The Experience of Politics in the Age of Reform: Comparisons in Approaches to Social Policy History in Australia and the United States Ben Huf Australian National University Words: 7,433 IN THE 1930s, both the Australian Commonwealth and American federal governments attempted to introduce sweeping welfare reforms amidst that decade’s crippling Depression. In the United States, this included a vast suite of reforms as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal program between 1933 and 1936. In Australia, the Lyons United Australia Party Government attempted, and failed, to introduce a national insurance scheme based on the British model in their third term of office, which would have been the most comprehensive social reform in Australia since the New Protection. A comparison between these periods of attempted social policy reform might elucidate any number of similarities or contrasts. The concern of this paper, however, is with something more fundamental. Historians in each country have treated the respective periods of reform very differently. This is, of course, partly to do with the magnitude and significance of the New Deal and comparative failure of national insurance in Australia, which was soon overshadowed by the initiation of the Curtin Labor Government’s welfare-­‐state in the 1940s. Of interest here, however, is not how much attention historians have given periods of reform like the New Deal and national insurance, but the kind of questions they have asked. Australian historians, it is contended, might learn much from their American counterparts. For the past 20 years, historians have made use of the New Deal to better understand political development in twentieth-­‐century United States history. The New Deal has provided a site of enquiry to ask about patterns of governance, to interpret public reactions to policy implementation as a dialogue with government and to explore the kinds of political identities social policy confers on citizens. In short, histories of the New Deal have helped American scholars better problematize and critique the political sphere in U.S. history. This paper explores how similar approaches might be applied to the Australian experience with national insurance as a way of developing more critical and nuanced perspectives on the politics of 1930s Australia. This is something of an experiment in addressing a much larger research agenda. To anticipate some conclusions, the study of 1 Australian politics remains largely impoverished by the incapacity, reluctance or disinterest of historians to characterise, interpret or critique the way politics has been understood and experienced in Australia in the twentieth century.1 Following the achievements of American historians focusing on the New Deal, it is suggested a similar focus on periods of welfare-­‐reform might provide one line of inquiry to help rejuvenate the Australian historical study of politics. To be sure, a common-­‐sense liberal-­‐individualism now seems to pervade characterisations of the Australian political sphere,2 incorporating various social-­‐liberal, utilitarian and legal-­‐positivist interpretations.3 Having built on New Left critiques of the old radical-­‐nationalist narrative from the 1970s, historians have included labourism in this liberal hue, too.4 The result has been to provide firmer footing for those searching for the history of ‘political thought’ in Australia and those wanting to demonstrate that ‘ideas matter’.5 Yet it has also introduced problems of its own. Of particular concern here is that the acceptance of this pervasive liberalism has not been matched with critical reflections on what the implications of characterising Australian politics in this way might be. Those who have criticised the pre-­‐dominance of a ‘born modern’ liberal interpretations of Australian politics and claimed other ‘traditional’ or ‘collectivist’ forces ought be integrated have hinted towards such implications, though they might be better placed to claim it is a collectivist (read communitarian) critique, rather than re-­‐
interpretation, that is needed.6 It is one of the remarkable traits of much of Australian political writing since the nineteenth century, that while repeatedly acknowledging the peculiar ‘new worldliness’ of Australian politics, such writings have remained so disconnected from the great critiques of liberal politics which animated so much of twentieth century European and American political scholarship. Indeed, it is perhaps a 1 Stuart Macintyre, “Political History”, in Rhodes (ed.), The Australian Study of Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 84-­‐96. 2 Graham Maddox. "Australian democracy and the compound republic." Pacific Affairs (2000): 193-­‐207. 3 Marian Simms, A Liberal Nation: the Liberal Party and Australian Politics (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1982); Hugh Collins. "Political ideology in Australia: the distinctiveness of a Benthamite society." Daedalus (1985): 147-­‐169; Stuart Macintyre,. A Colonial Liberalism: The lost world of three Victorian visionaries. (Oxford University Press Australia, 1991); Alastair Davidson. The Invisible State: The Formation of the Australian State. (Cambridge University Press, 1991); Gregory Melleuish. Cultural Liberalism in Australia: a study in intellectual and cultural history. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Marian Sawer. The ethical state?: Social liberalism in Australia. (Melbourne University Publishing, 2003). 4 Humphrey McQueen. A new Britannia. (University. of Queensland Press, 1970); Tim Rowse, Australian liberalism and national character. (Melbourne, Australia: Kibble Books, 1978); Peter Beilharz. Transforming Labor: Labour tradition and the Labor decade in Australia. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Bongiorno, Frank. The people's party: Victorian Labor and the radical tradition, 1875-­‐1914. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1996. 5 Brian Head and James Walter. Intellectual movements and Australian society. (Oxford University Press, USA, 1988); Stokes, Geoff. "Conceptions of Australian political thought: A methodological critique." Politics 29:2 (1994): 240-­‐258; Melleuish, Gregory. The Power of Ideas: Essays on Australian Politics & History. Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009. 6 Maddox, “Compound Republic”; Gregory Melleuish. "Distributivism: The Australian Political Ideal?." Journal of Australian Studies 23, no. 62 (1999): 20-­‐29. 2 trait of Australian ‘new worldly’ politics to remain so aloof, so apathetic, to such critiques.7 Historians might show more interest. For in order to better interpret and explain the kind of politics that has developed in twentieth-­‐century Australia, this ‘liberal tradition’, if we might call it that, needs to be more problematically examined in historical ‘lived experience’. This has long been the purview of labour historians. An opportunity thus presents itself to them to re-­‐invigorate the study of Australian politics. Critical engagement with the history of welfare reform might provide one line of enquiry to more constructively explore, interpret and eventually critique this liberal tradition.8 The purpose of this paper is not to draw out conclusions about these implications, but to explore some avenues for how historians might begin to penetrate this liberal framework. This has been the case for American scholars in recent New Deal historiography. As we shall momentarily see, problematizing the American ‘liberal tradition’ has been among the achievements of this body of literature. While leading scholars in policy and welfare history are still not satisfied with the state of the field and see potential for greater integration of research interests, it has nevertheless recently been claimed that ‘studies of American welfare have revolutionised our understanding of American history and politics – and, indeed, have a good claim to present the strongest area of scholarship in history and political science more generally’.9 I am not concerned with how the history of the Australian welfare-­‐state itself has been addressed. Two works, one by Rob Watts almost 30 years ago and another more recently by John Murphy, have provided arresting correctives to older Whiggish assumptions that the Australian welfare-­‐state was simply developed by the benevolence and progressivism of Labor governments. Both works will be drawn upon heavily here. The point rather is that aside from these works, there has been a propensity for historians to either approach the history of social policy in a rather unreflective, empirical manner, or focused on specific policies without connecting them to a broader interpretation.10 The American literature suggests ways labour historians and historians of social policy can contribute to such interpretations about the historical nature of Australian politics. The failed attempt at national insurance might appear an odd case study to test these approaches, yet despite its failure, this passage provides a worthwhile 7 A persisting ‘anti-­‐intellectualism’, as Horne put it? 8 A similar claim was made more than 40 years ago. See Watts, Rob. “Social amnesia and welfare history.” Arena 47 (1977): 133-­‐145. 