Insight 03: Setting the agenda

VICTORIAN COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICE ISSUE 3

G N I T T E S THE DA N E G A

CONTENTS

INSIGHT

CONTRIBUTORS

SETTING THE AGENDA

Publisher Cath Smith Editor Marie McInerney Design Nicole Dominic Photographer Luke Chang Cover photo Reuters Additional photos Reuters, AAP, Paul Weinberg (www.paulweinberg.co.za) Printer Blueprint

Esther Abram is a community sustainability consultant.

04. BACK TO THE FUTURE? Dr Nick Economou

06. ON THE AGENDA Kate Colvin 08. VIEWING VICTORIA’S NEW SOCIAL POLICY LANDSCAPE

VCOSS Vox Pop

010. IN CONVERSATION:

Mary Wooldridge 013. JEFF’S AGENDA

Marilyn Webster Carolyn Atkins 016. HARDER LABOR?

Kate Driscoll 018. ALL IN THE FAMILY

Llewellyn Reynders 020. CONTRADICTIONS OF WEALTH

Prof David Green 023. BINDING VALUES

Renee Kornin 026. VIEW FROM THE UK Prof Nick Ellison

030. CHANGING FOCUS

Elizabeth Carger 032. ADVOCATING FOR ADVOCACY

Esther Abram 034. THE TWO OF US

Faye Pattinson and Garth Wilson

Insight is printed on recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks, by an ISO 1400-accredited printer.

Acknowledgements Kate Colvin, Claire Bauska, and VCOSS staff; editorial committee members Angela Savage, Sarah Pollock, and Alexandra Gartmann; Reuters, AAP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Office of the Premier, and Community Services Minister’s office; ACOSS; and the many community sector organisations that assisted with this edition.

Articles are subject to copyright. Apart from dealings under the Copyright Act 1968, permission must be obtained from both VCOSS and the author.

Disclaimer The opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect VCOSS policy.

Advertising/Contributions/ Subscriptions To contribute ideas and articles or to discuss advertising, sponsorship, and subscriptions, contact VCOSS on 03 9654 5050 or vcoss@vcoss.org.au VICTORIAN COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICE Level 8, 128 Exhibition Street Melbourne 3000 03 9654 5050 VCOSS raises awareness of the existence, causes and effects of poverty and inequality, and contributes to initiatives seeking to create a more just society. www.vcoss.org.au Join the latest news, views and analysis on our blog, VCOSS Voice.

Carolyn Atkins is Deputy Director at VCOSS. Elizabeth Carger is the Senior Manager of Public Policy and Social Marketing at Olson Zaltman Associates.

Kate Colvin is Policy and Public Affairs Manager at VCOSS. Kate Driscoll is a lecturer at the School of Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT University Nick Economou is a senior lecturer in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University.

Nick Ellison is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.

David Green is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Social of Social Work and Social Policy at La Trobe Univeristy.

Renée Kornin is General Manager, The Housing Connection.

Llewellyn Reynders is a Policy Analyst at VCOSS. Marilyn Webster is Manager, Policy and Research at Good Shepherd Youth and Family Service.

Accessible format If you would like to receive this publication in an accessible format, please telephone 03 9654 5050 or email vcoss@vcoss.org.au

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EDITORIAL

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EDITORIAL. Just weeks after the 2010 state election, a report in the Australian Financial Review noted calls from conservative policy groups like the Institute of Public Affairs for the new Baillieu Government to “pick up the reforming mantle” of the former Kennett Government.

It raised for VCOSS a key question about the direction of the new Government, namely: where is the battle for ideas going to be fought now in Victoria? Our concern about that question, and particularly its influence on addressing the causes of poverty and disadvantage in Victoria, sparked the theme and title — Setting the agenda — of this issue of Insight.

Certainly we will get an important sense of what the next four years have in store when the Government hands down its first budget in May. The challenge will be the need to invest in proven policy and programs, to seed and invest in innovation, and to create a ‘stronger, fairer and safer Victoria’ within its own philosophies and a changing national and global context.

Can it deliver? Or, as it focuses on delivering election commitments, will it cut programs that benefit those most under pressure — ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’?

One big ticket item is the national community services pay equity case which is moving to a conclusion.

VCOSS is coordinating sector activity to ensure the Government pays its share – as it promised.

So in this edition of Insight, we are asking: • what is driving policy in Victoria and more widely?

• what does this mean for the community sector and the communities we serve?

• how should the sector itself respond?

In the following pages, political analyst Nick Economou comments on what will drive the agenda for the Baillieu Government, while VCOSS policy and public affairs manager Kate Colvin discusses the new opportunities and challenges for the sector in that environment.

In our VCOSS Vox Pop section, community leaders discuss how the agenda has changed in their fields and what that means for their work. New Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge also opens up in conversation on the philosophies and priorities that drive her. Marilyn Webster and Carolyn Atkins provide historical context on why many in the sector were worried about a new conservative government, reflecting on the trail of destruction left on community services by the Kennett Government.

As we look beyond Victoria, RMIT’s Kate Driscoll examines whether social justice was missing in action during the 2010 federal election campaign. And, in an era where policy on ‘the family’ is in its ascendancy, VCOSS policy analyst Llewellyn Reynders asks whether conservative policy on families has shifted and delivered some gains to disadvantaged families.

Despite this, warns Professor David Green, there is a growing gap between prosperity and disadvantage — the contradictions of wealth — in Australia that needs new approaches, not just from government but from the sector itself. Renée Koonin takes us back to her early work in apartheid South Africa to explore how the values of the sector shape the work we do – and the way we do it. And what role does advocacy play?

Esther Abram looks at the impact of the Aid/Watch case on the ability of Australian not-for-profits to seek to set the agenda.

Finally we look at two big examples of change from overseas. In the UK, the Tory Government’s vision for a Big Society is seeking to radically change the welfare state, while the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in the US presents a compelling view on how the different political parties see the issue of health disparities — an important insight if we want to talk to people of all political colours in a way that is persuasive and meaningful.

We will look at similar themes at our VCOSS Congress 2011 on Friday, 5 August: State of the state: what’s happening, what’s different, what’s possible? We look forward to seeing you there, and at our Community Sector Leaders Dinner on Thursday night, 4 August.

Cath Smith VCOSS CEO April 2011

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SETTING THE AGENDA

AUTHOR DR NICK ECONOMOU

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<< BACK to the FUTURE? AFTER 11 YEARS, A CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT IS BACK IN POWER IN VICTORIA. MONASH UNIVERSITY POLITICAL SCIENTIST DR NICK ECONOMOU RATES THE CHANCES OF A RETURN TO JEFF KENNETT-STYLE FREE MARKET RADICALISM.

Mr Ballieu’s victory was the first Liberal-National coalition defeat of a Labor government since Jeff Kennett’s landslide win in the 1992 election. Back then, Baillieu had been a member of the Liberal organisation (indeed, he had been State President) and was known to be close to Kennett.

Legend has it that Mr Baillieu sought the seat of Hawthorn at Mr Kennett’s urging ahead of the 1999 state election – another contest whose outcome defied the expectations of the political commentariat. This left Baillieu in a Liberal party room that narrowly lost government and then lost Kennett himself when the former Premier decided to retire.

The Liberal leadership would eventually pass to Baillieu, but his tenure at the helm was not without its difficulties with some in the party constantly sniping at him. Through these tribulations, Mr Kennett was known to have been a loyal Baillieu supporter, and Baillieu was reported to have taken the former leader’s counsel on occasions. With Baillieu now Premier, some commentators have made the assumption that the influence of Mr Kennett, and particularly some of

the policy themes pursued by the radically reformist Kennett Government, will manifest themselves again in this new Liberal administration.

Important mitigating circumstances need to be taken into account before any forecast is made, however, that the Baillieu Government will be a re-run of the Kennett administration. There are two important major points of difference in the political and economic circumstances in which Kennett and Baillieu came to power.

When the Kennett-led Liberal Party swept to government in 1992, it did so amidst a serious national recession in which Victoria had been hit particularly hard. The public was also suspicious of the public finance legacy of the previous Labor Government, and the new Kennett Government reinforced the perception of the need for radical panaceas when an inquiry headed by Professor Bob Officer concluded that the state had incurred an unsustainable debt. This provided the context for the Kennett Government to apply a range of policies based on shifting the state’s economy from a dependence on state intervention to one based on the marketplace. Such an approach had been urged by policy analysis bodies such as the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) which advocated a serious reduction of the public sector through privatisation of previously publicly-owned corporations, the contracting out of services to private providers, and a serious reduction in the size of the Victorian public service. All of these things were done by the Kennett governments elected in 1992 and 1996.

PHOTO: Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu talks to members of a comminity group in Yarra Glen. Supplied by Office of the Premier.

On 23 November 2010, the government of Victoria changed.

Contrary to the expectations of nearly all commentators (myself included), Liberal leader Ted Baillieu and his National Party colleague, Peter Ryan, were able to form a coalition government with the barest majority in the Legislative Assembly once it was clear that the sitting Labor member for Bentleigh (and former VCOSS president) Rob Hudson had been defeated by a Liberal challenger. Having secured the 45th seat necessary to ensure that it had a majority, the Liberal-National coalition proceeded to form a government.

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SETTING THE AGENDA

“It is to be assumed that today’s Nationals won’t make the mistake their colleagues made during the Kennett era of being complicit in policies that stripped their core constituencies of services and programs.”

Mr Baillieu comes to the Victorian premiership in quite different circumstances. The perception that Victoria is in a debt-based crisis is nowhere near as commonly held as it was back in 1992 (although the Coalition in opposition was anxious to claim that the Brumby Government, in particular, had been accumulating debt). Further, the Victorian economy appeared to be quite robust in 2010, despite the impact of the global financial crisis and the fact that the state’s economy is nowhere near as dependent upon the mining sector for its prosperity as Queensland and Western Australia. Consequently, the election of the Baillieu Government occurred amidst a much more benign debate about the economy than that which accompanied the 1992 election. Perhaps this partly accounts for the closeness of the result. In 1992, Kennett won in a landslide. In 2010, Baillieu just fell over the line.

Reflection on the very different nature of the outcomes of the 1992 and 2010 elections leads to the second important point: specifically, the very different roles played by the Liberal Party’s coalition partner, the National Party. The dominance of the Liberal Party in the 1992 election was reflected in the fact that it had a majority in its own right in both parliamentary chambers. In 2010, however, it is the National Party, with 10 seats in the Assembly and 3 seats in the Council, that holds the balance of power. As junior partners without the potential to bargain with their Liberal colleagues, the Nationals in the Kennett coalition were bound to follow the lead of the Premier on policy. For this acquiescence to the Liberal Party’s pursuit of neoliberal, small-government policies, the Nationals paid a political price with a loss of voter support to rural-based independents who ran on platforms criticising the Kennett legacy of amalgamated shires, contracted services, and the closure of schools, hospitals, railways lines and such like.

This rural rejection of Kennettism helped bring down the Government when the three rural independents who won seats in 1999 – Susan Davies in Gippsland West, Russell Savage in Mildura, and Craig Ingram in Gippsland East supported Steve Bracks’ minority Labor Government.

Since then, the National Party has recovered its electoral fortunes, including winning Mildura and the previously Labor seat of Morwell in 2006, and regaining Gippsland East from Ingram in 2010 – a crucial result that helped bring Mr Baillieu to power. It is to be assumed that today’s Nationals won’t make the mistake their colleagues made during the Kennett era of being complicit in policies that stripped their core constituencies of services and programs. Moreover, Mr Baillieu can’t afford to disregard his National colleagues, for it is they who give his government the majorities it enjoys in both parliamentary chambers.

The Liberal and National parties are back in government, but they have achieved this outcome on the basis of a very narrow majority in both parliamentary chambers. Large swathes of the Victorian electorate, mainly in the regional cities of Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo, weren’t sufficiently convinced of the attractiveness of the Baillieu alternative to switch their votes. To consolidate its majority at the next election, Mr Baillieu needs to win these regional city seats and a number of outer south-eastern metropolitan divisions as well. It is doubtful that a return to Kennettstyle free-market radicalism as the basis for policy would achieve this outcome. It was just such a free-market approach that drove voters in these areas to Labor back in 1999 and brought an unexpectedly quick end to the Kennett Government. We should assume that today’s Coalition politicians have learned the lessons of the recent past. A return to a Kennett-style free-market radicalism in policy-making seems very unlikely.

Dr Nick Economou is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University. He is also author of a range of publications, including The Kennett Revolution.

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SETTING THE AGENDA

ON THE AGENDA Victoria has a new team at the helm. What does the election of the Baillieu Government mean for community sector issues? VCOSS Policy and Public Affairs Manager Kate Colvin examines which doors are opening and which may be closing.

It’s fair to say the 2010 state election result surprised the community sector, although the signs of unrest were clearly there, particularly in the burdens being felt by many households on the urban fringes and in rural and regional areas of Victoria. The dawning realisation that we would have a change of government in December 2010 saw many rushing to examine Coalition election materials to try and judge the road ahead. As much as we knew the Opposition’s views on many issues, we were unsure if a broad intent for reform had been left unsaid.

Nearly six months on, the picture is becoming clearer, revealing some new opportunities and some pitfalls for social policy in Victoria. Most obvious are the issues on which the election was fought — particularly rural and regional services and those on the urban fringe.

As Nick Economou points out in this issue (pp4-5), these locations delivered the Coalition Government and are unlikely to be forgotten.

For the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS) and other organisations concerned about service gaps and lack of access to opportunities for residents of these locales, now is the time to stake a claim for measurable improvement. Health, transport, family and youth services are all firmly on our agenda.

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Cost of living also featured prominently in the 2010 election campaign, and already we’ve seen early delivery of the very welcome, and expensive, yearround energy concession which trumped the Labor Government’s more contained concession promise and marked a departure point for the Coalition in the campaign. The challenge for the Government — and opportunity for advocates for people living in poverty — is that cost of living pressures will continue to bite. Energy prices are on an uphill trend, likewise water prices, and we’re yet to see the full impact of February’s floods on the cost of food. Meanwhile rents and house prices continue to climb.

This presents an opportunity to see off the water concession cap — which unfairly limits the concession benefit for large families and those in expensive (often rural) water districts — while also creating more space for policy initiatives such as rental housing standards and retrofitting subsidies that help both families and the Government’s capacity to contain ballooning concessions costs. It will become increasingly difficult for the Government to argue that regulations mandating efficiency standards in housing are an unnecessary imposition if the state budget is also captive to upward pressures on energy costs.

“…OUR EXPECTATIONS FOR SYSTEM REFORM AND A STRONGER FOCUS ON PREVENTION AND EARLY INTERVENTION ARE JUSTIFIABLY HIGH.” The costs savings to families of delivering public transport options to communities on the urban fringe, and in regional cities, and removing the need for households to sink scarce capital into second, third and fourth family cars are just as vital. Planning is a major risk area, as short-term plaudits won by delivering nominally cheaper housing on the urban fringes translate into even more communities needing services and the growth of a crippling infrastructure

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SETTING THE AGENDA

AUTHOR KATE COLVIN

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deficit. We welcome the commitment to infill development like Fishermans Bend, but will want to see a new Melbourne Plan that delivers on services and infrastructure to new communities, including delivering quality public transport options.

This is not to underestimate the significant institutional obstacles to reforming long-established systems, and the strategic energy and persistence needed from our sector to support this aspiration to translate into system change.

Community safety was another issue that shot to election prominence. Herein lies a challenge for a sector where easy divisions between the ‘criminal’, ‘undeserving poor’ and the ‘deserving’ ‘battlers’ are belied by close contact with the devastating consequences of past and current failures of the state to adequately support children and families and ensure education delivers real opportunities for all. Keeping the focus on the real enemies of entrenched disadvantage and addiction will be our challenge as the tabloid media revels in new opportunities to demonise, and further penalise, people who transgress accepted norms of behaviour. Some smart and quick thinking will be needed to avert the Government’s apparent enthusiasm to toughen sentences and build new prisons — with the British Conservatives new-found budget-saving zeal for community-based sentencing options one sunny point to look to on the horizon. Human rights will also be a challenge as Attorney General Robert Clark has been a critic of the Human Rights Charter. We will need to focus on the protective role the Charter plays for vulnerable children and adults in settings which have always presented human rights challenges — residential disability services, children’s services, and aged care.

Liberal commitment to the individual and families also presents an opportunity for positive reform in disability services, and a platform from which to seek the muchneeded additional resources for services and supports.

But the environment is not without its risks. Ensuring client choice is complemented by viable options will be one challenge to address. It would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed if the transition under way to a disability service system driven by client choices resulted in the rise of ‘ABC Childcare’ type services at the expense of specialised support. Attention will also need to be paid to providing access to independent advice separate from services and supports.

These danger points aside, a great many of the new opportunities received scant attention in the election campaign, where the blooms of more complex policy issues struggled to flourish. The opportunities for better integration of children, family and other services, such as homelessness supports, drug and alcohol programs and mental health services are one example.

Minister for Mental Health, Women’s Affairs and Community Services Mary Wooldridge clearly has a nuanced understanding of the importance of a holistic approach to vulnerable children, and our expectations for system reform and a stronger focus on prevention and early intervention are justifiably high.

As the new Government settles into its place on the hill we have a broader opportunity to redefine the ‘wicked’ problems, finding new language, and perhaps fresh approaches, for delivering better lives for struggling Victorians. Like the Bracks Government in 2000, the Coalition is yet to articulate an overarching plan. The challenge for VCOSS and the Victorian community sector is to grasp by the horns the reform opportunities offered under the new Government, while being ready to fight the good fight for the crown jewels of social justice if the occasion demands.

Kate Colvin is Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS).

VCOSS’ state budget submission and response to the State Government’s Families statement can be found at www.vcoss.org.au.

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SETTING THE AGENDA

VCOSS VOX POP Viewing Victoria’s new social policy landscape

Insight asked key community sector leaders to view the changing policy landscape in Victoria under the new Coalition government and say how it would inform their priorities.

SAM BIONDO

Executive Officer Victorian Alcohol & Drug Association (VAADA)

While some things change, others stay the same. Community work is ever changing yet there is always more to do. I remain fairly certain that our work is not over yet!

The relationship, however, between government and those of us who provide services at its behest needs to continue to mature beyond the ‘master slave relationship’, approaching a more genuine collaboration towards our mutual objectives. There has been much progress over recent years and this maturing relationship offers considerable end benefit to the general community we seek to serve. Governments may come, governments may go; however, in my view it is the ability to listen, consider and incorporate the varied views of stakeholders that makes a great difference. Working in the Victorian alcohol and drug sector across a number of social justice and health issues, the voices of the marginalised and disadvantaged are seldom heard…

I suspect this will continue to guide and impact much of our work into the future.

PHILIP LYNCH

VERNON KNIGHT

Respect for human rights — a fundamental Liberal value — is essential for a community that is fair and just, participatory and prosperous, and inclusive and cohesive. There is strong evidence that comprehensive and effective legal protection of human rights is an important factor contributing to their practical realisation.

Ten years ago, Jeff Kennett and the Coalition lost sight of rural Victoria.

Last year, it was Labor’s turn. It’s inconceivable that either side of politics is likely to forget the lessons.

Executive Director Human Rights Law Resource Centre Ltd

The comprehensive legal protection of human rights is particularly important for vulnerable or disadvantaged groups, including people who are homeless, those with mental illness or a disability, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Recognising this, the legal promotion and protection of human rights should be a key priority and instrument of the Baillieu Government in delivering on its commitment to a ‘fair and just’ Victoria and enhanced transparency, accountability and integrity in government.

The Government’s priorities in this regard should include: 1. strengthening the Charter of Human Rights through the 2011 review process 2. fully implementing the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to address systemic discrimination and promote equality 3. re-calibrating the approach to law and order to address causes of crime rather than criminalising the consequences of poverty and disadvantage.

Chief Executive Mallee Family Care, Mildura

Aside from the fact that regional Victorians vote, it’s also becoming clear that voters in Melbourne are recognising the importance of rural and regional Victoria. Capital city growth throughout Australia is alerting all to the realisation that unfettered urban development is simply not sustainable.

Both the Victorian Government and the residents of Melbourne must now hope that more and more Victorians will be happy to ‘go bush’. They will, if they can look forward to better health services, better access to further education and better transport.

IAN PORTER

Chief Executive Officer Alternative Technology Association (ATA)

The Baillieu Government has not yet fully revealed its stance on the environment, having released some policies during the election (water and energy, for example) but not others (climate change), and progressing cautiously since taking office. Some areas where it has been quick to act — scrapping the voluntary water Target 155 and changes to planning arrangements for wind farms — don’t bode well. On the other hand, the

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How has the agenda changed in Victoria and what will you work towards now?

Living Victoria Ministerial Taskforce report offers some very positive principles for Melbourne’s water future.

Overall we get the sense of a government likely to work to achieve environmental objectives at a household or neighbourhood level, while being less committed to larger scale responses, such as on climate change or closure of Hazelwood.

This will see the ATA working to represent people who are committed to sustainable living, and advocating for access to new technologies and practices at the household and local level. Encouraging support for energy and water efficiency, water tanks, solar hot water and photovoltaic (PV) will be our immediate focus.

STEPHEN NASH

Chief Executive Officer HomeGround Services

The last significant system reforms and injection of resources to address homelessness came in 1997 under former Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett, which shows that conservative governments can be bold and effective.

The massive loss of affordable housing options since means further systematic reform is now overdue.

Coming reforms are likely to be driven by costs, efficiencies and evidence. This will support the current environment where we are already seeing companies like Grocon and groups like Rotary joining social services to deliver whole-of-community solutions like Common Ground. We see a growing understanding across government, from Department of

Premier and Cabinet and Treasury to Health, Mental Health, Justice, Disability and Housing that homeless people are not just homeless. There are huge costs and burdens for emergency systems that can be removed by providing integrated housing and support instead of million-dollar bandaids. Governments worldwide are responding to this realisation with approaches that focus on prevention, early intervention and supportive housing.

Ending homelessness is not only possible, it will save both lives and money.

RHONDA LAWSON-STREET National Disability Services State Manager, Victoria

The most significant change under the Baillieu Government is that we now have a Minister with seniority and presence in Cabinet. This both symbolically and practically gives disability sector issues a heightened priority. The Government has made a very promising start in speaking directly with the sector as it seeks solutions to the pressing problems facing people with disability, and the services which support them. We feel there is a genuine respect for, and receptivity to, the experience and knowledge of the sector.

The commitment to tackling the ‘silos’ across government of service delivery is also encouraging, with signs that it will be driven competently until solutions are found. What hasn’t changed is the enormous struggle required to achieve appropriate funding for disability services. As this Government

is a champion of a National Disability Insurance Scheme, we will work to ensure the service system gets the resources it needs to become a platform for this exponential change.

DAVID PUGH

Chief Executive Officer St Luke’s, Bendigo

Nearly six months on, most of us can’t yet say we are working with the new Government. There has been little clarity around its direction, but we do sense it is listening, even if it seems that new ministers are understaffed and have not yet created a trusting or team approach with their departments.

We have been pleased to see some local election promises honoured.

Welcome too is the inquiry into protecting children, but there is currently too little direction, drive, or clarity coming from both Children and Early Development, and Health.

A particular bright spot is the merging of Regional Development Victoria and the Department of Planning and Community Development. Deputy Premier Peter Ryan and Regional Cities Minister Dennis Napthine have grasped the opportunity to have a stronger rural focus and are building on good work by the previous government.

It’s fortunate we have a robust community sector that has a clear vision of its own for service reform, initiatives and improvement and which now has its best chance in a while to present considered views to a listening government.

SETTING THE AGENDA

AUTHOR MARIE MCINERNEY

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IN CONVERSATION: MARY WOOLDRIDGE Victoria’s new Community Services Minister talks about her philosophies and priorities and how the community sector can be part of the new State Government’s agenda.

Dust off those good ideas that were shelved in the past, be excited about engaging, and look for new ways of doing things.

That’s what Victoria’s new Mental Health, Women’s Affairs, and Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge is looking for from the community sector as she embarks on what she sees as a 10-15 year strategic plan to develop a ‘family-centric’ model of community care.

“I think an excitement to engage is probably first and foremost,” she says, adding that the Government wants to be “informed critically” by the sector. “So those who have been trying innovative models — make sure we know, engage in the conversation, engage in the debates, be honest, be vocal and help contribute to the outcomes. Those ideas that have been shelved because they’ve been knocked back in the past or because there hasn’t been time to think them through; now’s the time to bring them out, to air them, for engaged discussion on what’s possible.”

While the processes for those engagements are yet to be worked out, the Minister points, during her interview with Insight, to a round-table discussion she had that morning with 25 disability service providers. She notes that “there’s no doubt groups like VCOSS, NDS (National Disability Services), the Centre for Excellence, and all the peaks…are great avenues to engage

with memberships and create, in many cases, readymade forums...We need creativity, and idea generation, so we can push the boundaries about how services are delivered.”

And how should her Government’s performance then be measured by the community sector in 2014? First, she says, in the experience of vulnerable individuals and families: “are they able to access the information and support they need when they need it, have we made inroads into reducing the incidence of abuse and violence, and do people feel the confidence in the system that it works when they need it?” Second, from the sector’s perspective: “I hope (community sector organisations) will feel they’ve been able to contribute to the policy making process and to where things have gone, that they’ve been heard and respected in this process, and that we have the frameworks, the policies, and hopefully the funding, over time, to make sure we can deliver those sorts of outcomes.”

Born and bred in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, Mary Wooldridge’s early career may have pointed to a different direction, at least a different ministerial portfolio. She graduated from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours, before going on to study an MBA at Harvard. She worked in New York for global management consultants McKinsey & Company, but even there (and later working for the Packer family in Australia), she says, her interests were clear. “The vast majority of my colleagues were down at Wall Street consulting in the banking sector, and I was out in New Jersey… interested in how to help make health care delivery more effective.”

PHOTO: supplied by the Victorian Government

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With politics a family affair (older brother Michael was Health Minister in the Howard Government, and is an important mentor now), she worked as senior advisor on industry issues for former federal minister Nick Minchin. Her next move was to head the Foundation for Young Australians, a logical extension, she says, of her long-standing volunteer commitments to charitable boards — not least for the Otis Foundation, a network of rural retreats for women with breast cancer, founded by her surgeon husband Andrew, whose first wife died of breast cancer at a young age.

“Resources always constrain efforts to address causes not just consequences, but we’ve managed to have a stronger prevention agenda for health and we need it in this area – child protection, mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction as well.”

In terms of social policy, she says she’s not driven by any one particular theory or thinker.

Rather, she has “a very practical approach to policy development, informed by a whole range of influences rather than one particular ideology”, but clearly driven by Liberal philosophies on the rights and dignity of the individual and role of government. “My starting point is that the community is best placed to be developing solutions and delivering them…and we (in government) play a critical role to facilitate, to fund, to build the capacity of the sector to be able to deliver that effectively.”

Also differentiating the Coalition Government from its Labor predecessor will be “the role of the family as a core entity”. This is not only a philosophical distinction but one she believes will encourage greater early intervention and integration of services. “Under the current ‘silo based’ and crisis driven system, if you have a mental illness you go through one door, if you have a drug and alcohol issue, you go through another. We’d like to turn that focus around and actually put the family in the centre of the decision-making. For example this could be done with a family advocate sitting alongside the family saying ‘these are the services you need, how do we access them simultaneously rather than you trying to get a service… when things have got really rough’.”

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“We believe that this requires a long term cultural change agenda, as well as both a structural change and a change in approach. Working with a family in that context would need much earlier intervention mechanisms. This change in approach would allow caseworkers to anticipate housing instability, the onset of mental illness, and consider how this would impact on children.”

Community services traditionally have to struggle for priority in most governments, and most Cabinet discussions, but Ms Wooldridge is confident that her ministerial colleagues will appreciate the critical need for early intervention and wider family support —albeit in a climate of constrained resources and competing priorities.

“When you look around the Ministry, most people are affected by this in one way or another, and if we’re not affected in our ministries, we certainly are in our electoral offices. This isn’t an unusual problem for MPs to understand, the complexities that some families deal with, because frankly, often for families, the last point of call when everything else fails is their local MP.” Courage, though, will be needed, she says, in a number of areas, particularly when it comes to child protection and the disintegrated family system, and she acknowledges the Government will have to be prepared to address problems at their cause — not just at the crisis end.

“Resources always constrain that, but we’ve managed to have a stronger prevention agenda for health and we need it in this area – child protection, mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction as well.”

“It might be hard in the transition, but there’s no doubt that a long-term preventative approach, not just for individuals and families, but the whole state, is going to achieve a better outcome. It’s unsustainable to expect to be able to support the increasing number of children that are going every year into out-of-home care, or the increasing number of people with disabilities who can’t get access to accommodation, or the ever-growing people with an addiction who can’t access drug treatment services….”

However, she notes that not all the solutions will involve more funding. “Some of these solutions actually require a different way of thinking, not just more money. And in fact throwing a lot more money at it is probably not part of the solution.

You actually have to get some of the structures and approach and culture right first.”

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Getting past the ‘silos’ of services and government will still be an issue, she concedes, but integrating a range of services in her own portfolio would be a “huge start”. Her specific request that the Premier included Women’s Affairs in her portfolio was driven by that need, by the connection of family violence with so many other issues — mental illness, child abuse, and often disability. She also sees great potential in working across portfolios with the other Ministers sharing the Department of Human Services premises at 50 Lonsdale Street: Housing and Children and Early Childhood Development Minister Wendy Lovell, and Health and Ageing Minister David Davis. “I think the Premier’s created the opportunity by the portfolios he’s given us, to help drive that change.”

On seeking advice: “In opposition, you rely on (external sources) because you don’t have a public service; now we have an abundance of advice, but often you’re looking to check validity, checking alternate views, getting informed on the full range of perspectives…I have a lot of respect for the public service but I think it’s very important that a Minister keeps informed by a full range of sources, not just relying on one.”

On role models and mentors: I have a whole range of friends, relationships, people I rely on…It might be a lawyer on an industrial relations issue, a friend with a child with autism on another….there’s nothing like hearing it from people experiencing things at the frontline. There are lots of people, former MPs, former colleagues and people I have come to know doing important day-to-day work in the community sector and business.

On the sector: I think the biggest opportunity is shifting to a family-centred model. I think it’s probably a 10-15 year plan. I have no illusions that it can be achieved in just four years, but I think we can be well underway because I think that will deliver the biggest outcomes.

I think workforce is a really big challenge, to make sure we have (one) that’s strong and skilled and vibrant and excited about their role and that we have a pipeline of workers for the future. I think funding is always a challenge. How services are funded and at what level is a critical ongoing discussion.

On pay equity: Community sector workers do a great job which we highly value. We have made a submission to Fair Work Australia saying that we support gender pay equity and a pay rise for community sector workers.

We have made provision for $200 million towards a decision in this case, based on the estimates of the previous Government and await Fair Work Australia’s final decision with interest.

On why she gets her own lunch (sushi on this day)? “(My staff) would kill me if I expected them to.”

On the books by her bed: The Slap (by Christos Tsiolkas). I’m only a little way in… but it’s a very interesting reflection of Melbourne society in an ethnic context and of modern day dilemmas. I’ve also recently seen The King’s Speech, which I enjoyed very much.

I don’t get a lot of time these days for reading, just a page or two at night. The time I get free, I spend with my husband and (5 year old) son.

And frankly, a lot of the stuff I see, especially on the child protection front, makes me go home and hug my son.

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AUTHORS MARILYN WEBSTER, CAROLYN ATKINS

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JEFF’S AGENDA It’s nearly 20 years since the Kennett Government was elected. Marilyn Webster and Carolyn Atkins recall the impact on community services and the wider community.

“All is not well in Victoria, despite the State Government’s promotion of its undoubted successes… The preponderant view is that change has been forced upon local communities, often with arrogance and insensitivity, and that much knowledge, good will and resource has been wasted or destroyed in the process… The Victorian Government has been ruthless in forcing change…”

Jean McCaughey AO and Ben Bodna AM

PHOTO: Former Premier Jeff Kennett launching the Liberals’ campaign for the 1999 Victorian state election. Julian Smith. AAP Image.

Chairpersons, People Together Project, 19971

The 1992 Victorian State Election produced an 8 per cent swing against the Kirner Labor Government, overwhelmingly delivering government to the Coalition, led by Jeff Kennett, in one of the most dramatic changes of government in Victoria’s history.2 The Coalition had campaigned on comprehensive economic and structural reform, as well as changes to industrial relations. At that time in Victoria, there was high unemployment and structural failure of key elements of the economy.

The Kennett Government’s approach was embedded in an economic liberal or neo liberal approach to public policy, popular at the time, with a foundation belief that the free market is the best way to transact any activity.

Its basic tenets included that: • Government should be ‘steering’ not ‘rowing’, restricted to creating and protecting free markets and distinguishing between the role of government as funder or contractor and the role of community sector organisations as service providers only3.

• Market values and economic efficiency should dominate, at the expense of other important tenets such as access, social equity, quality of care, catering for diversity of need, longer-term sustainability, and democratic participation in an open and accountable system4.

• Competition within the market is the best approach for the provision of social and community services, with government responsibility constricted to core services and a view that these could be privatised or tendered out, for example prisons, to achieve greater ‘efficiency’.

• Community sector organisations and the non -government sector more broadly are not fundamentally different from other sectors, including for-profit sectors; in fact, either could provide government contracted services.

• The ‘bottom line’ is paramount in policy making, with economics displacing the concept of the public good5.

1. People Together Project, Community: The impact of government reforms on Victorians and their local communities, People Together Project, North Carlton, 1997.

2. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_state_election,_1992.

3. D Osborne & T Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector, Plume Penguin Books from Addison –Wesley Publishing Reading MA, p.40.

4. L. Hancock, What makes sustainable health policy?, In Health policy in the market state, L.Hancock (Ed.), Allen & Unwin, Melbourne, St Leonards.

5. B Jones, Politics, self-interest and the retreat from reason, Presentation at the People Together Project Community Summit: The widening gap between the rich and the poor – the (declining) role of government, Melbourne Town Hall, 15 June 1998.

