From social security to social control

From social security to social control

Over the next few weeks and months you will hear a lot about the interim
report of the government's committee on welfare “reform”, Participation
Support for a More Equitable Society, issued on March 28. It is the
government's latest declaration of its intent to wield social security
as an even more far-reaching instrument of social control.

This may be why the report does not propose that the government cut
social security payments further, since the payments are already well below
recognised poverty measures, including the income-based Henderson poverty
line and the Social Policy Research Centre's low-cost budgetary standard.

The committee's main proposal is that social security — at least for
the unemployed, disabled and sole parents — should become a “participation
support system” with a single, similarly named, payment. This system will
mandate increased government intervention into social security recipients'
lives (called “individualised service”), backed by sanctions against recipients
who fail to act as required and by an increased stigmatisation of social
security.

In an article in the March 30 Australian, Michael Raper, president
of the Australian Council of Social Service, notes that negotiating participation
requirements on an individual basis attacks “the security that people need
from our welfare system. The main difference between the arbitrary paternalism
of the 19th century charity model and a modern social security system is
that social security is based on legislated entitlements.”

But it is precisely a “new paternalism” that the government wants. The
secretary of the employment department, Peter Shergold, describes US academic
Lawrence Mead's book The New Paternalism: Supervisory Approaches to
Poverty as “relatively sophisticated” and “very influential”.

Mead proposes policies that are “an effort to control the lifestyles
of the poor” and favour “order rather than justice”. He says poor people
must “help themselves and avoid trouble”.

The government already controls aspects of the social relations and
financial arrangements of social security recipients and, under “mutual
obligation”, increasingly dictates the activity of unemployed people.

“Mutual obligation” will be extended to affect people with disabilities
and sole parents through “a greater emphasis on prevention and early intervention
to improve people's capacities”, committee head Patrick McClure says. This
will further government attempts to present social security as a privilege
gained only by meeting required norms of behaviour, rather than a right
of the unemployed, disabled and sole parents.

The government also realises that more practical measures are required.
Family and community service minister Jocelyn Newman said on March 29 that
sanctions were required “to support people moving out of welfare dependency”.

But sanctions are punishments. Hundreds of thousands of social security
recipients are already being financially penalised for “breaching” payment
conditions. To describe sanctions as support is like saying that offering
“six of the best” is support for behaving well; the concept, equally, is
from the century before last.

Such Orwellian double-speak is already familiar enough from the mouths
of government ministers. The committee, though, provides new lessons in
the distortion of meaning.

Take “participation support”, for example. The poor are supposedly “socially
excluded”; if then they refuse to take part in society — i.e., work, on
terms dictated by others — this is their choice.

All people are part of our society, however. The rights accorded them
are the starting point for how people choose to participate. The unemployed,
disabled and sole parents are excluded from jobs and their relative financial
benefits because not enough suitable jobs, child-care places and disability
support services are available.

There are stark choices to be made in tackling poverty among social
security recipients. One is to accept the government turning the screws
a few more notches, penalising people or driving them out of the system
altogether.

The other is to stop these “reforms”, to begin a counter-campaign for
reduced working hours without loss in pay to share work around and for
free and accessible child-care and other community services. We must throw
our weight behind the latter.