Lessons from ASPC 2019
I recently had the privilege of attending the Australian Social Policy Conference, hosted by the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW. Over three days I met other, like-minded students, heard from leading academics and community representatives, and indulged in some fabulous catering. Experts from around the country (and the world) presented on topics ranging from basic income to child protection; welfare conditionality to data linkage; refugee integration to drug testing Newstart recipients. Some highlights included the mistaken release of a still-embargoed AIHW report and the award of the Peter Saunders Prize to none other than Peter Saunders! There were many lessons to be taken away from twelve sessions of keynote lectures and contributed papers — let me share a few of them with you now.
Basic income’s effect on wellbeing is inextricably linked to its potential for boosting employment
In the opening plenary, Professor Olli Kangas from the University of Turku presented on the preliminary findings of the 2017–18 Finnish basic income experiment. He explained that the centre-right government mandated a focus on employment outcomes (leading some basic income proponents to question the relevance of the experiment), which have yet to reveal any difference between the treatment and control groups. It could be argued, however, that the lack of a reduction in days in employment amongst basic income recipients is important, especially when accompanied with the results of the accompanying qualitative survey which found those in the treatment group to be significantly more comfortable with their level of income and significantly less stressed, even with income controlled for. In a later session, others argued that basic income should be understood as a tool of labour market activation precisely because of its aim to enhance wellbeing. It is perfectly conceivable that an individual unburdened from the stresses of having to comply with welfare payment conditions will find themselves more able — cognitively and emotionally — to find employment or take on the risk of starting their own enterprise. Thus, basic income schemes perhaps shouldn’t be concerned with boosting employment in the first instance; rather, the wellbeing of recipients should be a priority. (Heads up: the Basic Income Earth Network Congress is slated to be held at UQ in 2020!)
Listening to affected communities is vital
A session on compulsory income management saw Ballardong Noongar woman Beverley Walley describe the havoc wrought in the Kununarra community by the cashless debit card, owing to scant community consultation. Issues included undisclosed card fees, cards not being accepted by services such as buses and a dearth of guidance on applying for exemptions. Ms Walley argued that the stress caused by being on the CDC actually became another barrier to people obtaining employment. She also questioned claims of the trial’s success when further restrictions on the sale of alcohol were subsequently introduced in the community.
Owen Bennett of the Australian Unemployed Workers Union stressed the importance of unemployed people having a chance to be heard. He spoke of the hypocrisy of society’s “othering” of social security recipients when the majority of households have some interaction with the welfare system. Not only do unemployed people need to be heard, he argued, they also need to be granted control over their own stories, to not be presented as victims but as people ready and willing to take charge of their own circumstances. It is voices, stories, like Mr Bennett’s and Ms Walley’s that need to be at the forefront of social policy debates for us to have any hope of acting in the best interests of communities.
Big data is the future (but we knew that already)
Speakers from the AIHW and the ABS described the potential for data linkage to exponentially increase the usefulness of existing data and revolutionise our understanding of our world. It will allow people to be tracked over time, allowing needs to be much more precisely determined, and policies more thoroughly evaluated. It has applications for tracking cancer outcomes, and people’s trajectories through the child protection system. We will potentially be able to go from only being able to say what proportion of incarcerated adults had contact with the system as children to being able to determine exactly how those adults ended up there and what sort of interventions could have made a difference along the way. Data linkage also means, for example, that we no longer need to probabilistically determine refugee populations within datasets based on data points such as country of birth and religion; linking the dataset of interest with immigration data allows the refugee population to be definitively identified.
However, of course, privacy concerns loom large as the more data points that exist for each person within a dataset, the more difficult it becomes to truly de-identify the data. Thus, providers of this data — such as the AIHW — are working on developing secure access environments to enable researchers, and by extension, society, to benefit from the wealth of knowledge at our disposal while maintaining our privacy.
Social policy advocates need to engage with opponents’ arguments
Professor Alison Ritter of the Drug Policy Modelling Program at UNSW delivered a brilliant plenary discussing her analysis of the policy dialogue surrounding the government’s proposal to drug-test welfare recipients. She considered both parliamentary debates (which featured arguments both for and against the policy) and ‘expert’ submissions to parliament (which were exclusively against). She found that while the government claimed the purpose of the policy was to prevent taxpayer-funded payments being used to finance drug habits only in addition to improving welfare recipients’ ability to engage in employment and training, its arguments focused on the former objective. Meanwhile, those against drug testing argued that it would not be effective in achieving the latter. The opposing arguments put forward were talking past, and ultimately completely missed each other.
A moral framework analysis revealed these divisions to run even deeper. While those politicians in favour of drug testing argued from strongly communitarian, but also paternalist and contractualist perspectives, those against the policy used solely utilitarian and rights-based arguments. Professor Ritter concluded that, in order to successfully counter the government’s arguments, one solution might be to appropriate their moral frame. Could advocates use a communitarian framework to reject drug testing? Should they be arguing that communities have a right to expect that the government will defend civil liberties? What is becoming apparent is that we will never get anywhere if our lines of argument focus on factors our opponents consider irrelevant, and if we ignore those they don’t — if we don’t address the “funding drug dealers” concern, for example. In advocating for social policy change, we need to ensure we are engaging with the opposing arguments in order to successfully challenge them.
The ASPC provided a fascinating insight into developments in social policy research. I heard of how thinkers studied in class are influencing policy research, gained a greater understanding of how political theories such as historical institutionalism can actually provide useful insights and saw Stata’s applications in Australian research (ECON3360 kids will understand!). I left challenged, inspired and eager to return in 2021!
I would like to thank UNSW’s Grand Challenges Program for granting me a bursary to attend ASPC 2019.
