim most <a href="https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/eligibility">benefits</a> before the age of 18 – and parents can only claim government financial support for them if they engage in some form of education or training, such as apprenticeships. This means that household income can dramatically reduce if a 16 year old is not in education, employment or training. Parents can potentially stop receiving <a href="https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit/eligibility">Child Benefits</a>, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance/eligibility">Child Support/Maintenance</a> or <a href="https://www.gov.uk/child-tax-credit">Child Tax Credits</a>. A reduction in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit/what-youll-get">Child Benefit</a> alone can leave a family £82.80 per month poorer. </p>
<p>When young people turn 16, they are legally classed as children, but their parents are no longer <a href="https://fullfact.org/law/legal-age-limits/">legally responsible</a> for their housing. So if they get evicted from the family home and present themselves as homeless, the local authority <a href="https://www.nhas.org.uk/docs/G_v_Southwark_briefing_revised_Nov_11.pdf">has a duty</a> to immediately house them in suitable accommodation. </p>
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<p>Young people at the ages of 16 and 17 are recognised as being “<a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/17">in need</a>” when they become homeless, so they qualify for the same benefit entitlement as someone over the age of 18. They can claim <a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/legal/housing_options/young_people_and_care_leavers/paying_for_accommodation">Housing Benefit</a> and <a href="https://www.nhas.org.uk/improving-outcomes/advising-young-people/money-matters/benefits-and-financial-support-for-young-people/welfare-benefits">Job Seekers Allowance (JSA)</a>, or <a href="https://www.nhas.org.uk/improving-outcomes/advising-young-people/money-matters/benefits-and-financial-support-for-young-people/welfare-benefits">Universal Credit</a>, to financially support them while they reside in emergency accommodation. </p>
<p>Due to these rules, families living in poverty – who have no other option – may see this method of presenting homelessness as a way to take the financial pressure off. This is anything but an easy ride, however.</p>
<h2>Stuck in poverty</h2>
<p>When they become homeless, 16 and 17-year-olds are typically offered places in accommodation which gives them extra practical and emotional support. This varies according to what each person needs but can cover anything from daily living skills to advice on accessing education and employment, or mental health help. The aim is to help them build the skills they need to live independently. But this type of accommodation costs around <a href="https://www.crisis.org.uk/media/20677/crisis_at_what_cost_2015.pdf">£400 per week</a>.</p>
<p>Due to this high cost, young people are limited in <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/2-142-a-month-homeless-accommodation-that-traps-people-in-poverty-dr-beth-watts-1-4837175">employment opportunities</a>. If they earn over a certain amount (which varies according to hours worked, wages and age, among other factors), they will become liable to pay a percentage of the rent which would otherwise be covered by their housing benefit. This usually leaves them in a situation where they are better off claiming JSA rather than working. Indeed, Barnados has reported that <a href="http://www.barnardos.org.uk/homeless_not_voiceless_report.pdf">some hostel staff</a> have reluctantly discouraged young people from full-time jobs while living there as a result of this dilemma. </p>
<p>In addition, financial incentives for education and training, such as <a href="https://www.studentfinancewales.co.uk/fe/information-for-parents/education-maintenance-allowance.aspx">Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA)</a>, are undermined when young homeless people can claim more money through JSA. Arguably, young people who live in supported accommodation are in a situation where they may consider it a better option not to engage in education, training, or employment. This can be detrimental to their <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1023/A:1025694823396">long-term life chances</a>.</p>
<p>These, and the other <a href="http://www.employabilityinscotland.com/media/82460/reducing-dependencyincreasing-opportunity-options-for-the-future-of-welfare-to-work.pdf">multiple disadvantages</a> they face, can exclude young people from the labour market, resulting in them becoming reliant on benefits for prolonged periods of time.</p>
<p>If parents are unable to obtain the necessary financial support for their children, they may very well consider homelessness to be a viable solution to their problem. Combined with the limited options that young people have in terms of housing generally, obtaining accommodation through homeless services might be seen as an appealing alternative. </p>
<p>But in the long term it is <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/media/chp/documents/2015/CostsofHomelessness.pdf">far more expensive</a> for the country, more damaging to young people’s future prospects – and potentially their <a href="https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/health-and-wellbeing/drugs-and-alcohol/">physical</a> and <a href="https://www.younghealthprogrammeyhp.com/content/dam/young-health/Resources/Publications/Making-it-matter-putting-it-into-practice.pdf">mental</a> health – than if the country simply provided financial support to families, preventing homelessness and keeping them together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Howell receives funding from ESRC. He is affiliated with Housing Studies Association.</span></em></p>For families living in poverty, making their 16 or 17 year old child homeless may be the only option to keeping them all afloat.Matt Howell, PhD Student, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1208982019-09-03T20:04:43Z2019-09-03T20:04:43ZMeet the nonagenarians: people in their 90s are Australia’s fastest growing senior age group<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290619/original/file-20190903-175673-1nn85sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C8%2C5964%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With so many people now living to their 90s – and so many more projected to in future – health and social policy must evolve.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the media discusses ageing, it commonly focuses on people older than 65. But generally, a 65-year-old and a 95-year-old have about as much in common as a 65-year-old and a 35-year-old.</p>
<p>Our population has been ageing for more than a century, picking up momentum in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331683951_The_Dimensions_and_Implications_of_Australian_Population_Ageing">the 1970s</a>. Attention has typically been on the baby boomers, who have started to reach age 65 and beyond. </p>
<p>But the “greatest generation”, those born in the 1920s and aged in their 90s today, have quietly become the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajag.12695">fastest growing group</a> of older people in Australia. The rate of people living to their 90s – “nonagenarians” – has grown by 67% in the past decade, much higher than any other ten-year age group over 60.</p>
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<p>And the rate shows no sign of slowing. For every 100 baby boys born in Australia in 1920, only 12 survived to age 90. For every 100 boys born in 1935, 22 can expect to live to age 90. And for boys born in 1950, <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/apjri.2014.8.issue-2/apjri-2013-0004/apjri-2013-0004.xml">demographers estimate</a> that one in three will live to age ninety, with a further average life expectancy of 4.8 years. </p>
<p>Among girls born in 1950, we can expect half to survive to age 90, with an average life expectancy of a further 5.7 years. </p>
<p>With so many people now living to their 90s – and so many more projected to in future – health and social policy need to evolve with their changing needs, from more inclusive built environments to more health expenditure.</p>
<h2>Why is there such a large increase in nonagenarians?</h2>
<p>A larger birth cohort and immigration are partly responsible, but mainly, it’s a result of better survival. </p>
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<p>And this is largely due to the dramatic decline in death rates from heart disease that <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/2ba74f7f-d812-4539-a006-ca39b34d8120/aihw-21213.pdf">began in the late 1960s</a> and continued to decline in the decades after. </p>
<p>This generation was the first to really benefit from declining death rates from heart disease when they were aged in their 40s and early 50s, and from further improvements again in the 1970s and again in the 1980s.</p>
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<h2>Back in my day…</h2>
<p>Those born in the early 1920s would have entered the workforce during the Great Depression of the 1930s, after leaving school at about 13. In 1932, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajag.12695">unemployment</a> in Australia was 32%.</p>
<p>Many men served in the armed forces from 1939 during the second world war, giving women unusual opportunities for employment at the time, such as in <a href="https://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/women-in-wartime">factories and shipyards</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289544/original/file-20190827-8860-2xgt3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Army field kitchens in Australia during the second world war. Many men who are in their 90s today served in the Second World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofvictoria_collections/8662067512/in/album-72157633275165063/">State Library of Victoria</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Those born in the late 1920s left school during the war, and were well placed to take advantage of the economic boom that followed the war years. </p>
<p>As adults, nonagenarians experienced a number of significant technological breakthroughs. Refrigerators and automatic washing machines became common household items, and the average couple likely purchased their first car when they were in their late 30s or early 40s. Television also became part of their lives around the same time. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/better-design-could-make-mobile-devices-easier-for-seniors-to-use-118972">Better design could make mobile devices easier for seniors to use</a>
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<p>When they had families of their own, they had, on average, three children, who became the baby boomers. </p>
<h2>90-somethings today</h2>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajag.12695">In 2016</a> in Australia, 56,058 men and 117,690 women were aged in their 90s. While women outnumber men by about two to one, the number of male nonagenarians is increasing much faster than the number of women (a rate of 99% compared to 55% in the past decade). </p>
<p>This means that as more men survive, there are more intact married couples, but also more men (whether widowed, divorced or never married) living alone or in residential aged care than has previously been the case. </p>
<p>What’s more, a small proportion of nonagenarians in the census said they were providing care to others (8% of men and 3% of women) or engaged in volunteer work (5% of men and 4% of women).</p>
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<p>People in their nineties also have diverse cultural backgrounds. Approximately one-third were born overseas, and around two-thirds of those have come to Australia from countries where English was not the dominant language. </p>
<p>They also have diverse educational backgrounds. Over a third had left school by or before Year 8, and only around one in five had completed Year 12. </p>
<p>More than a quarter of men held some kind of trade qualification. Eight per cent of men and 3% of women held university qualifications. </p>
<h2>What it means for policy and society</h2>
<p>While nonagenarians birthed the first baby boomers, today’s octogenarians had even higher birth rates. Higher survival rates also mean more intact social networks as friends and neighbours survive into old age. </p>
<p>This means the experience of advanced old age could be less lonely and less isolating than was previously the case.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-and-more-older-australians-will-be-homeless-unless-we-act-now-87685">More and more older Australians will be homeless unless we act now</a>
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<p>And the changing gender ratio will mean more men live in residential care and need to use community care services. </p>
<p>Most nonagenarians will be living in the community, and as well as greater community care, they’ll need <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-and-more-older-australians-will-be-homeless-unless-we-act-now-87685">affordable housing</a>. </p>
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<span class="caption">2005 Archibald Prize winner John Olsen is a nonagenarian, born in 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mosman Council/Wikimedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>It’s also important to plan for improved local transport to shopping centres, clubs, churches and mosques and cultural events, not just to the all-too-common focus in the media about getting to medical appointments. </p>
<p>We will need <a href="https://theconversation.com/contested-spaces-we-need-to-see-public-space-through-older-eyes-too-72261">age-friendly</a> built environments (seating, curbs, footpaths, parks, community gardens) and service environments (banks, government services, clothing stores, furniture stores), not just the common focus on ramps and other home modifications. </p>
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<p>And the potential homelessness in older populations should be taken into account, programs to help develop or strengthen <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-younger-people-can-learn-from-older-people-about-using-technology-107607">digital literacy</a> for those who use technology, and ways of providing alternatives for those who do not. </p>
<p>So what does it mean for health services, and particularly for health expenditure? </p>
<p>We would argue the changes will be surprisingly limited. In fact, the fastest increases in expenditure per person for admissions to hospital were not in the 90 and over age group – where <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/health-welfare-expenditure/australian-health-expenditure-demographics-disease/contents/table-of-contents">the increase</a> was 15% from 2004 to 2013. The highest increase was in the 35-64 age group with an increase of 34%.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Goss is a member of the Australian Labor Party and the Uniting Church</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diane Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The rate of people living to their 90s has grown by 67% in the past decade, much higher than any other senior age group.Diane Gibson, Distinguished Professor (health and ageing), University of CanberraJohn Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1146112019-04-10T04:30:13Z2019-04-10T04:30:13ZThe Coalition’s record on social policy: big on promises, short on follow-through<p><em>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/coalition-record-2019-69102">series</a> examining the Coalition government’s record on key issues while in power and what Labor is promising if it wins the 2019 federal election.</em></p>
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<h2>Religious freedom</h2>
<p><strong>Anja Hilkemeijer, Law Lecturer, University of Tasmania; and Amy Maguire, Associate Professor, University of Newcastle Law School</strong></p>
