The Development of Australian Social Policy and Its Implications

This essay provides a literature review and analysis of the development of Australian social policies, focusing on healthcare, social welfare, child protection, and education. The essay examines the historical context and the current state of these policies, with a particular emphasis on the inclusion of all communities, including Indigenous and disabled populations. It explores the views of various scholars on the evolution of social policies, including the impact of marketization and social investment. The essay analyzes the 'Closing the Gap' initiative and assesses the progress made in addressing disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It also evaluates the inclusion of people with disabilities in social policies and programs. The conclusion reiterates the need for the Australian government to develop more inclusive social policies that address the needs of all citizens, drawing on the evidence presented throughout the research and analysis.

Running head: DEVELOPMENT OF AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
DEVELOPMENT OF AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Introduction
The assignment aims to conduct a literature research on the development of Australian
social policies and then analyze the findings. The social policies include policy on healthcare,
social welfare, child protection and education. In Australia, various departments look after the
introduction and implementation of the social policies. The social policies are public policies that
the Australian government uses for the welfare of the people and social protection. The main aim
of the essay is to argue that Australia needs to develop its social policies with an inclusion of all
communities.
Discussion
According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, “social policy deals with the care
and development of individuals in the society according to a set of standards which the society
sets out to achieve” (Aifs.gov.au, 2019). At times, these standards are explained as the rights of
the individuals but mostly, these policies emerge owing to the competing political interests.
Several scholars argue that there has been remarkable shift in the policies concerning the society.
As Meagher and Goodwin (2015) argue in their book, the condition of social services in
Australia has seen a dramatic change in the recent decades wherein the governments have
extended the social provision without the expansion of the public sector. The authors have
looked at the provision of social policies from the point of view of marketisation where private
actors are given “public funds to deliver social services to citizens”. Deeming and Smyth (2014)
however, focus on the “social investment” of the government on the social policies especially
after the neoliberalism phase. They argue that the strategies for social investment differed during
the different regimes. They state that the focus of the government during the 2009 to 2014 period

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has been on the “social investment and inclusive growth” when it came to the social policy
agenda. While the liberals relied on light investment, the Nordic depended on heavy social
investment for the welfare of the people. However, it has been seen that hardly any government
focused exclusively on the Aboriginal community. Stoneham, Goodman and Daube (2014) note,
“The health outcomes for Australian Indigenous peoples are lower than those of non-Indigenous
Australians”. The authors found that bulk of the media reporting on Indigenous health has been
negative with Indigenous people being represented as prone to drugs, alcohol, child abuse,
suicide, violence and so on. The authors argue that the Aboriginal people did not choose to be
like this but their condition is a result of the poor social policies implemented by the
governments.
In many of the studies, it has been found that the gap between the Indigenous and non-
Indigenous health outcomes has not yet closed owing to the failure of the government to develop
an all-inclusive social policy (Mitrou et al. 2014). The authors conducted a study on the social
determinants of health for the Indigenous people based in Australia, New Zealand and Canada
and found that in Australia, the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous grew to 25% in
2006. In terms of unemployment rate, the gap was 16.9% in 1981 for Australia. This shows that
the social policies for the Aboriginal people in Australia have yet to develop. In contrast to this,
Baker et al. (2018) hold that Australia has come a long way in realizing the gap that exists
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous in various aspects. The enactment of various laws to
ensure the inclusion of the Aboriginal people within the social policy agenda of the country
indicates that the governments have attempted to bridge the gap. As mentioned in the 2016
Closing the Gap report, the governments have worked collaboratively since 2008 to “deliver
better health, education and employment outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

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people, and to eliminate the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians”
(Ctgreport.pmc.gov.au, 2019). The government has achieved in some regards as evident from the
2019 report. The report covered all the major aspects of the social policy and found that there has
been significant improvement in the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
In case of developing the social policy for the inclusion of the disabled people, the
Australian government needs to put more effort in it. Thill (2014) observes that the voice of the
disabled people in Australia led to the reshaping of the National Disability Insurance Scheme of
Australia. The study found that the Australian government has been open to the inclusion of the
disability scheme in the national policy. Mithen et al. (2015) find that the disabled persons in
Australia have little access to social capital. The authors conducted a study on 15,028 adults with
disabilities across many non-remote areas of Australia and found that most adults with
disabilities were worse off than those without disabilities were.
As evident from the literature research, there is need for the Australian government to
develop social policies that could be all inclusive. The review of the literature focused
particularly on the gap between the social outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. It
was revealed that there are still enough gaps in the health and other outcomes of Indigenous
people that arose out of poor social policies. While some scholars pointed out the gaps, others
found positives in the social policy development. The review also analyzed the annual report of
Closing the Gap initiative and found that much has been improved since 2008. The review also
analyzed the inclusion of people with disability in the social policy and program. The studies
reveal that adults with disabilities are still lagging behind in the social policy of the government
as compared to adults without disabilities.

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Conclusion
Therefore, it could be reiterated that the Australian government needs to develop a social
policy that includes citizens across communities. The analysis proved the thesis by including
studies that both agreed to the statement and opposed it. While it was revealed that the social
policy development did not include the Aboriginal interests, it was also found that some gaps
have been closed. Furthermore, the research also found some lack in the inclusion of disabled
people in the overall social policy.

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References:
Aifs.gov.au. (2019). Social policy in Australia: The family dimension. Retrieved from
https://aifs.gov.au/publications/family-matters/issue-34/social-policy-australia-family-
dimension
Baker, P., Friel, S., Kay, A., Baum, F., Strazdins, L., & Mackean, T. (2018). What enables and
constrains the inclusion of the social determinants of health inequities in government
policy agendas? A narrative review. International journal of health policy and
management, 7(2), 101.
Ctgreport.pmc.gov.au. (2019). Home | Closing the Gap. Retrieved from
https://ctgreport.pmc.gov.au/
Deeming, C., & Smyth, P. (2015). Social investment after neoliberalism: policy paradigms and
political platforms. Journal of social policy, 44(2), 297-318.
Meagher, G., & Goodwin, S. (2015). Introduction: capturing marketisation in Australian social
policy. Sydney University Press.
Mithen, J., Aitken, Z., Ziersch, A., & Kavanagh, A. M. (2015). Inequalities in social capital and
health between people with and without disabilities. Social Science & Medicine, 126, 26-
35.
Mitrou, F., Cooke, M., Lawrence, D., Povah, D., Mobilia, E., Guimond, E., & Zubrick, S. R.
(2014). Gaps in Indigenous disadvantage not closing: a census cohort study of social
determinants of health in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand from 1981–2006. BMC
Public Health, 14(1), 201.

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Stoneham, M., Goodman, J., & Daube, M. (2014). The portrayal of Indigenous health in selected
Australian media. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 5(1), 1-13.
Thill, C. (2015). Listening for policy change: how the voices of disabled people shaped
Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme. Disability & Society, 30(1), 15-28.