9 Jacob Hacker, “Bringing the Welfare State Back In: The Promise (and Perils) of the New Social Welfare History”, Journal of Policy History, 17:1 (2005), 125-­‐154. So successful had the utilising of welfare history in this way been, thought Hacker, that it was time for historians to return to the subject of welfare itself, and rather than treating it like a ‘convenient window into some larger relation of power’. 10 Watts, “Social amnesia and welfare history,” Arena 47-­‐48 (1977): 133-­‐145 3 opportunity. It must be remembered that at the time, the scheme, which was legislated in 1938 but never implemented, was the most important social policy reform Australia had seen since Federation. All workers earning under £7 per week, about half the working population, would involuntarily be brought into the scheme.11 Weekly contributions of 1/6 from both employee and employer entitled the wage-­‐earner to old-­‐
age, sickness, disability and widow pensions and medical benefits, pulling low income earners into one equitable scheme replacing the ‘mixed economy’ of welfare which hitherto had existed.12 National insurance was also the crescendo to a series of debates over a fiscal crisis that had persistently confronted Australian governments since 1920, before such problems were absorbed by the Second World War. The cost of the means-­‐
tested old-­‐age pension scheme, which had been initiated in 1908 and was funded entirely from government revenue, was one source of contention. By the mid-­‐1930s it was being calculated the annual cost of the pension, now dubbed by some economists as the ‘mistake of 1908’, was almost equal to the revenue the Commonwealth derived from direct income taxation.13 National insurance, based more firmly on a contributory principle, was seen as a means to offset this strain on the budget. Yet it was also more than a measure of fiscal necessity. Many considered an insurance scheme an irreducible minimum component of a ‘modern society’.14 Variations of such a scheme were on both Labor and non-­‐Labor policy platforms for most of the inter-­‐war years. Historians have rightly flagged that the persistent flirtation with national insurance, which included a Royal Commission in 1925 and failed attempt to implement a similar scheme by the Bruce Government in 1928, undermines any account of the interwar years as a period of ‘stagnation’ in Australian history.15 Yet despite its importance on all these levels, national insurance failed. This failure is nevertheless of interest for it provides scope to explore the institutional and attitudinal inertia that undermined the scheme, highlighting some of the key characteristics of the Australian political sphere in the period. The paper will proceed by first giving a brief overview of how American historians have analysed the New Deal over the past 20 years to make broader interpretations about patterns of governance, the implementation of policy and political 11 Macintyre has suggested £8 a week was the dividing line between ‘those able to enjoy the full comforts of the new lifestyle and those who lived in mores strained and precarious conditions in the inner suburbs.’ See Macintyre, The Succeeding Age, 220-­‐1. In 1938, the Federal basic wage was about £4 1s per week in Sydney. See Commonwealth Year Book 1938, 572. 12 John Murphy “The other welfare state: non-­‐government agencies and the mixed economy of welfare in Australia,” History of Australia 3 no. 2 (2006): 1-­‐15 13 Watts, Foundations, 11. 14 Ibid, 7; Murphy, A Decent Provision, 183. 15 John Murphy "Path Dependence and the Stagnation of Australian Social Policy Between the Wars." Journal of Policy History 22, no. 04 (2010): 450-­‐473. 4 identities in twentieth-­‐century United States. I will then take a moment to suggest why these American approaches might also be applicable to the Australian experience, before applying each in turn to the case of national insurance. These three approaches do not represent a cohesive research program laid out by American scholars. They are categories taken up for my purposes here to help identify some of the ways in which scholars of the New Deal have more richly textured the study of American politics and how they might be applied to the Australian experience. Recent American historiography of the New Deal Up until the 1980s, the historiography of the welfare-­‐state in the United States in many ways mirrored that of Australia. In both countries, a common-­‐sense master narrative was clear and agreed upon. While in Australia this had centred on benevolent bursts of progress by Labor, the ‘party of reform’16, in the U.S., the persistent absence of a welfare-­‐
state was assumed to be because of America’s anti-­‐government heritage. What programs did emerge were from spasms of twentieth-­‐century liberal achievement: the New Deal and the Great Society.17 By the early 1990s, historian Edward Berkowitz could still write that the American welfare state ‘commands little attention from today’s students, who view it as a confusing, highly technical and dry subject’.18 But already before the time of Berkowitz’s writing, disinterest was giving way into excited academic engagement in both Australia and the United States. As the security of Keynesianism came apart and welfare reform became a central political question again, it began to capture the attentions of scholars, too. However this interest took spectacularly different trajectories in each country. In Australia, the turning point was Watt’s important 1987 study, which, in reappraising older triumphalist interpretations, argued the welfare state was subsumed in the pragmatics of economic management which were essentially non-­‐redistributive in intent and impact. However, this was followed with more interest not from historians, but sociologists and policy experts. In the U.S., however, the welfare-­‐state became a major growth area of interest for historians. The old ‘master narrative’ was uprooted and questions of race and gender, the influence of business and labour, and a more sophisticated understanding of policy development, reappraised the entire picture of American welfarism. In the process, treatment of 16 In opposition to non-­‐Labor ‘parties of resistance’, as Hancock so influentially put it. 17 The Australian strawman is Watts, Foundation, 1. The American strawman is Hacker’s. “Bringing the Welfare State Back In”, 149. 18 Edward Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan (Balitmore, 1991), xi. 5 periods like the New Deal made for much more textured, and problematical, accounts of political development in twentieth-­‐century United States history. Such works have been grouped here as addressing patterns of governance, interpreting public responses to policy implementation, and asking about the identities policy confers on citizens. Firstly, questions about patterns of governance in the New Deal have provided the broadest re-­‐considerations of the development of twentieth-­‐century American politics. This was most evident in how New Deal historians began re-­‐interpreting the mythical tradition of ‘American liberalism’. From the 1940s until at least the early-­‐
