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Australian Welfare Reform

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The Australian welfare system plays an integral role in the protection of the health and well-being of all Australian citizens. However, due to rapidly changing socio-economic factors, the Australian welfare system may not always be capable of providing just and satisfactory support to the disadvantaged. As a result, the Australian government regularly undertakes important welfare reforms by amending its social policy, in order to remunerate the faults and compensate for social changes within the Australian welfare system.
In 1990 the commonwealth government expressed particular concern regarding the dramatic increase in lone parents and people with disabilities receiving pension-type payments. Consequently “Welfare reform” became a central …show more content…

The underpinning purpose of the transformation was to better match Australia’s income support goals with social and economic participation goals. In 2005, the Commonwealth responded to the McClure report by implementing the “Welfare to Work” package, which focused on the concept of mutual obligation.
The 2005 budget incorporated a comprehensive rebalancing of Australia’s welfare system to make it more sustainable. The initiative advocated for an increase in workforce participation for those with the capacity to work, with the purpose of limiting welfare dependency. The “Welfare to Work” package provided $2 billion in new welfare services aimed at helping people obtain work. Although the welfare reform does not improve the overall accessibility of welfare payments, the reform made important improvements in providing services that aid individuals in obtaining work, thus prompting self-sufficiently and the reduction of welfare dependence.
In 2002 the Australian government released the "Australians Working Together" package as part of the 2002 Budget. The package provided increased support services to parents, individuals with disabilities, and other people who had been unemployed for an extended period. The main aspect of the "Australians Working Together" package, the “working credit” initiative, was aimed at reducing the impact of means testing to working-age people in the early stages of returning to

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