Brotherhood of St Laurence lunchtime research seminar - Social policy today - What happened to Australian Egalitarianism?

Australian governments are abandoning their commitment to egalitarianism.  A string of failed policy experiments has seen the hard heads decide that equality is no longer a plausible social goal. They have now set themselves on a path of allowing minimum wages and welfare benefits to fall over time. Governments are stealthily allowing the Australian social landscape to be transformed to one where we accept a widening gap between rich and poor.

This presentation will explore this phenomenon and the larger political context around it. It will particularly focus on the de-legitimization of Australia’s egalitarian tradition.  It will examine how our egalitarian heritage was transformed into something to be ashamed of, paving the way for the current policy era. It will argue that reclaiming that egalitarian heritage is an essential part of turning around the current policy malaise and it will offer up tools to do that.

Dr Lindy Edwards is a political scientist at the University of New South Wales.  She has previously worked as an economic adviser in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as economic policy adviser to the then Leader of the Australian Democrats, Natasha Stott Despoja, and as a press gallery journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald. She is the author of ‘How to Argue with an Economist: Re-opening political debate in Australia', Cambridge University Press.