Is it social inclusion or social illusion?

By the time the 12-year rule of the Hawke/Keating Labor was drawing to an end, this activation/participation rhetoric had evolved into “Reciprocal Obligation” with the associated claim, inherited from Blair Labour in the United Kingdom, that such policies promoted “Social Inclusion” (Lund 2008). The incoming socially conservative Howard government metamorphosed reciprocal obligation into “Mutual Obligation” and Jocelyn Newman, the social welfare minister shrilly denounced the propensity of welfare clients to sink into “welfare dependency”. (Tomlinson 2004)

Promoters of participation income claim that by insisting that people who are out of work make some effort to gain a job, such as undergo training, look for jobs, or engage in community service, they are making it more likely that those out of the paid workforce will find employment.

The reciprocal/mutual obligation brigade claim it is more acceptable to those in employment for the government to pay income support to those out of work when people who are unemployed give something back to society by undergoing training, looking for jobs or engaging in community service.

Welfare officers claim that they legitimate the paying of benefits when they establish that clients have less wealth than the means tests allow and also meet all the applicable eligibility criteria.

As one wanders through the endless Australian welfare debates since 1908 (when the first Commonwealth social security legislation was enacted) to the present time, there is an amazing similarity of tone. There are short periods of aberration where joy and a generosity of spirit prevail: the Whitlam period, the 1941-49 years, 1908-12, and 1983-4 when Don Grimes was masterminding social policy. For the rest, one is struck by a mealy-mouthed meanness, an absence of trust in welfare beneficiaries, a sense of parsimony - of eking out a living out of the parish poor box and a smell which is reminiscent of the stale musky interior of a medieval dole cupboard.

As I write this article I have just witnessed the generous government bail-outs of financial institutions both here and overseas. It was with some amusement that I listened to Senator Carr who was defending the $6.5 billion bail-out of the automotive industry: "We are operating on the basis of mutual obligation. This is not a blank cheque, this is about developing capability and it's about ensuring long-term high skilled, high-wage jobs," he said (Rodgers 2008). I recalled my mother saying “One law for the poor and another one for the rich”.

Third way politicians who claim to be implementing socially inclusive policies, social scientists who promote participation income schemes, public servants pushing mutual obligation regimes and welfare workers who support categorical or means tested benefits all have at least one thing in common. They are all responsible for implementing non-universal policies.

As politicians go about saying they are assisting people to be socially included they are enforcing policies which, because they don’t embrace everyone, necessarily exclude some. As social scientists go about denying assistance to some people on the basis that they have not met their requirement to participate they are consigning some to exclusion. As public servants determine who has and who has not met their obligations or contributed sufficiently they relegate some citizens to the margins of society. As welfare workers decide who is eligible for payment on account of whether they have met all the applicable criteria and have not exceeded the income/asset means test they are dividing the population into those worthy and those unworthy to receive the payment.

Universal payments such as the Basic Income operate quite differently. By their very nature, universal payments are made to everyone: that is everyone is included.

At the end of 2008, Australia has a Deputy Prime Minister whose portfolio responsibilities include “Social Inclusion”. If the past is anything to go by, it will be a long while before we get around to including every permanent resident in a universal income support system.