Literacy, history and blaming the victim

March 10, 1999
Issue 

By John Tomlinson

The Coalition government's announcement last month that young people's unemployment payments will be decreased if they "continue to remain illiterate and innumerate" leaves many wondering if Howard's concept of "mutual obligation" knows any bounds. Any educator could tell him that no young person deliberately sets out to fail to learn how to read and count.

But observers should not be surprised by the announcement. There has been a conservative thread running through the provision of income support in Australia since federation. This is so despite Australian welfare provisions being described by European experts early this century as "a socialist experiment".

The first federal income support payments, in 1909, were age and disability pensions. Until 1927 these were paid by Treasury. Asian Australians (until the 1940s) and Aborigines (until the late 1960s) were not entitled to these pensions, and at the turn of the century, the age of entitlement for the age pension, 65 for men, closely approximated the average age of death.

In order to qualify for either pension you had to establish that you were of "good moral character". Such requirements remained part of the social security system until the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972.

The requirement on unemployment payment applicants to establish their "worthiness" has been more stark. During the 1930s Great Depression, to qualify for the "susso" men had to join make-work schemes designed by local governments. In many places, they were also required to move from town to town each fortnight to get their rations.

In the 1970s, such make-work for the dole schemes were re-established in Aboriginal communities, where they still exist as the Community Development Employment Program.

Concerned by the prospect of trained soldiers returning home to unemployment after fighting for "King and country" in WWII, Labor PM Ben Chifley set out to ensure there would be unemployment benefits for those for whom no work could be found. The 1947 federal social security legislation brought together in one bill many payments, including child endowment, and widows', sickness and unemployment benefits.

At the time, this legislation was regarded as progressive and comprehensive. However, each applicant was required to not only be of good moral character but also meet a "work test" — to be fit, able and ready for work.

From the end of WWII until 1974, the unemployment rate remained at around 1%. But when unemployment, in particular youth unemployment, began to climb in the last year of the Whitlam government, federal ministers began trotting out references to "dole bludgers" and "work-shy lion tamers".

The mutterings of ministers such as Bill Hayden and Clyde Cameron, which blamed the unemployed for the failure of the state and industry to find a use for their labour or educate them for the work that was available, became a tirade against "dole bludgers" under the subsequent Liberal government of Malcolm Fraser.

By the mid-'80s, under the ministership of the Labor left's Brian Howe, cutbacks in human service provision and particularly income support were launched. Unemployment was rising but payments were being more narrowly targeted. The Department of Social Security's 1986 annual report boasted, "Though there will be more unemployed in 1987, there will be fewer people paid unemployment benefit".

The amount paid to young unemployed was not increased once during Fraser's seven years in office. Labor PM Bob Hawke initially increased unemployment payments to young people, but soon discarded any intention to restore the value of the benefit to its early 1970s level.

During the '80s, Labor tightened the eligibility criteria and collapsed several payments into one so as to ensure that the lowest amount was paid. Usually, it was the young who missed out. Howard replicated this technique with his Common Youth Allowance and merging of Abstudy into Austudy in 1998. He also abolished unemployment payments to 16-18 year olds.

During the late 1980s, as the rate of unemployment rose, signs emerged that voters were taking the threat of unemployment seriously. Labor leaders stepped up the vitriol in their attacks on the unemployed and started talking about "reciprocal responsibility".

In the wake of the Labor government's green paper "Working Nation", unemployed people had to do more than pass the work test to receive payments; they now had to undertake training or some other "approved activity". In return, they were to be offered work, after 18 months of unemployment.

Labor had considered but rejected a general return to the susso-style work for the dole schemes. In 1998, Howard, influenced by the New Zealand conservatives' introduction of such a scheme, began to implement his thesis of "mutual obligation".

Both the NZ and Australian governments have been influenced by the United States' "workfare rather than welfare" policy and rhetoric, and by the bogey of "dutiless rights", articulated by the British Conservative David Green. The Howard government's attacks on social welfare provision derive from a deep conservative distrust of the poor. Whether it is expressed as "dutiless rights", "reciprocal obligation", "mutual obligation", "getting something for nothing" or "bludging on the system", the rhetoric amounts to the same thing: blame the victim.

It is not surprising that Coalition singled out young people for the literacy test; that's what they did with their work for the dole scheme, before announcing that it would be extended to older Australians. They know that political attacks on the young go down a treat with many older Australians.

The people who will suffer most from the decision to target young people with reading and learning difficulties are the least skilled, least schooled, poorest, least powerful, migrant, indigenous, marginalised and/or intellectually disabled members of society. They are the people least likely to vote Liberal, if they vote at all.

This policy might be well received by "middle" Australia, as journalist Michelle Gratton contends. But if so, middle Australia is missing something that may yet come back to bite their children. How long will it be before one of the requirements for unemployment benefit is computer literacy (to cope with the technological revolution), university level numeracy (to cope with increasingly available statistics), literacy in an Asian language (to cope with tourism) and a PhD in economics (to cope with globalisation)?

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