Ben Spies-Butcher

• PhD Economics (Sydney University)
• Professor (Associate) at Macquarie University

The COVID‐19 pandemic led to widespread social and economic policy experimentation as governments sought to protect household finances while locking down economies. Cash transfers emerged as one of the most popular policy measures, leading many to reflect on new possibilities for enacting universal basic income through temporary or emergency interv...

Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have a long history, but a surge of interest since the global financial crisis suggests a connection to growing inequality and insecurity. The pandemic intensified interest through the global explosion in the use of cash transfers. This special issue arose from pre-pandemic debates among Australian socio...

International studies using the European Social Survey (ESS) reveal higher support for Universal Basic Income (UBI) in poorer countries with less generous welfare systems, and among individuals with lower income and education, and leftist political leanings. We present data from the 2019−20 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes mirroring the ESS qu...

Movements for racial and Indigenous justice are targeting rapidly expanding budget allocations for prisons and police. In Australia, Indigenous Communities are seeking to redirect public money from the criminal justice system to Indigenous-controlled services and infrastructure through ‘justice reinvestment’. This article explores the possibilities...

This article examines the impact of recent European basic income experiments on the re-emergence of basic income in Australian public policy and political debate. We argue that while basic income experiments in general have garnered some attention in Australia, the Finnish basic income pilot has been particularly significant. We trace this influenc...

The financialization of households complicates how we compare housing systems and welfare states. This article explores the shifting relationships between wealth inequality, welfare states and household risk, focussing on the roles of housing and mortgage markets. We show national regimes of capitalism continue to shape experiences of risk, but inc...

Retirement incomes and aged care have both received considerable policy attention in Australia over the last three decades, but as in other countries, the two financing systems have remained largely separate in policy and practice. The problem is located at the intersection of wider policy debates about shifts from public to private welfare and con...

Despite growing interest in proposals for a universal basic income, little advance has been made in implementation. Here we explore policy options for an Australian Basic Income. Our analysis responds to concerns that Basic Income is both too expensive and too radical a departure from existing welfare state structures to be a feasible policy option...

Workfare is an exemplar of neoliberal welfare reform generating precarity. In response, critics have sought to advance a politics of universalism, through either a return to social democracy or the embrace of a universal basic income. Yet, these responses invoke different understandings of universalism. This paper explores the politics of universal...

This chapter explores a “stepping stones” approach to Basic Income in the Australian context. It identifies two policy changes that would mark a partial shift away from Australia’s highly means-tested transfer system towards a more universal model of income support.

Income-contingent loans are increasingly used by governments around the world to finance the costs of higher education. We use the case of income-contingent loans to explore how states are bringing the architecture of financial markets inside the state, disrupting conventional understandings of marketisation that are linked to concepts of commodifi...

Economists typically argue population ageing generates fiscal pressures by restricting the tax base while increasing demands for social spending. Alongside other economic pressures associated with neoliberalism, this dynamic contributes to a politics of ‘enduring austerity’ that limits governments’ fiscal discretion. The politics of population agei...

Income-contingent loans (ICLs) are becoming widely adopted across higher education sectors internationally, and increasingly proposed for other policy domains. This article explores why this policy form has gained such wide popularity in the context of fiscal austerity and greater financialisation of social policy. It argues ICLs act as a policy hy...

Growing global integration, combined with the collapse of Soviet Communism, created major challenges for centre-left politics in the democratic world. This article considers two transformative Labour Party-led experiments that refurbished the welfare states of Australia and the United Kingdom, respectively. In Australia, this includes the Hawke–Kea...

Researchers have increasingly recognised a link between homeownership levels and retirement policy, particularly in English-speaking welfare states. Housing is central to asset-based welfare policies, which may enable households to efficiently manage life course risks, but may exacerbate wealth inequality and expose them to market volatility. Austr...

Despite growing evidence of significant impacts from human-induced climate change, policy responses have been slow. Understanding this policy inertia has led to competing explanations, which either point to the need to build a consensual politics separated from economic partisanship, or which encourage solidarities between environmental and social...

