John Murphy, a decent provision: Australian welfare policy, 1870 to 1949 (book review)

Title: John Murphy, a decent provision: Australian welfare policy, 1870 to 1949 (book review)
Creator: Bryson, Lois
Relation: Critical Social Policy Vol. 33, Issue 2, p. 356-358
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0261018312472010d
Publisher: Sage
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2013
Description: Samuel Johnson’s eighteenth century aphorism, ‘a decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization’ provides a thought-provoking focus for John Murphy’s book A Decent Provision: Australian Welfare Policy, 1870 to 1949. However, the author’s stated goal to ‘understand why the Australian model had been developed, and assess its distinctiveness’ (p. 2), provides a more realistic, if somewhat more prosaic, summary of what can be focused on in one book. Each chapter covers a stage in the development of Australian welfare policy and the issues faced as the foundational policies were put in place. The analysis shows how complex these developmental processes were and, at the same time, identifies major themes that are still of relevance for assessing the ‘decency’ of the system.
Subject: critical analysis; book review; Australian history
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1293523
Identifier: uon:18620
Identifier: ISSN:0261-0183
Language: eng