Looking back to look forward: The future of public debate of social policy in Australia
The Australian Journal of Social Issues is the sole Australian journal concerned with issues of social policy and social justice. Since its first issue in 1961, the AJSI has published a wealth of peer-reviewed scholarship dealing with crucial social policy issues potentially affecting the welfare of Australian citizens. As editors our fundamental vision is to continue to strengthen the journal as a key venue for robust multidisciplinary analysis of issues that inform public debates concerning effective social policy design. In order to achieve this, we seek to develop the journal further so that we facilitate quality research on both conceptual and applied social policy analysis, in both international and Australian contexts. This special issue commemorates the 50th volume of the journal. However, beyond the matter of celebration, it also provides an opportunity to reflect on where the journal has come from in order to envisage what it might become. Janus, the two-faced Roman deity, has particular resonance with this anniversary issue. Looking to the future and to the past at the same time, he is the god of beginnings and transitions--of entrances, passages and endings. As we look to the future we need to envisage a path for the journal that allows it to remain relevant for a complex and changing social policy environment while retaining a distinct sense of identity. How can the journal remain an active contributor to public debate about social policy so that it can achieve its other significant milestones? One reason why Janus provides an appropriate analogy for this issue is that he presided over the beginning and ending of conflict, and hence of both war and peace; social policy is intrinsically bound up with resolving social conflict and coordinating the interests of citizens. Without social justice in the outcomes of social policy there is little prospect for peace and harmony among the citizenry. At the risk of over-extending the analogy, the doors of Janus's temple were left open in time of war, and closed to mark peace. As it is unrealistic for any social policy to expect to achieve complete peace, we always need to keep the temple doors open. This is necessary in order to remain open to an important question in social policy: how can society reform social policies to achieve greater harmony among its citizens? Of course, in aspiring to answer a big question such as this, we need to acknowledge the constraint to resources facing modern governments. Notwithstanding such constraints, social policy and social justice need to be taken seriously even when budgets are squeezed by persistently low economic growth rates. Indeed, an argument can be made that this is the most important time to focus on social policy, when economic stress exacerbates social conflict. This anniversary issue provides us with an opportunity to ask what the journal can do to inform public debate in order to achieve its aspirations. Historically, most contributors to the journal are not direct actors in the design and implementation of social policy, but their research can nonetheless inform the public and actors in social policy regimes in regard to what does and does not work. We have commissioned five leading scholars for the 50th anniversary volume and asked them to reflect on the core issues of Australian social policy with a view to identifying strategic priorities for the journal for the next 50 years. All these scholars are prominent contributors to the public debate and are in an excellent position to reflect on the historical and future roles of the Australian Journal of Social Issues. Mitchell and Rowse (2005) provided a detailed history of the journal, including a retrospective account of the organisation in its first four decades, and a summary of the coverage and scope of the research published. This issue does not attempt to replicate that analysis, but instead attempts to provide fresh perspectives as a complement to the insight of those researchers with an enduring commitment to social policy research in Australia. …
Australian Social Issues: A Retrospective
This issue opens the 40th volume of the Australian Journal of Social Issues series. Strictly speaking the 40th anniversary of the Journal's publication was reached in September 2001, a milestone that went unnoticed during the transition between the editorial team at the University of New England and the Australian National University. We hope that this issue will redress this oversight, celebrate the vision of the founding Editor, Professor Torn Brennan and provide AJSI readers with a stimulating tour through some of the social issues that have engaged the many contributors to the journal over the years. The first section of this editorial overview looks at some of the early history of the journal and its subsequent evolution over four decades. In preparing this issue some inclusions were obvious: a consolidated listing of all major contributions (1) to Volumes 1-39; and a list of the Editors of the journal since 1961. These are both provided at the end of this issue and we are grateful to our research assistants, Liana Leach and Ruth Wood, who completed these and other tasks associated with this anniversary issue. In deciding the remaining contents of the issue, we were faced with many intriguing possibilities. For example, we pondered whether to reprint some outstanding contributions from the past, or to seek new papers from those authors who have been frequent contributors to the journal. In the end, we opted to commission papers by some of Australia's best-known writers on social issues, and we asked them to review specific topics that have been--and remain--central to the journal. The contributions of Brennan (Children and Families), Cass (Social Security and Social Welfare), Johns and Sanders (Indigenous Communities), Rowe (Drug Use and Intervention), Saunders (Poverty) and Western, Dwan and Kebonang (Social Inequality) are of this nature. There are several papers that depart from this brief: Richard Hugman, a previous editor reflects on how the journal has changed over the past forty years; Lois Bryson and Martin Mowbray revisit their 1981 (16:4) AJSI paper 'Community: The Spray-On Solution'; and our own paper examines three over-arching themes that emerged from our reading of all previous volumes. The latter section of this overview introduces all the commissioned papers and the authors in greater detail. Over the years, the journal has published papers on a much wider array of issues. In our analysis of over 900 papers, commentaries and research notes, we identified thirty key topic areas, but these could have easily been expanded to twice that number. It is inevitable that among the very broad readership of AJSI, there will be some readers who feel that there are notable omissions. For this reason, we invite AJSI readers to submit short notes or reflections on this issue and the AJSI more generally, for publication in the last issue of Volume 40. (2) The journal and its subject matter The first AJSI editorial by Tom Brennan noted that the journal was not intended to 'cater for the interests of those working in any particular university discipline' but to 'raise important issues over a wide range of subjects'. This broad formulation characterises the editorial direction of the journal for much of its existence, as we report below. It is hardly surprising that Brennan resisted a tight definition of the Journal's scope. In a journal of social issues we would expect that topics and themes would come and go over the years. Unlike disciplinary, technical or specialist field journals, social issues invite, indeed require, analysis and reflection from multi- or inter-disciplinary perspectives. Under this broad umbrella, the journal enabled contributions from a range of disciplines, professions and practitioners to be published. In these early years, the journal also provided an abstracting service that similarly covered a wide range of Australian journals, selecting abstracts for their connection to 'socially significant issues. …
Myths of Welfare Reform
In Australian welfare reform debate, a range of approaches and policies has been advocated. Regardless of their diversity, I argue that the debate has an unnecessarily narrow framework resulting from the widespread acceptance of at least three welfare reform myths. First, is the idea that the current system is anachronistic and in disrepair. lnstead of this narrowfocus on welfare policy, I argue that the welfare reform debate must be widened to include other domains of public policy to involve a 'joined up' approach to addressing poverty and disadvantage. The second myth is that welfare recipients need to be the focus of policy attention. Policy reforms focus on changing the behaviour of recipients and their communities. Because structural changes underlie increased benefit receipt, such reforms will only have minimal consequences. The third welfare reform myth is the false notion that the current welfare system lacks obligation.