<p>In December 2017, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/07/marriage-equality-law-passes-australias-parliament-in-landslide-vote">joyous scenes</a> accompanied the long-awaited enactment of marriage equality in Australia. This joy was soon replaced by outrage, however, when the community learned of the extent to which religious schools may legally discriminate against students and staff on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation. </p>
<p>In response, Prime Minister Scott Morrison <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/13/morrison-caves-to-labor-on-gay-students-in-discrimination-law-reform-push">announced</a> last October that parliament would swiftly act to disallow religious schools to expel students on the basis of their sexuality. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/talk-of-same-sex-marriage-impinging-on-religious-freedom-is-misconceived-heres-why-82435">Talk of same-sex marriage impinging on religious freedom is misconceived: here's why</a>
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<p>However, action on removing the special exemptions in the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2014C00002">Sex Discrimination Act 1984</a> (SDA) for religious schools quickly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/13/coalition-to-unveil-new-laws-to-guard-religious-freedom-but-stalls-on-lgbt-students">stalled</a>. Following a number of private members’ <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s1147">bills</a>, a range of <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_LEGislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s1162">amendments</a> and two Senate inquiries, it became clear the Coalition government wanted religious schools to retain some special exemptions. </p>
<p>In a Senate committee report in February, Coalition senators insisted the matter of religious school exemptions from the SDA be <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Sexdiscrimination/Report">referred</a> to the Australian Law Reform Commission. </p>
<p>To date, no referral has been made. And given the few parliament sitting days scheduled before the federal election, it appears this issue will fall to the next parliament to resolve. </p>
<p>The Coalition has also <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/government-response-religious-freedom-review">announced</a> a number of initiatives to boost protections of religious freedom following the release of the long-awaited <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-long-awaited-response-to-ruddock-review-the-government-pushes-hard-on-religious-freedom-108750">Ruddock Religious Freedom Review</a> in December.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-australia-needs-a-religious-discrimination-act-105132">Why Australia needs a Religious Discrimination Act</a>
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<p>Contrary to the panel’s recommendation, Morrison said the government <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/scott-morrison-pledges-religious-discrimination-act-but-delays-protections-for-gay-students-20181213-p50lyh.html">would appoint a religious freedom commissioner</a> to the Australian Human Rights Commission. He also <a href="https://theconversation.com/morrison-wants-religious-discrimination-act-passed-before-election-108755">said he wanted</a> to pass a Religious Discrimination Act before the next federal election, but the government has not provided any details on what form such a statute might take. </p>
<p>While the Liberal Party’s election policies <a href="https://www.liberal.org.au/our-policies">have yet to be released</a>, it is safe to assume the Coalition would seek to implement all the proposals announced in response to the Ruddock report if re-elected.</p>
<p><strong>What about Labor?</strong></p>
<p>If Labor wins the May election, it will feel pressure to follow through on removing exemptions for religious schools in the SDA, as it has <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Sexdiscrimination/Report/d01">committed to doing</a>. </p>
<p>Labor has also indicated it supports enacting a federal law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs, but it needs to see the details of such a proposal before <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/13/coalition-to-unveil-new-laws-to-guard-religious-freedom-but-stalls-on-lgbt-students">committing</a> to it. </p>
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<h2>Freedom of speech</h2>
<p><strong>Katharine Gelber, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, The University of Queensland</strong></p>
<p>Freedom of speech has become a prominent topic in public debate in recent years. One trigger was the 2017 <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1800.0">marriage equality survey</a>. During the campaign, the Australian Christian Lobby argued that marriage equality would “<a href="https://www.acl.org.au/why_gay_marriage_will_take_away_your_right_to_free_speech#splash-signup">take away</a>” people’s right to free speech and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/21/abbott-insists-marriage-equality-threat-to-religious-freedom-after-brandis-calls-it-a-trick">insisted</a> that a “no” vote was essential, “if you’re worried about religious freedom and freedom of speech”.</p>
<p>A second trigger was the 2017 parliamentary <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Human_Rights_inquiries/FreedomspeechAustralia/Report">inquiry into freedom of speech</a>, which raised the question of whether the wording of the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/rda1975202/s18c.html">racial vilification provision in federal law (Section 18C)</a> should be changed, and whether the procedures under which complaints are dealt with by the Australian Human Rights Commission should be altered. Subsequent <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_LEGislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s1063">attempts</a> to change the text of Section 18C were unsuccessful.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/free-speech-would-removing-section-18c-really-give-us-the-right-to-be-bigots-63612">Free speech: would removing Section 18C really give us the right to be bigots?</a>
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<p>What has received far less media attention, though, are the multiple ways in which the Coalition has undermined free speech while in government. The Coalition appears to be a friend of free speech only when it suits them.</p>
<p>The list includes extensive <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/free-speech-after-911-9780198777793?cc=au&lang=en&">laws</a> that restrict free speech far more than is necessary for legitimate national security purposes. </p>
<p>These include counter-terrorism <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1323238X.2017.1363371">laws</a> prohibiting the unauthorised disclosure of information that does not have a public interest exemption. Another <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.au/passing-of-draconian-laws-throws-australian-rights-and-freedoms-under-the-bus/">new law</a> ostensibly designed to prevent foreign interference in Australian affairs exposes journalists and charities to risk of prosecution.</p>
<p>In addition, the Coalition included <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-27/what-are-the-secrecy-provisions-of-the-border-force-act/7663608">secrecy provisions</a> in the 2015 Border Force Act intended to prevent people who work in offshore detention centres from disclosing information. The legislation was so draconian, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants <a href="https://ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16503&LangID=E">cancelled a planned visit</a> to Australia in September 2015 on the grounds it would prevent him from doing his work. Eventually, in the face of a High Court challenge in 2017, the government <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/peter-dutton-abandons-detention-centre-secrecy-rules-amid-high-court-challenge-20170813-gxv128.html">removed</a> the provisions. </p>
<p><strong>What about Labor?</strong></p>
<p>Labor’s position on free speech is less clearly stated. On the one hand, it has <a href="https://theconversation.com/government-needs-to-slow-down-on-changes-to-spying-and-foreign-interference-laws-98002">a record of support for national security laws</a> that restrict free speech. However, Labor takes a different stance from the Coalition on anti-vilification laws, which it <a href="https://www.pennywong.com.au/media-releases/new-anti-discrimination-laws-to-cover-sexual-orientation-gender-identity-and-intersex-status/">defends</a> as narrow, valid restrictions that prevent racism, bigotry and discrimination.</p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest shift in public discourse around free speech has been the degree to which politicians from One Nation, Katter’s Australian Party and the United Australia Party, as well as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/peter-dutton-says-victorians-scared-to-go-out-because-of-african-gang-violence">some from the Coalition</a>, have been emboldened to promote harmful stereotypes of migrants, asylum seekers, LBGTQI and other marginalised groups. </p>
<p>Indeed, in some quarters, political rhetoric has become so caustic that it has separated informed public debate from evidence and reasoning, and undermined core democratic institutions.</p>
<p>If Labor wins the election, its biggest challenge will be to provide the leadership to shift public discourse away from this and facilitate a political culture that embraces diversity and provides free speech to as many people as possible.</p>
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<h2>Social security and welfare</h2>
<p><strong>Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University</strong></p>
<p>Social security and welfare remains the largest component of government spending. In the <a href="https://www.budget.gov.au/2019-20/content/bp2/index.htm">latest budget</a> released by the Coalition government, spending is projected to increase from A$180 billion in 2019-20 to just over A$200 billion in 2022-23. This represents a slight fall, however, from 36.0% of total spending to 35.8%.</p>
<p>Compared to previous budgets, there are no major proposed cutbacks in assistance. The Coalition government has attempted to slash funding for social security and welfare in its past six budgets, with little success. </p>
<p>There are some welcome initiatives set out in the budget, including a commitment of A$328 million over four years to the <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/women/programs-services/reducing-violence/the-national-plan-to-reduce-violence-against-women-and-their-children-2010-2022">National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children</a>, and a commitment of A$527.9 million over five years to establish the <a href="https://engage.dss.gov.au/royal-commission-into-violence-abuse-neglect-and-exploitation-of-people-with-disability/draft-terms-of-reference/">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/future-budgets-are-going-to-have-to-spend-more-on-welfare-which-is-fine-its-spending-on-us-111498">Future budgets are going to have to spend more on welfare, which is fine. It's spending on us</a>
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<p>But the budget also extended the government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-costs-mount-the-government-should-abandon-the-cashless-debit-card-88770">Cashless Debit Card trials</a>, which have courted controversy. The <a href="https://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/mandatory-cashless-debit-must-cease-following-damning-report/">Australian Council of Social Service</a> has argued the card curtails people’s freedoms and hasn’t resulted in any positive effects. This followed an <a href="https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/g/files/net4981/f/Auditor-General_Report_2018-2019_1.pdf">Australian National Audit Office</a> report, which concluded that the card had major flaws and it was difficult to see where social harm had been reduced due to a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/14/cashless-welfare-card-trials-extended-despite-no-evidence-they-reduce-harm">lack of robustness in data collection</a>.”</p>
<p>The Coalition government has attempted to play up its social security and welfare successes in recent years, pointing to the fact that the proportion of the working-age population receiving income support is at <a href="https://ministers.dss.gov.au/media-releases/4786">its lowest level since the early 1980s</a>. </p>
<p>But this appears to be the result of fewer people applying for benefits rather than people moving off benefits more rapidly, as has been claimed. It also reflects a somewhat stronger labour market in recent years and changes introduced to the <a href="https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/parenting-payment">Parenting Payment Single</a> and <a href="https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/disability-support-pension">Disability Support Pension</a> programs under the Rudd/Gillard governments.</p>
<p><strong>What about Labor?</strong></p>
<p>Whoever wins the next election will face pressure to further increase welfare and social security spending as the <a href="https://www.ndis.gov.au/">National Disability Insurance Scheme</a> ramps up and the <a href="https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx">Aged Care Royal Commission</a> releases its findings. The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Budget_Office/Publications/Research_reports/Australias_ageing_population_-__Understanding_the_fiscal_impacts_over_the_next_decade">recent report by the Parliamentary Budget Office</a> projects that real spending on aged care will increase by around A$16 billion over the next decade as a result of Australia’s rapidly ageing population. </p>
<p>Newstart, the main payment for unemployed Australians, <a href="https://www.thesenior.com.au/story/5639229/pension-rise-small-newstart-a-disappointment/">is also increasingly being seen as inadequate</a>. It has slipped relative to pensions and wages each year because it is indexed to the slower-growing consumer price index. </p>
<p>Labor has promised that, if elected, it will use a “<a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/bill-shorten-labor-review-newstart-allowance/2d73d7f3-42c8-423f-8c4b-bfb0e4e012f0">root and branch review</a>” to look at lifting the rate of the Newstart unemployment benefit. However, it is not just Newstart that is inadequate, but support for single parents and families with children, which has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-newstart-single-parents-are-271-per-fortnight-worse-off-labor-needs-an-overarching-welfare-review-107521">cut by both major parties over the last 15 years</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114611/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anja Hilkemeijer is affiliated with Australian Lawyers for Human Rights.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Gelber receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Whiteford has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Social Services. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and a Policy Advisor to the Australian Council of Social Service.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Maguire does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government is spruiking its commitment to religious freedom and freedom of speech, as well as its successes on tackling inequality. Its record, however, leaves much to be desired.Anja Hilkemeijer, Lecturer in Law, University of TasmaniaAmy Maguire, Associate professor, University of NewcastleKatharine Gelber, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, The University of QueenslandPeter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1029932018-09-12T08:22:53Z2018-09-12T08:22:53ZNew generation of working parents demand a better deal on shared parental leave<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235842/original/file-20180911-144458-torg4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">My turn. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-loving-young-man-holding-baby-721480006?src=CRbW_yZuRLpZJ8fNFygfcg-1-5">Rido/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite widespread belief that men should be as involved as women in all aspects of childcare, they are both still largely playing traditional gender roles when looking after children, according to a <a href="https://gender.bitc.org.uk/system/files/research/bitc_equal_lives_september_2018.pdf">new report</a> from Business In The Community (BITC).</p>
