Social Rights in Australia

Australia diverges from other developed countries in not providing specific legal protection for social rights, which are protected only indirectly in Australian law. When crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or financial crises require governments to reduce expenditure, there is little bulwark against changes that narrow legal protection or reduce funding. This chapter introduces social rights in Australia and reviews three specific examples to illustrate the impacts of this divergence: laws concerning disability discrimination, the national disability services scheme, and the provision of unemployment benefits. Crises have revealed limitations or weaknesses of protection in each area, and government reluctance to repair the damage to rights. Because many benefits are not insurance based or contributory, they are not treated as individual rights but as privileges, and vulnerable to reductions when the government seeks to reduce expenditure. A convergence factor, the government’s political orientation to neoliberalism, market primacy and outsourcing, has produced approaches similar to the United Kingdom and United States of America in some areas at the general policy level. Overall, however, specific details of protection of social rights and responses to crises have been influenced by distinctive features of the Australian context and diverged from models in other jurisdictions.