Recent discussions of welfare reform have been unusually divided between those who see Australian welfare transformed by neoliberalism and those who argue social spending has increased. This chapter explores this tension. It argues economic restructuring has significantly increased market inequalities, undermining an older ‘wage earner’ consensus....

Across the developed world, population ageing has coincided with rising living standards and expectations in retirement. Since the 1980s this has led to growing concern about the sustainability of public pension systems. Australia has been held up as an example of prudent fiscal management, as it looked to fund retirement incomes through compulsory...

Australian social policy has seen apparently contradictory developments over the period of economic restructuring. Social spending has increased based on a highly redistributive model while inequality has grown. This article explores the relationship between Australia’s experience of economic restructuring and the political dynamics of an emerging...

Australia and New Zealand developed distinctive ‘wage-earner welfare states’, with social protection largely delivered through high breadwinner basic incomes and residual social policies. Market reforms then pursued in both countries during the 1980s and 1990s retrenched important elements of the Antipodean model. Our article offers a novel charact...

Market Society: History, Theory, Practice explores the social basis of economic life, from the emergence of market society in feudal England to the complex and interwoven markets of modern capitalist society. This lively and accessible book draws upon a variety of theories to examine the social structures at the heart of capitalist economies. It co...

The 2011 NSW election produced the largest two-party swing in recent Australian election history, ending 16 years of Labor government. It raises the prospect of the end of Labor's dominance of NSW politics. This paper focuses on the consequences of ALP instability for the Party's electoral opportunities and strategy in the lead-up to its 2011 defea...

Traditionally, older people have been the key targets of Australia's targeted welfare state. Flat rate pensions and widespread home ownership have ensured relative equality in older life. However, in response to perceived fiscal pressures generated by population ageing, Australia has increasingly shifted its policy settings, encouraging private sav...

In advanced democracies, unions influence industrial relations through collective action and law. They also maintain influence in politics through their alliances with labour parties. But the weakness of some labour movements, most apparent in falling membership, raises questions about their capacity to shape future industrial relations policy, rea...

There is increasing political consensus in Australia that climate change poses real threats to our economy and society, and that some form of policy action is necessary to address these risks. However, as this consensus has grown, so has confusion and disagreement over the nature of that policy response. What appeared to be growing support for an e...

International debates about the comparative institutional structures of welfare states have focused on social expenditure and the inclusiveness of social policy. However, these debates have not accounted for the significant rise of fiscal welfare and, in particular, social tax expenditures (STEs) in our understanding of welfare regimes. The growth...

According to recent international research, political mobilisation at the local level no longer reflects socioeconomic divisions in society, but is instead based on a post-material oriented ‘politics of choice’. This proposition is applied to group politics within six Sydney communities. We broaden the examination of political activity undertaken b...

Australia's welfare model – targeted payments alongside low but progressive taxation – exemplifies the targeted approach, prioritizing the needs of poorer citizens within the constraints of low taxation. But does this approach match the welfare orientations of Australia's voters? Does the public hold other views about welfare, emerging out of compe...

Principal-agent theory alerts principals to their problematic relationship with agents. The former are encouraged to take deliberate action to counter asymmetries in knowledge, moral hazard etc. To avoid this, principals should determine outcomes and contracts and incentives should be designed to achieve them. This approach has influenced the form...

Recent election campaigns have been dominated by the theme of responsible economic management . Both major political parties have sought to take credit for the long economic boom in Australia. Yet, increasingly financial markets and economic commentators see governments and politicians as largely irrelevant to the task of economic management. Decad...

Social capital is one of the most exciting new concepts to have emerged from within economics in the past decade. It promises to reconcile traditional market approaches with an understanding of intangible social dimensions to economic activity, such as trust and community. At the same time, the concept of social capital has been criticised as a for...

Contractually based purchaser-provider relationships have been adopted in a variety of human services settings in recent years. These programs have been extensively promoted by both federal and state governments. Two rationales have been offered. First, governments need to control ballooning welfare and human service budgets and they claim that thi...

This paper is a reflection on the NSW Department of Education debating and public speaking programs and efforts to make these programs more inclusive and democratic. This paper is largely a reflection on my experience as a teacher/trainer and adjudicator in debating and public speaking for the Performing Arts Unit in the NSW Department of Education...