<p>This is disappointing news for gender equality, and the British government’s initiatives around family-friendly workplace policies, such as shared parental leave.</p>
<p>The BITC report, entitled “Equal Lives”, is underpinned by a survey of 10,000 employees with caring responsibilities. It found that men under age 35 are “significantly more likely” to wish to take a more active role in caring for their children than previous generations of fathers. This finding resonates with the conversations we’ve had in our ongoing research with men and couples who opted to take shared parental leave. Since 2015, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/shared-parental-leave-and-pay">shared parental leave</a> has allowed eligible parents the opportunity to divide up to a year of parental leave between them in a baby’s first year or first year of adoption.</p>
<p>Our interactions with this current generation of parents who’ve had a child since 2015 show just how strongly some hold ideals of parenting equality. For many, family-friendly schemes, such as shared parental leave, are playing catch up with their already-established ideals and beliefs: that parenting is a joint, and equal, venture. As one of the parents we interviewed, Sarada, <a href="https://www.workingfamilies.org.uk/shared-parental-leave-videos/sarada-and-adam/">told us</a>: </p>
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<p>I never saw the one-year maternity right as something that automatically applied to every single woman, I saw that as an option and shared parental leave caught up with my mindset.</p>
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<h2>Already lagging behind</h2>
<p>Those we’ve interviewed have called into question traditional gender roles, with our research suggesting that shared parental leave policy is already lagging behind this new generation’s progressive thinking.</p>
<p>Parents have told us they find the maternity leave transfer model that underpins shared parental leave unhelpful. An employed woman still has the right to up to 52 weeks of maternity leave, but it’s up to her whether she wishes to swap some of this time for shared parental leave taken with her partner. It is one aspect of the scheme that has been blamed for its <a href="https://www.workingfamilies.org.uk/workflex-blog/shared-parental-leave-opportunities-barriers-sharethejoy-campaign/">poor take up</a>.</p>
<p>Equal Lives finds that many men consider that shared parental leave positions leave as “a woman’s prerogative”. The men in our own <a href="http://www.research.mbs.ac.uk/makingroomfordad/">study</a> felt they were “loaning” leave from their partner. They often described themselves as feeling like a “charity case”, or a “second-class parent”, beholden to their female partner to transfer some of “her” leave. The Equal Lives survey reported that 85% of parents under the age of 35 already consider caring to be an equal responsibility, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that the men we’ve spoken to were indignant about the way shared parental leave works. </p>
<p>Nordic countries are ahead of the game here, all adopting, in some form, a “use it or lose it” quota of leave specifically for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/mar/19/parental-rights-norway-reduce-inequality">dads</a>, and offering a ring-fenced period of time on leave that is reserved for mothers and fathers. Both parents are obliged to take leave from work to care for their child and if they don’t use it, they lose it – a potential policy change which BITC supports.</p>
<p>Yet the UK’s established and comparatively long maternity leave (increased to one year in 2003) is deeply entrenched. And so it’s easy to see why the UK currently operates what is essentially <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/news-parliament-2017/fathers-and-the-workplace-report-17-19/">a transferal scheme</a> between parents. </p>
<h2>Fit work around people’s lives</h2>
<p>In working through how couples make caring decisions, it’s useful to see how same-sex couples operate. The Equal Lives survey found that men in same-sex couples were less likely to be concerned with “depriving their partner” of leave that is rightfully theirs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-shared-parental-leave-gives-adoptive-parents-real-time-to-build-a-new-family-unit-95618">How shared parental leave gives adoptive parents real time to build a new family unit</a>
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<p>However, new Swedish research suggests that this is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/34/5/471/5056857?searchresult=1">not the case in same-sex female couples</a> involving a birth mother, where those preconceived roles can still linger. The research, comparing parental leave in different-sex and female same-sex couples, finds that the birth mother’s uptake of leave is higher than the partner’s uptake in both same-sex and different-sex couples. Perceived norms still exist, linked to the child’s “need” for its birth mother. </p>
<p>The Equal Lives findings come alongside other calls for the workplace to be reimagined. In early September, Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/10/four-day-working-week-for-all-is-a-realistic-goal-this-century-frances-o-grady">called for a universal four-day week</a> so that employees can benefit from the increased efficiency afforded by technological change.</p>
<p>Such a call also recognises that work needs to fit with peoples’ lives – and it provides food for thought about other ways to facilitate a more equal sharing of childcare. The Equal Lives report shows it’s time for employers and society to recognise more fully the importance of supporting employees to have lives outside work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Banister receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and British Academy/Leverhulme</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Kerrane receives funding from British Academy/Leverhulme and ESRC. </span></em></p>Men under 35 want to take a more active role in caring for their children than older generations.Emma Banister, Senior Lecturer, University of ManchesterBen Kerrane, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1025182018-09-05T09:24:08Z2018-09-05T09:24:08ZChina looks to relax two-child policy – but it won’t solve demographic problems<p>There are signs that China’s infamous birth control restrictions – relaxed from a one-child to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-scrapping-the-one-child-policy-will-do-little-to-change-chinas-population-49982">two-child policy in 2015</a> – could be relaxed even further, if not removed altogether. </p>
<p>The first sign came from postage stamps. In 1980, just after the one-child policy was implemented, the postal service introduced a <a href="https://www.weibo.com/1502367562/GtGb6mXuA?type=comment#_rnd1535681554645">stamp</a> showing a single (rather sad-looking) baby monkey to celebrate the zodiac cycle. In 2016, meanwhile, after the two-child policy was introduced, a <a href="https://www.weibo.com/1502367562/GtGb6mXuA?type=comment#_rnd1535681554645">stamp</a> with two (much happier) monkeys was issued. In August, ahead of the year of the pig in 2019, another <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45124502">stamp</a> was issued showing a very happy pig with three very happy piglets.</p>
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<p>Of course, this is just a pig on a stamp. Back in 2007, a Chinese <a href="http://thinkdifferentlyaboutsheep.weebly.com/farm-animal-factspigs.html">stamp</a> was issued with five pigs playing with their mother – and, of course, a five-child policy did not follow in 2008. </p>
<p>Many have identified another possible signal which came in late August, with the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-population/china-paves-way-to-end-family-planning-policy-state-media-idUSKCN1LD077">publication</a> of a Draft Civil Code which omits any commitments to family planning. It will be deliberated upon in September before its implementation. However, family planning is actually covered in the Population and Planning Law and, as such, <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201808/28/WS5b8511a7a310add14f3883c3.html">does not need</a> to be duplicated in the marriage section of the civil code. </p>
<p>However, in March 2018, in a much less noticed piece of administrative news, the National Health and Family Planning Commission was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130313112946/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-03/10/c_132221724.htm">dissolved</a> and folded into the new National Health Commission, possibly signalling a shift in resources away from policing family planning policy. </p>
<h2>Demographic travails</h2>
<p>All this is linked to the fact that China is one of the most rapidly ageing countries in the world. It’s also seeing a steady decline in its working age population which, in turn, is linked to wage inflation. I have <a href="http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2017-06/19/content_29792479.htm">argued elsewhere</a> that a major motive for the “Belt and Road” initiative of Chinese infrastructure investment around the world is to take advantage of more favourable demographic circumstances in other parts of Asia and Africa.</p>
<p>But would relaxing the two-child policy even more actually achieve China’s goals to offset population ageing and stagnation by increasing fertility?</p>
<p>This is where years of studies of fertility preferences in China can come into play. A <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02529203.2015.1001482">recent meta review</a> of studies of fertility preferences in China between 2000 and 2011 found an average of only 4% of respondents wished to have more than two children. Even in rural areas, the mean ideal number of children was under two. The same study also found a significant negative relationship between education levels of women and their ideal number of children. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.701.5432&rep=rep1&type=pdf">a meta review</a> I worked on of fertility studies between 1980 and 2009, my colleague Baochang Gu and I found that in most cases precisely nobody stated a preference for three children. Where they did, these respondents accounted for less than 5% of the total.</p>
<p>Of course, studies of fertility preferences in a country which tightly controls fertility – and which are often performed by family planning commissions themselves – need to be approached with caution. A 1990 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1971594">study showed</a> that when respondents were guaranteed anonymity in a fertility preference survey, they reported a higher desired number of children than those who were not.</p>
<h2>Weak appetite for three children</h2>
<p>From the direct costs of having children to the impact upon female career progression and structural issues relating to the cost of living, work culture, and the challenge of finding decent employment, there has arguably rarely been a worse time to expect Chinese people to have more <a href="https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2067770/why-chinas-two-child-policy-failing-reality-test">children</a>. As marriage is being postponed, couples are also having their first child later, which my ongoing research suggests is also lowering the overall fertility rate. And at this very moment, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/166af97e-a6c6-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff35b">consumer confidence</a> is also on the decline, not least as a consequence of uncertainty about global trade.</p>
<p>And it’s worth remembering that the response to China’s 2015 reforms to its birth control policies was <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-in-shock-why-no-baby-boom">relatively muted</a>. There wasn’t a “baby boom” – making another one now seem unlikely.</p>
<p>These contextual issues are increasingly similar to other parts of East Asia which are grappling with low fertility. Take Taiwan, for example – a territory never subject to any birth control restrictions. In a 2010 <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135105">national survey</a> of married women, just 1.24% of women stated an intention to have three or more children. </p>
<h2>Hopes pinned on more babies</h2>
<p>But despite this weight of scientific, empirical and observational evidence, there is still a real anticipation among many observers, including Chinese officials, that further relaxation will bring about an end to China’s demographic woes. Part of the reason for this misplaced optimism is a false view that China’s birth control policies were a kind of “pressure valve” that held back a massive unmet desire for children. This comes from <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-017-0595-x">a view that it was birth control policies</a> which were the predominant driver of fertility decline in the 1980s and 1990s. But put in context beside <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0658-7">the nature of fertility declines</a> elsewhere, as well as the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13524-018-0662-y">revolutionary changes in economic and social conditions</a> in China over the past two decades, then the idea of a “pressure valve” loses steam.</p>
<p>The reality is that relaxing birth control policies – or scrapping them altogether – is not going to be a magic solution to China’s demographic problems. A multi-dimensional approach to population policy which tackles the institutions associated with ageing, such as pensions and social care, is a first step. </p>
<p>Still, people in China currently do want more children than they have – even if it not three. Policies which seek to bridge this gap between aspirations and reality, not least through looking at circumstances in neighbouring territories as well better understanding why bringing up children seems so tough in China, will stand a much better chance of success. They would also have the added benefit of allowing citizens to meet some of their aspirations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Gietel-Basten does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are signs China could drop its two-child policy in an attempt to boost population growth.Stuart Gietel-Basten, Associate Professor of Social Science and Public Policy, Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1007092018-08-31T10:39:05Z2018-08-31T10:39:05ZSometimes people with learning disabilities need a hug – but support staff aren’t meant to give them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233456/original/file-20180824-149481-1cw221w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A comforting gesture can go a long way. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/disabled-woman-sitting-outdoors-half-breed-188312993?src=f0PDp8aXYCWYEbczwkvEaA-2-1">Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For some people with a learning disability, navigating elements of daily life can be a struggle – and a kind touch or gesture from a support worker can be a real comfort. But it’s not always forthcoming. </p>
<p>As part of my <a href="https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/are-people-with-learning-disabilities-really-being-empowered">PhD research</a>, I spent months watching how support staff in care settings interact with people with learning disabilities. One day, I was spending time with a young man who was attending employment training to develop workplace skills. At one point, we were sitting down together when he leant his head against my shoulder. I responded by putting my arm around him. A staff member walked past and witnessed this, and after telling the young man that he knew he shouldn’t be doing it, the staff member turned to me and warned me that he might “get the wrong idea”. </p>
