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People with innate variations of sex characteristics (also known as intersex traits or disorders or differences of sex development) have any of a wide range of innate physical traits that differ from medical and social norms for female and male bodies. Responses to these physical differences create experiences and risks of stigmatisation, discrimination, violence, and harmful medical practices intended to promote social and familial integration and conformity with gender stereotypes. As is evident globally, the Australian policy response to the existence and needs of people with innate variations of sex characteristics has been largely incoherent, variously framing the population as having disordered sex development in need of "fixing", and a third sex/gender identity group in need of recognition, with only recent engagement by intersex community-controlled civil society organisations. This paper presents an overview of the context and goals of the intersex human rights movement in Australia. Australian intersex community organisations have sought to apply human rights norms and develop new infrastructure to address key health and human rights issues, and necessitating new ways of resolving policy incoherence. Together with human rights, mental health, and public health institutions, they have called for significant changes to medical models of care and reform to research and classification systems. Intersex community organising and resourcing have made a tangible difference. The Australian Capital Territory is the first jurisdiction in the country to move ahead with reforms to clinical practice, including a legislative prohibition of certain practices without personal informed consent, oversight of clinical decision-making, and investment in psychosocial support. A national community-controlled psychosocial support service has also commenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue addresses the use of linked data for research purposes and to carry out government functions such as child protection, allocation of resources, and debt recovery. Government investment in big data has the potential to change citizens' experience of the welfare state in a broad range of areas in both positive and negative ways. It is therefore important that the Australian social policy community understands and engages with the potential benefits and risks involved in the linkage and analysis of government datasets. Papers in this Special Issue discuss the technical challenges and institutional barriers involved in the construction and governance of linked government data assets and showcase the promise of big data for generating policy relevant insights. This Special Issue also features papers critically interrogating the potential for big data to produce social harms. We contextualise this collection of papers with a brief history of recent policy developments in regards to access to government held data. We also discuss ways of improving public trust and social licence for the use of big data and argue that the voices of First Nations and disadvantaged Australians must be given greater weight in discussions of how their data will be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of a local newspaper in shaping a community's collective memory of child sexual abuse by documenting changing representations of a former rural orphanage and its custodians where such horrific crimes took place. The paper conducts an across-time analysis of news coverage (1944–1954 and 2010–2020) to map these changing representations in their media, policy and social contexts. It extends scholarship around collective memory and temporal reflexivity as a provocation for journalists to acknowledge and engage with their news outlet's own mediated past (no matter how uncomfortable) when reporting on and interpreting events such as Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using a life course approach, this article seeks to discuss and analyse the impact on a carer when their older loved one experiences cognitive changes such as dementia, and the specific implications for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In Western contexts such as Australia, dementia is often understood through a biomedical lens and deficit-based frameworks. These dominant understandings can maintain ageist attitudes that construct older people and those with dementia as a social policy burden. This is further amplified for people from non-dominant cultures. This paper examines the marketisation of aged care in Australia and phenomena of ambiguous loss in identifying a range of issues for carers, including the specific experiences and challenges for culturally and linguistically diverse people. Finally, it discusses implications for critical social work practice and argues for radical change at structural and organisational levels. It proposes that a reframing of dementia as a shared social experience along with strengths-based and relational practice are key to creating more meaningful counter narratives that foster a sense of agency and empowerment for carers and people with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments of highly developed western nations with colonised Indigenous populations such as Australia, Canada and South Africa are increasingly turning to social procurement policies in an attempt to solve social inequities between Indigenous people and other citizens. They seek to use policies and funds attached to infrastructure development and construction to encourage private sector companies to provide training, employment and business opportunities for Indigenous people in the communities in which construction occurs. This paper outlines the rise of these policies and their origins, and critiques their connection to Indigenous people's human rights, impact measurement, evaluation and accountability mechanisms. In doing so this paper also explores benefits and potential of social procurement policies, as well as risks. Drawing on insights from an Aboriginal-developed evaluation framework, Ngaa-bi-nya, and Indigenous Standpoint Theory, this paper highlights Indigenous peoples' definitions of value and outlines their relevance to social procurement. Introducing the notion of cultural counterfactuals into social impact measurement research, it also offers a new conceptual framework to enable policymakers and practitioners to more accurately account for social procurement value and impact, including Indigenous people's notions of social value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017 paediatrician Dr Peter Jones called for a policy debate on the need for some people in Australia to have fewer children. His call came in response to unacceptably high numbers of children and young people in out-of-home care in Australia and resulting adverse outcomes for these children and young people. This paper challenges this call from a critique of neoliberal society which is characterised by increasing socio-economic disadvantage and rising inequality. It uses Standing's notion of a social construction of a precariat grouping to understand what is happening in many vulnerable families where children's safety and well-being needs are compromised. The argument posed in this critique is that societally we need to promote policies that tackle poverty, inter-generational disadvantage and associated social ills in an attempt