1980s, ‘progressive’ and ‘consensus’ interpretations of American liberalism, and their latter New Left and neo-­‐Consensus adherents, had alternatively interpreted the New Deal as either a decisive rejection of the American individual-­‐liberal tradition, or alternatively, construed its pragmatic openness to fresh ideas as enveloped in the broader tradition of ‘Lockean liberalism’.19 Since the 1990s, historians have re-­‐read the New Deal as a defining moment of American liberalism’s malleability, its ‘protean character’, rather than of its hiatus or static continuation.20 ‘American liberalism’, and all that might entail for governance, has become a far more contested space. Accordingly, since the New Deal, a wider range of voices, both Republicans and Democrats, have been claimed to be defenders of the ‘authentic’ liberal tradition.21 The New Deal has also been mined to explore more nuanced influences on policy development and government decision making. Through the 1980s and 1990s, historians debated the importance of ‘societal’ or ‘institutional’ influences on the policies government’s pursued. The former stressed economic conditions, cultural values, class conflict, or interest-­‐group power (such as big business) as the most important influences.22 The latter argued the distinctive development and organisation of American political institutions denied the centralisation of enough political power necessary to enact domestic social reforms.23 Since the early 2000s, research concepts such as ‘path-­‐dependence’, ‘policy-­‐paradigms’ and ‘policy feedback’ have been deployed to challenge this simple dichotomy.24 Scholars have explored the ways existing policies 19 Melvyn Stokes, "American Liberalism and the Neo-­‐Consensus School." Journal of American Studies 20, no. 03 (1986): 449-­‐460 20 Gary Gerstle. "The protean character of American liberalism." The American Historical Review (1994): 1043-­‐1073; Brinkley, Alan. The end of reform: New Deal liberalism in recession and war. (Random House LLC, 1995.); Gary D. Best. The retreat from liberalism: collectivists versus progressives in the New Deal years. (Praeger Publishers, 2002); 21 James R. Hurtgen. The Divided Mind of American Liberalism. (Lexington Books, 2002). 22 For example, see Jill Quadagno, "Welfare capitalism and the Social Security Act of 1935." American Sociological Review (1984): 632-­‐647. 23 For a response to Quadango (1984) see Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta. "Did capitalists shape social security?." American Sociological Review (1985): 572-­‐575. 24 Paul Pierson. "When effect becomes cause: Policy feedback and political change." World politics 45, no. 04 (1993): 595-­‐628; Paul Pierson. "Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics." American 6 and institutions delimited what could be imagined or implemented by policy makers. Policies or programs which already existed, it is now argued, were likely to persist or shape the form future social policies might take. Part of the insight of this approach was to see that ‘societal’ and ‘institutional’ forces of policy development were intertwined. The perceived success or failure of existing private benefit schemes influenced as much the inclination of policy actors to intervene in private markets or supplant voluntary institutions of social provision, as their own goals and motivations for developing new policy. Secondly, in the past two decades American scholars have given more attention to popular responses to the implementation of specific New Deal programs, interpreting them as a conversation between government and the public. Crucial here has been use of opinion poll data.25 These analyses have further textured assumptions about governance by exploring how the public thought about the proper role of government. Old ideas about the New Deal as being a period of heroic national, collective spirit have been replaced by evidence of widespread scepticism to some elements of the program.26 Again, against ‘institutional’ interpretations of policy development, this kind of research has shown policy debates among elites took place on a terrain crucially shaped and constrained by public opinion. 27 Meanwhile, specific New Deal programs, such as the Social Security Act, have been shown to be more popular than the articulation of any overarching, theoretical reforming liberalism in the abstract. This has further problematized how American politics might be characterised in any straightforward, ideological terms.28 Thirdly, and perhaps most incisively, analysis of the New Deal has been used to interpret the kinds of political identities policy reform conferred on citizens. The gendered and racial character of American welfare has been continuously explored as a means of emphasising how policy legitimates and entrenches the formation of certain social and political identities.29 These perspectives have been further fine-­‐tuned by emphasising the New Deal’s importance in the trajectory of a centralising American political science review (2000): 251-­‐267; Jacob S. Hacker. The Divided welfare state: The battle over public and private social benefits in the United States. (Cambridge University Press, 2002). 25 Opinion polling began in the United States in the early 1930s; it did not begin in Australia until the Second World War. 26 Katherine Newman and Elisabeth Jacobs. "Brothers’ Keepers?." Society 44, no. 5 (2007): 6-­‐11. 27 Schickler, Eric, and Devin Caughey. "Public opinion, organized labor, and the limits of New Deal liberalism, 1936–1945." Studies in American Political Development 25, no. 02 (2011): 162-­‐189. 28 Ibid. 29 Quadagno, Jill. The color of welfare: How racism undermined the war on poverty. (Oxford University Press, 1994); Lieberman, Robert C. Shifting the color line: Race and the American welfare state. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Katznelson, Ira. When affirmative action was white: An untold history of racial inequality in twentieth-­‐century America. (WW Norton & Company, 2005); ); Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origin of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass. 1992); Linda Gordon, Pitted but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-­‐1935 (New York, 1994). 7 federalism. Those included in New Deal programs – predominantly white, working men – were conferred a rational, standardised ‘federal citizenship’, whereas women and African Americans remained ‘state citizens’, subject to policies that were administered with discretion and variability from state to state. As one scholar argued, in effect, the New Deal welfare state treated men and women as if they were members of separate sovereignties.30 Others historians have shown being included in programs did more than confer identity, but perpetuated or dissuaded political participation. As Louise Campbell has argued, social security development transformed senior citizens into one of the most active political groups, defending their programs from proposed threats, while welfare recipients from modest socioeconomic backgrounds excluded themselves because of the disenfranchising process of proving eligibility. Campbell concluded that program design profoundly shapes the nature of democratic citizenship.31 While it is being contended here similar such approaches might enrich the study of Australian politics, it might also be fairly conjectured that the application of recent American approaches to the New Deal are not relevant to the Australian experience. American questions, arguably, are applicable only to an American polity that possesses a different political structure and political culture. A number of key differences between Australia and America may be assumed to anticipate these approaches. For example, unlike America’s ‘small government heritage’, Australian patterns of governance are considered to be traditionally interventionist, a legacy from the ‘nation-­‐building’ of colonial governments. Meanwhile, the enduring achievements of Australia’s much stronger labour tradition, such as wage-­‐arbitration, has had a clear impact on policy development and also in construing the identity of the self-­‐sufficient wage-­‐earner. Much of this, as we shall see, is reflected in the case of national insurance. An account such as Francis Castle’s characterisation of the Australian ‘wage-­‐earners welfare-­‐state’ demonstrates how these elements provide their own answers to questions of governance, policy and identity. Castle’s incrementalist argument suggested that later welfare initiatives had to fit conceptually and politically with prior choices about arbitration.32 In Australia, a built-­‐in ‘assumption’ about fair wages meant social policy developed quite differently from that in Europe (and America), established certain public expectations about what Australian government’s ought deliver, and reinforced 30 Suzanne Mettler. Dividing citizens: Gender and federalism in New Deal public policy (Cornell University Press, 1998). 31 Andrea Louise Campbell. How policies make citizens: Senior political activism and the American welfare state (Princeton University Press, 2003). 32 Francis Castles, The Working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand 1890-­‐1980 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1985). 