The proposed welfare bill will push people further into poverty. We have to stand together against it
When social policy is made from above, be it by the moneyed class or by governments that serve its objectives, it is inevitable that it will alight on the notion that social problems lie with the individuals and, by extension, the communities, who bear the brunt of structural and historical inequality. This is very much the case with the welfare reform bill. This proposed legislation makes nine more cuts, introducing drug testing and extending income management to people who are not only struggling with income inadequacy but also often with a sense of despair and disempowerment. These measures are designed to push people further into poverty. They are discriminatory and demonising. There is no place for them in a nation that prides itself on fairness and opportunity.
Let’s go back a bit though to look for a clearer expression of this paradigm. In his address at the Westin Hotel in 2006 to mark the tenth anniversary of his prime ministership, the then prime minister John Howard set out the five challenges facing the nation. The fifth challenge, as he saw it, was framed as being the greatest:
The “zones of chaos” metaphor is both powerful and provocative. It bespeaks the strategic assumption of a national or global order that is endangered by the exceptions to this order. Howard has been channelled in this regard by subsequent governments from both sides.
The “zones of chaos” mode of thinking, which saw its most blatant application in the Northern Territory intervention, using First Nations communities as its dismal testing site, is still very much with us. It pretends a moralising justification for why ordinary people are not to be trusted with the meagre share of social wealth that they currently have access to; why it is supposedly in their interests, to protect them, or, better still, to protect their children, that degrading restrictions must be placed on their lives and on their incomes.
The “zones” discourse constructs individuals, homes and then communities as being either unwell or unlawful. Implicit in this practice is the affirmation of the place of these individuals, homes and communities within the normative economic, social, legal, moral and political framework that “all of us” call Australia. The demonising of asylum seekers also fits neatly into this lie.
By employing this discursive practice the individuals, homes and communities are blamed for their own alleged pathology or criminality. In either case their condition is understood as a moral, as opposed to structural and historical, problem and, most importantly, the problem is theirs to solve by their own resolve. Witness the sugary nonsense about “practical love” currently being rolled out in lieu of evidence to justify the punitive drugtesting regime.
As a doctrinaire imposition of domestic policy settings in the interests of an even greater redistribution of wealth towards the already wealthy, through tax cuts for corporates and high wealth individuals and more, neoliberalism retrenches the role of governments in the provision of essential services and social protections. It however accelerates the role of government in arming the schoolyard bullies with sticks and instructing their victims to stand still for their tormentors. It does all it can get away with in taking rights and living conditions away from working people (include residualised members of the working class such as people experiencing unemployment and underemployment, discouraged workers, carers, people with a disability who are structurally excluded, aged pensioners, and students, many of whom are forced to live below the poverty line and who are readily exploited by unscrupulous employers). It does this directly, through industrial relations and welfare “reforms” as well as through cuts to, or marketisation of, essential social infrastructure including health, housing, education and social services. It takes from those who have little and gives to those who have much.
The morphing of the so-called nanny tate of the Fordist-Keynesian era into what sociologist Loïc Wacquant describes as the coercive daddy state of neoliberalism is analysed in his book Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. This framework emphasises duties and obligations over rights, sanctions over support, and new methods for monitoring and dealing firmly and coercively with people who bear the brunt of inequality.
History teaches us that individuals are an easy target for the neoliberal assault on their lives. When people stand together and affirm to each other that “you are not alone”, it is a different proposition, which is why the government attempts to delegitimise the union movement and other sections of civil society that take the side of people who are forced to suffer the soul-crushing effects of deepening inequality. All of this while neoliberalism thrashes around during its death-throes. We are impelled by this moment of history to simply and fearlessly say what is happening and to stand together with an unprecedented sense of unity. For there is nothing as powerful as the truth, or as tender as solidarity.
Dr John Falzon is chief executive of the St Vincent de Paul Society national council