to address the causes of these unacceptably high statistics on children in the statutory care system. The paper examines the responsibilities of a critically informed social work approach to posit an alternative social policy approach. Such an approach is based in particular philosophical beliefs about the need for social change to benefit vulnerable citizens. The author concludes that we need to do more to challenge dominant negative discourses about those families. Only when all has been done in the active provision of support should we be having discussions about policy restrictions on family choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case management is promoted as a trademark of community service practice with young people funded by neoliberal social policy. In spite of this, case management practice and case managers have largely escaped the attention of youth scholars. In this paper, we examine the funding parameters of two youth case management services in Australia to reveal the governing effects on young people, case managers and NGOs. We develop an analytical framework that exposes the compounding effect of interacting governable spaces that facilitates a critical analysis of case management revealing the problems of governance within this seemingly generic practice method. Shifting focus from the young person as the object of governance to include the case manager and case management as separate but interacting governable spaces, provides new insights into the problematisations underpinning case management practice with young people. We argue compounding governable spaces provides insight into the infantilisation of young people that is amplified and reinforced within and between case managers, and case management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is the primary focus for social procurement policies in many countries. However, there has been little research into the drivers of social procurement policy adoption in this industry. To help address this gap in research, this paper reports the results of semi-structured interviews with fifteen social procurement professionals who are implementing social procurement into the Australian construction industry. Results reveal interesting historical parallels with the implementation of environmental sustainability initiatives. However, social procurement has yet to become normalized. There appears to be a high level of homogeneity in industry practice and while there is considerable scope for innovation, this is constrained by the prescriptive and 'top-down' nature of social procurement policies in Australia which make it difficult for organizations to respond 'bottom-up' to actual community needs. It is concluded that the considerable untapped potential of social procurement policies to create social value currently depends on the intrapreneurial efforts of a small number of emerging social procurement professionals who are individually challenging the many institutional norms and practices which undermine the implementation of these policies into the construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to be an important part of education governance. It is already being built into everything from business intelligence platforms to real-time online testing. In this paper, we aim to understand how AI becomes, and forms, a legitimate part of authority in contemporary education governance in what we call the automated education governance assemblage, that incorporates technology companies and AI-supported products used in education. We focus on EduTech Australia – an education technology trade show in Sydney – as a way to look at: (i) how the different aspects of automated governance are connected at EduTech, including the relations between different participants, companies and products; and (ii) how the automated governance assemblage works to legitimise and constitute EduTech as a policy space and site of new authorities in education governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the relationship between regional Australia, its audiences, and radio research in the 20th and 21st centuries by examining the methods by which regional Australia has been incorporated and acknowledged within radio histories, surveys, and research into broadcasting policy. This paper argues that this research has embraced a wider discourse and narrative focused on 'saving' the regions--a sentiment that has been the overwhelming narrative in Australia's social and economic history. It concludes that regional Australia needs to be better understood and integrated into research that has implications for broadcasting policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has a long history of realising value from data assets supported by our strong governance and analytical capability. Recent changes to technology, government policy and the complexity and volume of our data holdings have put increasing pressure on our existing processes for data collation, analysis and sharing/release. While the AIHW has already put in place a number of initiatives to respond to the changing demands on data, some slow response times have resulted from new developments required to meet some of the complex challenges posed by Multi‐source Enduring Linked Data Assets (MELDAs) such as the National Integrated Health Services Initiative (NIHSI). The learnings we are taking forward will provide smoother pathways for newer MELDAs such as the National Disability Data Asset. This paper outlines the new challenges faced with appropriately managing MELDAs, and the learnings of the AIHW have taken forward in realising value from this new type of data asset along with how MELDAs, such as the NIHSI, can be applied to address social policy questions in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing, employment and economic conditions in many nations have changed greatly over the past decades. This paper explores the ways in which changing housing markets, economic conditions and government policies have affected vulnerable individuals and households, using Australia as a case study. The paper finds a substantial number and proportion of low income Australians have been affected by housing and employment that is insecure with profound implications for vulnerability. Importantly, the paper suggests that in Australia the economic gains achieved as a consequence of mining-related growth in the early 2000s were translated as greater employment security for some on low incomes, but not all. Enhanced access to employment in this period was differentiated by gender, with women largely missing out on the growth in jobs. For the population as a whole, employment gains were offset by increased housing insecurity as accommodation costs rose. The paper finds low income lone parents were especially vulnerable because they were unable to benefit from a buoyant labour market over the decade 2000–2010. They were also adversely affected by national policy changes intended to encourage engagement with paid work. The outcomes identified for Australia are likely to have been mirrored in other nations, especially those that have embraced, or been forced to adopt, more restrictive welfare and income support regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do public health advocates and practitioners encourage policy actors to address the social determinants of health? What strategies can be used to elevate healthy social policies onto government agendas? In this paper, we examine the case of Australia's first national paid parental leave scheme, announced in 2009 after decades of policy advocacy. This scheme provides job-protected leave and government-funded pay at the minimum wage for 18 weeks for eligible primary care givers on the birth of an infant, and has been shown to reduce health inequities. Drawing on documentary sources and interviews (n  = 25) with key policy actors, this paper traces the evolution of this landmark social policy in Australia, focusing on the role of actors, institutions and policy framings in setting the policy agenda. We find that advocates strategically deployed three different framings—for economy, gender equality and health—to drive paid parental leave onto the Government's agenda. They navigated barriers linked to power, gender ideology and cost, shifting tactics along the way by adopting different frames in various institutional settings and broadening their coalitions. Health arguments varied in different institutional settings and, at times, advocates selectively argued the economic or gender equality framing over health. The case illustrates the successful use of strategic pragmatism to provoke action, and raises broader lessons for advancing action on the social determinants of health. In particular, the case highlights the importance of adopting multiple synergistic policy framings to draw support from non-traditional allies and building coalitions to secure public policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Western society the secular way of life has resulted in individuals to prioritize individualized and self-absorbed lifestyles which leads some to prioritize self-pleasure over community well-being and solidarity. This paper aims to explore the concept of altruism and the internal/external dynamics in the Hizmet Movement in Australia. The paper will exemplify the Australian Intercultural Society (AIS) and Affinity Intercultural Foundation (AIF) as a case study to show the altruism of the affiliates, that through vast activities of intercultural relations and projects have catalyzed the process of social policy dynamism for social well-being among the wider community. It examines the dynamics of the "Hizmet Movement" that aim to encourage pro-active and altruistic individuals to prioritize others' well-being over one's self in a secular context. Finally, the paper offers a conceptualization of altruism as understood in sociological theory and faith traditions which set the scope on Gülen and Hizmet Movements' understanding of altruism clearly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the ageing experiences of older Chinese immigrants in Australia. The life course perspective provides a framework to investigate the main aspects relating to a sense of home and to analyse how family, relational, and societal factors influence older Chinese immigrants' construction of a sense of home in a transnational context. This paper is based on qualitative data from 30 in‐depth interviews with older Chinese immigrants living on the Gold Coast, Australia. This study reveals that family relationships, independence, and social interactions contribute to constructing a sense of home among older Chinese immigrants. Findings elucidate the interrelations between personal adaptive actions and mindsets, Chinese organisations, and social policies in the life experiences of older Chinese immigrants in Australia. This study suggests that policymakers need to be more sensitive to the significance of culture; it also highlights the need to further support existing cultural services that contribute to developing a sense of home for older Chinese immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this viewpoint article is to consider the #BlackLivesMatter movement within the Aboriginal Australian struggle for equality, sovereignty and human rights. Indigenous sovereignty has been threatened throughout Australia's history of colonization. We provide a viewpoint and recommendations for social policy education and practice. Design/methodology/approach: We provide commentary and interpretation based upon the lived experience of Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC) co-authors, co-authors who are Allies, extant literature and practice wisdom as social policy educators. Findings: Universities are sources of knowledge production, transmission and consumption within society. We provide critical recommendations for what social policy education within universities can address human rights and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Originality/value: Culturally responsive inclusion for BIPOC has only just begun in Australia and globally within the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This paper adds critical conversation and recommendations for what social policy programs might do better to achieve universities' teaching and learning missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many developed countries, the provision of disability services has undergone significant transformations, from institutional to community based care, and from oganisational to personalised funding. Yet delivering disability support remains an ongoing challenge for governments. Specifically, the relative success of different types of disability support governance is convoluted and problematic given the diversity and complexity of disability support systems and the people they serve. To enhance the systematic analysis and evaluation of disability support governance, this paper conceptually advances four distinct models based on the locus of control and coordination of such support: uncoordinated; casework governance; dwelling-based governance; and user-coordinated. Using illustrations from case studies of individuals receiving care, the identification of these ideal types enables their relative strengths, weaknesses, and the occasions of governance failure to be articulated. No one model is universally applicable to people, nor immune to failure. Furthermore, the paper presents a novel approach to visualising actual disability support arrangements as social networks. The utility of such visualisations for analysing individual and systemwide arrangements is outlined. In the context of Australia's developing National Disability Insurance Scheme, these conceptual and analytical developments are argued to be important tools for policy and service analysis and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by examining the social inclusion agenda that formed the centrepiece of the social policy agenda of the Australian Government between 2007 and 2013. It discusses several features of the agenda, including its objectives (as articulated by the government) and some of the administrative and bureaucratic mechanisms that were put in place to assist with its development and implementation. Although no formal assessment of the impact of the agenda is attempted, some of the ways in which such an agenda could make a difference are identified. The paper then summarises the social inclusion indicator framework developed by the Australian Social Inclusion Unit with assistance and advice from the Australian Social Inclusion Board, and compares its structure and content with the frameworks developed by two of Australia's leading social research institutes. Finally, data from two national surveys of poverty and social