Australia's Welfare Wars : The Players, the Politics and the Ideologies, Paperback by Mendes, Philip, ISBN 174223478X, ISBN-13 9781742234786, Like New Used, Free shipping in the US

Writing from a social democratic perspective, the author outlines contemporary social welfare policies in Australia and the roles played by ideology and advocacy groups in determining welfare outcomes. He emphasizes the influence of ideologies that support or reject the existence of the welfare state, such as neoliberalism, laborism, social democracy, and social investment; the impacts of local interest and lobby groups; and the impacts of economic globalization and global social policy actors and policy trends on welfare policy debates. He considers why government policies increasingly focus on supposed character deficits or the welfare dependency of poor and disadvantaged people instead of addressing the structural causes of poverty and unemployment; why most Western countries experienced increases in poverty and inequality and why so few politicians seem to care; whether globalization and its shift of power from governments to global corporate entities hinder generous national welfare states; why Australian Labor and Coalition social policies have increasingly converged and why only the Greens have dissenting views; which interest groups are most influential on social policy; and why governments fail to consult welfare consumers or local communities about the planning, design, and implementation of services and policies. This edition has been updated and revised to include discussion of levels of welfare spending; case studies of the Centre for Independent Studies and child welfare policy, social welfare alternatives from the Nordic states, compulsory income management as an example of ideological convergence, Australian Council of Social Service campaigns regarding Newstart and indigenous affairs, recent Australian Association of Social Workers campaigns about mental health rebates and registration, and media reporting of social welfare debates; updates on the social welfare policies of the federal Coalition, with reference to the Abbott and Turnbull governments, as well as the social welfare policies of the Australian Labor Party since the rise and fall of the Rudd and Gillard governments; and a section on the Greens. Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR ()