Australian Journal of Social Issues: special issue devoted to selected papers from the 2007 Australian Social Policy Conference.

The papers in this Special Issue of The Australian Journal of Social Issues were originally presented at the 10th Australian Social Policy Conference (ASPC), held at the University of New South Wales in July 2007. The theme of the conference was Social Policy Through the Life Course: Building Community Capacity and Social Resilience. The ASPC is one of the key events on the social policy calendar in Australia, and the 2007 conference attracted around 500 participants from academia, government and non-governmental organisations. In addition to Plenary Sessions on inequalities in child outcomes, the challenge of the work-life balance and the ethics of care, special forums focused on Indigenous policies and programs, policies that make a difference for disadvantaged children and families, advocacy and consumer participation, and Australia's demographic challenges. Contributed paper strands included: income distribution and social inequalities; families, work and care; labour market participation and welfare reform; children and young people; early childhood; citizenship and participation; organisation and delivery of human services; and retirement and ageing.

This selection of conference papers represents the wide spread of topics covered by contributors. They address many of the issues that are at the centre of the social policy agenda by raising new problems or identifying inadequacies in existing responses. It is now more than three decades since the combination of high unemployment and high inflation threatened the economic foundations of the post-war welfare state, but the second half of that period has been characterised by strong economic growth, rising material prosperity and falling unemployment. Governments of all political persuasions have been forced to re-assess their policy interventions in order to better address complex problems with limited resources.

This requires new ways of thinking about old problems and new ideas for combating emerging issues without undermining the stability that social programs are designed to offer those in need. New partnerships have been forged between government and the non-government sector, often focusing on new ways of harnessing economic ideas and market mechanisms to promote social goals. Increasingly, social problems reflect a range of failures--institutional, attitudinal and behavioural--and require responses that can address the underlying causes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner. Government's role has become more facilitative and less directly interventionist, identifying others that can contribute their knowledge and expertise in a coordinated response to these problems.

'Joined-up government' is the only effective response to inter-connected problems, to quote Tony Blair. But the approach requires more than a coordination of activities within government, because government is now so intimately bound up with a large cast of non-government actors. It also requires an evidence-based approach that draws on what we know about the challenges we face to develop responses that recognise and build on current realities, not on simplified diagnoses derived from anecdote, ideological bias or simplistic textbook theorising. Evidence also needs to be interpreted, not just collected.

The re-emergence of economic liberalism as the driving force behind policy change has reinforced the importance of ideas such as agency, choice, competition and freedom. The social policy agenda has been struggling to adjust to these new realities while responding to problems associated with diversity and inequality, disadvantage and discrimination, rights and responsibilities, poverty and need. The challenges are complex, priorities must be determined and difficult choices confronted. There is scope for disagreement not only about the means of policy, but also about its ends. What is it we are trying to achieve and what are our markers of success? Is it enough to generate and maintain a high rate of economic growth? Clearly not, to judge from recent experience--at least when viewed from a social perspective.

Economic growth generates its own dynamic, one that is often inimical to the needs of those who are left behind. The underlying challenge involves balancing the freedom and prosperity that market forces can deliver with the guarantee of fair play and fair outcomes--allowing everyone to contribute and ensuring that their efforts are justly rewarded. It involves ensuring that our economic institutions are grounded in a platform forged by a social vision of what Galbraith has called 'the good society'.

The papers in this Special Issue illustrate how the factors identified above are shaping the ways in which social issues are conceived and addressed. The first three papers set the scene by addressing three of the major themes driving today's social policy agenda: the nature of economic and social disadvantage; problems associated with achieving a balance between (paid) work and family life; and the nature of public opinion about the notion of social citizenship that is embodied in the concept of a welfare state. This 'big picture' perspective is followed by three papers that focus on the problems faced by three specific groups that have been at the forefront of policy concern for much of the last decade: homeless people, the long-term unemployed, and people with a mental illness. The final two papers provide a thorough discussion of one of the issues that has assumed central place in social policy discussion in Australia, as in many other OECD countries--the ageing of the population and its implications for policy.

The paper by Peter Saunders, Yuvisthi Naidoo and Megan Griffiths draws on research conducted in collaboration with a group of leading community sector agencies into the nature of disadvantage in Australia today. It adopts a living standards approach derived from the literature on deprivation--defined as an enforced lack of socially perceived necessities--and social exclusion--which exists when individuals do not participate in key activities in society. The findings indicate that many Australians face deprivation and exclusion in numerous aspects of their lives, and that those defined as poor in income terms are different from those who are deprived or excluded. All three indicators thus have an important role to play in documenting the extent of social disadvantage and helping to identify the factors that contribute to its various manifestations.