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The implementation of these tenets across a range of public programs was largely justified through reference to the state debt and the need to address it. It was clear the Government was moving from providing to purchasing services, driven by an emphasis on such characteristics as privatisation, competitive tendering and performance contracting.

The new public management approach emphasised ‘outputs’ alongside a push for higher productivity through improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Management skills were valued over and above technical and professional specialists.6 The impact of this agenda on community sector organisations and the communities they work with was dramatic and extensive. Changes to funding and the introduction of competitive tendering, productivity savings across the public sector, and the massive withdrawal of government from service provision had a severe impact on the most vulnerable in the Victorian community and undermined community wellbeing.

In education, 350 schools were closed, and 8,000 teachers and support staff were cut, with funding for education down from $1,004 per capita in 199394 to $865 in 1997-98.7 In the health system, 1,400 beds were closed, 10,000 staff cut,8 and investment declined.9 Funding for community service programs to support vulnerable Victorians was also cut and more tightly targeted, resulting in more people falling through the ‘safety net’.10

6. M Painter, ‘Public management: fad or fallacy?’, In Managerialism: The Great Debate, Eds., M Considine & M Painter, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 1997.

7. L Hancock & S Cowling, Searching for social advantage: What has happened to the ‘social dividend’ for Victorians? Background Report No.1, Women’s Audit Project, Centre for Public Policy, University of Melbourne, 1999.

8. O Hughes & D . O’Neill, ‘Public Management Reform: Some lessons from the Antipodes’, In L Jones, J Guthrie and P Stene (Eds.), Learning from International Public Management Reform, Elevier Science, Oxford U.K, 2001.

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The role of peak bodies in facilitating coordination, providing a voice, and strengthening organisational capacity was neither valued nor seen as legitimate.

This was evident in the defunding of several community sector peak bodies, including the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria and parts of VCOSS. The Government’s preferred option was to negotiate directly with larger organisations as part of the contracted provisions of service. Smaller organisations were often sidelined and pitted against other ‘market players’.

The changes to funding and the introduction of competitive tendering stressed and tested the board and management bodies of community sector organisations. A public inquiry into the impact of competitive tendering practices in 1997 highlighted significant ‘adverse impacts... on the availability, cost and quality of human services’11. There were significant long-term impacts of the competitive tendering regime, as it created friction and distrust between community sector organisations, and undermined coordination of services and the continuity of care provided.

Some small organisations folded and their work was contracted out to other, generally larger, organisations.

Others merged with like-minded organisations or found other ways of taking on new services while maintaining their original mission.

9. L Hancock & S Cowling, 1999 …

10. People Together Project, Turning people into commodities: Report of the public hearings on competitive tendering in human services, People Together Project, Carlton, March 1998.

11. ibid

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The shock of the impact and the extent of ideological positioning behind the public policy approach adopted by the Kennett Coalition Government is exemplified by the experience of the Grey Sisters. In 1993, despite a strong campaign against the decision, the Government withdrew funding for the group’s respite centre for struggling mothers in Croydon, an annual ‘saving’ of $45,000. The Centre was known for its work with mothers who were suffering depression and struggling to care for their children. It was a primary prevention service which saved lives and prevented young children from entering the child protection system. It was impossible to understand the decision, even more so today when governments of all colours accept the importance of early intervention.

In 1994 the People Together Project was established following a community summit at the Melbourne Town Hall of church communities, community sector organisations, academics, philanthropic organisations, unions and others concerned about the impact of the Kennett Government approach.

The project initiated public inquiries and seminars in policy areas where the most severe impacts were experienced, including the social effects of gambling, and the specific impacts of service cuts on women.

A critical part of its work were seven community audits, including four in rural and regional Victoria.

They highlighted both the negative impacts of the Government’s actions and the resilience and power of local communities.

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The Purple Sage Project in 1998 built further on that work. This was a partnership of six agencies: the Victorian Women’s Trust, Brotherhood of St Laurence, the People Together Project, The Stegley Foundation, the YWCA and the Victorian Local Governance Association. The project engaged around 6,000 Victorians in small groups in a thoughtful deliberation of the key issues for Victoria and the actions required to address these issues.

At the 1999 state election the Kennett Coalition Government was narrowly defeated, primarily due to a significant swing against it in rural and regional Victoria where so many of the cuts had been made.

The change of government however did not sweep away the effects and impacts of the dramatic changes that had been implemented. The competitive tendering agenda was corrosive in its impact on community sector organisations, undermining collaborative relationships. The loss of early intervention supports and the increased targeting of services continued to mean that many vulnerable Victorians could not access support when they needed it, often having to wait until crisis point. A new government meant a change in direction, but much work was required to repair the negative impacts on community sector organisations and the communities they work with.

Marilyn Webster is Manager, Policy and Research at Good Shepherd Youth and Family Service. Carolyn Atkins is Deputy Director at the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS).

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AUTHOR KATE DRISCOLL

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HARDER LABOR? Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised to be there for the tough times.

But for whom? RMIT lecturer Kate Driscoll looks at the focus – or lack thereof – on disadvantage in the 2010 federal election campaign.

Labor’s election message sought to offer the reassurance of an old friend. It would be there in good times and through the tough times, through hardship and stormy waters. Just who would benefit from this warm hand of friendship was made clear in the broad themes and priorities of $12 billion in campaign promises and in Gillard’s July 2010 National Press Club speech1, used to unleash the moving Australia forward catchphrase and her mandate for the nation. Her view about the role of the state was encapsulated in her claim that governments must be a force for confidence and certainty in the economy.

promises to cut company tax, give small business an extra helping hand, invest in infrastructure… as part of the project of building an economy with higher productivity growth and higher workforce participation.

Gillard’s proclaimed vision for Australia was most specific: simply that a strong economy is the foundation of everything else. Alongside that, she flagged her structural reform agenda for the health and education sectors, signaling that the market design of services is more important than the delivery choice of either state or market and demonstrating a lack of faith in public sector provision… where competition and value is often held back by jurisdictional red tape and the lack of seamless national markets. Hers is the promise of a new era of microeconomic reform led by efficiency and markets.

From this position she lauded the good government which saw Australia safely through the global financial crisis (GFC), promised prudent and disciplined economic management for the future, with a return to the ‘holy grail’ of budget surplus, and sought to reassure industry and miners with

In a post-election speech2, the Prime Minister spelt out just how the social services reform vision would be developed: Using market tools to improve social outcomes; doing the hard work of designing new markets for social services, looking at the needs they serve, and then methodically working to create the conditions in which markets serve the public interest — through vigorous competition, transparent information, a focus on quality, the freedom to make choices and a responsiveness to the needs of service users.

1. J Gillard (Prime Minister) Moving forward to a stronger and fairer economy, speech to the National Press Club Speech, Canberra, 15 July 2010, available online at http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/moving-forward-stronger-and-fairer-economy.

2. J Gillard (Prime Minister), Reform is not easy, but it works, speech to the Queensland Media Club, Brisbane, 12 October 2010, available online at http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/reform-not-easy-it-works.

PHOTOS: Reuters

The 2010 federal election certainly delivered significant changes; a hung parliament for the first time since 1941; a minority Labor government reliant on Greens and independent support; and Julia Gillard became the first woman to be elected to lead the country. In the aftershock of these developments, I want to examine how social policy fared in the national election campaign, and the election narratives which produced these results.

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SETTING THE AGENDA

“The narrative of ‘families and hardworking Australians doing it tough’ frames child poverty and the working poor as politically and morally worthy.”

While the Gillard story recognises the uneven spread of prosperity across the nation in initiatives like the Connecting Health Services ($392 million) announcement to improve access to specialist health services for rural, remote and outer metropolitan residents, her election pitch was reserved for hard-working Australians and families… doing it tough. Citing… cost of living pressures, the cost of housing, job security, worries about affording education and retirement, Gillard offered empathy and a mix of income support promises for families: additional family support for teenagers aged 16-18 ($668 million); simpler access to the advance payment provisions of Family Payments, and an additional $500 upfront Baby Bonus payment ($454 million); two weeks, minimum wage Paid Paternity Leave for working fathers ($146 million); and early intervention resources for children with sight and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome or fragile X syndrome ($122 million).

These are all worthy, if piecemeal, developments for families carrying the joys and burdens of raising and caring for children and young people.

While this new money continues Australia’s good record of spending on low-income families, it also continues the moral pattern of favouring families and older people with income support increases, while ignoring the circumstances of unemployed people. The narrative of ‘families and hardworking Australians doing it tough’ frames child poverty and the working poor as politically and morally worthy, leaving deafening silences on the circumstances of those without work. The unemployed are Australia’s political outcasts, vilified in the neoliberal language of mutual obligation and overlooked in Gillard’s globalised narratives of productivity.

This election campaign saw the further creep of mutual obligation income management techniques, first developed to discipline people receiving unemployment benefits, and now seeping into other areas of the income support system.

Parents in receipt of additional family support for 16-18 year olds will only receive benefits if their children complete Year 12 or the vocational equivalent. According to Gillard3, rewarding positive behavioural change will contribute to 3. Gillard, Reform is not easy

the human capital development of young people. Labor’s Healthy Kids Check program also uses this blunt ‘carrot and stick’ approach of threatening the income support payments of the parents of four year olds to ensure their children participate in mandatory health assessments.

Journalist George Megalogenis and others rightly described the 2010 federal election campaign as ‘awful’, with “…Gillard and (Opposition Leader Tony) Abbott competing for the right to shrink the nation.” 4 Abbott offered voters the choice of ‘little government’, no refugee boats and no responsibility. Gillard offered droll economic management, transport infrastructure, an agenda for service delivery reform, off-shore asylum seeker processing and conditional money for low income families. The key policy challenge for Labor was developing a price on carbon but this was carefully delayed for another time – albeit one not so far ahead, as it turned out.

With the Minerals Resource Rent Tax compromise in place pre-election, a handbrake silencing population growth discussions, and repetitive debates over water and the National Broadband Network, the electorate was given little genuine dialogue and policy choice. Megalogenis argues that the hung parliament election result was actually a vote against Gillard’s reform inaction5. This avoidance of policy vision meant that the major parties offered no firm resolutions, no sense of how Australian society might develop and flourish and divest itself of habits of old.

It was, curiously, the post-election haggling of the independents and Greens which finally gave voice to meaningful policy engagement and highlighted how many policy issues had been neglected in the election campaign.

Rob Oakeshott, Andrew Wilkie, Tony Windsor, Adam Bandt6 and Bob Katter are politicians with a conviction story. Like the government now, and disadvantaged people through the campaign, they were in a minority.

Kate Driscoll is a lecturer at the School of Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT University.

4. G Megalogenis,’Trivial pursuit; leadership and the end of the reform era’, Quarterly Essay, issue 40, p. 2 2010.

5. Megalogenis, p. 63.

6. The promise to the Greens to fix dental care was one of the prices Julia Gillard had to pay to form a government.

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AUTHOR LLEWELLYN REYNDERS

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[All in the family] Support for families is now at the core of conservative welfare policy in Australia. VCOSS policy analyst Llewellyn Reynders shows how this changed thinking can produce useful and tangible social investment.

Something interesting happened to social policy in Australia during the Howard Government. While debates raged about asylum seekers, Middle Eastern wars and interest rates, spending on family benefits crept quietly to be second only to the age pension as a proportion of welfare spending. Australian families, including low-income and single-parent families, benefited from generous and growing support from Treasury coffers and, despite the rhetoric of small government and lower taxes, the Australian welfare state added a significant new pillar. After the 2007 ‘Working Families’ election that propelled Labor to power, the rubric of families has been entrenched at the centre of social policy, even producing a bidding war over paid parental leave in 2010.