8 the identity of the wage-­‐earner as politically legitimate. The magnetism of arbitration, it might be argued, dissolves the questions raised in the American scholarship. Rob Watts criticised Castles’ account for this exact point; it dissolved the richness of policy history and imposed a teleological view of the development of the welfare-­‐state.33 Murphy likewise felt there was a certain ‘functionalism’ to Castles’ argument, but did think he was right to notice that the presence of arbitration influenced what else could be imagined and what else could succeed.34 As we shall see, this was certainly the case with national insurance. We might accept, then, that there is something distinctive about social policy development in Australia, but that does not debar historians from peeling back this distinctiveness and asking what it conceals about the character of the Australian political sphere. While there are clear key institutional, cultural and circumstantial differences between Australian and the United States, the point here is not to transpose the American questions directly to the Australian experience. There are of course dangers in obscuring key national distinctions when scholars ask questions of one polity in terms of another.35 For example, to ask about patterns of governance in the case national insurance in terms of ‘societal’ or ‘institutional’ forces may be fortuitous because of Australia’s existing interventionist tradition. (Although, as noted below, John Murphy does use the notion of ‘path-­‐dependence’ in his own way). While the American public were engaged creatively (if in limited ways) with the New Deal, what is interesting about national insurance is the ways in which the public reacted to this attempt at intervention. Yet nevertheless, as we shall see, asking about patterns of governance in the case of national insurance does yield its own lines of inquiry regarding the importance of British paternalism and the strictures of federalism in 1930s Australia. This paper is not, then, concerned with the possibilities of comparing American and Australian policy development, nor their political cultures or structures. The comparison is, rather, one of methodological approaches to welfare-­‐history and the broader political interpretations that can be garnered from such scholarship. National Insurance and Patterns of Governance 33 Rob Watts, “10 Years On: Francis Castles and the ‘Wage-­‐Earners Welfare-­‐State”, Journal of Sociology, 33:1 (1997), 1-­‐15. 34 Murphy, A Decent Provision, 202 35 Raewyn Connell, Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2007). 9 Some of the questions about patterns of governance American scholars have explored through the New Deal, have, in a way, been approached by Watts and Murphy in their treatment of Australia’s mid-­‐century welfare reform. Much of Watts’ objective was to discredit prevailing assumptions that social policy reform came from the benevolence of the Labor ‘party of reform’, as opposed to non-­‐Labor ‘parties of resistance’. This dichotomy had long persisted as a common-­‐sense interpretation of Australian politics both for scholars and in the popular imagination, having gained influence since its first use by W.K. Hancock 1930.36 Watts demonstrated support for the scheme was founded on principles of a ‘social liberalism’ that was common both to the non-­‐Labor and Labor parties in the 1930s and 1940s.37 Other historians have since shown this social liberalism to be a powerful intellectual tradition in the first seven decades of Commonwealth politics, challenging older assumptions about the non-­‐ideological pragmatism and utilitarianism of the Australian state.38 Yet Watts’ argument was not to just tease out ‘ideology’. At the core of his interpretation was a continuity of ‘political expediency and benevolent cynicism’ which persisted through these years, both in Lyons’ national insurance scheme, whose chief objective was to offset the ballooning cost of the pension, and in Curtin’s successfully implemented welfare-­‐state the following decade. Watt’s saw the latter a means of managing inflation and raising necessary wartime funds.39 Fiscal expediency, as much as any social liberalism, underpinned both parties’ claims for legitimacy in the period. John Murphy’s more recent account of the welfare state provided insight into patterns of governance in a different way by borrowing Pierson and Hacker’s notion of ‘path-­‐dependence’ to explore the extent that existing policies shaped what could be later achieved. In the case of national insurance, Murphy demonstrated that it was not that the path of the non-­‐contributory old-­‐age pension could not be departed from, but that the neighbouring institution of wage arbitration, with its potential to shift costs, ‘exerted its own powerful gravitational pull over other parts of the policy firmament.’40 The labour movement demanded that wages should be readjusted if the contributory principle was adopted, which immediately aggravated employers to respond this would just mean they would end up paying for the entire scheme in their own contributions 36 Watts, Foundations, xiii. Hancock, Australia (London: Cheshire), 72; attempts to break down Hancock’s binary began as early as the 1950s. Henry Mayer. "Some conceptions of the Australian party system 1910–
1950." Australian Historical Studies 7:27 (1956): 253-­‐270. 37 Watts, Foundations, 1-­‐8. See also Rob Watts, "Revising the Revisionists: the ALP and Liberalism 1941-­‐
1945." Thesis Eleven 7, no. 1 (1983): 67-­‐86. 38 Marian Sawer. The ethical state?: Social liberalism in Australia. (Melbourne University Publishing, 2003). 39 For his earlier tabling of this argument, see Rob Watts. "The origins of the Australian welfare state." Australian Historical Studies 19, no. 75 (1980): 175-­‐198. 40 Murphy, A Decent Provision, 202. 10 and raised wages. Labour replied they would be worse off anyway as employers could offset their contributions by increasing the price of their goods. While he chided Castle’s ‘wage-­‐earners welfare-­‐state’ model as reading history backwards, Murphy did acknowledge that in stalemate’s such as these, Castles was right to notice that the presence of arbitration influencing what else could be imagined and what could succeed in social policy. We can further texture Watts’ and Murphy’s important observations on patterns of governance in 1930s Australia by examining two other characteristics which where decisive with national insurance – imperialism and federalism. Firstly, the question of imperialism in 1930s Australia. The case of national insurance brings to the fore the importance, if not common-­‐sense acceptance, of British paternalism to policymaking in 1930s Australia. The Lyons Government’s scheme was closely modelled on the British program. Two experts where sent out in 1936 to help draft the policy and again in 1938 to help with its implementation.41 The Australian media endorsed their involvement and invoked Britain’s own difficultly implementing national insurance in 1911 as ‘a light at the end of the tunnel’ when the Australian scheme began to falter in 1939.42 And the British weren’t unaware of their influence. At the same time as Australian newspapers invoked the British experience in early 1939, British magazines (including the National Insurance Gazette) published articles in support of the Australian scheme while British politicians who had been involved setting up their program in 1911, were quoted in Australian publications urging local authorities not to be ‘discouraged’ by public dissent, but reassuring they had faced far ‘stiffer public opposition’.43 The 1930s has often been cited as a period of national self-­‐
