Voluntary Action, Social Welfare and the Australian Assistance Plan in the 1970s1

Abstract

The Australian Assistance Plan (AAP), a little-remembered yet radical and imaginative program of social welfare reform, was introduced by the Whitlam government in 1973 and abolished three years later by the Coalition government of Malcolm Fraser. This article will chart the history of the short-lived AAP, its genesis and its demise, and argue that the AAP, while always controversial, helped to reinvigorate the voluntary sector in Australia and recast ways in which governments and voluntary organisations interacted, especially in terms of social welfare delivery.