exclusion are used to examine recent changes in social exclusion and the association between the severity of exclusion and levels of subjective well-being. These latter results show clearly that subjective well-being is consistently lower among those who experience the greatest degree of social exclusion, suggesting that exclusion as identified and measured reflects external constraints rather than internal preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance measurement (PM) in the public sector has progressively broadened to cover the operation of professionals traditionally framed as independent and autonomous. How PM reconstitutes the role and conduct of professionals is critical for understanding contemporary dynamics of policy and governance, and service provider-service user relationships. Building on Lipsky's classic Street-level Bureaucracy, this paper examines the ways in which street-level professionals are reconfigured in their roles as evidenced by the operation of Australia's schooling PM, NAPLAN. The paper reports findings from a project examining the effects of PM in social policy. Attention is given to the ambiguous and conflicting goals arising from measuring literacy and numeracy performance and the varied ways performance numbers are used by management for teacher governance at the street-level. These considerations have implications for the effectiveness of PM in delivering service improvements, the experience of service users, and the achievement of policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overcoming the socio-economic disparity between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous Australians is a long-standing social policy objective: one largely shared by Indigenous people. Achievement will require Indigenous individuals and households to be socially mobile, a process integrally involved with social capital, existing and requisite. The lack of research on Indigenous social mobility or its attendant social capital connections is addressed in this paper through an exploratory analysis of this interaction across three dimensions: distinctive patterns of Indigenous social capital; the transferability of Indigenous social capital; and traversing the social capital divide. The implications drawn, while tentative, indicate that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the intersection of the processes of social mobility and social capital is vexed, and contains hazards and costs not fully shared by socially mobile non-Indigenous households. The Indigenous-specific factors of a gendered professional class, the identity- social capital link, and Indigenous labour market circumstances all indicate that more research and a more nuanced understanding of Indigenous social mobility is necessary. Social policy recommendations include broadening the concept of cultural leave to include bonding social capital obligations, especially for women, and re-evaluation of how to support Indigenous career trajectories and transferable skill sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precariousness, together with its cognate terms (e.g. precarity, precarious work, precarious workers, the precariat and precarious life), has become a significant theme in employment relations research in recent years. This paper reviews important aspects of the discussion, taking its starting point from an article in Labour and Industry which introduced the concept and sketched out a proposed research agenda for examining poor job quality in Australia. The current paper identifies patchy progress in knowledge concerning the core issues. Casual employment has been one area of successful inquiry, but challenges remain in connection with analysis of precariousness in permanent employment. At the same time, understanding of precariousness has moved into new channels of inquiry that were uncharted in the 1998 article and offer great promise for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the policy environment and settlement support services provided for migrants arriving in Australia and the challenges faced by them when engaging in a complex policy environment. Using structuration theory, it aims to understand how migrants’ understanding of settlement services relates to their exercise of agency and to the institutional and social structures they draw upon to integrate in the new society. Data were collected through 14 focus group discussions (N = 164), across seven migrant communities in Greater Western Sydney, Australia. The paper highlights access to language services and literacy programmes as contributing to the obstacles affecting migrants’ ability to achieve employment and draw on available settlement services. Three main themes emerged: (i) language barrier; (ii) employment in the new country; and (iii) settlement services. Language posed as a major barrier to find suitable employment and overall settlement. While non-recognition of prior skills or education, and a lack of local employment experience, posed significant barriers for migrants looking for work, participants also found settlement services had not been able to ease this challenging process. Our findings suggest the need to consider pre-migration experiences while planning for interventions that are tailored to better integration of migrants into the Australian workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conditionality in Australia's welfare state has sustained a significant academic critique, including the critique published in this journal. In this Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Social Issues, we contribute to the existing critical literature on welfare conditionality. This Special Issue aimed to provide empirical scrutiny into welfare reform and conditionality in Australia. The articles extend our understanding of welfare conditionality's underpinnings and its lived effects. These case studies illuminate the aspects of welfare conditionality that have not received enough attention: the role of technology, the question of mobility, the relationship with housing and the little thought given to the state's role in mutual obligation. What is clear is that the individualisation of structural problems is not just a theoretical and political misstep ripe for critique, but leads to the formulation of policies that impact marginalised people's capacity to shape life on their own terms. Through different empirical foci, all papers in this Special Issue demonstrate how welfare conditionality is put forward as a solution to address the consequences of structural disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic saw governments around the world suddenly accumulate substantially higher levels of public debt. We consider the level of debt entered into by Australia's federal, state and territory governments and compare this against three metrics for debt sustainability. Using these measures, we find that current and future public debt levels sit within what is regarded as sustainable by scholarly and practitioner opinion. However, we note that recent increases in interest rates will challenge this. We conclude by outlining a range of economic, social and policy challenges arising from the new high public debt environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on how community workers in Shepparton viewed the impact of the Place Based Income Management (PBIM) trial on the lives of their clients, their