realisation and receding clinginess to Britain,44 with a line often drawn from Hughes’s performance at the Paris Peace Conference to Curtin’s denouncement of the betrayal at Singapore (with Bodyline and the Westminster Statue in between).45 Attention to 41 Watts, Foundations, 11-­‐17; John Murphy "Path-­‐Dependence”, 462. 42 On media endorsement of British help: “National insurance,” Mercury, 6 January 1938, 8; “National Health and Pensions,” Canberra Times, 12 May 1938, 4; “Insurance crisis,” Herald, 15 June 1938, MS 6150/35; “Insurance and the nation,” Courier Mail, 1 June 1938, 4; “Letters,” Advertiser, 26 November 1938, 26; “Letters,” Advertiser, 25 February 1939, 4; “Letters,” SMH, 9 March 1939, 5. On referring to British experiences with national insurance: “Letters,” SMH, 9 March 1939, 5. See for example: “National Insurance,” Mercury, 6 January 1938, 8; “National Health Insurance,” Courier Mail, 19 April 1938, 6. 43 “Letters,” Advertiser, 1 February 1939, 26; “Britain not impressed by opposition to National Insurance,” Barrier Miner, 10 February 1939, 10; “Attack on doctors, British expert on insurance,” Courier Mail, 2 February 1939, 4; “Don’t be discouraged by criticism,” SMH, 10 February 1939, 13. 44 Most recently, see Frank Bongiorno, “Search for a solution, 1923-­‐39” in Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre (eds.) The Cambridge History of Australia: Volume 2, The Commonwealth of Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 64 – 87. 45 Richard White, Inventing Australia. (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981). 11 passages of policy reform like national insurance can disrupt this trajectory.46 To be sure, acceptance of British support was not ubiquitous and there is evidence of assertions of national self-­‐determination. Some Australian policy experts were circumspect about the British influence, arguing that simply grafting a British model onto Australian policy landscape was to ignore Australia’s economic and social idiosyncrasies.47 Such sentiment, in contrast to press editorials, was also common in letters to the editor. Some felt Australia was ‘too young and its population too scattered’ for social insurance, another feeling ‘what might give partial satisfaction in the congested and crowded areas so prevalent in England would not be acceptable to Australians’.48 The separation between Australia and ‘Old world countries’ was often invoked.49 Clearly, however, these ripples of public disquiet over British policy influence did not a counter the centrality of imperial influence in the period. The context of the 1937 election, fought on the issue of increasing military mobilisation in Europe, reinforces this point; popular affinity with Empire had been re-­‐affirmed when Lyon’s pro-­‐Chamberlain imperial policy defeated Curtin’s isolationism.50 Any characterisation of the Australian political sphere in the 1930s, liberal or otherwise, needs to be qualified with the persisting importance of imperialism. A similar point can be emphasised regarding the fissures of federalism that plagued the Commonwealth Government at least up until the Second World War. While the Engineers Case of 1919 is often marked as a turning point in the centralisation of powers when the High Court acknowledged the Commonwealth’s full constitutional capabilities, the 1920s and 1930s were marked by repeated clashes between the state and federal governments. National insurance maintained this pattern right until the eve of the war. All efforts to include unemployment insurance in the scheme was thwarted by the smaller states who felt that because of their relatively higher unemployment rates, their obligation in helping finance such benefits would unfairly affect their budgets.51 With the impact of the Depression still raw, the broader public considered the incapacity for the Lyons Government to include unemployment insurance a glaring 46 Neville Meaney. "Britishness and Australian identity: The problem of nationalism in Australian history and historiography." Australian Historical Studies 32, no. 116 (2001): 76-­‐90. 47 Colin Clark, “Bacon and eggs for breakfast”, Australian Quarterly, 9:4 (1937): 24-­‐31. 48 Argus, 18 March 1939, 2; Advertiser, 1 June 1938, 26. 49 Canberra Times, 15 November 1938, 12; Canberra Times, 15 November 1938, 12; Pastoralist, 16 June 1938, 1. In Parliament, Labor member Bernard Corser scolded Casey for ‘following too slavishly the scheme in operation in the Old Country’. CPD, Representatives, 25 November 1938, 2127. 50 George Fairbanks, “Isolationism vs imperialism: The 1937 election,” Politics 2 no. 2 (1967) 245-­‐255 51 “Problem of insurance, objections by the states,” Argus, 25 November 1938, 3; “National insurance, South Australia’s position,” West Australian, 14 December 1937, 16. The NSW and Victorian Premiers Stevens and Dunstan were in support of the scheme: “Premier disappointed, offered fullest cooperation,” SMH, 9 December 1938, 10; “Insuring the workers, abandonment of federal plan,” Argus, 9 December 1937, 3. 12 oversight.52 Yet when it was finally conceded that no such benefits would be included in the scheme at the Premiers Conference in late 1937, there was also much public resignation that the Commonwealth had it hands tied. National insurance was just another example of ‘the vexed and difficult question of federal financial relationships’.53 These fractures were of significant interest to commentators at the time, a number of pamphlet and books published expressing concern over the crippling economic impact of the frequent disagreements between state and federal government.54 The manifestation of such concerns in cases like national insurance must, like the issue of imperialism, serve as a qualification on the ways we think about the patterns of Australian federal governance in the period. National Insurance, Public Opinion and the Implementation of Policy Exploring popular responses to the implementation of social policy reform provides another avenue for historians to reappraise the contours of the historical political sphere. In this regard, Australian scholars are in some ways disadvantaged to their American counterparts in that polling records are only available from the 1940s. But there are other possible methods. By thinking about debates in the ‘public sphere’55 and carefully exploring responses in a wide range of ephemeral sources, historians might speculate on such popular responses and consider this a conversation between government and polity. Such an approach provides striking results in the case of national insurance, which was marked by great public rejection of the scheme from the latter half of 1938. Notably, the scheme was rejected by two groups in the community. First, as we will explore in the following section, was that of those affected by the scheme, working men and women. Secondly was the denouncement by the broader, non-­‐insured public. The source of contention for this second group was the Treasurer Richard Casey’s September 1938 budget announcement which included income tax increases to abridge a £3 million gap in outlay due to the bolstered defence program.56 This was the first time 52 See, for example, “Insurance plan, ANA disappointed,” Argus, 10 December 1937, 2; “National insurance,” Advertiser, 20 December 1937, 18; “Deliberate Lie,” Argus, 31 March 1938, 11. “Social insurance,” Advertiser, 4 May 1938, 24; “Insurance for pensions,” Courier Mail, 4 May 1938, 6. 53 Advertiser, 20 December 1937, 18. 54 Kenneth O. Warner, An Introduction to some problems of Australian Federalism (University of Washington Publications in The Social Services, 9, August 1932); Gordon Greenwood, The Future of Australian Federalism: A Commentary on the Working of the Constitution, (Melbourne University Press, 1946). 55 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy,” Social Text, 25-­‐26 (1990): 56-­‐80. 56 A surplus of £3.5 million in revenue was announced however expenditure was expected to increase from £86 million to £93 million, leaving a gap of £3 million. National insurance was forecast to cost general 13 income tax had been raised since the Depression had begun eight years earlier. The response of the broader public proved a further manifestations of the strictures of federalism, discussed above. For many, the need to increase income tax to help fund both the enlarged defence program as well as introduce national, suggested the Commonwealth were acting beyond their financial ambit. Commonwealth revenue was at the time only a fraction of what it would be following the major taxation reforms in 1942 with income tax still paid separately to both federal and state governments. 