Jennifer Baxter and Michael Alexander use data from the 2004 wave of Growing up in Australia: The Longitudinal Stud), of Australian Children (LSAC) to explore the relationships between work-to-family strain and a number of demographic, employment and support factors for mothers in couple and sole parent families. While there has been increased focus on the work-to-family strain of mothers, less is known about single mothers, even though they are expected to face difficulty in combining work and family, given that they do not have the support of a partner to assist with childrearing responsibilities. These expectations are not borne out by the evidence, which suggests that the work-to-family strain is mainly affected by factors other than sole parent status. However, it is also apparent that the decision to seek employment is itself influenced by the presence or absence of a partner, so that the lower strain of un-partnered mothers may reflect their inability to join the labour force.

Loiuse Humpage addresses the role of public attitudes in New Zealand, but her findings have great relevance to Australia, given the similar policy trajectories followed in the two countries. She examines whether the shift towards a neo-liberal reform agenda has changed public attitudes towards the social rights of citizenship in New Zealand, whose institutions were more rapidly transformed by neoliberal reform than other similar countries, and whose citizens have become increasingly disengaged from politics. Drawing upon public opinion data regarding economic protectionism and the welfare state over the past two decades, she argues that there is no overwhelming evidence of a paradigmatic shift in public attitudes towards social citizenship rights across the Tasman. It appears that New Zealand's experience is as ambiguous as that in Australia, even though different policy and historical settings have produced some differences in public opinion.

The paper by Kaylene Zaretzky, Paul Flatau and Michelle Brady provides a valuable illustration of the benefits of adopting a whole of government approach to examine a specific policy intervention--in their case the net cost to government of homelessness programs. These programs may improve the health, well-being, financial security, labour market and accommodation outcomes of clients and may result in decreased utilisation of health and justice services, reduced child residential care costs, lower housing management costs, lower income support payments and higher revenue from increased income tax payments. When identified and costed, such impacts represent significant savings or cost offsets to the provision of homelessness programs. The authors estimate that on the basis of health and justice cost offsets alone, homelessness programs have the potential to save well over twice the value of their recurrent funding.

Greg Marston and Catherine McDonald focus on how workfare has affected long-term unemployed people in three different labour markets over the period between 2005 and 2007. They focus on testing the validity of one of the unstated assumptions of many workfare programs, that long-term unemployed people lack the personal motivation to engage proactively and successfully in the search for paid employment. They argue that the implementation of what are experienced as paternalistic workfare programs are counter-productive to achieving the official policy goal of improving self-efficacy and gaining paid employment, and support this interpretation using evidence derived from a semi-longitudinal study that tracked the experiences of 75 long-term unemployed people over a three-year period.

The starting point for the paper by Kristy Muir, Karen Fisher, Ann Dadich and David Abello is that without appropriate support, people with mental illness can be excluded from stable housing and social and community participation. They note that transitional models of support for people with acute mental illness have addressed clinical symptoms and hospitalisation, but have not facilitated stable housing and community integration. In contrast, individualised housing models aim to improve mental health, housing and community outcomes, although these programs are costly and require collaboration between agencies. The authors draw on their involvement in the evaluation of one of the NSW Mental Health Housing and Accommodation Support Initiative (HASI) programs to describe the challenges participants faced prior to joining HASI, the changes experienced while in the program, and discuss the policy implications for programs supporting people with mental illness to live in the community.

Maggie Walter, Natalie Jackson and Bruce Felmingham provide a policy perspective on one of the issues at the forefront of the Australian policy response to the ageing of the population: keeping older workers participating in the labour force for longer. Although the Government has introduced a range of policies to persuade older workers to abandon early retirement and/ or remain in the workforce past traditional retirement ages, it remains unclear whether the 'baby boom generation" will be prepared to change their retirement plans in response to policy encouragement, or whether current policy measures will translate into significant numbers of older workers extending their labour force participation. Using the Australian Survey of Retirement Attitudes and Motivations (ASRAM) the authors find that while the official message about working longer is getting through, older workers are relatively unresponsive to current policy measures and a broader range of actions is needed.

The final paper, by Allan Borowski, provides a comprehensive review of recent reforms to Australia's system of retirement income. He argues that a critical crossroad was reached in the 1980s and this led to the emergence of a set of reforms that were driven by a reasonably clear set of goals. However, Australia now faces a second crossroad that it appears less well-equipped to respond to, because of how the system has evolved over the last two decades. Policy in this area is characterised by Borowski as a 'slippery fish' that is difficult to grasp and easily slips away. The failure to set clear policy goals, combined with the cost and inequity of existing arrangements (particularly those relating to the tax treatment of superannuation contributions and benefits) implies that there is a need for further reform, driven by a clear vision of the goal of the system and the contribution of its different elements, including the age pension.

Guest Editors' Introduction by Peter Saunders and Tony Eardley (SPRC)