<p>I felt awkward and conflicted; on one hand, compelled to offer comfort to someone I could see was lonely and vulnerable. Yet, on the other hand, I was also concerned not to be seen to be flouting “house rules”. </p>
<p>Such rules are the result of a shift in social care policy since the 1970s from a more paternalistic approach, to one focused on enabling people with learning disabilities to become independent members of their communities. The intention, set out by the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/250877/5086.pdf">UK government</a>, has been to <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130105064234/http:/www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_093375.pdf">enable people</a> with learning disabilities to live “normal” and fulfilling lives. This is partly rooted in the recognition that an unintended consequence of wanting to take care of and protect vulnerable people can be that these people become more dependent and ultimately less able to take care of themselves.</p>
<p>But in recent years, some researchers have begun to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17714342">question</a> the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/sDaZVxwDmTTVFH4Sa3a8/full">inherent tension</a> within this approach – particularly when promoting autonomy for people whose condition both qualifies them for support and limits their ability to live independently. For those with learning disabilities, who can be particularly vulnerable and reliant on others, this conflict is stark. </p>
<h2>Hand holding forbidden</h2>
<p>For my own doctoral research, which was focused on the need to rethink the way social care support is delivered, I spent nine-and-a-half months observing learning disability services in an area in the south-west of England. I immersed myself in the lives of a small group of people in order to see the world through their eyes.</p>
<p>The people I spent time with often struggled to achieve independence and community inclusion due to the limits their condition placed on them. Without staff support, they tended to be unable to do many things, such as going to the shops and organising general aspects of their lives. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233463/original/file-20180824-149472-1yj8lso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233463/original/file-20180824-149472-1yj8lso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233463/original/file-20180824-149472-1yj8lso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233463/original/file-20180824-149472-1yj8lso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233463/original/file-20180824-149472-1yj8lso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233463/original/file-20180824-149472-1yj8lso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233463/original/file-20180824-149472-1yj8lso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Rules for support staff are governed by what is ‘professional’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/252940873?src=V2PU0Z27lqLL1BW_ClDGGg-1-2&size=medium_jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>I also saw that this dependence often played out in an emotional sense: people with learning disabilities would seek comfort and support from staff, often through attempting to hug them or to hold their hand. But, within many of the services where I spent time, relations between staff and people with learning disabilities were governed by rules directing interactions to be “professional”. This often meant that in practice physical contact appeared to be viewed by staff as something to be avoided and discouraged, if not ignored. </p>
<p>During my research, I accompanied some people with learning disabilities and their support workers on a trip to a local shopping centre. I watched as one man with learning disabilities tried to take the hand of one of his support workers, but she very quickly pulled her hand away from him, without verbally acknowledging what had happened. </p>
<h2>Importance of emotional engagement</h2>
<p>These rules fit with the primary aims of contemporary social care, set out in the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/23/contents">2014 Care Act</a>, which are in place to ensure the promotion of autonomy for people in receipt of support. They are also there to protect both people in receipt of support and the people supporting them from being taken advantage of in what can be vulnerable moments in the delivery and receipt of care. As such, the idea behind these formal rules is to govern what kinds of interactions are acceptable in these settings. </p>
<p>Yet, I’m worried that through these policies we might be forfeiting fundamental aspects of human need for touch within relationships – and stopping people from being emotionally fulfilled.</p>
<p>This issue is not unique to learning disability support. Across health and care services emotional engagement is rarely incorporated into processes of care and treatment. In her book, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Illness.html?id=HscYDQAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">Illness</a>, the philosopher Havi Carel explores coming to terms with a chronic lung condition, in which she describes how her relations with clinicians treating her were defined by “an objective, sanitised language and lack of engagement with social and emotional aspects of illness”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/melanoma-tattoos-a-simple-technique-helping-doctors-develop-empathy-with-patients-74648">Melanoma tattoos: a simple technique helping doctors develop empathy with patients</a>
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<p>With increases in medical advancements and life expectancy across developed nations, people are living longer with serious chronic conditions. A consequence of this is <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/vol390no10100/PIIS0140-6736(17)X0041-X">that more people</a> require care for longer stages of their lives, including those with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28875573">learning disabilities</a>. As a society, we urgently need to ensure that such vulnerable people are enabled to live fulfilling lives.</p>
<p>The issue of whether or not support staff should be allowed to hug and touch those under their care also raises questions about the kinds of relationships that are possible in these professional contexts. If we are to think about introducing emotionally-driven support into caring and treatment contexts, we will also need to consider how this may impact upon the staff working in these settings. Many of those professionals who support people with learning disabilities are poorly paid and undervalued. If we are to change what we expect of them when it comes to the emotional engagement they give in their jobs, we must begin to value the staff themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carys Banks received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). She was the 2016 recipient of the Radcliffe Brown/Sutasoma award from the Royal Anthropological Institute.</span></em></p>An emphasis on the autonomy of people with learning disabilities has put distance between care workers and the people they support.Carys Banks, PhD Candidate, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/939612018-04-03T19:50:59Z2018-04-03T19:50:59ZWhy prosecutions for welfare fraud have declined in Australia<p>Between 2009-10 and 2016-17, the number of social security fraud prosecutions in Australia fell by 80% as a proportion of Centrelink’s customer base. This is remarkable considering national dialogue continues to focus on punitive approaches to welfare fraud. The Department of Human Services, which absorbed Centrelink in 2011, <a href="https://www.humanservices.gov.au/sites/default/files/12637-1607en.pdf">has even reiterated</a> its “zero-tolerance” approach to the issue.</p>
<p>My research suggests this swift and dramatic decline in the welfare fraud prosecution rate is tied to fundamental shifts in the department’s approach to prosecutions. This has led to a less punitive culture among its Serious Non-Compliance staff.</p>
<p><iframe id="qCn9w" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qCn9w/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Legal and policy changes</h2>
<p>Several legal and policy changes have contributed to the declining prosecution rate. This includes the impact of two High Court cases – one from <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/2011/43.html">2011</a> and another in <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/2013/20.html?context=1;query=keating;mask_path=au/cases/cth/HCA">2013</a> – on so-called “omission cases”. These are cases where the allegation of fraud relates to a customer’s failure to inform the department of a change in circumstances (an omission), rather than any deliberate misrepresentation or dishonesty on the recipient’s part.</p>
<p>In the 2011 case, the court ruled that because there was no legal obligation for Centrelink customers to inform the department of changed circumstances, failing to fulfil this duty could not constitute fraud – or, more specifically, the offence of “obtaining financial advantage” under the <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cca1995115/">Criminal Code</a>. </p>
<p>The government sought to preempt this decision by swiftly passing a law creating such <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/s838_aspassed/toc_pdf/1112220.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">an obligation</a>, making it retrospective to the year 2000. But, the retrospectivity of this law was successfully challenged in the 2013 High Court case.</p>
<p>These cases’ combined effect was to prevent the department from prosecuting “omission cases”, where the relevant omission had occurred prior to August 4, 2011 – the date on which <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/s838_aspassed/toc_pdf/1112220.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">the law</a> requiring welfare recipients to inform the department of changes in their circumstances was passed.</p>
<p>After this date, such omissions constituted fraud and so could be prosecuted. But these two High Court decisions effectively reduced the potential pool of cases that could be prosecuted – at least in the short term.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-can-learn-from-the-limitations-of-new-zealands-welfare-reforms-63103">Australia can learn from the limitations of New Zealand's welfare reforms</a>
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<p>At around the same time, a new requirement was introduced making the department responsible for preparing full briefs of evidence, including witness statements, for each welfare fraud case it wished to refer for prosecution.</p>
<p>Previously, the department only needed to prepare a short-form brief of evidence, which amounted to little more than a statement of facts. <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/sj.2014.36">According to the department</a>, this change:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… impacted the (prosecution) referral numbers as significantly as the High Court decisions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Together, these changes impacted on the number and types of cases the department could pursue. But they only tell part of the story.</p>
<p>I conducted in-depth research on welfare fraud, including interviews with Serious Non-Compliance staff at the department during 2014 and 2015. Other factors emerged that were far more influential in reducing welfare fraud prosecutions over the long term.</p>
<h2>From prosecuting everything to targeting serious fraud</h2>
<p>Until 2011, Centrelink compliance functions, including prosecutions, were subject to quantitative targets. For example, in 2000-01, Centrelink <a href="https://www.humanservices.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/1998-1999-centrelink-annual-review.docx">was required</a> to refer 4,000 cases for prosecution and generate A$708.8 million in savings by recovering welfare overpayments.</p>
<p>To meet these organisation-wide targets, Centrelink developed targets for individual investigators. For example, <a href="https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/centrelink-fraud-investigations">in 2008-09</a>, some investigators were required to complete 96 investigations and refer at least six cases of suspected fraud.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/note-to-centrelink-australian-workers-lives-have-changed-70946">Note to Centrelink: Australian workers' lives have changed</a>
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<p>According to compliance staff I interviewed, these requirements led to a focus on achieving targets rather than selecting the most appropriate cases for prosecution. </p>
<p>Janice, an investigator who had been with the department (and its predecessors) for more than 17 years, described the approach: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… we used to just prosecute, prosecute, prosecute. Quite frankly, it used to be about a number, it used to be about a benchmark.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2011, these targets were scrapped, reducing the pressure on staff to make up prosecution numbers. Since then, a more strategic approach to prosecutions has emerged – one focused on serious and unambiguous cases of fraud. As Henry, a member of the Serious Non-Compliance team, explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The directors (in the DHS) at least do know that it’s not a numbers game. It’s finding people that legitimately need to answer for their actions in front of the court rather than getting a referral to the court for the sake of achieving a number.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My research suggests this new approach has also underpinned the emergence of a less punitive culture among compliance staff, where staff consider the appropriateness and impacts of prosecution in each case. </p>
<p>One investigator explained the shift as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… more about prevention and intervention than it is about the end result. We’re more conscious of what we’re doing, and the impacts as well. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, as Bruce explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t believe in a heavy-handed approach. If someone is defrauding the Commonwealth, until we actually determine that, they’re customers. They’re not crooks … The culture has changed.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The wider reform debate</h2>
<p>The general approach to welfare compliance in Australia continues to be punitive and underpinned by a suspicion of people who use welfare. The <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/2018/03/21/11/21/welfare-reform-package-passes-upper-house">recent passage</a> of a bill that will introduce a punitive demerit system for non-compliance is testament to this. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the approach to social security prosecutions has undergone significant change. The removal of quantitative targets, combined with a more strategic approach to prosecutions, has contributed to a sustained reduction in the welfare fraud prosecutions rate.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-robo-debt-debacle-heres-how-centrelink-can-win-back-australians-trust-74256">After the robo-debt debacle, here's how Centrelink can win back Australians' trust</a>
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<p>This has occurred despite, rather than because, of changes in federal government policy. It serves as a small reminder that punitive welfare measures can be effectively contested and sensibly reformed, even as the government continues to campaign to “get tough” on welfare non-compliance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scarlet Wilcock is a member of the Board of Directors of the Welfare Rights Centre, Sydney. This is a volunteer position.
