This book provides a comprehensive account of the modern Australian legal aid system. It charts the twists and turns of policy and practice over the past 30 years with a particular focus on:the reaction of the legal profession to conflicts and debates about legal aid policy and services and the way in which this has both reflected and accentuated major shifts in the social and political structure of the profession itself; the development of community legal centres from radical fringe organisations to accepted legal practices, which provide a 'value for money' service and work in alliance with the big city firms; the constancy of government calls for fiscal restraint and the recurrent lack of clear objectives despite widely varying approaches by different administrations.
Margaret Levi's wide-ranging theoretical and historical study demonstrates the importance of political relative to economic factors in accounting for revenue production policies.
This book explores the tensions between the competing social rights and social control functions of the modern Australian welfare state. By critically examining the history and rhetoric of the Australian welfare state from 1972 to the present day, and using the author’s long-standing research on the Australian Council of Social Service and other welfare advocacy groups, it analyses the transformation from rights-based to conditional welfare. The Labor Party Government from 1972-75 is identified as the only clear cut example of Australia positively using welfare payments and services as an instrument to promote greater social equity, inclusion and participation. Since the mid-1970s, the Australian welfare state has gradually retreated from the social rights agenda conceived by the Whitlam Government. Australia has followed other Anglo-Saxon countries in adopting increasingly conditional and paternalistic measures that undermine the protection of social citizenship outside the labour market. In contrast, this text makes the case for an alternative participatory and decentralized welfare state model that would prioritize social care by empowering and supporting welfare service users at a local community level. This book will be of interest to academics, students and policy-makers working within social policy, social work and political sociology.
The Times They Are Changing? Crisis and the Welfare State presents a series of readings from international policy researchers that examine the effects of the recent financial crisis on welfare states around the world. Provides comprehensive and in depth coverage of changes in welfare states as a result of the financial crisis Reveals how the financial crisis is changing our perception of the welfare states Features contributions from policy researchers and academics from around the world
This book explores the legal meaning of the radical new laws which have transformed the social security system in the last decade.It analyses legislation and case law and lays out the legal principles and concepts, which underpin the sweeping reforms, culminating in the 'welfare reform' package announced in the 2005 Budget. It also explores the policy foundations of these reforms and key administrative changes, such as the creation of a privatised 'job network' and of Centrelink as a 'payment agency' .This book also explores the tension between traditional 'protective' functions of social security and the contemporary focus on 'activation', reciprocity and 'capacity-building', and the extent to which social changes have altered the form of Australian welfare. It reviews the history and transformation of the welfare state, the ideas about the nature of poverty and need, and the policy choices to be made.Detailed case studies are made of the law and policy affecting key groups such as the unemployed, people with illness or disability, and sole parents, as well as the administration and review rights of welfare recipients, and the workings of income and means tests.
This groundbreaking book examines why the majority of Australian school leavers want to go to university and have resisted government attempts to promote alternative forms of tertiary education. The New Inheritors explores differences in young people’s understanding of the purpose of university and their reasons for wanting to enrol. The book reveals that although there has been a general shift in values towards the utilitarian perspective, there is still significant support for the traditional liberal idea of university education as a cultural experience. This support is concentrated in well-educated families, regardless of their financial resources, but there is a substantial number of young people from less well-educated families who have absorbed the liberal perspective. The book begins with an extensive and unique overview of changes in Australian federal government tertiary education policy and changes in the public discourse on education. This overview provides a framework against which differences among today’s students are examined in detail. Drawing on a study of over 200 secondary school students from diverse backgrounds The New Inheritors records their attitudes to university – including access, fees and the role of government – and explores how these are formed by their family backgrounds and influenced by public policy on education. The New Inheritors uncovers the complexity of young people’s attitudes, and what processes occur in the forming and reforming of those attitudes to university and what young people really want from university education. Dr Madeleine Mattarozzi Laming is a Lecturer in Education at Australian Catholic University. She has given numerous conference papers on transition from school to university and teaching students from diverse backgrounds. In 2011 she received an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for an outstanding contribution to student learning, particularly at the first year.
The fully revised edition of this successful textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to medical sociology and an assessment of its significance for social theory and the social sciences. It includes a completely revised chapter on mental health and new chapters on the sociology of the body and on the relationship between health and risk in contemporary societies. Bryan S Turner considers the ways in which different social theorists have interpreted the experience of health and disease, and the social relations and power structures involved in medical practice. He examines health as an aspect of social action and looks at the subject of health at three levels - the individual, the social and the societal. Among the perspectives analyzed are: Parsons′ view of the `sick role′ and the patient′s relation to society; Foucault′s critique of medical models of madness and sexuality; Marxist and feminist debates on the relation of health and medicine to capitalism and patriarchy; and Beck′s contribution to the sociological understanding of environmental pollution and hazard in the politics of health.