Of course, the institution of ‘the family’ has long been a staple of conservative ideas. Conservative parties place a high importance on cultural continuity, with the institution of the family playing a central role in cultural transmission. In this world view, families instil the values, traditions and attitudes that reproduce cultural memory from generation to generation, ensuring that cultures remain intact and are conserved for future generations. Through this inculcation role of the family, social institutions are maintained, ensuring children learn a work ethic, acquire education, and accept responsibility for themselves and to care for others.

This once also meant a range of community taboos, social opprobrium and legal discrimination that privileged the ‘right’ sort of family, but restrictive divorce laws, discriminatory laws against single parents, working women and ‘illegitimate’ children, and the industrial legal principle that a ‘living wage’ should allow a male breadwinner to support his wife and children have now been swept into history.

Families continue to face very real problems in the contemporary world, in which old certainties no longer hold. Tradition no longer dictates the roles and efforts of each member. Economic and industrial changes produce a precarious existence, in which jobs and whole industries can disappear overnight, and where part-time and casual work is the norm for many. The open, competitive economy is also exposed to global risks and sudden price shocks which can quickly push household budgets into stress.

At the same time, consumer culture presents its own challenges, constantly fuelling consumption desires, and encouraging people to see ordinary family life as boring, uneventful and unfulfilling.

These ideas have been discussed through many different lenses: the ‘anomie’ of a life without strong social norms; a precariously free society exposed to new social risks through the erosion of institutions and the individualising effects of economy and culture; the destabilising effects of a neo-liberal agenda to reduce social interactions to market exchange; or the reflective assembly of individual identities in light of a fractured reality. Regardless of the particular emphasis, the common suggestion is that if individuals are abandoned by government to fend for themselves in an uncertain world, their social relationships –

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including family connections – will struggle and many will fail, resulting in social problems such as abuse, poverty and crime that will ‘boomerang’ back onto the governments that tried to offload them.

More concretely alongside this theorising, an overwhelming body of research emphasising the importance of childhood development and education on people’s lifetime achievements has reinforced policy attention on providing good environments for the development of children. Internationally, government has increasingly placed children at the centre of social investment strategies for improving social outcomes. At the same time, a surge of child protection notifications and a string of state and territory inquiries into the issue focused attention on the needs of children in a society where not all was well with the contemporary family.

In contemporary society, families are now seen to require government support to function properly It is in this context that the governing Coalition parties came to a new consensus on family policy. Initially, in the late 1990s, the Howard Government tried to reinforce the male-breadwinner model, particularly through what is now Family Tax Benefit Part B, and consciously promoted the idea that women should have the ‘choice’ to stay out of the workforce. However, a number of events served to challenge this thinking.

Firstly, worry about the declining fertility rate magnified, reluctantly acknowledging that, if forced to choose between work and family, many Australian women would elect (or have no option but) to work. Secondly, the growing workforce challenges for the Australian economy persuaded a rethink on whether it was efficient to encourage well-educated and productive workers to stay out of the labour force. Finally, a number of Coalition backbenchers began to agitate on issues such as the costs of childcare, sensing a change of mood in the electorate.

Somewhat grudgingly, the Coalition acknowledged that Australian society had emphatically moved past the point of upholding the male-breadwinner and stay-at-home wife model as a social ideal – even if it remained important for this option to be available.

This represented a change in the view of families as a stand-alone institution that was taken as given. In contemporary society, families are now seen to require government support to function properly – in stark

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contrast to the neoliberal idea of ‘small government’ that minimised government interference, reduced expenditure and demonised social welfare payments.

On the contrary, the Coalition began to roll out a suite of social spending programs: boosting Family Tax Benefits and reducing the work penalties associated with them, increasing childcare rebates, introducing the ‘baby bonus’, and rolling out a large program of Family Relationship Centres, aimed at providing counselling and support for family life.

Naturally, this new view of the family as a place for the active intervention of government is not without its problems. The furore over gay marriage demonstrates that older methods of trying to privilege certain family forms are not yet extinct. There have also been significant criticisms of these social policies: that they were insufficiently progressive and focused on middleclass welfare; that they paid insufficient attention to women’s rights as individuals; and that the emphasis on stability of the family – particularly in family law – diluted the principle of the best interests of the child.

A significant risk of this new family consensus is that it can also revitalise calls for paternalism. Examples include the moral panic about child abuse used to justify the Northern Territory Intervention, and more stringent welfare policing introduced under the cover of improving children’s lives, such as compulsory activity requirements, income management and using welfare withdrawal as a threat if children do not conform to expectations about school attendance.

Family welfare can also devolve quickly into calls for parental responsibility, for instance, with regards to truancy, diet and exercise, or the use of information technology.

What is undeniable, however, is that the Coalition parties have moved towards a consensus on the role of government in providing income support and social services in order to maintain social relationships in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. While there are legitimate concerns with putting families at the centre of social policy, including occluding attention to the individual rights of women and children, and a tendency for paternalism, many of these policies have provided much needed support for families and children, including those on low incomes and experiencing disadvantage.

Llewellyn Reynders is a policy analyst at the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS).

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AUTHOR DAVID GREEN

CONTRADICTION$ OF WEALTH

Jesuit Social Services put the question to La Trobe University Associate Professor David Green. This article is an abridged and edited version of his response.

Today Australia is almost three times richer — in terms of GDP — than it was before the Second World War. Yet despite this growth, and the resources and technological innovations which largely drive it, we have an increasing number of children subject to abuse, trauma and neglect; family violence continuing to rise; increasing numbers of young people and adults homeless; more young people neither in full time work nor full time employment; and the rise of mental illnesses and addictions which defy both our prosperity and the progress of medicine and science.

1. Affluence, choice and constant technological innovation empower some but disempower others.

2. Economic growth and affluence may produce greater inequality.

Oxford economic historian Avner Offer1 has concluded that affluence and constant innovation and choice are eroding selfcontrol and commitment, and thereby undermining the wellbeing of many people and families vulnerable to the markets of our contemporary world. Eli Paretsky’s2 work on the history of psychoanalysis in the context of modern capitalism describes these changes in terms of the decline of an inner directed life.

Ironically, says Richard Eckersley, the promise of 21st century individualism — increased autonomy, control and infinite choices — has delivered for some a separation ‘from others and the environment in which they live.

While the data behind these trends is complex The more narrowly and separately and contested, how do we explain such stark the self is defined, the greater contradictions? Some answers may be seen in the the likelihood that the personal ways different economic, social, environmental, influences and social forces and cultural systems interact and, in so doing, acting on us are experienced as impact on each other and on our wellbeing. external and alien’3.

1. A Offer, The challenge of affluence: selfcontrol and wellbeing in the USA and Britain since 1950, Oxford, 2006.

2. E Paretsky, Secrets of the soul, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2004.

3. R Eckersley (ed.), Measuring progress: is life getting better?, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 3-34.

Leading British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that the most equal wealthy countries in the world do far better on almost all indicators of health and wellbeing than the most unequal wealthy countries, which include Australia4.

They also go further, saying that economic growth, in the most unequal countries, can further increase inequality, disadvantage and reduced opportunities for social inclusion of vulnerable people. The instability, uncertainty, and economic vulnerability of people in unequal but wealthy countries generate conditions which are bad for children and adults — more anxiety, depression, fear, social insecurity, lack of self-esteem, lack of pride, shame, bitterness, resentment and violence.

4. R Wilkinson & K Pickett, The spirit level: why more equal societies almost always do better, Allen Lane, London, 2009.

PHOTO: Reuters

Australia is a stable, well governed, peaceful and increasingly wealthy country. So why on many key indicators of our collective health and wellbeing is our story not one of shared progress for all?

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3. Many Australian public policy responses to the changes of globalisation, technology, economic growth, and economic restructuring are manifestly inadequate.

A range of policy and institutional failures compound growing inequality and heighten the impacts of this inequality. These failures include5: • lack of commitment to policies that support full employment and support low-skilled people to obtain good jobs (since the defeat of the Keating Government and its Working Nation policies in 1993), alongside major problems of housing affordability • movement away from the workerswelfare state without protecting citizens from economic uncertainty • policies designed to reconcile new working demands and family life that still fall behind those of many other countries • measures introduced and planned to increase the conditionality of welfare • redistributive measures such as tax reform or education policy changes that maintain or reinforce existing inequalities.

To further compound all this it now appears markets represent an increasingly attractive paradigm for the state to govern society. Understanding people’s market choices provides government with an effective approach to ‘manage’ policy decisions in increasingly difficult areas like education, health and urban planning.

4. Families are rearing children in a society which gives markets and their technologies increasing and powerful roles in family life, parenting and child development.

Three centuries ago the family was a multifunction service provider— school, hospital, refuge, church, house of correction, old people’s home.

Gradually most of these functions were taken over by the state and then, more recently, the state contracted many of them to the market.

5. K Healy & A McClelland, ‘Australia’s changing social policy context: increased vulnerability and the human service response’, address to a conference on contemporary welfare regimes and delivery of social services for the 21st century, Canberra, 2005.

The market has responded and the choices have increased, strengthening and liberating some families and weakening and demoralising others.

US feminist scholar Arlie Hochschild saw this process starting with ‘the commodification of emotional life’6.

What, then, are the implications for community service organisations, if these changes reliably inform the way we understand the world?

1. Confronting the systemic and moral issues of our times.

Over the last two decades governments in general have been moving to public policy responses which are focused on managing problems rather than solving them. In particular, managing risk is a powerful paradigm across all levels of public policy, which points downstream and focuses not on the systemic issues but the highly visible symptoms — such as a struggling child protection system, alcohol fuelled violence, and welfare dependency. While scientists and professionals continue to solve what Jerome Ravetz7 originally identified as ‘technical’ problems that can be addressed by the knowledge found within disciplinary boundaries, new and old ‘practical’ problems where ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’ are defying solution and threatening our futures’8. And in the context of today’s politics, solving problems such as these are seldom addressed in systemic terms, particularly if possible solutions threaten our expectations of constant ‘growth’, ever improving ‘quality of life’ and ‘progress’.

Consider the following: • sharp increases in the tax levied on Alcopops to discourage teenage drinking • proposed pre-commitment strategies to gambling to prevent ‘pokie addictions’ • ‘income management’ for designated families receiving welfare payments.

6. AR Hochschild, The commercialisation of intimate life: notes from home and work, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003.

7. JR Ravetz, Scientific knowledge and its social problems, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1971.

Each represents public policy attempts to deal with complex problems about individual choice, control, judgment and commitment in the context of the siren song of markets9. They are ‘downstream’ last resort measures focused on attempting to change and regulate the interface between individuals and markets. They are preferred measures because the freedom of markets and of consumers to optimise their choices, as exemplified by the provision of alcohol in remote communities or gambling in low socioeconomic regions, transcends our vulnerability to the constant almost inescapable confrontation with choice. Desperate problems provoke desperate remedies, but the goal of governments should be, according to Offer, to restore and strengthen control, judgment and balance in our lives, not to further weaken them10.

If this analysis is valid (and it is strongly contested), who is going to challenge the dominant assumptions that growth, increased choice and affluence are always good for society and people?

