Welfare reform needs to be about improving well-being, not punishing the poor

Peter Whiteford (Australian National University) writes in The Conversation that some of the improvement in workforce participation may have been due to the impact of the benefit activation reforms, but it was also due to Australia’s experience of uninterrupted economic growth. And that is a prerequisite for successful activation strategies.

Is welfare spending really unsustainable?

Peter Whiteford (Australian National University) has provided an excellent analysis of social welfare payments for Inside Story. He concludes that political and media concerns about relentless growth in welfare are difficult to substantiate – particularly when the total number of welfare recipients is close to its lowest level in the past twenty years.