57 Under the existing federal income tax regime, which accounted for just 16 per cent of federal revenue and whose design was to tap into only a small portion of wages, government was not expected to yield such broad spending power. In light of the increased defence budget, a social insurance scheme designed to save Commonwealth revenue was, ironically, rejected by the public because it was feared government could not afford to pay for both at the present time. Furthermore, the Australian people had already been subject to significant tax increases at state level throughout the 1930s to help fund state unemployment relief (most unemployment relief was administered by the states, not the Commonwealth, throughout the Depression). In 1928, incomes of under £300 were still exempt from federal income tax and those under £200 from state tax.58 The Depression changed this and low income earners were grafted into state tax systems for the first time to help fund relief benefits while higher income earners faced tax increases to contribute to relief funds. The tax-­‐free threshold was dropped to affect incomes as low as £1 per week in Victoria, well below the basic wage.59 Many of these state unemployment relief taxes, though renamed, were still in place by 1938 and would remain so until the introduction of national uniform tax in 1942.60 National insurance now came to be perceived by both the insurable and non-­‐insurable public as the source of yet another income tax hike. revenue £1 million in the next financial year. Income tax was raised by 15 per cent, sales tax by 5 per cent, land tax by 11 per cent. See Sawer, Australian Politics and Law, 114. According to The Times (London): ‘The Budget introduced in the Federal Parliament this afternoon by Mr R.G. Casey, the Federal Treasurer, reverses Budgetary trends since 1932…the Lyons Government for the first time have been compelled to impose a fairly widespread increase of taxation’, The Times, 22 September 1938. 57 Total Commonwealth revenue grew exponentially throughout these years. In 1938-­‐39 it was £95 million, in £1942-­‐43 it was £294.5 million and in 1944-­‐45, £376.8 million. Income tax represented the greatest increases. In 1938-­‐39, it represented £11.8 million of revenue, in 1943-­‐43, £141 million and in 1944-­‐45 £215 million. Income tax represented only 16 per cent of revenue in 1938-­‐39, climbing to 63.4 per cent in 1944-­‐45. A pay-­‐roll tax was also introduced in 1941-­‐42, representing about £10 million in extra government revenue. Before the 1940s, the bulk of government revenue came from customs and excise. See Commonwealth Year Book 1944-­‐45, 665. 58 Julie Smith, Taxing Popularity (Australian Tax Research Foundation, 2004), 63-­‐65. 59 Butlin, Capitalism and Government, 172-­‐74 60 There was keen argument to have them abolished however, especially when increased employment figures were announcement in January 1938. “Employment,” Argus, 24 January 1938, p8. 14 Newspapers around the country, who throughout these years had a ‘habit for ventriloquism’ in proclaiming the public’s support to the scheme61, initially reported that it was expected the public would accept the increases ungrudgingly. The Taxpayers’ Bulletin, the mouthpiece of the national taxation lobby, the Australian Taxpayers’ Association, captured the public mood more accurately, insisting ‘non-­‐essential or deferrable work should be postponed.’62 National insurance was an obvious scapegoat. Protest now spread from not only insurable wage-­‐earners (see below) but to all those who paid federal income tax. The government was not thought to be able to increase its military budget and reform social provision at the same time. Those who thought the scheme was ‘highly desirable’ felt it now not ‘immediately necessary.’ Considering the Commonwealth’s limited resources, ‘no more inopportune time could have been chosen for its introduction.’63 Business interests, initially impressed by the attempt to cut the pension cost, now turned darkly against the scheme.64 From October 1938, public meetings and protest rallies were held regularly across the nation in town halls, often chaired by local mayors.65 In January 1939, the Taxpayers’ Association conducted a straw ballot and found that of 8000 members polled, 86 per cent were in favour of repeal. 66 In their magazine issue of the same month, they insisted public opposition was rooted ‘entirely in the fear that the financial load is greater than either the nation or the people individually can carry at the present juncture.’ By early 1939, as the U.A.P. Government fractured internally and looked increasingly incapable of implementing the scheme, private sentiment only intensified their predicament. ‘A breakdown occurred,’ wrote one newspaper correspondent, ‘the cause being the unwillingness of an increasing number of electors to accept it.’67 Others were more direct: ‘I have met very many who do not want the Act at any price either whole or chopped in half.’68 Historians have long mulled over the ‘strange death’ of national insurance, nominating the approaching war, unresolvable division within the Coalition government, intense lobbying from doctors and employers and even pressure from the 61 Murphy, A Decent Provision, 193. See also: Advertiser, 26 November 1937, 30; Advertiser, 20 December 1937, 18. Herald, 1 July 1938, Herald, 29 June 1938, Canberra Times, 26 June 1938, 2. 62 “How budget was received,” Taxpayers’ Bulletin, September 1938, 4. 63 “Letters,” Argus, 15 November 1938, 12; “Letters,” Courier Mail, 6 December 1938, 9. 64 Courier Mail, 30 November 1938, 5 65 “In other districts,” Argus, 6 August, 1938, 10; “Protests at Port Adelaide,” Advertiser, 31 August 1938, 24; “National Insurance criticised,” SMH, 7 November 1938, 7; “Other districts,” Argus, 8 November 1938, 7; “Wangaratta Protest,” Argus, 19 November, 1; “ANA Opinions,” Argus, 23 November 1938, 2; “Benalla citizens oppose scheme,” Benalla Ensign, 25 Friday November, 5; “Opposition to Act,” Argus, 22 November 1938, 3; “Drive against insurance,” Courier Mail, 24 November 1938, 3; “Opposition to the National Insurance Act,” Examiner, 3 December 1938, 3. 66 SMH, 14 April 1938, 12; Courier Mail, 14 April 1938, 9. 67 Advertiser, 3 March 1939, 28. 68 Argus, 18 March 1939, 4. 15 UAP’s financial backers as its poison.69 The pressure Casey’s budget applied to public perceptions of the scheme might now also be considered. What is important for our purposes here, however, is such a response raises questions about the perceptions the public had of the Commonwealth’s capacities to provide services before the Second World War. Any utilitarian or social liberal characterisation of the Australian political sphere in the 1930s might be qualified by episodes like the public denouncement of national insurance. Indeed, that famous image construed by economic historians of Australian governments persistently intervening in economic and social affairs since the nineteenth century,70 finds sharp relief in the letters to the daily metropolitan papers in this period, which expressed severe scepticism of what the Commonwealth, as opposed to the States, might achieve. National Insurance and conferring of political identities The problem of taxation and the responses it evoked from the public segues to questions about the way policies (like taxes) confer political identities on citizens. The case of national insurance is interesting, however, not because it conferred new political identities (as did the New Deal) but because it’s broad public rejection revealed and reaffirmed existing identities. Significantly, there was an independency, a gulf, between what the Lyons Government was seeking to achieve with the policy, both morally and fiscally, and the terms in which it was resisted by working men and women. The political identity of working women was clearly articulated during the debates over national insurance. When details of the scheme were announced by Casey in early 1938, women’s groups such as the Australian Federation of Women Voters (AWFV) and Sydney Feminists Club went on the attack. Outraged at the lower benefit rates women would receive compared to men, and absence of coverage for wife and dependants, they demanded the scheme’s liberalisation and launched a ‘national insurance amendment campaign’, including conferences, circular letters to parliamentarians and meeting with Prime Minister Lyons. 71 Between May 1938 and May 1939, the AWFV and their state 69 For each respective argument, see Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law, 1929-­‐49 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1963), 106; T.H. Kewley, Social Security in Australia, 159-­‐169, and Rob Watts, The Foundations of the National Welfare State (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 7-­‐26; James Gillespie, The Price of Health: Australian government and medical politics 1910-­‐1960 (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 87-­‐111; Frank Green, Servant of the House (Melbourne, Heinemann, 1969), 196; see also, Murphy, A Decent Provision, 190-­‐191. 