This is very difficult territory for community organisations, whose advocacy has traditionally focused on widely accepted arguments for social and economic justice, equal opportunity, access and inclusion. To question the benefits of freedom and choice in ever expanding markets and ever improving technologies appears to quarrel with the very notion of progress. However, as Offer points out, our wellbeing is about more than having more. Governments, it could be argued, should be about institutional arrangements which foster balance, judgment and commitment as well as facilitating technological development, access and consumption. It is generally services working at the borders of inclusion and exclusion which are the first to see and make sense of the contradictions of the impact of growth and progress on people and communities.

8. T Horlick-Jones & J Sime, ‘Living on the border: knowledge, risk and transdisciplinarity’, Futures, vol. 36, no. 4, 2004, pp. 441-456.

9. Offer, 2006.

10. O ffer, 2006.

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2. Resilience as a new cornerstone of understanding and practice In Australia’s recent bushfire, flood and cyclone disasters, resilience has been at the forefront of the way we have understood and recognised our responses. In these contexts, relevant psychological factors for our personal resilience include a high degree of awareness of what is happening and why, anticipation of future events, a realistic sense of personal agency and capacity, problem solving skills, and access to support, friends, and safe places11.

Just as building resilience in ecosystems and communities is a major strategy for managing the impacts of climate change, so too may it be key to the capacity-building work of community service organisations helping those confronting social, economic and technological change12.

Constant change and choice can weaken us, erode commitment to each other, and reduce rather than increase our adaptability and our capacity to make good judgements. In recent years community organisations have focused on social inclusion as the solution, but now ‘inclusion’ into a society and economy framed by affluence, rapid change and global crises may no longer work.

11. J Wiseman & T Edwards, ‘Climate change, resilience and transformation: challenges and opportunities for local communities’, in I Weissbecker (ed.), Climate change and human wellbeing: global challenges and opportunities, (forthcoming).

Community services now have to respond to this volatility, recognising that the foundations of our collective security and resilience may no longer be supported by the institutional certainties of the past.

3. Community service organisations as learning organisations Peter Senge suggests only learning organisations can build on and adapt their experience to address the complex and changing demands made upon them13. Senge has written largely in the context of commercial enterprises, but his argument holds true for community service organisations. Every intervention at the Brosnan Centre, Gateway, Atherton Gardens estate, or Dandenong is a demonstration of how Jesuit Social Services engages with a complex world. Many other organisations also confront the same complexity and volatility and are developing and testing new ways of working.

Articulating, sharing, developing and evaluating these engagements, both the ones that are effective and those that are not — across organisations and sectors — is as vital to the mission and purpose of today’s community organisations as the actual delivery of services. We need much more open conversation and institutional arrangements which support rather than inhibit and constrain this cooperation.

12. B Walker & D Salt, Resilience thinking: sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world, Island Press, Washington, 2006.

This is an edited version of a paper prepared for Jesuit Social Services by David Green.

David Green is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Social Policy at La Trobe University. He is also a former Victorian Public Advocate.

Jesuit Social Services works to build a just society by advocating for social change and promoting the health and wellbeing of disadvantaged young people, families and communities. See www.jss.org.au for further information.

13. P Senge, The fifth discipline, Random House, Sydney, 1993.

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AUTHOR RENÉE KOONIN

BINDING VALUES What are the values that drive and shape work in the community sector.

Renée Koonin reflects on a career which began in apartheid South Africa.

I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa to parents who were refugees from Nazi Germany. I grew up under the apartheid regime and was exposed early to the impacts of its inequality and oppression. I was taken into townships and encouraged to ask questions: why black people were glaringly disadvantaged, why black men and women were not allowed to live together as husband and wife, why the security police raided their dingy premises to enforce this law? And why their children were being reared far away, in so-called Homelands?

I began my professional career during the turmoil of the Soweto riots in 1976. The following year I moved to Cape Town and worked until 1983 in the townships of Athlone, Langa, Nyanga and Guguletu, confronting the oppressive realities of detention without trial, the demolition of squatter camps in which the most impoverished people struggled for existence, the banning of organisations deemed in opposition to the regime and the almost total absence of services for black people who suffered every day the inequities of apartheid.

As a young worker confronted with such profound injustice, it was an enormous challenge to find a way to play any meaningful role. Working for the government in that context was unthinkable and it was to the community not-for-profit sector that I turned. Many community organisations, of course, simply toed the official line. But others were up to the challenge of working for meaningful change and committed to the creation of services, even in the most unpromising circumstances. These organisations were capable of remaining true to their values in the most adverse environment and despite government policy.

These organisations made a difference.

PHOTO: Paul Weinberg, South Africa (www.paulweinberg.co.za)

I have spent almost my entire working life in the nongovernment not-for-profit community sector, including 27 years in Australia, seeking to challenge and address social inequality in all its guises, much of it in the disability sector.

I am therefore speaking from the coalface – a personal and professional perspective of the consequences of injustice and structural inequality and work to redress it.

My voice is that of a witness and a participant during the most challenging political and economic circumstances.

And, I am a practitioner who has consciously chosen to work in the not-for-profit community sector because of my understanding of and commitment to its values and strengths, working alongside 200,000 others with a vision similar to mine – a society based on equality, fairness and social justice – and a belief in the role of the community sector in achieving this goal.

SHARED VALUES In the maelstrom of South African apartheid, the promise of working in the community sector was the opportunity to: • Hold in my heart a vision of a society at odds with the one of the prevailing government – a non-racist, non-sexist, just community.

• Think laterally – to analyse the prevailing problems and to develop innovative practice that could in some way achieve this vision.

• Do whatever was possible to transfer power (skills, knowledge, money and other material resources) to those most disadvantaged.

• Work in a way that cut across the range of social issues and did not divide people into silos.

• Advocate for the most disadvantaged and marginalised members of the community and challenge injustice.

• Develop social capital through the voluntary participation of people committed to achieving the goals of the organisation, developing informal support networks and contributing to civil society.

• Work in a democratic organisation.

• Develop links with other national and international organisations that were willing to help challenge the status quo.

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Hence, work in this context was both practical and political. What did that look like in practice?

• We were able to appoint people on the basis of their ability rather than race.

• We could use our resources to support those with the greatest need, rather than according to stratified entitlements based on race. This meant a direct challenge to the regime as grants were given on a racial basis. We provided services in communities where none existed.

• We employed strategies, most notably community development practice, to enable people to have a voice, to organise and to take action on their own behalf.

This is hardly radical, but was considered treason in apartheid South Africa.

• We created links and alliances with other organisations which supported our ideals - such as trade unions and internationally with funders who were prepared to support this work.

So what are the value principles that guide the finest work in this sector in Australia?

• Vision and mission driven, not market driven: reinvesting surpluses in the community through additional services or increased quality; the altruistic purpose can lead to greater trust and engagement of marginalized individuals, families and communities.

• Independence: exercising the right of people to associate and organise themselves and others, independent of the State.

• Social justice: striving to make a difference and promote lasting social, environmental, political and economic change.

• Diversity, dignity and respect: celebrating diversity, taking account of individual needs and circumstances and developing integrity in relationships.

• Responsiveness and flexibility: being more responsive than government organisations to emerging or unrecognised needs.

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• Participation and empowerment: including those we serve in management structures, policy and program development and service delivery processes. A long term commitment to an issue, client group, or community brings a potent history to searching for new understandings. The altruistic mission generates goodwill which mobilises additional human and material resources for building community cohesion and social capital.

• Innovation: ability to anticipate new needs and respond more effectively to entrenched inequality.

In many ways, therefore, the values that motivated me in the early years of my career are mirrored in those held in the not-for-profit sector in Australia today. But our community faces its own set of challenges: • FUNDER/PROVIDER MODEL A progressive shift in the relationship with government towards a funder/provider model mitigates against creativity, engenders a ‘them and us’ attitude and creates a lack of understanding about the respective roles. This challenges our capacity for far-sighted vision and our influence on social policy. In addition, the silo structure of various government departments means that the reporting mechanisms are unnecessarily complex and regularly require duplication.

• REGULATION The sector is hampered by a myriad of complex and cross-cutting regulatory requirements.

• COMPETITIVE TENDERING AND UNDERFUNDED CONTRACTS Competitive tendering has meant that often services undercut each other, while funding rarely covers infrastructure costs including rent, training, IT and administration. As a result, some smaller services have disappeared. In addition, community organisations have needed to focus on business decisions, such as profitability as well as their mission.

PHOTOS: Paul Weinberg, South Africa (www.paulweinberg.co.za)

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• DATA COLLECTION Definitions used for data collection and reporting on programs are inconsistent and waste time and other resources. The information flow is largely one way – feedback is rarely received from the funding body.

• PERFORMANCE MONITORING Most performance monitoring processes look at monitoring service agreements and assess inputs and outputs, a tick-box approach, rather than outcomes.

• FOR-PROFIT ORGANISATIONS We face the prospect of increasing competition from organisations that operate from a profit motive, for example under the proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme.

• WORKFORCE The sector faces significant workforce challenges – including the relative pay inequities, casualisation, ageing of the workforce and appropriate training and qualifications.

• STIFLING OF INNOVATION All of these factors weigh heavily on the sector and combine to stifle innovation and our capacity to formulate new approaches to emerging needs. There is very limited opportunity for organisations to imagine, create and experiment and to seek funding for issues not yet on the mainstream agenda and solutions outside the current focus of government. Our vision, independence and capacity for responsiveness are all compromised.

How then do we address pervasive disadvantage in our society and hold fast to our values as we simultaneously tackle challenges within our sector and remain effective and vibrant?

I return to apartheid South Africa, the crucible in which my thinking about values and a commitment to social justice was forged. I was afraid to act and I was compelled to act.

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My home overlooked the ocean. From my verandah I could see Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was detained.

I did not share Mandela’s measure of courage, but he did shine a light on what was possible.

During my education at the University of the Witwatersrand, only white students were accepted. The very few black students who were able to negotiate their way through the legal, political, social, emotional and financial obstacles that inhibited their opportunity for learning had to study at the University of Ford Hare where they were forbidden to study community development.

One of the strategies I employed was to educate black social workers in community development processes. In turn, they were able to work with the Xhosa speaking members of their communities and inspire them to work together. One of my cherished memories is the shining face of the chairman as he watched the different groups interacting, planning, negotiating…for an instant the full weight of the oppression he experienced lifted. He smiled at me and said: ‘Renée, this is wonderful. We have so much to do!’

We cannot all emulate Nelson Mandela. We can only do what is possible within our sphere of influence. That is our responsibility. To quote Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack, A crack in everything that’s how the light gets in.

Renée Koonin is the Sydney-based General Manager of The Housing Connection. This is an edited and abridged version of her address from the opening plenary session of the 2011 ACOSS conference. An unedited version of her speech can be found at: www.vcoss.org.au.

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AUTHOR NICK ELLISON

Big idea?

View from the UK

What is the ‘Big Society’ and what does it mean for the community sector, in Britain and beyond. Professor Nick Ellison explains UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s social outlook.

What is the ‘Big Society’ being proclaimed by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and some sections of the Conservative Party? Opinion, needless to say, is divided. Some — usually, but not always, associated with the ConservativeLiberal Democrat Coalition Government — believe that the Big Society, though a vague idea at present, can provide a vision of a ‘post-statist’, ‘post-bureaucratic’ society in which individuals, neighbourhoods and communities will cooperate to provide and/or deliver welfare and other services on a local basis. Charitable and voluntary organisations, individual volunteers and a range of social enterprises will come together to develop and provide more sensitive, ‘customised’ services tailored to suit the expressed needs of particular communities.

Opponents, conversely, believe two things.

