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Social policy 'generosity' at a time of fiscal austerity: The strange case of Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme

journal contribution
posted on 2024-11-02, 01:51 authored by Pavla MillerPavla Miller, David Hayward
In a climate of fiscal austerity, Australia's neo-liberal government is continuing to fund and implement an expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This paper presents a demographic, funding and policy context for the introduction of the NDIS. Its success, we argue, must be situated in the context of development of a post-industrial workforce, and owes a lot to its embrace of social investment, marketization of welfare services, and cash for care. We then look at two tensions unfolding during the scheme's implementation: increasing demand for care work alongside a shortage of care workers, and the market-driven reform of the Australian vocational education and training system. The changes to vocational education, we conclude, have produced more problems than they solved. Since they anticipate key aspects of the NDIS, they raise questions about the intent and future of Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme.

History

Journal

Critical Social Policy

Volume

37

Issue

1

Start page

128

End page

147

Total pages

20

Publisher

Sage

Place published

United Kingdom

Language

English

Copyright

© The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

Former Identifier

2006068130

Esploro creation date

2020-06-22

Fedora creation date

2016-11-23

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