Brace yourself for another round of innuendo and ignorance about immigration as the Office for National Statistics prepares to release its latest figures showing that 30,000 new migrants have arrived from…
After initially celebrating the new-found freedom to spend their pension savings how they want, people are now waking up to what scrapping the annuity really meant. One reason for forcing people to buy…
The fair go has been selectively reinterpreted as applying only to competitive opportunities for the economically productive.
John Englart (Takver)/Flickr
In the lead-up to the budget, the story of crisis has been hammered home, but there’s more to a country than its structural deficit. So how is Australia doing overall? In this special series, ten writers…
Care homes for older people are once again under scrutiny following a damning investigation on BBC Panorama’s Behind Closed Doors: Care Exposed. But if you really want to understand some of the complexities…
The Commission of Audit made much of the affordability of Australia’s core areas of social spending without any consideration of our social responsibilities.
AAP/Tom Compagnoni
The recommendations in the Commission of Audit’s report, which was released yesterday, would, if implemented, erode the fundamental building blocks of Australia’s social contract. The social contract…
Daniel Sage, University of Stirling et Adam Coutts, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
There is now another slide in the UK towards American-style “workfare” programmes aimed at getting the unemployed back to work as quickly as possible. The evidence showing that workfare programmes actually…
Cuts in social spending should be carefully analysed to assess their impact on income disparities.
AAP/Tim Cole
As a tough federal budget round looms, there has been suggestions that the pension eligibility age could rise to 70, indexation of pensions could be changed, Family Tax Benefit Part B could be more tightly…
Treasurer Joe Hockey has his sights set on the age pension.
Daniel Munoz/AAP
Treasurer Joe Hockey last night stepped up his rhetoric on the the need for heavy government spending cuts, singling out the A$40 billion age pension cost as “much more than we spend on defence, or hospitals…
Cuts to programmes like the EMA may weaken ties to the welfare state.
Lewis Whyld/PA
Recent proposals for benefit reform have centred upon the argument that at present many people feel they get nothing for something from the welfare state, while those on benefits reap the rewards. The…
Howard government minister Mal Brough first proposed part-quarantining welfare payments in the lead-up to the Northern Territory intervention. Now it could become a mainstream welfare policy.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
One of the bizarre bipartisan policy overlaps between the Coalition and Labor is in the area of income support known as welfare payments. Labor has been seen as the party that cared about the poor and…
Abbott: One rule for farmers, another for manufacturers.
Andrew Meares/AAP
The announcement of drought relief funding for farmers by an Australian prime minister would not normally be a cause for surprise. But last week’s A$324 million drought package comes amid a concerted push…
Cost-of-living pressures in Tasmania’s poorest households are intensifying, according to a new report. Researchers examined…
If Kevin Andrews was serious about sustainable welfare spending, his review would not have excluded the biggest, fastest-growing and most poorly targeted areas of expenditure.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Social services minister Kevin Andrews says a concern that the system is unsustainable is driving his review of welfare. It’s true that Australia has a budget sustainability problem. It’s not true that…
Single parents’ protests last year at being transferred to Newstart were ignored, and the evidence suggests the move made it harder to get suitable work to support their families.
AAP/Paul Miller
The major missing factor in debates on cutting welfare spending – as has been flagged by social services minister Kevin Andrews – is the limited and falling demand for labour. Labour market figures give…
Not bad, but have you seen the Whitechapel job centre?
Chiugoran
For all of the changes to the UK over the last century, the ideal of “fair play” still seems to be a pretty fundamental part of Britain’s national self-image. The concept that anyone – especially anyone…
Incognito: Wicks’s leaks saved two generations billions in child benefit.
Anthony Devlin/PA
The children of this country owe a debt of gratitude to Malcolm Wicks, who died last year. If you have ever benefited from child benefit, you have him to thank. While Wicks was dying he wrote a memoir…
Now you see it … now you don’t.
Owen Humphreys/PA Wire
George Osborne has warned that a further £25bn of spending cuts will be needed after the next election – with about half of those cuts to be made from the social security budget, largely from cuts in benefits…
Gideon is Hebrew for “destroyer”.
Dominic Lipinski/PA
George Osborne’s announcement this week that a Conservative government would implement £25 billion of cuts over two years after the next election is a bold statement of intent both economically and politically…
Stories about “population ageing” often have a number of things in common – it is bad, it is new, and it will overwhelm us all. The major fear is a burden of cost and caring that more older people will…