This research was funded by an Australian Government Australian Postgraduate Award and the University of New South Wales.
The views and opinions expressed by individual staff members of the Department of Human Services (DHS) interviewed for this research in 2014 and 2015, and which are quoted or otherwise relied on in this article, do not necessarily reflect the views or current practice of the DHS. The analysis and conclusions drawn in this research are those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or opinion of the DHS.</span></em></p>Despite a public focus on punitive approaches to welfare fraud, the number of social security fraud prosecutions has fallen in recent years.Scarlet Wilcock, Lecturer, School of Law, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/883952017-12-31T14:18:24Z2017-12-31T14:18:24ZCabinet papers 1994-95: The Keating government begins to craft its legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199625/original/file-20171218-17889-1mh1c3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Keating drove a policy agenda that had been rallied after the 1993 victory.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/NAA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If Labor was surprised by its re-election <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_1993">in March 1993</a> – the “sweetest victory of them all”, as Paul Keating claimed – there was, for months before the 1996 election was called, much less confidence in government ranks that it could hang on.</p>
<p>They were right. A 6.17% first-preference swing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_1996">against Labor</a> in 1996 confirmed the momentum John Howard’s Coalition leadership had built over the previous year. The political mood was shifting decisively.</p>
<p>Howard pitched to the values of the “battlers”, <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2357256">affirming</a> “the Australia I believe in”. In contrast, Don Watson, Keating’s speechwriter, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/10/1022982811918.html">recalls that</a> the “big picture” reforms of Keating’s prime ministership “never found a place for the people” in testing those values. </p>
<p>Political scientists Paul Strangio, Paul t’Hart and James Walter <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=wecvDwAAQBAJ">add that</a>, after 1993, Keating became ever-more dominant in “a small clique of very senior colleagues”. He drove a policy agenda that had been rallied after the 1993 victory.</p>
<p>There were big ambitions, like Working Nation, and big symbols, like the republic. These initiatives were part of a push through 1994 and 1995, as revealed in the cabinet papers released today by the National Archives of Australia, to ensure a legacy for the program Labor had crafted since 1983.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/cabinet-papers-1994-95-how-the-republic-was-doomed-without-a-directly-elected-president-88394">Cabinet papers 1994-95: How the republic was doomed without a directly elected president</a></strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/keatings-working-nation-plan-for-jobs-was-hijacked-by-bureaucracy-cabinet-papers-1994-95-89013">Keating’s Working Nation plan for jobs was hijacked by bureaucracy: cabinet papers 1994-95</a></strong></em></p>
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<p>In that process, the term “benchmarking” figured repeatedly in the cabinet submissions ministers debated. It was time to take stock of what had been achieved, in terms of reform, expectations of it, and principles that could not be undone by their successors. </p>
<h2>Changing attitudes to social policy</h2>
<p>The measures of such impact included a vital element of attitudinal change. </p>
<p>In social policy, ministers were assured that the past ten years marked a decisive shift for people with disabilities from a welfare approach to a “human-rights-based focus”, measured in labour market access. Cabinet called for regular reports to track how effectively this support continued to move from the margins of specialised programs to mainstream provision.</p>
<p>Other measures included a standard pension rate of 25% of male total average weekly earnings, a target of 100 residential care places per 1,000 population aged over 70 by 2001, and a child support system that fostered “a change in the community ethos” with regard to the obligations of separated parents. </p>
<p>In May 1994, cabinet endorsed tackling the more “legally complex or controversial issues” identified in the 1992 <a href="http://www.voced.edu.au/content/ngv%3A18075">Half Way to Equal report</a> on women’s rights. Among them was a commitment to target potential pregnancy “as a ground of prohibited discrimination”.</p>
<p>As Labor’s 1994 national conference adopted a commitment to a 35% quota of safe seats for women candidates by 2002, these issues achieved a clearer place in public debate.</p>
<p>Reforms in public and community housing were aimed at increasing the co-ordination of federal and state governments in delivering stock to meet diverse needs. The beneficiaries of such attention, it was argued, would include people with psychological illness. The minister concerned, Brian Howe, pushed for the principle that rent in such housing should not exceed 30% of income.</p>
<h2>Progress on Indigenous Australians</h2>
<p>For Indigenous Australians, ministers agreed that “priority be given to social benchmarks” for housing and also health and community support, employment and education. Together they would hold agencies accountable for the delivery of services, rather than simply describing the conditions to those receiving them.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199626/original/file-20171218-17842-1k37iik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag were granted ‘Flag of Australia’ status in 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/NAA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The minister, Robert Tickner, urged that consultation with Indigenous clients must take into account that their “reluctance … to provide information” reflected “a more complex, historical issue”. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission’s work as a national representative body was seen as integral to overcoming this challenge.</p>
<p>The new National Native Title Tribunal brought sharp focus to these concerns. Keating urged that this body must have sufficient authority to counter the “implacable” opposition of interests and governments such as that in Western Australia. </p>
<p>Cabinet also moved to establish an Indigenous land acquisition program. The May 1995 launch of a National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, followed by the official gazettal of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, further consolidated a network of recognition it would not be easy to unravel.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/cabinet-papers-1992-93-keating-government-fights-for-indigenous-rights-on-multiple-fronts-70059">Cabinet papers 1992-93: Keating government fights for Indigenous rights on multiple fronts</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Labour market reform</h2>
<p>Indigenous affairs had some of the elements of “compassion” and “justice” Keating spoke of returning to politics. This pushed the boundaries of prevailing values. </p>
<p>Yet, with promising economic forecasts in early 1994, ministers were also keen to ensure there was no backsliding in the stricter discipline of microeconomic reform. </p>
<p>Having recently bedded-down principles of enterprise bargaining, cabinet was advised in March 1994 that the still-fragile foundations of a “productivity culture” were too vulnerable to “unrealistic” expectations developing in workplaces across Australia to risk any further iterations of the Prices and Incomes Accord. </p>
<p>A cabinet submission claimed that “it may be necessary to push the limits of what is acceptable” to the unions, and instead “establish benchmark criteria to assist employers in responding to claims”. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/cabinet-papers-1992-93-the-rise-and-fall-of-enterprise-bargaining-agreements-70139">Cabinet papers 1992-93: the rise and fall of enterprise bargaining agreements</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<p>While sticking to this message, ministers still worried that the people seemed not to be travelling with them. In mid-1994 they decided to appoint an independent consultant to probe the question of why reported poverty levels had not declined, “despite all the measures taken over the last decade”.</p>
<p>Cabinet’s Social Policy Committee regarded the evidence informing such analysis as a “statistical artefact”. The Department of Social Security ventured that the long-term impact of labour market deregulation might help explain such sentiments. Finance countered that an already overgenerous social welfare system acted as “a disincentive to efforts to improve private incomes”. </p>
<p>As economic signals wavered through 1994 and 1995 – despite Keating’s assurance with the 1995 budget that “this is as good as it gets” – the challenge of inclusion grew. </p>
<p>There were some benchmarks, clearly, that were up for debate within a cabinet still pushing Australian economic as well as social transformation.</p>
<h2>Climate change becomes a more pressing concern</h2>
<p>There were also some benchmarks that were troubling on a larger scale. </p>
<p>Over 1994 and 1995, the government was briefed on the extent to which global commitments were already proving insufficient to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And even within the concessions Australia had won in those formula as an “emissions-intensive economy”, it was “only likely to achieve 46–53%” of its target by 2000.</p>
<p>Enhanced support for “greenhouse science” was identified as one option Australia might pursue in preserving its international reputation on these issues. More was required if we were to hold our standing in relation to vulnerable island states of the South Pacific. And more was required at home.</p>
<p>Major decisions were being taken that were “contrary to the terms of the 1992 National Greenhouse Response Strategy”. As ministers were told, Western Australia’s new Collie Power Station would “provide electricity at a higher cost than gas-powered alternatives”. The “extension of the electricity grid to outback areas of NSW ignored the potential for lower cost solar energy”. </p>
<p>Decisions to defer minimum energy standards for appliances showed “little more than lip service” to the fundamental issues of climate change. What was the point of such benchmarks if nothing was done to observe them?</p>
<p>If the 1996 vote reflected an electorate wearied of “big picture” reform, it was clear that the Keating government itself was seeking indicators that could affirm and entrench its achievements. Not all were easily found. </p>
<p>But, in retrospect, several do still stand up as enduring principles, and/or as markers around which a good deal of political conflict was to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88395/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After 1993, Paul Keating became ever-more dominant in cabinet policy discussions to ensure a legacy for the Labor government.Nicholas Brown, Professor in History, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/887702017-12-12T00:05:05Z2017-12-12T00:05:05ZAs costs mount, the government should abandon the Cashless Debit Card<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198441/original/file-20171210-27677-12248fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Cashless Debit Card trial disproportionately targets Indigenous people, despite what the government says.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Richard Milnes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A Senate inquiry <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/CashlessDebitCard/Report">has recommended</a> that trials of the Cashless Debit Card be continued and expanded to new sites in other states next year. This is despite <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/CashlessDebitCard/Report/d01">Labor</a> and <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/CashlessDebitCard/Report/d02">Greens</a> senators providing separate dissenting reports that rejected the recommendation that legislation for the bill should pass.</p>
<p>The majority report’s proposal dramatically contrasts with most of the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/CashlessDebitCard/Submissions">submissions accepted</a> by the inquiry raising significant concerns and arguing against the trials. These submissions outline a variety of serious issues that have been largely overlooked.</p>
<h2>What is the card?</h2>
<p>The trials for the Cashless Debit Card began in early 2016 in Ceduna, South Australia, and the East Kimberley in Western Australia. </p>
<p>The card quarantines 80% of social security payments received by all working-age people (between the ages of 15 and 64) in the trial sites. It attempts to restrict cash and purchases of alcohol, illegal drugs and gambling products. </p>
<p>The card compulsorily includes people receiving disability, parenting, carers, unemployed and youth allowance payments. People on the aged pension, on a veteran’s payment or earning a wage are not compulsorily included in the trial, but can volunteer to take part.</p>
<h2>The issues left unanswered</h2>
<p>The trial disproportionately targets Indigenous people, despite the government claiming the card is for both <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=1fcbc7ab-effb-4092-bb42-9c743dadf7a5&subId=560832">Indigenous and non-Indigenous</a> welfare recipients. This is disingenuous, given the card was first proposed as a key recommendation in mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s <a href="https://www.pmc.gov.au/resource-centre/indigenous-affairs/forrest-review">Review of Indigenous Training and Employment</a>. </p>
<p>This recommendation followed various other forms of income management, including a program that was part of the <a href="http://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/highlights/evaluating-new-income-management-northern-territory-final-evaluation-report-and-summary">Northern Territory Intervention</a> in 2007.</p>
<p>The Intervention required the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act to explicitly target all Indigenous people on welfare. <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=5b3af532-0d22-44e2-9967-7731d0074a6f&subId=561285">Concerns</a> about <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=1fcbc7ab-effb-4092-bb42-9c743dadf7a5&subId=560832">human rights</a> breaches continue, and most were overlooked by the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/CashlessDebitCard/Report">Human Rights Joint Committee’s commentary</a> on the Cashless Debit Card bill.</p>
