British and European influences on the "Australian Way" from the 1980s
- 2002
Commonwealth countries share their British social policy legacy in a variety of ways. Australia attempted to adopt the postwar "new Fabian" welfare stat e modela te the very time when international economic circunstances undermined its Keynesian foundation. With Labor governments in power from 1983 to 1996, Australia diverged significantly from the neo-liberal reform path adopted in the United Kingdom. Australian governments looked increasingly to European social democracies for alternative social policy models. In a manner anticipating the "Third Way", the tendency was towards mixing neo-liberal economics with social democaratic welfare. The Australian "Third Way" which resulted proved unstable. Current social reformers, the paper proposes, ought to revisit a neglected but characteristically British emphasis on the need for a measure of "socialization of investiment" to underpin redistributive strategies