Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Daniel Mulino, La Trobe University Press, $34.99.
Praised for being “a prodigious work by an enquiring and innovative mind,” Safety Net looks to the challenges facing today’s welfare state and reflects on what steps must be taken to protect and extend it.
It’s a comprehensive account of the history of welfare in Australia and abroad, from Bismarckian Germany to present-day Canberra. Economist and Labor MP Daniel Mulino also explains how the Australian welfare state was created.
As Bill Kelty says in the foreword: “Mulino’s work challenges the orthodoxy of the free-marketeers but also the Left believers in the theory of the magic pudding or the call to arms for class warfare.”
As Mulino points out, the rationale for the welfare state remains compelling and relevant today. However, the institutions that compose it are in need of another burst of reform.
“We stand at a fork in the road. The welfare state is experiencing cost and scope pressures that threaten its continued existence as a meaningful social safety net. On top of these cost pressures, countries across the OECD, including Australia, are burdened with high debt levels thanks to the necessary spending in response to Covid-19.”
The focus of this book is the rise of government’s role in the management of risk: to explore the principal successes by governments to date in managing individual and society-wide risk and uncertainty — and the considerable opportunities for improvement.
It doesn’t argue that risk management should become the sole guiding light. While insurance and risk management already play a prominent role in the welfare state, there are practical ways in which that approach could be strengthened.
This book proposes five key strategies for using a risk-management approach in relation to the challenges that affect the welfare state. It also tells a story of marrying economic growth and fairness.