<p>The trial of the card has increased hardship in people’s lives. This is not only because of the experiment’s disorganised and ill-conceived implementation, but also due to the trial’s design. </p>
<p>People are being compulsory included because there is an assumption that they engage in problematic behaviours, such as the over-consumption of alcohol, gambling, or the use of illegal drugs. But this is not the reality <a href="http://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/cashless-debit-card-trial-east-kimberley">for most people</a>.</p>
<p>Being put on the card has made people’s lives harder because limiting cash restricts people’s ability to undertake day-to-day activities to help their family’s wellbeing. This includes getting second-hand goods, paying for transport, and buying gifts. </p>
<p>This hardship is reflected in the <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/about-the-department/feature/cashless-debit-card-trial-evaluation-final-evaluation-report">final evaluation of the trial</a>, in which 32% said their lives were worse since being on the card (only 23% said their lives were better). </p>
<p>Further, <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/about-the-department/feature/cashless-debit-card-trial-evaluation-final-evaluation-report">48% of participants</a> reported that the card does not help them look after their children better. This is concerning, as recently completed research into income management programs indicates a correlation with <a href="https://www.menzies.edu.au/icms_docs/279201_Children_negatively_impacted_by_early_intervention_restrictions.pdf">negative impacts</a> on children – including a reduction in birth weight and school attendance.</p>
<p>Getting the assumptions wrong has pushed already vulnerable people into even more vulnerable situations. Medical specialists <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=6d4e5cc9-7d8b-4567-bf87-9d10068d25ea&subId=561286">have raised</a> concerns with the card being used to treat addiction.</p>
<p>Both crime and domestic assaults increased under the card in the East Kimberley. Superintendent Adams of the Kimberley Police District told the Senate inquiry that in the 12 months to June 30, 2016, there were 319 domestic assaults in Kununurra, but in the 12 months to June 30, 2017 (and the time of the trial), this figure had <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/CashlessDebitCard/Report/d01">increased to 508</a>.</p>
<h2>Flawed evidence</h2>
<p>The government used both the interim and final evaluations as key evidence to justify extending the trials. </p>
<p>Both evaluations have been severely criticised as being <a href="http://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/cashless-debit-card-evaluation-does-it-really-prove-success">methodologically and analytically flawed</a>: from the way <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/07/much-of-the-data-used-to-justify-the-welfare-card-is-flawed">interviews were conducted</a>, to having no baseline to test government claims of success, through to an over-emphasis on anecdotal improvements and discarding important issues such as the increase in crime and domestic violence.</p>
<p>The decision to implement the card was not a community decision that represents the regions’ diverse interests or population. And some have had more say than others. </p>
<p>For example, the Miriuwung Gajerrong Corporation <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=9e59ccc9-b9e6-4fad-9fb6-2a992d84fd44&subId=516467">noted</a> that, although the:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… Department of Social Services states that the Cashless Debit Card program was co-designed with local leaders in Kununurra … in reality, only four local leaders were consulted in relation to the introduction of the [card] in Kununurra. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Consultations themselves have not been about co-design, but have been tokenistic to <a href="http://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/cashless-debit-card-trial-east-kimberley">convince people to support the card</a>.</p>
<p>In a perverse twist, the only way people can get themselves off the trial is to get a job. Yet in both Ceduna and the East Kimberley, the biggest cause of unemployment is the lack of formal, dignified and secure jobs. Linking to unemployment, some people included in the trial are also subjected to the punitive <a href="http://regnet.anu.edu.au/research/publications/6984/modern-slavery-remote-australia">Community Development Program</a>. This compounds poverty, as the program’s nature induces high breaching rates.</p>
<p>Even if a few support the card, many more have suffered material and emotional hardship. The community has been fractured through <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=98f47f0e-ff14-4156-ba37-5f25e05b43d9&subId=561082">such heavy-handed intervention</a>. And the A$25 million spent on it has demonstrated no credible evidence of sufficient benefit to justify an ongoing rollout. </p>
<p>That the card continues to be pursued by government exposes its dogged obsession with implementing neocolonial and punitive policy for some imagined political gain at the expense of vulnerable people.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The author would like to thank professor Jon Altman and Sarouche Razi for comments on earlier drafts.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88770/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elise Klein receives funding from the British Academy. She gave evidence in the Senate's inquiry into the Cashless Debit Card. She is a member of the Australian Greens. </span></em></p>That the Cashless Debit Card continues to be pursued exposes a dogged obsession with implementing punitive policy at the expense of vulnerable people.Elise Klein, Lecturer in Development Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878252017-11-23T11:02:04Z2017-11-23T11:02:04ZReading my grandad’s Blitz reporting makes it all the sadder to see social history repeat itself<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195575/original/file-20171121-6051-1ydmsj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A German bomber flying over Wapping, September 7, 1940.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In one way, London saw the Blitz coming. Cities knew that the existence of bombers would bring this war right to them. From now on, war would mean the large-scale killing of anonymous civilians as strategic targets were hit from the sky. When the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/06/london-blitz-bomb-map-september-7-1940">bombers first came</a>, on September 7, 1940, the authorities were expecting unprecedented civilian fatalities – up to 1.8m within 60 days, said one <a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-Social/UK-Civil-Social-2.html">1937 report</a>. In the event, the eight months of the Blitz saw <a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Civil-Social/UK-Civil-Social-2.html">43,000</a> lose their lives.</p>
<p>But what London didn’t plan for was mass homelessness. The bombs took people’s homes on a scale, and at a speed, not seen since the first great fire of London. In the first six weeks alone, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=p32vBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT29&lpg=PT29&dq=250,000+homeless+blitz&source=bl&ots=FfNOJazb3K&sig=ibZiDd_ZSwDNkHPeiQypBhDD9qE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimtom8ks7XAhWXHsAKHTA5BWQQ6AEISDAF#v=onepage&q=250%2C000%20homeless%20blitz&f=false">250,000</a> lost their homes. In Stepney, four out of ten houses had been destroyed or damaged by November 11. <a href="http://holnet.lgfl.org.uk/learningzone/londonatwar/airraid/p_theblitz.html">1.4m people</a> – one Londoner in every six – would be made homeless by May 1941. When it came to those surviving but displaced, it was <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/node/164697">as if</a> “some officials had never imagined what the Blitzkrieg would be like”.</p>
<p>Those words came from my grandfather, Ritchie Calder – at the time, a reporter for the Daily Herald. As the Blitz hit, he was pulled around the East End in the wake of fallen bombs, giving raw reports of their impacts on the ground. He typed nightly in the thick of the fires and sirens, at one stage describing “fiery confetti spatter[ing] the papers on the desk with singe-marks”. He offered, as the journalist <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/dispatches-from-the-blitz-why-peter-ritchie-calder-was-a-true-war-hero-1989929.html">Tim Luckhurst</a> has put it, “compelling stories fizzing with quotes, observations and the authentic voices of ordinary Londoners”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bLgfSDtHFt8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The official propaganda machine was in overdrive, proclaiming “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLgfSDtHFt8">London Can Take It</a>” as if the responses of emergency services, government, civilians in general and “the people’s army of volunteers” were fluently in sync. My grandfather’s Blitz reporting gave a far less harmonious picture. Consistently impressed by the resolve and creativity of working-class Londoners, he grew exasperated by the sclerotic, fragmented ways in which local and national authorities responded to the city’s battering. If London was “taking it”, this was too often despite, rather than because of, what those in charge were up to.</p>
<p>In quick-spreading journalism and books (three in 1941 alone) he wrote of communities finding their own shelters when Public Assistance Committees lacked the power to provide even basic equipment, of local officials being left to deal ad hoc with impacts rippling right across London, of the hurdles posed by complex, varying boundaries between local authorities and services from water to energy, and all the time, most vividly, of the everyday human burdens borne amid these administrative gaps and failures.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195805/original/file-20171122-6072-zjqacr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195805/original/file-20171122-6072-zjqacr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195805/original/file-20171122-6072-zjqacr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195805/original/file-20171122-6072-zjqacr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195805/original/file-20171122-6072-zjqacr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195805/original/file-20171122-6072-zjqacr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195805/original/file-20171122-6072-zjqacr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ritchie Calder, 1940s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gideon Calder</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were “the gasless, the waterless, the foodless and the wifeless”. There were wardens dealing with drastic incidents through the night without respite, electric light or any provision to feed them on the job. There was clergyman <a href="http://writingcities.com/2015/06/10/on-father-john-groser-rebel-priest-of-the-east-end/">Father Groser</a>, sleeping under railway arches with the bomb-disrupted, lighting a bonfire outside his church, breaking into an official food store to feed the homeless in the shelter he’d organised. There was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/04/my-hero-flora-solomon-ben-macintyre">Flora Solomon</a>, “one of the most remarkable women I have ever known”, running “Communal Restaurants” which, as government caught up with their success, became endorsed by the Ministry of Food and renamed “British Restaurants”. And consistent throughout: there was the poor helping the poor as officials argued over whose budget should be used for what.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/hidden-stories-blitz-changed-british-lives-forever/">One such story</a> – one of families being “left by a series of blunders to be bombed to death in a dockland school” – forms part of the first episode of BBC2’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gtbh2">Blitz: The Bombs that Changed Britain</a>, in which Calder’s own story plays a role. In this episode, my cousin Simon and I follow the tracks of our grandfather’s reporting, reliving both the rich accounts of human resourcefulness and the pettiness and parochialism of local bureaucracies arguing about who was going to provide how many blankets to whom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195584/original/file-20171121-6055-x9lxkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195584/original/file-20171121-6055-x9lxkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195584/original/file-20171121-6055-x9lxkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195584/original/file-20171121-6055-x9lxkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195584/original/file-20171121-6055-x9lxkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195584/original/file-20171121-6055-x9lxkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195584/original/file-20171121-6055-x9lxkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Smoke rising over the London docks, September 7, 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_Blitz_791940.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ripples of that time extend all the way to now. Churchill’s war cabinet, unsettled by Calder’s writing, recruited him: he was <a href="http://digital.nls.uk/propaganda/calder/index.html">put in charge</a> of “White Propaganda” at the Political Warfare Executive. There were, as he wrote, compensations amid the bomb-disruption: seeds of new democracy, with people discovering “latent qualities of leadership”, finding a voice, becoming active in the organisation of their communities. </p>
<p>His calls for a <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/node/164697">Welfare Board for London</a> to coordinate the meeting of basic needs chimed with the soon-to-come <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a1143578.shtml">Beveridge Report</a> of 1942 – published <a href="https://www.sochealth.co.uk/national-health-service/public-health-and-wellbeing/beveridge-report/">exactly 75 years ago</a> – and the momentum behind the post-war creation of a concerted welfare state to take local happenstance out of the provision of vital services. His son, Angus, born in the middle of the war, became, as a social historian, an extensive, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080xzpc">influential</a> re-teller of the Blitz from the point of view of ordinary people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195587/original/file-20171121-6055-16wsku3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women salvage prized possessions from their bombed house.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Air_Raid_Damage_in_London,_1940_HU36206.jpg">IMW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lessons of the time <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-blitz-can-show-us-how-to-respond-to-a-tragedy">apply anew</a> today. Much of the anger and sadness about <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/grenfell-tower-39675">Grenfell Tower</a> echoes Calder’s sheer incredulity at how authorities can preside, whether due to complacency or ideology, over crises not just entirely predictable – but <a href="https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/06/14/grenfell-tower-fire/">directly, publicly predicted</a>. </p>