First, that services so organised would be too fragmented and dispersed to offer much in the way of comprehensive provision, with the risk that serious inequities could emerge in different areas of service delivery in different parts of the country. Second, that Big Society ideas happen to have become popular in governing circles at a time when the UK is facing public spending cuts of a kind not seen this side of World War II – and are little more than an excuse for extensive cuts to public services.

Which of these opposing views is ‘correct’?

ORIGINS OF THE BIG SOCIETY There is little doubt that Big Society thinking has invigorated elements of the Conservative Party, putting them in touch with certain strands of ‘pre-Thatcherite’ Tory thinking. Although Tory right-wingers continue to adhere to traditional ‘Thatcherite’ principles of tax cuts and privatisation, a new generation of Conservatives has lauded Cameron for pulling the Party out of an apparent near-terminal decline. Certainly, Tim Montgomerie, founder of the website ConservativeHome and an important critical friend, regards Cameron as having drafted ‘the most interesting definition of conservatism since the Thatcher-Reagan era’, essentially by reconciling elements of economic liberalism with an older more ‘social’ strand of Tory ‘One Nationism’.1 These twin pillars of Conservatism — one could say the abiding principles of British Conservative thinking — are encapsulated within the idea of the Big Society, which itself is made up of three closely related strands of thought: Burkean, pragmatic and compassionate conservatism.

The former looks back to Edmund Burke and, in particular, his belief that it is the ‘little platoons’ of intermediate groups and institutions that sustain the myriad relationships and forms of reciprocity that define civil society. There is a faith here that these groups (including the family), that operate in the space between the state and the individual, act to control centralised power in the interests of ‘bottom up’ social cohesion.

1. T Montgomerie, ‘Falling short: the key factors that contributed to the Conservative Party’s failure to win a parliamentary majority, in Conservativehome, May 2010, http://conservativehome.blogs.com/ generalelectionreview/2010/05/cameron-modernised-the-conservativeparty-and-drafted-the-most-interesting-postthatcher-definition-o.html.

PHOTO: Reuters

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While it may well be that certain sections of society could benefit from greater control of their immediate destinies, it is not clear that the most disadvantaged groups in society would benefit to the same degree.

These ideas have been endorsed by the Coalition Government in fairly pragmatic fashion, not least in the predilection for ‘nudging’ that is now visible in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office; the possibility, as one Minister put it, to give ‘a gentle push to society to move in a direction of greater responsibility, or greater coherence, or more stability, or neighbourliness, or better health’. The point, it seems, is to develop policies informed by the ‘hidden wealth’ of the ‘world of friendship, care and gift-based exchanges’ that formal economics ignores, using informal relationships, based on trust, and then stretching them ‘to reach a little further than [they] might otherwise do’ 2.

Compassionate conservatism is, in some ways, the most influential of the three strands that comprise Big Society thinking. It is closely associated with Tim Montgomerie and Tories’ ex-Leader, Iain Duncan Smith, now Secretary of State at the Department of Work and Pensions.

Montgomerie and Duncan Smith founded the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in 2003, a Tory think tank that fashioned key ideas about social policy for the Cameron team ahead of the 2010 General Election. The portrayal of a ‘Broken Britain’ suffering from too much central state interference, welfare dependency, family breakdown and poverty allowed Cameron and the Conservative leadership to talk about the ‘broken society’ and the need for a ‘Big Society’ to fix it. Complementing this approach is a rather

2. D Halpern, The hidden wealth of nations, Polity, Cambridge, 2010.

different strand of compassionate conservatism advanced by Phillip Blond, founder of the Conservative think tank ResPublica. Blond calls for a ‘remoralisation’ of society and the development of a ‘new civil state [which] would restore what the welfare state had destroyed’ 3.

His vision, though in some ways radical, shares with the CSJ a highly traditional understanding of individual responsibility, the importance of marriage and the family and the potentially detrimental effects of central state intervention.

Each of these themes was evident in speeches delivered by Cameron before the 2010 election campaign, as the following example makes clear: When you are paid more not to work than to work, when you are better off leaving your children than nurturing them, when our welfare system tells young girls that having children before finding security of work and a loving relationship means home and cash now…when social care penalises those who have worked hard by forcing them to sell their home…when your attempts at playing a role in society are met with inspection, investigation and interrogation, is it any wonder that our society is broken? 4

3. P Blond, ‘The future of Conservatism’, in ResPublica, 26 November 2009, viewed on 11 October 2010, http://www.respublica.org.uk/articles/future-conservatism-0.

4. D Cameron, ‘The Big Society’, Hugo Young Lecture, in Conservatives, 10 November 2009, viewed on 11 October 2010, http://www.conservatives. com/News/Speeches/2009/11/David_Cameron_The_Big_Society.aspx.

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This broad message was reiterated during the 2010 election campaign. The Burkean ‘small state’ message comes through in demands for the removal of central controls, the greater empowerment of communities and increases in voluntary action. For Cameron, breaking up ‘state monopolies’ and moving from a ‘bureaucratic world…to a post-bureaucratic world’ would allow charities, social enterprises and companies to provide public services in ways that would remove the central state from people’s lives. The absence of the state would require people to be more accountable, however, and to exercise greater responsibility and act in particular ways.

‘Nudge politics’ is relevant here: in one speech5, Cameron referred to a series of activities including ‘setting up new schools…taking over the running of parks, libraries and post offices…holding beat meetings so they could ask police officers what they were doing’ as examples of the sorts of socially useful behaviours that government needed to encourage in the Big Society.

The twist (one might say ‘wrench’), however, which is being given to this civic associationist vision is the distinctly conservative (both ‘big C’ and ‘small ‘c’) conceptualisation of social responsibility. While it may well be that certain sections of society could benefit from greater control of their immediate destinies, it is not

5. D Cameron, ‘Our “Big Society” plan’, in Conservatives, 31 March 2010, viewed on 5 November 2010, http://www.conservatives.com/News/ Speeches/2010/03/David_Cameron_Our_Big_Society_plan.aspx.

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clear that the most disadvantaged groups in society would benefit to the same degree. Indeed, the opposite could be the case: a reduced state, ‘nudge’ politics, greater local autonomy and a more active civil society for the majority may need to be bought at the price of greater state interference, ‘shove politics’ and the increasing enforcement of specific policies for the worst-off groups.

This characterisation of a bifurcated ‘Big Society’, where certain groups will prosper and others fall under the auspices of an ‘enforcer state’, is likely to be played out differently in the different policies of government ministries. Some areas of government, for example, may be able to sustain programs that do indeed extend greater powers to certain groups of citizens. However, these are likely to differ in both idiom and intent from how Duncan Smith and his advisors understand welfare issues at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Publications from the CSJ and subsequent DWP legislation leave little doubt that very tough work incentives, a stress on ‘individual responsibility’ and an emphasis on marriage and the family will be the abiding ‘demands’ placed upon those most likely to have to depend on the state for their welfare. In short, the Big Society is only likely to be ‘big’ for some.

PHOTO: Reuters

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RHETORIC OR REALITY? Social policy apart, how feasible is the Big Society project as a whole? First, there is a problem of resources. Recent research by Anna Coote at the new economics foundation claims that government support for Big Society initiatives will be inadequate. The transition from central and local state services to a panoply of voluntary, charitable and social enterprise initiatives is likely to be expensive, but, to date, only £470 million has been allocated over four years to help community groups build the Big Society.

Conversely, the government has removed £4.5 billion from the charities budget as part of its spending cuts6.

A second issue relates to the highly diverse funding regime in the UK third sector. Currently, the great bulk of sector funding goes to just a few large organisations; roughly 87 per cent of the sector receives just 5.4 per cent of the available income. It is therefore difficult to understand how organisations will be able to develop levels of service delivery that are both socially and spatially coherent. Decentralisation and greater local control, in other words, may be bought at the cost of a relative equality of provision.

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Finally, other potential problems include resource issues of time, expertise and access7. As one unnamed senior government advisor recently pointed out, the Big Society will ‘need an army of people with spare time and lots of energy to set up schools, form patient groups, become police commissioners, help run local services and analyse all the data being published to hold organisations to account’8. One fear, the same source has commented, is that ‘not enough people will want to make it happen’.

Of greater concern, however, is the distinct possibility that an under-resourced third sector and voluntary universe will simply fail to thrive.

Rates of volunteering are currently low and opposition politicians point to a good deal of institutional resistance to the pace at which the Coalition Government is attempting to reorganise public services. Finally, there is concern within the civil service that the removal of services and the relocation of responsibility for their delivery within voluntary, charitable and private sector organisations could compromise the state’s formal accountability for service provision, while also creating a significant democratic deficit in the delivery of public services at local level.

Nick Ellison is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.

6. A Coote, ‘Cutting it: The ‘big society’ and the new austerity’ in new economics foundation, 4 November 2010, http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/cutting-it.

7. Coote, pp. 16-17.

8. The Observer, Welcome to the ever-diminishing world of the ‘Big Society’, 21 November, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ politics/2010/nov/21/big-society-diary-civil-servant.

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AUTHOR ELIZABETH CARGER

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Changing focus

IN THE US, DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS SEE THE ISSUE OF HEALTH INEQUITY THROUGH COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LENSES, WRITES ELIZABETH CARGER. THE ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION SET OUT TO FIND A WAY TO MAKE THE ISSUE CLEARER FOR BOTH SIDES.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is the largest health advocacy non-profit organisation in the United States. One particular issue it has grappled with for nearly 30 years is the issue of health disparities, or the differing levels of health between Americans living in low income, at-risk neighbourhoods and those living in middle class or affluent communities.

In 2006 RWJF decided to launch a major new Commission that would unite Republicans and Democrats in Washington D.C. to seriously address the challenge of overcoming health disparities. They wanted this Commission to be substantially different from past forays into this realm of public policy, which were pegged as statistical, dry, Democratic-leaning initiatives. In short, they needed to understand how Democrats and Republicans both think and feel about health disparities and reinvent the way RWJF communicated about the issue.

Consumer research group Olson Zaltman Associates (OZA) interviewed Republicans and Democrats who worked for a wide array of federal agencies, policy institutes, and elected politicians in early 2007. We discovered not merely different interpretations of commonly held deep metaphors, but rather that the two groups viewed American society and the issue of health disparities through entirely different metaphoric lenses.

Democrats viewed American society as a complex and interconnected system of individuals, institutions, and even ideals. The important implication of viewing society as a complex system is that the actions of any one agent eventually affect everyone and everything else within our country. To address health disparities between populations, then, requires looking at multiple environmental, social, cultural, and biological factors simultaneously rather than addressing a single issue such as lack of health insurance. Democrats also spoke at length about the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;containerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of poverty in at-risk communities.

PHOTOS: Ed Kashi. Used with permission from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Gretchen Erti. Used with permission from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

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Individuals were ‘stuck in holes’ and needed to be ‘pulled out.’ This container constituted a barrier that prevented poor populations from fully participating in the larger American social system. Herein laid a major emotional trigger for Democrats. While these groups are in one sense blocked out of the larger social system, they are also necessarily part of the overarching interconnected society. Feelings of anger and frustration thus emerged out of the Democrats’ view because the existence of these two competing frames within American society will, over time, disrupt the social balance and damage the viability of the country as a whole.

Rather than a system of interrelated factors that cause health disparities, Republicans believe individuals in certain communities lack resources necessary to progress on a journey toward good health. The primary resources any person needs are money and knowledge, largely in the form of learned behaviours from parental role models. The challenge for Republicans is to balance how much the government provides in terms of money and services and how to support the type of guidance that will help individuals utilise these resources in their individual life journeys.

Republicans also tended to look at the larger journey of American society and point out how far it has advanced, with technological improvements and overall growth of the country’s resources continually raising the level of what is judged to be an acceptable minimum health status. This resulted in far more optimism.

