A farewell to Australia's welfare state

For much of the postwar period, the Australian welfare state has been misun derstood by overseas social policy commentators. The lack of generosity of welfare payments has been substantially compensated for by a system of wage regulation that has prevented waged poverty and delivered a reduced dispar ity of incomes. The strong emphasis on means-testing of benefits has not ha d the stigmatizing effects of benefit selectivity elsewhere, since Australi an means tests are designed to exclude the well-off rather than focus benef its exclusively on the very poor and Australian means-testing has been nond iscretionary in character. Policy changes in the 1980s and 1990s, and most particularly under the present Liberal Coalition government, have undermine d these distinctive aspects of welfare Australian-style, and it is no longe r possible to defend the Australian welfare state from its critics.