70 N.G. Butlin, “Colonial Socialism in Australia,” in The State and Economic Growth, ed. Hugh Aitken (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1959), 26-­‐78; 71 Dawn, 18 May 1938; “Report on National Insurance Amendment Campaign,” Minutes, AFWV Meeting, 9th May 1938, MS 2818/4/28, NLA; Letter, Rischbieth to state vice-­‐presidents, AFWV, 14 June 1938, MS 2818/4/28, NLA 16 affiliates sent almost 400 telegrams protesting against national insurance.72 As Judith Brett has shown, middle-­‐class women in pre-­‐Second World War Australia considered citizenship rights as natural rather than a gift bestowed by the State: ‘Australian women argued for the vote not in order to become citizens but because they were already “patriotic and law-­‐abiding citizens”.’73 So it was with their expectation of social policy, arguing equality ‘has always been the cardinal feature of the present old-­‐age pension.’74 National insurance, they argued, threatened to entrench sex discrimination within society. Despite clear social inequalities between men and women during the period, this did not afflict their sense of equal civic identity. An ‘utterly retrograde’ step, national insurance did confer political identities on working women but it was one deeply at odds with their existing self-­‐understandings. Such activism was all the more intense within the labour movement, who from 1937 had campaigned against the contributory principle as an ‘impost on workers’ rights’ and ‘an abuse of the minimum wage’.75 Both the AWU and ACTU protested the scheme dissolved the workers’ right to a ‘free’ pension. ‘It was never intended that the people should finance a special fund to provide them with pensions in their old age,’ steamed the Australian Worker. 76 In April 1938, the Sheet Metal Workers Union were the first to formalise such complaints, protesting at their annual convention that the scheme was ‘a drastic inroad on the social rights of the Australian people’ and advocated nation-­‐wide strike action if necessary.77 The labour movement’s continual obliviousness to the material benefits promised under national insurance was a striking feature of their protest for it revealed something about their sense of political identity. In contrast to the government’s assertion of the moral benefits of the scheme, promoting ‘thrift’ and ‘self-­‐reliance’, labour found it ‘specious.’78 One pamphlet warned workers to be wary of such ‘demagogic phraseology.’79 Such qualities, workingmen would assert, they already possessed. 72 Annual Report, Australian Federation of Women Voters, 1939. 73 Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class, 58; See also Marian Sawer & Marian Simms, Ch 1, “Political rights and representation,” A Woman’s Place: women and politics in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993). 74Minutes, AFWV Meeting of the Australian Board, 7 February 1938, MS2818/3/24, NLA; Letter, Rischbieth to state vice presidents, AFWV, 4 April 1938, MS2818/4/28, NLA; “The forgotten citizens” SMH, 9 February 1938, 7; “Pensions Plan, Differential Rates for Sexes,” SMH, 26 February 1938, 10. 75WH Mackenzie and Matt Hyde, Mackenzie, National Insurance, A Burning Question: Lyons Government and the experts. Another barefaced swindle (Sydney: State Unemployed and Relief Workers’ Council of NSW, 1937); T. Wright, A Real Social Insurance Plan (Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1937). 76 Australian Worker, 30 March 30, 1938, 11; “ACTU opposed to contributory principle,” Advertiser, 28 May 1938, 30. 77 “Lyons seeks wage impost disguised as social insurance,” Workers Voice, 30 April 1938, 1. 78 “Insulting the workless,” Argus, 20 April 1938, 11 79 Ibid; WH Mackenzie and Matt Hyde, National Insurance, A Burning Question, 33; 17 These sentiments became all the more pertinent after the legislation was passed in mid-­‐1938. By this time, Curtin’s attacks on the scheme had proven ineffectual and the major unions, showing immense opportunism, had abandoned their protest. The larger unions, such as the AWU, had gained certification as approved societies to help administer the scheme when it was announced such societies would receive a rebate from the Commonwealth to help with the administration costs.80 The vitriolic protests in their publications were replaced with advertisements encouraging workers to join union approved societies. 81 With ALP opposition ineffectual and worker’s feeling betrayed by union officials, a remarkable form of protest emerged in Victoria in mid-­‐August 1938. The protest was an incredibly self-­‐sufficient movement of letter printing, distribution, signing and posting to federal members.82 These letters, which were all worded similarly, objected to the scheme’s ‘drastic lowering of the already low standard of living of the majority of people of Australia.’ They voiced resentment the scheme hadn’t been passed by referendum and threatened that if the ‘undemocratic measure’ was not repealed, all would be done to ensure the recipient parliamentary member’s ousting at the next election. By October, the protest had gone viral up the east coast and in November it was reported 250,000 letters had been sent from Victoria alone.83 The campaign became a major talking point in Parliament, as Labor members admitted to receiving letters and accused others of the same.84 Casey, who was in charge of piloting the scheme, was taunted as receiving more letters than Clark Gable.85 It is difficult to ascertain the driving force behind the campaign; Watts has emphasised the influence of the Communist Party, but the newly established Social Credit organisations also appeared heavily involved.86 What is of particular interest here, however, is what motivated such large numbers of workers to become involved. The scheme was perceived by many as intruding upon workers’ sense of independence. 80 Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July 1938, 12. 81 For examples of unions withdrawing protest against national insurance, see: “Insurance opposed,” Argus, 27 August 1939, p8; “Insurance Act repeal campaign, opposed by Trades and Labour Council,” Advertiser, 5 November 1938, 28; “Unions objections,” Argus, 18 November 1938, 17. Evidence from the AWU general meeting in January 1939 reveals this caused a deep a schism between unions and their members. One motion was moved by a delegate that the ‘Executive of the AWU be censured for endorsing the National Insurance Scheme as the AWU should be the last to support such a rotten measure,’ while all state secretaries of the new AWU approved societies expressed disappointment at their rate of signing members. Australian Workers’ Union. “Official Report of the 53rd Annual Convention.” (Sydney: 1939), 109-­‐115. 82 The People Demand the Repeal of the N.H.I. Act: The story of the birth and growth of a new movement (Melbourne: The General Practitioner, 1938). Details in the following paragraph come from this source, unless otherwise stated. 83 “250,000 letters of protest,” Argus, 22 November 1938, 3 84 CPD, Representatives 22 September 1938; CPD, Representatives 25 November 1938 p2125 85 CPD, Representatives 25 November 1938, p 2155; see also Argus, 26 November 1938, 4. 86 Watts, “Light on a Hill The Origins of the Australian Welfare State, 1935 -­‐1945" (Ph.D., University of Melbourne, 1983), 196; Courier Mail, 24 November 1938, 3. 18 ‘Any compulsory political scheme that touches the people’s private affairs is regimentation, which is a definite step towards totalitarianism,’ wrote one correspondent.87 The turn of phrase may have been exaggerated by contemporary fears, but it no less demonstrated the distance ordinary Australians expected between themselves and government. At the time, Frederic Eggleston described the ‘average-­‐
worker’ as a ‘self-­‐contained man.’ National insurance, ironically, despite its promise of self-­‐reliance and thrift, threatened this identity.88 Ann Firth has shown how the Australian welfare-­‐state created by economists in the post-­‐war reconstruction in the 1940s was designed around the recognition of the male worker’s conception of himself as the independent breadwinner, and thus emphasised full employment rather than wealth distribution, soothing his foremost fear of joblessness and protecting his sense of masculine identity.89 This legitimation of the independent, breadwinning male identity as social policy of course had broader social implications for women, but it nevertheless served to garner the support of the wage-­‐earners like national insurance couldn’t. This is not to downplay the reality of the protectionism which underlay the wage-­‐earners’ sense of independence. Wage regulation underwrote the sense of self-­‐
