“Running on Empty”: Australia’s Neoliberal Social Security System, 1988–2015

In June 2014 the Abbott Coalition Government issued a report called A New System for Better Employment and Social Outcomes (Department of Social Services, 2014a). This report complacently repeated claims made by the Abbott Government’s Commission of Audit Report (2014, p. 2) released earlier in February 2014 that Australia confronts a substantial budgetary challenge—the fiscal situation is far weaker than it should be and the long-term outlook is ominous due to an unsustainable increase in expenditure commitments. Unleashed from the normal obligations entailed by “evidence-based policy,” the Commission of Audit had taken an even bolder step when it claimed that the “fiscal crisis” Australia apparently faced, was being driven by “unsustainable increases” in social policy spending (Commission of Audit, 2014, p. viii). This claim had been tirelessly repeated by senior Liberals like then Treasurer Hockey, who argued it pointed to why the Abbott Government needed to end what he called “the age of entitlement”: Government spending on a range of social programs including education, health … social safety nets and retirement benefits has reached extraordinary levels as a percentage of GDP [emphasis added] … [resulting in] levels of indebtedness that, in an age of slowing growth and ageing population, are simply unsustainable. (Hockey, 2012, p. 2)