Elise Klein is a Senior Lecturer of Public Policy at the Crawford School, Australian National University. Her research focuses on development policy with a specific interest in work, redistribution, decoloniality and care.
The contemporary punitive turn in Australian social security features disinvestment from actual payments made to individuals...as well as investment in punitive mutual-obligation programs such as ParentsNext.
A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is not a new idea. It has garnered support over the centuries from scholars and intellectuals, from Thomas More in his 1516 Utopia to Thomas Paine, Charles Fourier, Abraham Lincoln, Henry George, Bertrand Russell, Franklin Roosevelt and Tony Atkinson. Still, a global revival is well in train: a UBI is at the forefront of policies in the United Kingdom, Greece and Spain, and trials are under way in India, Finland,…
Last month saw the release of the Empowered Communities: Empowered Peoples Design Report, proposing a new model of Indigenous empowerment and development in Australia. The report is the culmination of work funded by a $5-million grant to the Empowered Communities network in early 2014 by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. It sets out a model for Indigenous development and empowerment for the eight regions that constitute the network, with the long-term goal of…