Australian social policy has seen apparently contradictory developments over the period of economic restructuring. Social spending has increased based on a highly redistributive model while inequality has grown. This article explores the relationship between Australia’s experience of economic restructuring and the political dynamics of an emerging ‘dual welfare state’. Importantly, the article argues that Australian reformers did not reject the state per se, nor egalitarianism as an objective. Instead, reform sought to combine greater competition with compensation, generating larger inequalities in market incomes alongside growing social spending. The article explores how Labor combined neoclassical ideas about competition with a commitment to a ‘small state’ version of social democracy. This did moderate inequalities through the period of restructuring, but it also altered the dynamics of political contestation. The article provides two typologies to understand this political dynamic, arguing forms of marketisation opened the door to a political contest over the nature, rather than the extent, of public provision, while the model of targeting reinforced paternalist tendencies inherent in neoliberal reform.

This article explains a curious redirection of economic policies that uses the policy framework of Kalecki and Keynes only to undermine it. It does not negate their theory of demand management, but reformulates it to serve the powerful interests of finance in the era of financial globalisation. As a result, accountability to finance rather than to the citizens becomes more important for democratic governments, and credit rating dominates democratic performance.

The author provides an introductory commentary on six divergent responses to the 2013 ‘Marglin Manifesto’, proposing basic principles that might guide the quest to combine ecological sustainability with equitably redistributive development.

This article analyses the 2008 economic crisis and its outcomes for the Baltic states. It then gives a genealogy of European economic policy responses to the crisis, tracing them from the emerging ‘freshwater’ school of economics (e.g. University of Chicago) that arose in opposition to Keynesian theory. The more immediate cause of the 2008 crisis, long in the making, was its reliance on private debt to sustain economic demand in light of profit-enhancing wage suppression. Following the 2008 financial shock, European Union policymakers crafted policy that placed the burden of adjustment on labour. A programme of austerity was chosen in much of the European Union, at odds with the post-war European ‘social model’. This represented a retreat from the notion of a European project that encouraged liberalisation of economic policy but at the same time could be harmonised with a social dimension to create a distinctive ‘Social Europe’. Nowhere was this austerity more vigorously applied than in the Baltic states. Its effects are examined here, along with lessons to be derived from that experience.

The low level of the Newstart (unemployment benefit) payment has become a major source of concern about Australia’s willingness and ability to protect unemployed Australians from poverty. Despite this disquiet, there has been little scholarly examination of the implications of living on Newstart. In this article, through the use of a survey and in-depth interviews, we examine features of everyday life for Newstart recipients in the Sydney area, experiences that reveal the scarring potential of low benefits. The article illustrates that for a majority of interview participants, the most basic items were difficult to purchase and many of the interviewees were living in inadequate and even unsafe situations owing to an inability to afford satisfactory accommodation. For some, their lack of disposable income had severe health implications. Social isolation was a common phenomenon, and many of the interviewees found that the low payment made finding employment a lot more challenging.

Prof. Marglin argues for a new economics and a new conception of welfare as part of the move to a sustainable future. However, the typical criticisms of the treatment of welfare in economics appear wide of the mark, and there are good reasons to regard this treatment as accurate enough for the job at hand. The critics appear to miss how demanding the job of reshaping economics in their (implicit) desired image would be, and how unproductive it might turn out to be to insist on such a reshaping as a precursor to serious action.

This article understands contemporary austerity through historical comparisons informed by Marxist insights into the nature of the state. It argues that austerity policies make sense from the perspective of capital–labour, inter-capitalist and international competition. Differences among states over time, in terms of their size and international situation and contested domestic relations, produce varied imperatives towards austerity and prospects of effective resistance.

Many traditional regions are being transformed as industries restructure. Paradoxically, the global economic downturn offers opportunities to innovate on policies to regenerate areas experiencing deindustrialisation, with one emerging focus being the development of ‘green skills’ to facilitate the transition of these places to ‘green economies’. In this article, we explore similar policy objectives (i.e. regeneration activity based (in part) on green economy transitions) across three deindustrialising/deindustrialised regions – Appalachia (United States), Ruhr (Germany) and the Valleys (South Wales) – to provide an account of the ways in which different regions with similar industrial pasts diverge in their approach to moving towards greener futures. Our argument is that the emphasis in such transitions should be the creation of ‘decent’ jobs, with new economic activity and employment initiatives embracing a ‘high road’ (i.e. high skill/high pay/high quality) trajectory. Utilising a ‘varieties of capitalism’ analysis, we contend that an effective, socially inclusive and ‘high road’ transition is more likely to emerge within co-ordinated market economy contexts, for example, Germany, than within the liberal market economy contexts of, for example, the United States and United Kingdom. In identifying the critical success factors leading to ‘high road’ green economy, the implications for any such transition within the liberal market economy context of Australia are highlighted.

Contracting out publicly funded vocational education and training (VET) in Australia to private providers has been accompanied by persistent concern at decline in the quality of training. Using transaction cost economics, this outcome is ascribed to the characteristics of publicly funded VET as a commodity and the conditions under which it is privately produced and consumed. The article concludes that, in general, publicly funded VET does not meet the minimum conditions for efficient contracting out. The economic and social consequences of inadequate quality VET provision are potentially severe.

