by Christina Jerne* In April 2020, a truck transporting half a million euros in cash was stopped at Italy’s eastern border, testifying that the ’Ndrangheta, one of the world’s largest and richest mafia groups, had made its own Covid-19 emergency liquidity plan. In the midst of tough European negotiations on EU solidarity mechanisms, the German […]
Welfare
The media has gone on the attack after the welfare U-Turn, but they're not telling the real story, argues Mathilda Mallinson
Penny Pepper explores the impact of the watered-down Welfare Bill and questions the very notion of ‘work’ as a marker of human value
Experts suggest Conservative frontbenchers are deliberately misleading the public
As Government cuts to disabled people's benefits lead to more dehumanising rhetoric, Penny Pepper reminds us that disability is an embedded reality of human experience as much as it always has been
Keir Starmer must change course from this performative cruelty towards the sick and disabled, argues Neal Lawson
Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation
Speaker: Ben Spies-Butcher
Thursday 7 November 2024, 12-1:30pm
Room 441, Social Sciences Building (A02), The University of Sydney
Neoliberalism has transformed work, welfare and democracy. However, its impacts, and its future, are more complex than we often imagine. Alongside growing inequality, social spending has been rising. This seminar draws on Ben’s recent book to ask how we understand this contradictory politics and what opportunities exist to create a more equal society. It argues an older welfare state politics, driven by the power of industrial labour, is giving way to political contests led by workers within the welfare state itself. Advancing more equal social policy, though, requires new forms of statecraft, or ways of doing policy, as well as new models of organising.
by Nicole Brown* Dovie Coleman, considered one of the “founding mothers” of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), was affectionately known as the “human tornado”. Her boldness and highly effective organizing strategies demonstrated her strategic acumen and leadership centered on the issues affecting those impacted by the system of poverty in Chicago neighborhoods. Coleman was […]
In her monthly column, Penny Pepper wonders what new threats disabled and elderly people will face as the season turns