“We discovered that Republicans and Democrats had not merely different interpretations of commonly held deep metaphors, but viewed American society and the issue of health disparities through entirely different metaphoric lenses.”

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Armed with a new understanding of the emotional drivers behind what was previously thought to be a very dull topic, RWJF made some strategic decisions.

In the past they had frequently talked about the issue of health disparities using the system and container language of Democrats. This time, they realised they needed to communicate this issue in a way that did not alienate Republicans. That meant incorporating language and imagery of journey and resource, which they accomplished by enlisting the help of a Washington Post journalist and a National Geographic photographer who used the Republican deep metaphors as creative inspiration for images and life stories that would populate the reports published by the Commission. This complete rethinking of the language and images of the report brought new life to the issue of health disparities and has made the Commission’s reports some of the most popular in RWJF’s recent history.

See the full report at http://www.commissiononhealth. org/PDF/ObstaclesToHealth-Report.pdf and A new way to talk about the social determinants of health at http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/ vpmessageguide20101029.pdf.

Elizabeth Carger is the Senior Manager of Public Policy and Social Marketing at Olson Zaltman Associates (OZA). This report was previously published in the Spring 2009 issue of OZA’s Deep Dives newsletter.

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AUTHOR ESTHER ABRAM

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Advocating for advocacy In the wake of the landmark Aid/Watch case, Esther Abram from Changemakers Australia argues that the law needs to recognise charities as a dynamic force for positive social and environmental change by endorsing their right to advocate, without restriction.

Changemakers Australia seeks to increase investment in social change philanthropy, which requires, in part, the removal of barriers to advocacy for public policy reform. Over the past year Changemakers has been coordinating the Charity Law Reform Project, partly funded by the Victorian Legal Services Board, talking to people in the not-for-profit (NFP) sector about how charity law impedes their advocacy work and what can be done to improve the situation. The final report will be released in the second quarter of 2011. In summary, the project has found that NFPs have been negatively and unfairly impacted by the restrictions on advocacy under charity and taxation laws. This creates a situation where, ironically, charities need to advocate for the right to advocate.

Over the past 100 years charities have been restricted in their ability to advocate for public policy reform.

Since 1917 charity law has seen ‘charitable’ as being different from ‘political’. The list of activities described as ‘political’ has grown to include many things that modern charities see as core business, such as public education campaigns and advocating for changes to laws, policies, and service delivery approaches.

Fortunately, the 2010 High Court decision on Aid/ Watch has given charity law a much needed shake up, by overturning the conventional legal view that ‘political’ activity is not ‘charitable’. Much importance was placed by the High Court on how Australia’s system of law, as defined by our Constitution, relies upon ‘communication between electors and legislators and the officers of the executive, and between electors themselves, on matters of government and politics...’

In this context, advocacy becomes a legitimate activity of a charity when it is directed towards meeting the charity’s objects.

While the law pre-Aid/Watch did not ban advocacy, it placed restrictions on charities which were both unfair and unclear. Charities have been required to abide by legal restrictions on advocacy, while lots of other organisations receive tax benefits but have no restrictions on their political activities. For instance, trade unions and industry associations receive income tax concessions, but are free to speak out on whatever issues they have a view on. Some policy think tanks have access to Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status, and use this tax break to both criticise and develop government policy. This situation is not unfair in just an abstract sense; individual charities have been attacked in Parliament and in the media on the grounds that they should not be able to advocate and retain their tax concessions.

Regarding the lack of clarity in the law, charities have had to restrict their advocacy to issues which are ‘incidental’ to their charitable objects, and ensure that such activities are ‘ancillary’ to their other charitable work. Too much of a focus on law reform could result in an organisation losing its charitable status on the grounds that it had become ‘political’ rather than ‘charitable’. A number of the charities interviewed by the project found it difficult to be sure that they were operating within the law, as there are few bright-line rules to follow. Small charities have felt particularly at risk of doing ‘too much’ advocacy in relation to their other activities.

The situation has been even more risky for philanthropic organisations which have had very little guidance from government on how they should approach funding advocacy projects. Those philanthropics wanting to invest in social change projects have taken a variety of approaches to funding advocacy, often informed by legal advice — which varies according to the practitioner providing it. For instance, some won’t fund lobbying but will fund other aspects of an advocacy project, such as research.

Some will fund advocacy only when it is part of a

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bigger project. Others will fund advocacy projects, but only on the basis that their overall investment in advocacy is ‘ancillary’ in relation to their overall funding program.

This of course has knock-on effects for the community sector at large, as it is both difficult to find philanthropic organisations which will fund advocacy, and then when one is located it is difficult to know how to structure the funding request. Should you promote to the funder your intention to lobby government with your project findings, or keep quiet about it? Should you call your project a ‘campaign’, or will that put funders off?

Add to this situation the barriers to advocacy enshrined in the tax concession framework, which reinforces the pre Aid/Watch common law split between ‘charitable’ and ‘political’. Higher levels of concessions are available to charities which provide direct relief to the needy, and less to charities which have a focus on advocating for public policy reform as the means of achieving their charitable objects.

While most charities hold Tax Concession Charity (TCC) status and are provided with income tax exemptions, relatively few are eligible for DGR status.

This restricts the resources available to those charities from private donors who seek a tax deduction for their donations and also hampers the ability of philanthropic organisations to provide them with financial support.

As regulation pushes more philanthropic organisations to require DGR status as a precondition of funding, the ability to access philanthropic dollars for non-DGR charities will reduce even further.

So, how to remove the barriers to advocacy? The first step is to ensure that the Australian Tax Office (ATO) reflects the Aid/Watch decision in the redrafting of the Tax Ruling for charities. Changemakers believes that, as a result of the Aid/Watch decision, at an absolute

minimum, it should now be legitimate for charities to advocate for public policy reform as a means of meeting their charitable objects. Also, charities should be able to have law reform objects and still be charitable. Charities will need to get involved in the redrafting process to ensure that the ATO does not take a narrow interpretation of the Aid/Watch decision, thereby maintaining restrictions on particular sorts of advocacy.

The second step involves the expanding of categories of DGR so that a wider range of charities can access this tax concession status. Changemakers believes that charities with a focus on public policy reform should be a priority for DGR inclusion. It is ridiculous that respected organisations such as the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS) and Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) cannot access DGR and are thereby limited in their ability to generate independent funds for advocacy.

For the first time in many years the NFP sector appears to be on the precipice of change and modernisation. As part of this process, the law needs to recognise charities as a dynamic force for positive social and environmental change by endorsing their right to advocate, without restriction.

STOP PRESS The ATO is set to release a draft Charities Tax Ruling in June. The draft will include the High Court Aid/ Watch and Word Investments decisions.

Esther Abram is a community sustainability consultant, appointed by Changemakers Australia to undertake the Charitable Law Reform Project which has researched the impact of charity law on philanthropic and community organisations.

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Faye Pattinson, 61, from Lancefield, north of Melbourne, travels to and from work in the city via Southern Cross station.

Because she is blind, she relies on support from Travellers Aid Australia to get from the station entrance onto the right platform to get home. Garth Wilson, 37, has been supporting Faye since he first started with Travellers Aid in 2006. He’s now supervisor of the Travellers Aid Australia Southern Cross team.

FAYE I started to lose my sight when I was 7, due to toxoplasmosis, which triggered bouts of retinal haemorrhaging. My eyesight deteriorated gradually until, at the age of 32, I was totally blind — there was apparently so much scarring on the retina that it was like a mirror covered in cobwebs. No-one likes it to happen, of course, and I’d have been devastated if it happened to one of my kids, but I was lucky that it happened so gradually over a long period of time and I just adjusted to each deterioration. When my eyesight finally went completely, it wasn’t really a major upheaval, just another adjustment.

I’d wanted to be a physiotherapist, but the only course I could have done was in the UK and my parents weren’t prepared to let an 18-year-old partially sighted person just head off to England on their own, so I went to business college instead, and trained as a receptionist and telephonist.

I now work about 5 days a fortnight for ANZ on the corner of Queen and Collins streets in the city. Living in Lancefield means I can travel into Melbourne either on the Seymour or

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THE TWO OF US*

Bendigo lines, according to which schedule best suits the shift I’m doing. That’s great but it means I often arrive at or leave from different platforms.

Of a morning, when I’m coming in, my guide dog Stony is fine to get me out of the station – it doesn’t matter what platform we come in on, he knows the way out. It’s coming back in the afternoon that is difficult, because he’s got no idea which platform we need to go to.

“To me, they are guardian angels, literally.”

Up until the new station was built, I didn’t need assistance because all the platforms were up ramps and lanes and they were very easy to differentiate. And then they built this wonderful new station. They tell me it looks great, but the first time I came in, it was one great big noise, there was no defining of any areas that I could hear or that the dog could pinpoint. I started to think I was absolutely stonkered, there

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was no way known I could find my own way around the station to get the right train home and I couldn’t teach the dog either.

peak hour crowd. I’m sure her dog gets very sore feet from the number of times people step on them, without thinking of him.

Then, at the suggestion of the station staff, I contacted Travellers Aid Australia, and from then on all of the stress and nightmare went away. The guys are obviously trained on how to interact with people with disabilities because they are all are so natural and terrific. They give me heaps of teasing and get it back!

Most of the people who need support from Travellers Aid Australia around peak hour travel are clients with visual impairments. We also help many elderly people who are coming into Melbourne for medical appointments, to catch up with family, or to go to a show.

The whole service is geared specifically for people like me, who once had a lot of stress with travelling and now have none; in fact I look forward to having a yarn with whoever is picking me up, because we’ve come to know each other really well. It’s like spending a bit of time with a mate.

Garth is great fun. A lot of people are self-conscious when they start dealing with someone with a disability. Garth never was. He’s good fun and spot on with the way he guides.

We’ve got a lot of things in common, especially when it comes to animals, and there’s never any awkwardness.

If it wasn’t for Garth and the guys, then I don’t think I could keep on working because the stress wouldn’t be worth it. They’ve taken that all away. To me, they are guardian angels, literally.

GARTH I love my job. I started here as a customer service volunteer before working my way up. I’m here because I love the interaction we have with our clients. Faye is good value, she always tries to trap you on the train by starting an exciting conversation just before the doors are going to close. I’m just waiting for it to coincide with a night when there’s roast for dinner and I’ll be there!

I also like getting to know Faye as well as I have and as long as I have now. When I started this job, I didn’t really think twice about what many people have to go through just to get somewhere. Now I have a much bigger appreciation because Faye is essentially playing rugby all the way down Collins Street to the station every night in the middle of a

One thing I love is the first time you provide the service to someone and you see them realise it can change their lives in a way. Coming into the city can be overwhelming – we get elderly people who remember Southern Cross as Spencer Street station from the 1940s and it’s a completely different place for them to navigate now. I love it when they say ‘now that I know you’re here, I’m going to travel more often.’ They come down first for a medical appointment, something they can’t avoid, but the next time you see them, they’re coming down to see a play or to catch up with children and grandchildren, and you know you’ve helped them get the confidence and ability to get out and about.

Located at Flinders Street Station and Southern Cross Station, Travellers Aid Australia provides vital services and dignified outcomes to travellers in need. Services include free personal care assistance for people with disabilities, an Emergency Relief Service at Southern Cross Station, and mobility equipment hire at both Flinders Street and Southern Cross stations. Visit www.travellersaid.org.au for details. * With acknowledgement to The Age’s Good Weekend for its weekly 2 of Us column

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