A Liberal approach to social welfare

 
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Robert Menzies consistently affirmed the need for Australia to maintain social security but always against the backdrop of liberal principles. By David Furse-Roberts.

On the occasion of his death in May 1978, the then leader of the NSW Liberals, Peter Coleman, remarked that Menzies had combined individualistic liberalism with a commitment to social welfare”. As Prime Minister, Menzies consistently affirmed the need for Australia to maintain social security but always against the backdrop of liberal principles. Menzies’ strategy of maximising individual initiative and free enterprise on the one hand, with the provision of ameliorative social welfare measures on the other, accorded with the thinking of key twentieth-century liberal theorists such as Friedrich Hayek. In The Road to Serfdom (1944), Hayek maintained that ‘there is no incompatibility in principle between the state providing greater [social] security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom’. Menzies affirmed this formula when he reflected that a modern state had much to gain from blending the ideals of rugged individualism with those of social responsibility. Repudiating the old laissez-faire strain of liberalism, Menzies was all too conscious that a free-enterprise economy devoid of any social security relief ‘would tend to destroy the weak, impoverish the poor and reduce the dignity of the individual’. For this reason, he believed governments had a social responsibility to provide a welfare safety net so long as it did not stultify individual initiative and perpetuate a culture of chronic welfare dependency. 

After the defeat of the Chifley Labor government in December 1949, the Menzies government played an active role in maintaining and, indeed, extending social welfare by identifying new areas of need amongst the electorate. Social welfare policies under Menzies, however, would be designed to nurture and reward a constituency of ‘lifters not leaners’. In this vein, Menzies recalibrated welfare in terms of autonomy and self-reliance, placing free enterprise, volunteerism and the family at the heart of this reconceptualisation. Guided by the classic proverb, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’, Menzies and his government instinctively turned to job creation as the infinitely superior alternative to welfare dependency. As Henry Ergas and Jonathan Pincus appreciated, the goals of Menzies’ social welfare policy were primarily pursued ‘by an emphasis on job creation rather than through transfers’. While mindful that welfare payments were often necessary to ameliorate short-term hardship, it was the provision of sustainable employment that ultimately enabled poorer individuals to not only earn a living for themselves but to become esteemed and productive members of society. For families meanwhile, the Menzies government in 1950 extended its original 1941 scheme of child endowment to the first (or only) child. Increases in the rates of endowment were intended to diminish poverty among large families, whilst student children between 16 and 21 became eligible to receive benefits under the scheme in 1964. In addition to recipients of child endowment, individuals on various pension payments received increases in assistance during the Menzies era. Payment rates for age, invalid and widows’ pensions were frequently adjusted upwards and, since the 1950s, they had increased more rapidly than living costs generally. 

As well as child endowment and pensions, the Menzies government introduced a suite of new social welfare initiatives including the free medicines service for pensioners, the 1954 Aged Persons’ Homes Assistance scheme, the free provision of life-saving drugs, the provision of free milk for primary school children, the provision of special allowances as part of an attack on TB, rehabilitation allowances; the introduction of a Home Savings Grants Scheme in 1964 for young home buyers; and a substantial system of tax incentives and rewards. In retrospect, Menzies regarded such areas as health, pensions and benefits, aged care and housing as being among the ‘high spots’ of his record. With this commitment to social welfare, Menzies had put into practice his view, stated in his Forgotten People speech and often restated, that it was the responsibility of the state ‘to secure, through social legislation, a decent and reasonable measure of economic security and material well-being for all responsible citizens’. In his implementation of social welfare policy as Prime Minister from 1949 to 1966, Menzies was assisted by a number of Ministers for Social Services including William Spooner (1949-51), Athol Townley (1951-54), William McMahon (1954-56), Hugh Roberton (1956-1965), and Ian Sinclair (1965-66).

While Menzies invested considerably in a welfare safety-net for individuals in need, the chief preoccupations of his government were to enlarge educational opportunities and generate job creation through the flourishing of free enterprise. Menzies appreciated that education and employment were the means through which individuals could develop into self-reliant contributors to society.  Returning to the theme of welfare dependency 22 years later in 1964, Menzies concluded that during his prime ministership, the Australian electorate had come to repudiate the old socialist dependence on the state. He had observed, on the other hand, the emergence of:

…a younger and, on the whole, better educated generation of electors, who want the opportunity to make their own way and place in the world. They reject the enfeebling notion that the chief end of man, from the cradle to the grave, is to be ordered around by, and live dependent upon ‘the government’.

For Menzies, however, this did not justify a wholesale rejection of state intervention and return to laissez-faire but rather a just and prudent Government approach to social welfare that still allowed ample room for the blossoming of individual initiative and free enterprise. The chief end of social welfare policy for Menzies was never just about the economic empowerment of individuals but the advancement of their human dignity. Accordingly, his government favoured decidedly humane and personalised approaches to social welfare that best accorded with the material, social and spiritual needs of vulnerable persons such as the aged and those with a disability. For Menzies, the great priority of social welfare policy was the maximisation of what John Howard would later term the ‘human dividend’.

Selected Menzies quotes on social welfare:

“That we must do far more than in the past to give decent people some security in the face of sickness and unemployment is of course true. But in my opinion we must to the greatest possible extent do it upon the principle of contribution.”

Robert Menzies, Opening Speech, Camberwell Town Hall, 23 July 1943

“The Liberal Party stands unhesitatingly for the most ample provision in respect of old age and sickness and unemployment and widowhood and all the other economic and social misfortunes to which people are subject. But it says without equivocation that if all these things are to be provided on a sound, solvent and self-respecting basis they must be put upon a contributory footing”

Robert Menzies, Freemantle By-election, 15 August 1945

“The purpose of all measures of social security is not only to provide citizens with some reasonable protection against misfortune but also to reconcile that provision with their proud independence and dignity as democratic citizens”

Robert Menzies, Provisional Policy Statement, 31 August 1945

David Furse-Roberts is the editor of Menzies in his own words: A collection of quotes. You can purchase the book here