Australia's Welfare Wars Revisited: The Players, the Politics and the Ideologies

Abstract

This represents a substantial revision of Philip Mendes' successful textbook Australia's Welfare Wars, in which the author explains - and questions - many of the values and assumptions that underpin contemporary social welfare policies. In particular, the book is critical of the Neo-liberal or Economic rationalist ideas that now dominate the welfare debates in Australia and overseas, and instead demonstrates and reaffirms the ongoing relevance of social-democratic and welfare-state ideals.