clients' families, and the broader community. The paper responds to criticism that there has been a lack of community voices in the development of PBIM or of their inclusion in the formal evaluation framework, raised in Philip Mendes's 2013 study of this trial site. A key policy goal underlying Income Management is that the tool assists low income people to become better money managers. Our study found that Shepparton community workers also used the parlance of 'tool' to describe the programmatic value of the BasicsCard in their interactions with clients. However, the BasicsCard appeared marginal to their discussions. Three clear themes emerged from the interviews: Shepparton's focus on voluntary clients, and ascertaining why participation in the local trial had dropped; that support for IM centred on the voluntary measure and the extra resources available to assist clients; and pragmatically locating the program in the middle of a welfare continuum that stretched from the voluntary Centrepay at one end to the highly coercive and restrictive paternalism of State Trustees at the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper specifically addresses the behavioural focus of the income management regime, arguing that through its use of market logic and the reduction of social and political complexity, the regime is a technology of neoliberal governmentality. This paper finds that income management, whether compulsory or voluntary, blanket or Community based, regards the individual as the site of dysfunction, depoliticising and dehumanising broader socio economic historical factors in the process. Further, the focus on behavioural change creates the illusion that the market logic of income management will produce responsible citizens, which in turn obscures the possibility of redressing poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability reform in Australia centres on a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which aims to provide lifelong, individualised support based on the principle of 'reasonable and necessary' care. As a universal rights-based scheme it represents a historical shift in allocation principles in Australia's disability policy. Nonetheless, attention will be on determining who receives what care given the diversity of personal and family contexts. The aim of this paper is to discuss the operational complexities of a principle of reasonable and necessary care with reference to the findings of a three-year study on the experiences and perspectives of disability care of 25 adults with acquired disability, their 22 nominated family members and 18 service providers. Evidence from this study suggests enacting the principle of reasonable and necessary care and support will be problematic, in particular as it relates to personalising the level and scope of services, balancing formal and informal care, and principles of equity. The paper contributes to the literature about allocation principles in social policy and the challenges of implementation. Further, it provides an empirically informed discussion of some of the specific policy implementation challenges concerning the NDIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists typically argue population ageing generates fiscal pressures by restricting the tax base while increasing demands for social spending. Alongside other economic pressures associated with neoliberalism, this dynamic contributes to a politics of 'enduring austerity' that limits governments' fiscal discretion. The politics of population ageing reflects modelling techniques, such as generational accounting (GA), which, anticipating future deficits, create demands for policy action today to address projected intergenerational inequalities. Taking Australia as a case study, this paper explores the politics of GA in public budgetary processes. While existing critiques reject GA by arguing it relies on 'apocalyptic' or unreliable demography, we focus on a different kind of contestation, which applies the techniques and even the categories of GA to frame different problems and promote different solutions. We identify three sites of partisan contest that refocus fiscal modelling: including the tax side of the budget equation; comparing the cost of public provision to public subsidies for private programmes; and including the costs of environmental damage. At each site, the future-orientated logic of GA is mobilised to contest the policy implications of austerity. This complicates analysis that financialisation and neoliberalism necessarily 'de-politicise' policy by removing state discretion. Instead, we identify an increasingly important, if technocratic, form of political contestation that offers the possibility to promote more egalitarian responses to population ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The connection between choice, control and health is well established in the literature on the social determinants of health, which includes choice and control of vital health and social services. However, even in the context of universal health and social care schemes, the ability to exercise choice and control can be distributed unequally. This paper uses the case of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to examine these issues. The NDIS is a major policy reform based on an international trend towards personalisation in social care. It aims to increase choice and control over services and supports for people who have or acquire a permanent disability, thereby boosting citizen empowerment and improving health and social outcomes.Methods: The research is a structured review of empirical evidence on the administration and outcomes of the NDIS to identify how social factors constrain or enable the ability of individuals to exercise choice within personalised care schemes.Results: We show how social determinants of health at the individual level can collide with the complexity of policy delivery systems to entrench health inequalities.Conclusion: Many social policy reforms internationally focus on improving empowerment through enabling choice and control. However, if administrative systems do not take account of existing structural inequities, then such schemes are likely to entrench or grow social inequality. Our research indicates that more attention must be given to the design of policy delivery systems for personalisation schemes to ensure health equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As governments worldwide turn to personalised budgets and market‐based solutions for the distribution of care services, the care sector is challenged to adapt to new ways of working. The Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is an example of a personalised funding scheme that began full implementation in July 2016. It is presented as providing greater choice and control for people with lifelong disability in Australia. It is argued that the changes to the disability care sector that result from the NDIS will have profound impacts for the care sector and also the quality of care and well‐being of individuals with a disability. Once established, the NDIS will join similar schemes in the UK and Europe as one of the most extensive public service markets in the world in terms of numbers of clients, geographical spread, and potential for service innovation. This paper reports on a network analysis of service provider adaptation in two locations—providing early insight into the