Falling membership numbers and declining union density are issues of concern for many Australian unions. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that between 2005 and 2008, trade union membership declined from 22.4% to 18.9% of the workforce. Studies and statistics consistently show that union membership and density are lowest in Western Australia, despite trend reversals elsewhere. Using the Western Australian branches of two ‘blue-collar’ unions – the Australian Rail, Tram and Bus Industry Union, Western Australian Branch and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, covering a range of transport, metal working, printing and manufacturing trades – as examples, this article examines whether privatisation has contributed significantly to falling trade union density and membership in this state. These unions represented large public sector workforces. In order to test the hypothesis that privatisation has adversely affected union membership and density, the article examines three areas: changing policies in the Australian Labor Party, the breaking down of union culture and changes in trade training, and concludes that privatisation is a significant factor in the recent decline of these two unions.

Spearheaded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there has been a rethinking of macroeconomic policies, in particular with regard to targeting inflation at a very low level in the wake of 2008–2009 global economic crisis. We provide a content analysis of the IMF Staff Reports on Article IV consultation of 12 Asian developing countries during the period 2009–2010 in order to see whether that rethinking has been reflected in the IMF’s advice. The findings of this study reveal that the IMF continues with its prescription of achieving low inflationary environment irrespective of country-specific circumstances.

The starting point for this article is the excellent article by Professor Marglin on the dangers of climate change. He outlines a broad remedial prescription, a new economics based on ecological concerns and a broadly based cultural revolution to change people’s thinking. We agree with Marglin that the prevailing neoclassical analysis is fundamentally flawed because inter alia it adheres to individuals’ independent (rather than inter-dependent) utility functions. It is argued that ultimately the problem of the ecosystem, and indeed violent threats of mass destruction that we constantly face cannot be solved without the insights that community and spiritual thinking bring us.

This article argues that the current global economic crisis is an outcome of the excessive growth of the financial market over the real economy, and hence, of fictitious profits over real profits. In investigating the interrelation between the financial market and the real economy, it makes a comparative inquiry into two key assertions regarding economic crisis within Marxism: the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and overaccumulation of capital. Accepting the claim that economic crisis is inherent to capitalism, this article probes the role of countervailing tendencies in battling the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. While crisis is an outcome of both the extensive growth of fictitious profits and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, the latter is identified as the fundamental reason for the current crisis. Labour market reforms that were implemented following the emergence of the economic crisis represent the resurgence of countervailing tendencies and are the most explicit evidence that the fundamental reason for the crisis resides in the real economy.

The article raises questions about how the economic crisis is being played out ‘in place’, taking an embodied, generational and gender perspective. ‘Place’ is used in a political context by examining how global realities are experienced in place, and the author argues the need to look at the everyday realities of the crisis from a gendered ontological perspective in order to counter grand narratives of gloom and doom where women (whether old, young, migrant, heterosexual or otherwise) are particular victims. By discussing local contexts of the gendered realities of the crisis in three southern Europe areas, the author shows the possibility of changing the crisis narrative from one of overwhelming paralysis to one of potential transformation. The focus is on the rise of resistance, solidarity economies and new types of communities in the search by women in southern Europe for alternatives to neoliberal capitalism.

Every year, there are over 200 traumatic deaths at work in Australia. A government safety inspector usually investigates each incident. The investigation may lead to prosecution of the employer or another party deemed to have breached relevant legislation. However, little systematic research has examined the needs and interests of grieving families in this process. Drawing on interviews with 48 representatives of institutions that deal with deaths at work (including regulators, unions, employers, police and coronial officers), this article examines how they view the problems and experiences of families. Notwithstanding some recent improvements, findings indicate ongoing shortcomings in meeting the needs of families regarding information provision, involvement and securing justice.

Although the issue of redistribution is glossed over by Marglin, there are three reasons why decarbonisation must be accompanied by a massive scaling up of redistribution from the global North to South if the agenda is to be founded on a social justice approach. First, constructing a capital infrastructure in the South in a manner that maximises the potential for decarbonisation would tend to be very import-intensive. Hence, it would require external financing or else risk running aground through balance of payment constraints. Second, there is already a tendency in the global economy of siphoning resources from South to North, in particular through the increasing control over flows of value and wealth by Northern corporations from their commanding positions within international networks. Southern productivity needs to be contextualised from this perspective given the risk that climate negotiations lock in the subordination of Southern countries within these global networks, rather than seeking ways for Southern producers to leverage more value for the output and carbon emissions they are already producing. Third, population and labour transitions in the South place relatively greater pressure than in the past on employment generation in tertiary (service) sectors, in which distributive and redistributive processes play essential roles in bolstering labour demand. The neglect of global redistribution could undermine the capacity of Southern countries to face these broader development challenges, which are already immense even in the absence of decarbonisation. A key question is how to organise global redistributive transfers in a manner that does not continue to subordinate Southern populations to Northern interests. The challenge for decarbonisation is the forging of a political will for redistribution that is motivated by climate change rather than geopolitics, and that respects national ownership and self-determination.

In the period leading up to the federal government’s May 2009 announcement of a paid parental leave scheme, there was a surge in community and media debate about the absence of such a scheme in Australia. This article explores whether this context had some bearing on bargaining outcomes during that time. We analyse data from the Australian Workplace Agreements Database to determine the incidence and length of paid parental leave in collective agreements registered between 2005 and 2010. The results show an increase in the number of agreements that included paid parental leave clauses in the period, with just over 14% of all current agreements including a paid parental leave clause by 2010. Moreover, 18% of all agreements lodged in 2010 included a paid parental leave clause, suggesting an increase in bargaining outcomes over time. We also find a slight increase in the average duration of paid parental leave in collective agreements. A leave of 14 weeks is most common in public sector agreements but less than 3% of agreements in the private sector provide for 14 weeks or more. These marked differences between the public and private sectors suggest minimal change in private sector bargaining outcomes. We conclude that the legislative context does influence bargaining outcomes, but that this effect is felt more in public sector than private sector bargaining.