Ideas@TheCentre
Crowding of the welfare state is detrimental to everyone
Prime Minister Gillard’s victory speech after defeating Kevin Rudd for the leadership of the Labor Party on Monday raised some important issues for those interested in public administration.
To emphasise that the federal government was now ‘moving forward,’ the prime minister spoke of her devotion to finding ways to improve the lives of all Australians. She also reiterated the government’s commitment to ‘getting on’ with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to help the most vulnerable members of the community.
Mentioning support for the NDIS has become a common refrain in political interviews. Any politician looking to humanise their image and identify with the underdog gives the disabled a metaphorical hug.
The notion that politicians have discovered how useful the NDIS is as a rhetorical prop is certainly cynical. There is of course a genuine need for greater awareness of the challenges facing people with disabilities and to recognise how inadequate disability services often are.
Hence it is a good thing that doing things differently in this sector is on the national agenda. Yet this begs a question that has received insufficient attention: Why is it that government has grown so large in the name of creating a welfare state that has demonstrably failed to properly secure the welfare of those who require the greatest assistance?
The obvious answer is that instead of targeting assistance towards the genuinely needy, politicians prefer, as per the prime minister’s speech, to operate universal or quasi-universal programs that help ‘all Australians’ and are most likely to harvest the all-important ballots of marginal voters come election time.
Hence in this country we have the spectacle of government doling out generous family, pension and health entitlements to the middle classes and above who ought to be self-reliant, while the most disadvantaged, including the disabled and the mentally ill, receive well below par support.
Those on the Left have hailed the NDIS as another great leap forward for social justice. They ignore the incongruity of piling a new welfare scheme for the disabled on top of the existing welfare state. Similarly, the problem of ‘middle class welfare’ only attracts the Left’s attention in relation to pet ideological hates – such as the private health insurance rebate.
The Left also downplays the obvious problem of cost. It is entirely likely that despite expressions of bi-partisan support, both sides of politics will baulk at the hefty price tag of the NDIS. In other words, all of the unnecessary but politically important welfare provided to those who don’t need it will continue to crowd out assistance to those who do.
Those on the Right who criticise ‘big government’ are often called heartless and accused of not wanting to help the disadvantaged. But it is only by limiting the role of government, and ending the charade that is the contemporary welfare state, that we can help those most in need.
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