implementation challenges facing the NDIS and the reconstruction of the disability service market. It demonstrates that organisations are facing challenges in adapting to the new market context and seek advice about adaptation from a stratified set of sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Training and education are acknowledged routes into employment, but they also entail risks of contemporaneous financial loss, and economic and social insecurity. This paper explores the specific risk of homelessness among apprentices and trainees, drawing on a survey conducted in South Australia in 2013. Housing has been largely overlooked by studies of the wellbeing of apprentices and trainees, and by explorations of the drivers of attrition rates that continue to plague Australia's training schemes. The data examined here reveal the high proportion of income that trainees spent on their housing; home moves motivated by the desire to reduce rental or mortgage payments; and a small proportion of learners who experienced periods of homelessness. Closer statistical analysis reveals that apprentices and trainees with past experiences of homelessness were disproportionately likely to be pursuing courses in retail and personal services, or in transport. They were also likely to be receiving Youth Allowance or AUSTUDY payments. We recommend better recording of apprentices' and trainees' housing situations and greater use of administrative data to improve our understanding and reduce the incidence of homelessness among this population [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the time that development of a National Disability Insurance Scheme arrived on the agenda of the Australian Labor Government's 2008 Ideas Summit, the lives of disabled Australian citizens have been widely discussed, consulted on, planned for and acted on. This discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003; 2010) critiques the ways in which disabled lives have been framed in these high profile policy debates, with detailed focus on two key policy documents. The Shut Out Report: the Experiences of People with Disabilities in Australia (2009) (2009) and Disability Care and Support (Productivity Commission 2011) are both grounded in extensive national consultations and provide significant evidence about the ways that disabled Australians talk about the problems they face and the solutions they advocate. The paper employs the well-known recognition-redistribution debate of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003) to interpret the findings that narratives of suffering, burden and marginalisation predominate in current policy conversations. This tends to push out discussions concerning the non-redistributive aspects of disability reform, potentially contributing to non-integrationist discourse entrenched over 150 years of policies of segregation. Minority voices advocating social integration are present but muted. At this stage, their influence is undetermined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that we have been amiss in diagnosing the role played by government, which has exacerbated the housing problems afflicting low-income households in Australia. However, I argue further we have placed too much faith in the capacity of managerial interventions to ameliorate what are far more deep-rooted and systemic challenges. It is suggested that researchers need to adopt a more critical account of the conduct of contemporary government policy making, one that casts aside a view of the State as a benevolent agency whose primary objective is to ameliorate the conditions of the disadvantaged. Instead, the State should be understood as an agency that sustains the conditions necessary for the finance industry, developers and real estate agents, along with well-off householders and landlords, to reap profits. The political economy of Australian housing, in its current incarnation, performs a form of reverse welfarism that exacerbates social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews major developments in Australian poverty research in the 50 years since the Melbourne poverty study established the Henderson measurement framework. It focuses on the limitations of the dominant, but narrow income (poverty line) approach used in Australia, contrasts it with the deprivation approach pioneered and refined in the United Kingdom, and shows how this provides more compelling evidence that poverty exists. Against the background of recent developments in international poverty research, the paper identifies existing gaps in Australia, and explores what needs to be done to address this situation. It then draws on international experience to examine how anti-poverty policy has evolved, focusing on the role of poverty targets in producing better data and promoting debate between policy makers, researchers and community sector practitioners about developing better measures. Australia lags behind these developments: a new approach is needed that engages researchers, policy makers, and other key stakeholders in positive dialogue aimed at setting a new framework for poverty measurement and an achievable anti-poverty policy agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper grapples with contestations about the place of dogs in Australian urban public space. On the one hand, urban Australia is characterized by high levels of dog ownership and intense family-style human–dog relations, yet, on the other, in public space dogs and their humans are subject to strict regulation and a regime of spatial segregation. Increased urban surveillance, privatization and control, coupled with regulation based on the figure of the dog-as-problem, have intensified disputation over the place of dogs in the city. Birke, Bryld, and Lykke (2004) suggest the notion of ‘animaling’ as a tactic for shifting perspective from animal essences – dangerous dogs and dog breeds, for example – towards a study of the material-semiotic performativity of human/animal relationships. This paper takes up this notion to explore the multiple ways in which dogs, humans and various human–dog conjunctions and relations ‘animal’ the city and shape public space. As a transgressive queer(y)ing of the border work that constitutes the human/animal dualism, ‘animaling’ is also useful for thinking about the affinities, partial connections and agencies that co-constitute human–dog relations and urban spatialities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A range of different countries have experimented with the concept of individualised funding and self-directed support, particularly for long term care. With the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, individual funding looks set to be an area of future development in Australia. Individual funding is concerned with making the financial aspects of care more explicit at the level of the individual. Supporters suggest that it has the potential to transform paternalistic and inflexible systems into ones that grant greater power to individuals. The introduction of individualised funding also poses a number of interesting questions about accountability. The paper considers these accountability dilemmas and provides evidence from different national settings to illustrate how these accountabilities may manifest in an Australian context. The paper concludes by setting out a framework of accountability bringing together these different dilemmas