<p>Government learned much from the war about how to do things better. But we find new throwbacks to that Blitz-era sclerosis. The shambolic and dangerous roll-out of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/20/mistake-universal-credit-catastrophe-misery?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet">universal credit</a> offers a masterclass in unlearned lessons about how to limit the human costs of policy. And local government, hollowed out by years of underfunding, operates under sustained adversity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195586/original/file-20171121-6016-1ylaq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195586/original/file-20171121-6016-1ylaq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195586/original/file-20171121-6016-1ylaq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195586/original/file-20171121-6016-1ylaq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195586/original/file-20171121-6016-1ylaq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195586/original/file-20171121-6016-1ylaq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195586/original/file-20171121-6016-1ylaq56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children of an eastern suburb of London wait outside the wreckage of what was their home.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/39735679@N00/1858202903">Ping News</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We live with the tendency to think downwards from market criteria, to reduce measures of value to individual costs and benefits, rather than upwards from the lives and wisdom of the people whom those models are purportedly about – so that their needs and voices are squeezed out, and the public realm depleted. The space for debate about and humane negotiation of social challenges and the public interest is shrunk. This takes an everyday toll, sometimes on a catastrophic scale. As my dad wrote in his social history of World War II, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1040534/the-people-s-war/">The People’s War</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In general nothing emerges more forcibly from the Blitz than the contrast between laggard councillors, obsessed with their own prestige, and the self-sacrifice of the volunteers who strove indefatigably to remedy the position which bumbledom had created.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Grenfell’s entirely avoidable disaster, and its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2017/oct/13/social-housing-grenfell-survivors-chaotic-government">aftermath</a>, speaks of a similar neglect of the position and agency of ordinary people, and lack of the most basic care for their safety. “Bumbledom” is surely too generous a term for this. The <a href="https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/">Grenfell Tower Inquiry</a> should tell us. But meanwhile the <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/david-lammy-mp-remembers-friend-grenville-tower-fire-london">angriest, most exasperated reactions</a> ring truest. We should have known better in 1940. In 2017, all the more so.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87825/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gideon Calder currently receives funding from Health and Care Research Wales. He is a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p>Government learned much from the war. But today we find new throwbacks to that Blitz-era sclerosis.Gideon Calder, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences and Social Policy, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/829032017-08-24T19:17:22Z2017-08-24T19:17:22ZNew budget standards show just how inadequate the Newstart Allowance has become<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183099/original/file-20170823-13285-hlywmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An increase in the Newstart Allowance of well in excess of $50 a week is urgently needed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joel Carrett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s long been accepted that the level of Newstart Allowance for the unemployed is too low. The <a href="https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/Content/Content.aspx?doc=html/home.htm">Henry Tax Review</a> proposed an increase of “about $50 a week” in the payment for single people to restore parity with the couple rate. Several community organisations, including the <a href="http://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/government_urged_to_make_a_new_start_in_2015/">Australian Council of Social Service</a>, have called for similar changes over time. </p>
<p>But if the couple rate is also too low, this would reduce – not remove – the underlying inadequacy.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/research/projects/a-new-healthy-living-minimum-income-standard-for-low-paid-and-unemployed-australians/">Our new research</a> allows these and other income inadequacies to be estimated using a budget standards approach – that is, by calculating how much income a family needs to achieve a certain standard of living.</p>
<p>New budgets have been derived for families with the main (male) breadwinner either in full-time work and receiving the minimum wage, or unemployed and receiving Newstart. They cover single people, couples with no, one and two children, and a sole parent with one child. The first child in each family is a six-year-old girl and the second child is a ten-year-old boy.</p>
<p>The budgets for low-paid families vary between A$597 per week (single person) and $1,173 per week for the couple with two children. The corresponding weekly budgets for unemployed families are $434 and $930.</p>
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<p>Comparing the new budget standards with the incomes provided by the social safety net for each family allows the adequacy of these provisions to be assessed.</p>
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<p>These comparisons show the minimum wage for a single person is $62 above the low-paid budget standard. However, the safety net incomes for couple families with or without children all fall short of the new standards by between $9 and $89 per week. </p>
<p>For unemployed families, the Newstart-based safety net incomes are well below the unemployed standards in all instances: $96 per week below for a single person, $107 for a couple, and $126 for a couple with two children.</p>
<h2>How reliable are these estimates?</h2>
<p>The budget standards approach involves deriving how much money a family needs to buy the basket of goods needed to achieve a particular standard of living.</p>
<p>The method has a long history in Australia. It dates back to when Justice Higgins used it as the basis for setting the living wage in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_case">Harvester judgment</a> in 1907.</p>
<p>The standard underpinning our new budget standards is the <a href="http://jech.bmj.com/content/54/12/885">Minimum Income for Healthy Living standard</a> developed in the UK. It is designed to allow each person to lead a fully healthy life in all of its dimensions, with implications for what people consume, own and do. It also means omitting items like tobacco products, too much “junk food”, and excessive consumption of alcohol, that are inconsistent with healthy living.</p>
<p>Any attempt to assess adequacy is fraught with difficulty. This reflects the elusive nature of adequacy itself, which is hard to give precise meaning to. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/05_2012/pensionreviewreport.pdf">Harmer Pension Review</a> emphasised that it should reflect “prevailing community standards”, but what these are and how they are identified is open to interpretation.</p>
<p>Rather than retreat in the face of this uncertainty, the budget standards approach has met the challenge head-on by identifying the items required to reach the Minimum Income for Healthy Living standard.</p>
<h2>What this means</h2>
<p>The new standards suggest that while the minimum wage may be adequate for some low-paid workers, this is clearly not the case for Newstart Allowance, which is woefully inadequate. </p>
<p>An increase well in excess of $50 per week is urgently needed, but so too is an independent mechanism for regular review and adjustment of its adequacy. Something similar to what the Fair Work Commission uses to set the minimum wage would be an obvious place to start, since that seems to work. </p>
<p>Improving and maintaining the adequacy of the incomes received by low-paid workers and the unemployed should be an integral part of any concerted effort to tackle overall economic inequality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Saunders received funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage grant for the research described here. As part of this Linkage grant additional cash and in-kind support was provided by Catholic Social Services, Australia, United Voice (National Office) and ACOSS. </span></em></p>The minimum wage may be adequate for some low-paid workers – but this is clearly not the case for the woefully inadequate Newstart Allowance.Peter Saunders, Research Professor in Social Policy, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/815502017-07-26T20:16:11Z2017-07-26T20:16:11ZThere’s far more to the fair go than just economics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179757/original/file-20170726-30108-ro9p66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to consider whether values are the basis of beliefs about inequality.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has often <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-is-australia-the-most-unequal-it-has-been-in-75-years-47931">argued</a> that inequality in Australia is the worst it has been in 75 years.</p>
<p>Leaving aside whether that is or isn’t correct, there is a bigger, more pertinent political question: is it inequality itself, or the perception of inequality, that fuels so much of the contemporary mistrust of politicians and political systems?</p>
<p>The growing legitimacy of inequality is a serious problem, even among market advocates like the IMF and World Bank, which seek to confine the fix to more equitable distributions of wealth. They fail to recognise the strong possibility that the push on inequality comes from wider perceptions that the system is so unfair it creates distrust of those in power and their main alternatives, so the damage is social rather than material. </p>
<p>Commentator Ross Gittins <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-neoliberalism-of-margaret-thatcher-and-ronald-reagan-has-run-its-course-20170718-gxda42.html">has argued</a> that the collapse of the “neoliberal consensus” is as apparent in Australia as it is in Donald Trump’s America and Brexit-ing Britain. Yet the data here do not reveal the serious poverty it brings with it.</p>
<p>The local focus on inequality has very much been more on tax rorts and the presumed sins of the rich than on the poor, either on or off welfare. This looks to be the basis of Shorten’s next policy bid for power, which he promises to release via inequality policies at the <a href="http://www.nswlabor.org.au/conference2017">New South Wales ALP conference</a> this weekend.</p>
<p>Shorten’s targeting of the voters’ desire for the “fair go” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/20/bill-shorten-says-inequality-threatens-australias-economy-and-social-cohesion">by claiming inequality in Australia</a> creates a “sense of powerlessness that drives people away from the mainstream so creating a fault line in politics”. </p>
<p>His emphasis on the wider effects of inequality suggests he recognises it as a symptom of wider issues, rather than a single economic cause of problems. However, if <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2017/jul/25/shorten-talks-up-labor-plan-to-tackle-inequality-and-tax-reform-video?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Politics+AUS&utm_term=236585&subid=7119379&CMP=ema_792">his proposals</a> are primarily focused on increasing tax takes, he is not tackling the wider damage, such as system distrust, that is widely evident. </p>
<p>He is not alone in this limitation; it dominated the debates on his proposals. The immediate responses from Treasurer Scott Morrison and several economic commentators <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/gr%20ogonomics/2017/jul/25/bill-shortens-inequality-pitch-has-rustled-the-jimmies-of-conservatives">disputed whether</a> the Gini coefficient (a measure of how wealth is distributed in a society) supported the claims of rising inequalities. They ignored the many other indicators, such as that workers’ share of income is at its lowest level in a half-a-century.</p>
<p>The complex data shown in <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-is-australia-the-most-unequal-it-has-been-in-75-years-47931">The Conversation’s factcheck</a> come down mainly on Shorten’s side. These varied sources show the problem of defining what counts as inequality. Are voters very aware of income differentials? Or do most judge inequality by tightening budgets and everyday hardships such as rising utility bills?</p>
<p>It is in fact these perceptions of wider inequality as unfairness that affects how we relate to those in power. These are toxic effects that need to be fixed, not just through adjusting tax or individual payments.</p>
<p>There is considerable evidence that inequality is increasing and, importantly, that it is affecting the views of possible voters. The long-running <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-20/2016-australian-election-disaffected-study/8134508">Australian Election Study</a> in 2016 found voters showed both increased distrust of politicians, and income concerns. More than half – 55% – supported incomes being redistributed versus 19% who did not. There have been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/distrustful-nation-australians-lose-faith-in-politics-media-and-business-20170118-gttmpd.html">other recent polls</a> that show the lack of trust of the mainstream parties.</p>
<p>Who do you trust? Increasingly the answer seems to be: nobody. </p>
<p>After a year when voters worldwide thumbed their noses at mainstream politics and the elite, a landmark annual survey has found trust in major institutions is eroding at a rapid rate. And the effect is particularly pronounced in Australia.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.edelman.com/trust2017/">The 2017 Trust Barometer</a> by Edelman, the world’s largest PR outfit, has documented an “implosion of trust”. It found that Australians believe their entire political system is failing and they harbour deep fears of immigration, globalisation and changing values.</p>
