Mutual obligation: ethical and social implications

Unemployed people have thus made an involuntary sacrifice for the economic well-being of employed people. From this perspective, it appears that the obligations are reversed – Australians in positions of advantage should feel gratefully obliged to those less advantaged for their considerable contribution to the well-being of the economy. Although justified on the basis that contemporary culture is characterized by ‘too much taking and not enough giving’, the call for disadvantaged people to make social repayments under threat of their only means of support may itself be evidence of the moral crisis of taking without giving.

In many ways the Reference Group on Welfare Reform recognised many of these difficulties and essentially re-defined mutual obligation as ‘social obligations’. Although sending a clear message to the Howard Government that its current policy of Mutual Obligation is flawed, the Report fell short of challenging the idea as a legitimate foundation for welfare policy.

However, acknowledging these fundamental flaws should shift mutual obligation out of the central place that it occupies in welfare policy. Requiring recipients of income support to demonstrate continuing need is important, but of substantially less importance than ensuring a basic and acceptable standard of living to all Australians, regardless of their life circumstances. Fair social security policy that focuses on demonstrated need rather than on strict conditionality is in all our interests. With increasingly insecure employment, the employed of today may be the unemployed of tomorrow. With rising rates of family breakdown, the partnered parents of today may be the sole parents of tomorrow. And with the sheer unpredictability of life, the healthy of today may be the disabled of tomorrow.

The shift from rights-based income support to conditional ‘participation’ support is too big a step to take, especially when the capability to administer such a policy fairly remains elusive and when our thinking on the issue remains so muddled and tainted by misinformation and prejudice.