to think about provision of care as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the international trend towards personalisation, in 2013 Australia launched a major disability scheme aiming to give participants greater choice and control over services. The scheme aims to cover a wide diversity of disabilities, services and significant geographical area – resulting in a highly complex system of local overlapping markets. At four years into implementation a range of challenges have emerged. In this paper we firstly describe the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme, then explore a range of implementation challenges it currently faces as a large-scale personalisation scheme. Based on these experiences we pose a range of questions for similar schemes internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The food industry is often described as having more power and influence in nutrition policymaking than nutrition professionals, scientists and other practitioners working for the public interest; yet authors often allude to this point as an assumed truth, rather than an evidence-based fact. This paper applies social network analysis techniques to provide a concise evidence-based demonstration of the food industry's capacity to influence nutrition policymaking networks in Australia. Network analysis using four rounds of data collection was undertaken, and the capacity of individual actors and occupational categories to influence policy decision makers were analysed. Network graphs were developed using cluster analysis to identify the structure of clusters and the path distance of actors from decision makers. The assumed advantage for the 'food industry' was present both strategically in overall network position and with respect to the number of direct access points to 'decision makers', whereas 'nutrition professionals' were densely clustered together with limited links to key 'decision makers'. The results demonstrate that the food industry holds the strategic high ground in advocating their interests to policymakers in the contexts studied. Nutrition professionals may be hampered by their reliance on strong ties with other nutrition professionals as well as limited direct links to 'decision makers'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years policy makers and social scientists have devoted considerable attention to wellbeing, a concept that refers to people’s capacity to live healthy, creative and fulfilling lives. Two conceptual approaches dominate wellbeing research. The objective approach examines the objective components of a good life. The subjective approach examines people’s subjective evaluations of their lives. In the objective approach how subjective wellbeing relates to objective wellbeing is not a relevant research question. The subjective approach does investigate how objective wellbeing relates to subjective wellbeing, but has focused primarily on one objective wellbeing indicator, income, rather than the comprehensive indicator set implied by the objective approach. This paper attempts to contribute by examining relationships between a comprehensive set of objective wellbeing measures and subjective wellbeing, and by linking wellbeing research to inequality research by also investigating how subjective and objective wellbeing relate to class, gender, age and ethnicity. We use three waves of a representative state-level household panel study from Queensland, Australia, undertaken from 2008 to 2010, to investigate how objective measures of wellbeing are socially distributed by gender, class, age, and ethnicity. We also examine relationships between objective wellbeing and overall life satisfaction, providing one of the first longitudinal analyses linking objective wellbeing with subjective evaluations. Objective aspects of wellbeing are unequally distributed by gender, age, class and ethnicity and are strongly associated with life satisfaction. Moreover, associations between gender, ethnicity, class and life satisfaction persist after controlling for objective wellbeing, suggesting that mechanisms in addition to objective wellbeing link structural dimensions of inequality to life satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores contemporary contradictions and tensions in Australian social policy principles and governmental practices that are being used to drive behavioural change, such as compulsory income management. By means of compulsory income management the Australian Government determines how certain categories of income support recipients can spend their payments through the practice of quarantining a proportion of that payment. In this process some groups in the community, particularly young unemployed people and Indigenous Australians, are being portrayed as requiring a paternalistic push in order to make responsible choices. The poverty experienced by some groups of income support recipients appears to be seen as a consequence of poor spending patterns rather than economic and social inequalities. By contrast, Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been constructed as a person centred system of support that recognises the importance of both human agency and structural investment to expand personal choices and control. Here we look at the rationale guiding these developments to explore the tensions and contradictions in social policy more broadly, identifying what would be required if governments sought to promote greater autonomy, dignity and respect for people receiving income support payments in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many advanced market democracies pursue social justice by bundling together a range of programmes represented as active social policy. Northern European exemplars sanction employment as an economic and social citizen’s civic obligation, promote lifelong learning and place welfare payments as a last resort. In the United States, market-based post-school education financed by guaranteed student loans was developed as a policy alternative. Australian politicians have embraced elements of both, resulting in a massive reduction in public delivery of vocational education and training in favour of multimillion dollar, stock exchange-listed private providers. The resultant amalgam of active labour market policy and free market principles positions standard setting as a regulatory mechanism and in support of cross-jurisdictional market operations. This paper explores the interaction between active policy and demands of the market while speaking to wider issues that arise when a government first creates and then intervenes in markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Royal Commission on Human Relationships was an initiative of the Whitlam government, instigated in 1974 to investigate ‘the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships’, with particular attention to the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’. The Commission heard evidence from thousands of Australians on a broad range of topics, and given the Royal Commission's origins in the 1973 Federal Parliamentary debate over abortion, it is perhaps unsurprising that motherhood featured so prominently in submissions presented to the Commission. In this article it is argued that mothers’ submissions to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships reveal the ways that social and cultural meanings of motherhood were being contested