<p>We need to consider whether values are the basis of beliefs about inequality. My thesaurus offers eight synonyms of the word: four simply describe it, while four signal negative feelings and perceptions: discrimination, unfairness, inequity, disproportion. None expresses inequality as a material or monetary difference. This indicates how often inequality connects with growing distrust of mainstream parties.</p>
<p>So is inequality a significant but limited indicator of wider issues that need attentions? The current special issue of <a href="http://www.aips.net.au/aq-magazine/">Australian Quarterly</a> features articles on this topic. The journal’s opening remarks state:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Inequality is arguably the catch-cry of our times, but, when you pick it apart, what does it actually look like in the Australian context? Is it economic, is it political; is it tax breaks for big business, or the everyday homelessness of our capital cities; is it the rot crumbling the sanctified pillar of the ‘fair go’, or has it become a convenient catch-all so broad as to be meaningless?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If this is so, the question will be whether Shorten’s policy options stay within the narrow confines of fairer taxes. If they do, it may be too simply economic to interest voters – unless he creates a broader vision of a trustworthy (fairer) Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eva Cox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Who do you trust? Increasingly the answer seems to be nobody, especially when it comes to inequality.Eva Cox, Professorial Fellow, Jumbunna IHL, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/774502017-07-26T01:53:08Z2017-07-26T01:53:08ZStranded in our own communities: Transit deserts make it hard for people to find jobs and stay healthy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178672/original/file-20170718-20874-9ym333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many Americans need reliable public transit to get to school or work.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/People_waiting_at_bus_stop.jpg">Frank Hank</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As any commuter who has <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f1e5/e8074c5a0bac7673bf1eeeb84a9e4c32e4ea.pdf">experienced unreliable service</a> or lives miles away from a bus stop will tell you, sometimes public transit isn’t really a viable option, even in major cities.</p>
<p>In our car-loving society, where <a href="https://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/files/2014/acs-32.pdf">85 percent of Americans use a car to get to work</a>, people who cannot access transportation are excluded from their own communities and trapped inside “transit deserts.” This term, which one of us (Junfeng Jiao) coined, describes areas in a city where demand for transit is high but supply is low. </p>
<p>Lack of transit has harmful effects on those who rely on public transit – generally, people who are <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Egrengs/files/Grengs2001_DoesPubTransitCounterSegregation.pdf">too young, too old, too poor or have disabilities that don’t allow them to drive</a>. Mapping these deserts will help agencies adjust transit services and better serve their communities. </p>
<p>At UT Austin’s <a href="http://soa.utexas.edu/resources/urban-information-lab">Urban Information Lab</a>, our research focuses on refining the methods used to quantify and measure transit supply and demand. We’ve developed clear and concise geographic information system (GIS) methods to evaluate transportation systems, providing alternatives to previous, more complicated network modeling. These methods can quickly be applied to any location, as we have shown in studies of <a href="https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/viewFile/899/884">five major cities in Texas</a> and other <a href="http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=jpt">cities across the United States</a>. By using this method, we found that hundreds of thousands of transit-dependent people in Texas don’t have access to mass transit systems.</p>
<h2>Connecting people to jobs and services</h2>
<p>Research shows that low-income residents living in sprawling areas have limited transportation options, which constrains their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2015.11.012">job opportunities and upward mobility</a>. Inadequate transportation keeps people from <a href="http://www.vtpi.org/tranben.pdf?b81542c0?db0c3fd8">finding work</a>, which then <a href="http://www.vtpi.org/tranben.pdf?b81542c0?db0c3fd8">reduces the productivity of their communities</a>. It also can <a href="http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/better_health.pdf">limit access to medical services</a>, causing health problems to go undetected or worsen.</p>
<p>Addressing transit access is one important strategy for tackling broader social problems. For example, welfare recipients <a href="http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_webdoc_16.pdf">are less likely to own cars or have access to transit</a> than the general population. Reducing these transportation barriers would help move them from welfare to work. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178677/original/file-20170718-10283-1qg5xh3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178677/original/file-20170718-10283-1qg5xh3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178677/original/file-20170718-10283-1qg5xh3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178677/original/file-20170718-10283-1qg5xh3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178677/original/file-20170718-10283-1qg5xh3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178677/original/file-20170718-10283-1qg5xh3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178677/original/file-20170718-10283-1qg5xh3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In cities with well-developed infrastructure for cycling, such as Amsterdam, large shares of the population commute by bicycle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Cycling_in_Amsterdam_2010-1.JPG">Steven Lek</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although scholars have been studying “food deserts” (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jessica_Burke2/publication/44592398_Disparities_and_Access_to_Healthy_Food_in_the_United_States_A_Review_of_Food_Deserts_Literature/links/55dcc9fa08ae591b309ab8da/Disparities-and-Access-to-Healthy-Food-in-the-United-States-A-Review-of-Food-Deserts-Literature.pdf">areas where residents lack access to nutritious food</a>) for <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK208016/">several decades</a>, we have only recently applied this logic to mass transportation systems, despite the fact that food deserts often occur due to <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/85n1j2bb#page-6">lack of transportation</a>. </p>
<p>Relatively little research has been carried out to identify and quantify gaps between transit demand and supply. But as counties and cities feel the effects of <a href="http://olis.uoregon.edu/sites/olis1.uoregon.edu/files/downloads/Sciara%202007.pdf">declining funding</a> from federal and state transportation user fees, they need new ways to target transportation infrastructure investments and ensure limited resources are used in the best way possible. We have found that maps are a promising way to guide these discussions.</p>
<h2>Mapping transit deserts</h2>
<p>Determining exactly who relies on mass transit can be difficult. Existing information depends on census data. As previously noted, people who rely on transit are usually from marginalized demographic groups. They may be elderly, poor or have disabilities that keep them from driving. Census data do not account for the fact that sometimes these populations overlap (a transit-dependent person could be old as well as poor), so one individual could be counted many times. </p>
<p>Also, census data on car ownership are not available at the census block group level, which is the smallest geographic unit published by the <a href="https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/block/2010/">U.S. Census Bureau</a>. This lack of data makes it hard to measure transit dependency with accuracy. </p>
<p>Measuring transit supply is easier. It relies on data from municipal planning agencies as well as relevant municipal and county GIS departments, which manage spatial and geographic information, analysis tools and mapping products. These agencies measure variables that include numbers of transit stops, transit routes and frequency of service, as well as lengths of sidewalks, bicycle lanes and low speed-limit routes (which are relevant because some commuters may opt to walk instead of taking the bus). </p>
<h2>Beyond city centers</h2>
<p>Current research shows that transit deserts exist all over the country. Cities such as <a href="http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=jpt">Chicago; Cincinnati; Charlotte, North Carolina; Portland, Oregon</a>; and <a href="https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/viewFile/899/884">San Antonio</a> contain multiple communities that don’t have enough transit services to meet existing demand. Even in older cities, where development tends to follow transit lines, there are neighborhoods where the supply of transit is simply not enough.</p>
<p>This is a large-scale problem. In San Antonio, the seventh-largest U.S. city by population, some 334,530 people – nearly one-fourth of the population – need access to public transportation in a city that doesn’t even have rail service. In Chicago, where there are high levels of transit dependency all across the city, just three of the transit desert neighborhoods that we identified house approximately 176,806 residents. Even in a city as progressive as Portland, Oregon, thousands live in transit desert neighborhoods. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178667/original/file-20170718-10283-qb7gy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178667/original/file-20170718-10283-qb7gy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178667/original/file-20170718-10283-qb7gy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178667/original/file-20170718-10283-qb7gy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178667/original/file-20170718-10283-qb7gy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178667/original/file-20170718-10283-qb7gy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178667/original/file-20170718-10283-qb7gy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Transit desert analysis for the city of San Antonio. Negative numbers connote areas where demand for transit exceeds supply.</span>
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</figure>
<p>When it comes to geographic location, transit demand and supply appear to follow certain spatial patterns. Unsurprisingly, transit supply is highest in city centers and decreases as distance from city centers increases. As a result, transit deserts do not typically occur in city centers or near downtown. In fact, because of the typical “hub and spoke” design of many transit services, city centers often have transit surpluses where supply outstrips demand. </p>
<p>The location of transit deserts often does not follow a geographic pattern, although they are usually associated with low-income and remote areas. While planners and engineers may have a rough idea of where supply is low, making service adjustments requires measuring and mapping of transit supply and demand citywide. </p>
<h2>Rebalancing transit networks</h2>
<p>Many cities are now making service adjustments to improve service to transit deserts. For example, Houston’s transit authority, METRO, recently redesigned its bus service as part of a larger “<a href="http://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/Reimagining-FAQs.aspx">Transit Service Reimagining</a>,” in an attempt to better meet the region’s mobility needs. Evaluation of the new transit services shows that current levels of transit demand and supply <a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/blog/Llamas062515/">are more balanced</a>, though gaps still exist.</p>
<p>Identifying transit deserts is even catching on at the federal level. The U.S. Department of Transportation recently launched a new initiative to map transit deserts nationally through a <a href="https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/ntm/about">National Transit Map</a>, which will put together data from different transit agencies into a complete feed. By accessing a larger, national look at transit demand and supply, regional agencies will have extra tools available to them when making changes to their local transit services. </p>
<p>What these changes will be is hard to say. Expanding existing bus services may be the most cost-effective way to improve transit access. Even in New York City, with its massive subway system, city officials are <a href="https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/new-york-city-council-transit-deserts-cure">increasingly turning to bus rapid transit</a> due to the high cost of adding new subway lines. </p>
<p>Adding bus lines, increasing service hours and <a href="https://nacto.org/tsdg/better-boarding-better-buses/">even streamlining boarding and fares</a> can help improve service and increase access. <a href="http://vehicleforasmallplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Krizek_Stonebraker_2010.pdf">Integrating bicycling with transit services</a> would be another cost-effective option. </p>
<p>As research on transit deserts continues to grow, more precise methods of quantifying the gap between transit supply and demand should develop. More research may provide new views on how the built environment and socioeconomic variables affect transportation accessibility. With careful planning and investment, these transit deserts can eventually transform into transit oases.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77450/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Junfeng Jiao receives funding from The Hampton K. and Margaret Frye Snell Endowed Chair in Transportation Grant.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole McGrath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Americans live in transit deserts – areas where demand for transit exceeds the supply. To fix these gaps, we need to find and map them so agencies can add transit options in the right places.Junfeng Jiao, Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning and Director, Urban Information Lab, The University of Texas at AustinNicole McGrath, M.S. Candidate, Community and Regional Planning, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.