sufficiency. While Watt’s important account was right to question the distinction between the parties of ‘reform’ and ‘resistance’, Hancock’s 1930 account nevertheless remains vital for understanding common political consciousness of the time. He captured the silent ambiguity of protectionism, writing that ‘to the Australian, the State means collective power at the service of individualistic “rights”. Therefore he sees no opposition between his individualism and his reliance upon government.’90 This passage has become for many writers since, a classic articulation of Australian liberalism; evidence of the common wage-­‐earners’ ‘liberal’ character.91 The rejection of national insurance appears to reinforce this image. The problem with the scheme for the worker was it not only cut into the sanctity of his wage but it appeared to him to compel a greater reliance on the State than he was willing to cede. For many workers, whether national insurance was too costly or not, the scheme centred the state far more clearly in their lives than their concept of ‘living standards’ and ‘social rights’ allowed. The caveat to this sense of independence from government authority was the workers’ propensity to political activism, as well as women’s groups. Both couched their attacks on national insurance as a defence of ‘democracy’. This also became the position 87 “Letter,” Argus, 10 March 1938, 7. 88 Frederic Eggleston, State Socialism in Victoria (London, 1932), 331 89 Ann Firth, “The Breadwinner, his Wife and their Welfare: Identity, Expertise and Economic Security in Australian Post-­‐War Reconstruction,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 50 no. 4 (2004): 491-­‐508. 90 Hancock, Australia, p65. 91 Rowse, Australian Liberalism, Chapter One. 19 of those Australian’s writing to newspapers in 1939, when public sentiment had fully turned against the scheme following Casey’s budget announcement. One writer felt ‘enforcement of the Act against such a well-­‐defined expression of the people’s will would be gross travesty of democracy’; another likened it to the ‘Nazi idea that the people must have something they do not want,’ indicating ‘democracy appears to be a nuisance to many of our politicians.’92 We have long since become accustomed to political commentators insisting on the apathy inherent in Australian political culture; this, indeed, is cited a feature of Australia’s ‘liberal’ culture.93 The experience of workers and women in the debates around national insurance in the 1930s, following Hancock, also apparently ‘liberal’ in their political disposition, suggests something very different. This compliments Davies’ characterisation of politics being a ‘portentousness’ matter in the 1930s, ‘more deeply felt’ than by succeeding generations.94 If government intervention was a matter of little interest, or something to be resisted, the political process itself was itself to be vigorously defended and engaged with. Whether this squares with general liberal-­‐individualist characterisations of Australian politics, is something for future historians to consider. Conclusion By reflecting on the policy processes and public responses to the Lyons Government’s attempt to implement a national insurance scheme in 1937-­‐39, this paper has been working from a number of angles to illuminate some perspectives on how historians might think about and characterise the politics in 1930s Australia. These mini-­‐
experiments have been led by American scholarship in the New Deal, where a focus on patterns of governance, interpreting public reaction to policy implementation, and exploring how policies confer political identities, has greatly enriched the study of political development in twentieth century American history. The application of similar approaches to national insurance provide a mosaic of perspectives on late 1930s Australian politics. Patterns of governance can be characterised by not only a tension in a reforming social liberal ethos and fiscally-­‐motivated ‘benevolent cynicism’, as Watts’ termed it, but also by the strictures of imperialism and federalism which were far more 92 “Letters,” Advertiser, 26 November 1938, 26; “Letters,” Argus, 6 December 1938, 9. 93 Donald Horne, The Lucky Country (Ringwood: Penguin, 1964); Colin Hughes “Political Culture” in Australian Politics, ed. Mayer and Nelson, 133-­‐148; Clive Bean, "Conservative cynicism: political culture in Australia." International Journal of Public Opinion Research 5, no. 1 (1993): 58-­‐77; Dean Jaensch, Election! Why How and why Australia Votes (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995), 20-­‐1; Ian McAllister, “Political culture and national identity,” in New Developments in Australian Politics, eds. Brian Galligan, Ian McAllister and John Ravenhill (Melbourne: MacMillan, 1997), 3-­‐21. 94 Davies, Australian Democracy, 140-­‐1. 20 apparent in the 1930s than later in the twentieth-­‐century. The strains of federalism were further highlighted in public rejection of the scheme following the Treasurer’s budget announcement of income increases; the Commonwealth was seen as spending well beyond its means in a period when federal revenue was still greatly fractured amongst the States. Finally, new political identities were not conferred with the passing of national insurance; rather, the aims of the scheme and terms in which these were articulated were at odds with the political self-­‐understanding working men and women had already established. Yet while wage-­‐earners may have rebuked their involuntary drafting into the government’s scheme, their sense of independence from authority contrasted with their vigorous sense political activism. Resistance to government did not mean resistance to politics. None of these observations are entirely original and an existing historiography supports each. But a case study like national insurance brings such elements together in a way that makes for a problematical, historicised image of the Australian political sphere. This has been the achievement of recent New Deal scholarship and it has been the purpose of this paper to explore how the American example might enrich the currently beleaguered state of historical political scholarship in Australia. It was flagged at the start of this paper as to whether American research questions were applicable to the Australian experience. There are clear institutional and cultural differences which anticipate some of the American approaches. The intention here, however, has been to give some general redirection to how historians might interpret political development by reapproaching welfare history. The point of comparison is methodological, not empirical. This paper is an engagement, however tentative, with concerns Australian scholars have persistently expressed about the way Australian politics has been studied, particularly the absence of nuanced interpretations and capacity to histories their characterisations of the political sphere.95 At the same time as U.S. scholars were beginning to problematize the American liberal tradition by developing alternate perspectives of the New Deal in the 1990s, Australian historians were uncovering (or erecting) Australia’s own predominant liberal tradition. While this has been enriching it has also generated problems of its own. Chief among these is how historians might think about the implications this liberal-­‐individualism – the ways in which politics is experienced and how is it popularly understood. The purpose of this paper was not to 95 Hugh Emy, “The roots of Australian politics: a critique of culture,” Politics 7 no. 1 (1972); Crozier, Michael. "A problematic discipline: The identity of Australian political studies." Australian Journal of Political Science 36, no. 1 (2001): 7-­‐26. 21 draw out any such conclusions about these implications, but to suggest some possibilities for how historians might penetrate, problematize or texture this liberal framework. Asking questions of the ‘lived experience’ of moments like national insurance brings to the fore a range characteristics of the polity. Certainly, some of these, such as the reinforced image of the ‘self-­‐sufficient’, independent wage-­‐earner, might be termed ‘liberal’. But to ask questions about his engagement in certain historical instances is to reflect on the political self-­‐understanding of the ‘wage-­‐earner’, his relationship to the state, and his understanding of the meaning of politics. The approaches taken in this paper are, then, an attempt to begin to get under this liberal interpretation, taking cue from an American body of literature that has been able to achieve such perspectives. 22