in 1970s Australia. Rather than making claims for rights in the established language of maternal citizenship, many women deployed their private experiences of mothering to argue that the state should facilitate their access to both paid employment and time away from mothering. These mothers argued for equal citizenship rights, challenging the reproductive compact that had long been central to maternal citizenship. The submissions reveal the ways that mothers (and their critics) drew upon both new and old meanings of motherhood to articulate new cultural and political possibilities for motherhood and citizenship in 1970s Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although recently criticised in the academic literature, the past few decades have seen international demand for policies to be based on evidence. In this article three aspects of the process of evidence-based policy (EBP) are briefly examined. They include: (1) how evidence becomes socially worthy of the title; (2) the problems which arise for EBP when there is conflicting or rival evidence; and (3) facets of the transition from evidence to policy - the evidence-policy nexus. After problematising evidence-based research in this limited way, the issues are clarified and illustrated by reference to the history of the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP: 1985-2008), renown at the time as the major Australian program for people who were homeless. SAAP involved an agreement enshrined in legislation between the Commonwealth and all states and territories of the Federation. The argument is based on evidence from the four official national reports of the policy which, over the period of the program, evaluated SAAP and were commissioned and accepted as authoritative by federal, state and territory governments. In a nutshell, the argument is that, at each iteration of SAAP, subsequent policy discounted one of the sets of evidence in the official National Evaluations. This concerned the clear evidence of a lack of external, affordable accommodation options which, in turn, undermined the objectives of the program. The issue remains topical as more recent evidence substantiates the imperative for increased accommodation options for clients ready to exit agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Australia and most of its people, international sporting contests have long been a marker of the nation’s identity, psyche and international standing. Now in the era of global mediasport, the geopolitical role and the economic impact of elite sport has assumed far wider implications. As a consequence, the need for strong, effective and appropriate governance of all sport, particularly at the elite level has become of critical importance. This paper presents an overview and an analysis of the policy shifts that impacted the development of the Australian Sport Commission, its structure and administration from its colonial roots up to the period leading to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. This discussion will look at the development of the centralized governance of elite and community sport in Australia and will be reflected upon through a consideration of the sportization–globalization processes, with sport in the first instance being established as an element of the cultural diffusion of British imperialism to its significant geopolitical role in late twentieth-century Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently proposed Anti-Racism Strategy established within a framework of the Australian Government's multicultural policy,People of Australia, identifies ‘youth engagement’ as one of the key areas that needs to be promoted and supported. Young people have been invited to join youth councils and youth forums and work with national, state and local policy-makers. Some have taken up this challenge and became public faces and active members of anti-racism campaigns. Others, however, either remained silent about the discrimination they face, or organised their own grassroots youth-based and youth-led initiatives. This paper discusses individual and collective responses to racism among young people in Australia, focusing on Melbourne, and examines possibilities in which racism, as a common experience among migrant youth, can be utilised to form alternative spaces for political action, challenging not only interpersonal, but also systemic forms of racism. By drawing attention towards institutional and systemic forms of racism, and the historical perpetuation of racist practices, these youth initiatives rely on legal measures, and argue that racism should be discussed in the context of the broader Australian society, not only in relation to minority groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is an attempt to re-position the perceptions and contributions of older people in contemporary Australian society. The world is undergoing a profound demographic shift, with almost every nation state experiencing population ageing on a scale that is unprecedented. This means that we have to search for new models by which to grow old and challenge stereotypes that there is only one acceptable way of doing so. The dominant view of adult ageing has recently changed from one based on dependency to one based on economic contribution. However if we are to successfully move to a new cultural environment – one that accepts age diversity and eschews age prejudice – we must consider a wide range of ways in which older adults can make a contribution. It would not be too much to say that we currently experience a poverty of meaning in our understanding of adult ageing. To address this poverty of meaning this paper draws on a series of social, cultural and historical ideas from which alternative understandings of ageing and later life are identified and discussed. Scholarly articles and texts from a range of disciplines form the basis of analysis, presenting a rich array of options for older adults. The discussion suggests that multiple sources of meaning are available to older adults, many of which counter dominant and acceptable ways of growing old in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a reconsideration of social cohesion as an analytical concept and a policy goal in response to increasing levels of religious diversity in contemporary Australia. In recent decades, Australian has seen a revitalization of religion, increasing numbers of those who do not identify with a religion (the "nones"), and the growth of religious minorities, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. These changes are often understood as problematic for social cohesion. In this paper, we review some conceptualizations of social cohesion and religious diversity in Australia, arguing that the concept of social cohesion, despite its initial promise, is ultimately problematic, particularly when it is used to defend privilege. We survey Australian policy responses to religious diversity, noting that these are varied, often piecemeal, and that the hyperdiverse state of Victoria generally has the most sophisticated set of public policies. We conclude with a call for more nuanced and contextualized analyses of religious diversity and social cohesion in Australia. Religious diversity presents both opportunities as well as challenges to social cohesion. Both these aspects need to be considered in the formation of policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]