It was based on a partnership with state governments, the professions, and insurance organisations; it applied universally throughout Australia; it
'touched every stage of life' in its successive steps; it had the 'active and voluntary* partnership of the professions, so ensuring that it worked smoothly, economically, and without abuse; and it promised to be self- supporting. It would also be an 'effective bulwark against the social isation of medicine'. The great danger of government-aided health schemes, which v/as their tendency to develop a psychology of dependence and to
diminish personal and communal responsibility, had been avoided by the device of stimulating voluntary insurance through government subsidies. This would encourage self-reliance and direct contributions. The scheme was, as many on the government side like to characterise it, one of
'helping people to help themselves'. Page, himself a former surgeon, went further and eulogised the 'social and moral uplift' which would derive from the co-operative and 'self-help' aspects of the scheme. The BMA, which Page had consulted closely in drawing it up, accepted the bill as meeting
3 its requirements for a national scheme.
4
Labour attacked the L-CP scheme on the grounds that its contributory methods would make it more difficult for the poorer sections of the
population to get adequate medical attention. Citizens were entitled to full medical attention as taxpayers, Labour spokesmen said; they should not have to make additional contributions to medical benefits sodefies which were, in any case, controlled by doctors themselves. The scheme did not cover mental and dental care, nor did it initiate measures which would 1 Garnett, Freedom and Planning in Australia, p. 142.
2 CP D , V o l . 221, pp. 1756-62, and HR2, pp. 154-67.
3 Labour, however, believed that the BMA had accepted from the Liberal government parts of the Labour scheme which it had previously rejected. (See Kewley op. cit., p. 346n, and Crisp, op. cit., p. 318.)
4 See, for example, the speech of Allan Fraser, Labour's spokesman on health, CP D , HR 2 , pp. 225-34.
promote good health in the community. Replying to these charges, Liberals were mainly content to rely on the proclaimed superiority of their
principles of self-help, voluntarism and co-operation, and to embarrass Labour by recalling the constitutional troubles which Chifley's scheme had encountered and also Labour's difficulties with the BM A .^
After it had enacted its own health scheme, the Liberal government's major problem in social policy was to find a way by which it could
eliminate the means test on aged pensions. The original creed of the
LPA had stated that social provisions should be 'on a contributory basis'
2
and 'free from a means test'. The means test was, according to the 3
later platform, a 'deterrent to thrift’. Menzies' policy speech of 1946 recommended a 'contributory social insurance scheme' in which every
contributor would have the right of benefit 'without means test at all'; 4 national insurance, he said, was 'democratic, fair and self-respecting*. The joint policy speech of 1949 re-stated this idea and promised to
'further investigate this complicated problem' with a view to presenting
5
a scheme for approval at the next election. After the double dissolution of 1951 had set back the government's time-table, Menzies reported in his policy speech of 1954 that, because of the high level of taxation and social services expenditure, it was now 'not practicable completely to abolish the Means Test'. The government would, however, 'continue
vigorously the work of modifying it, having in mind the majority of hard cases'.^ Policy speeches after 1954 usually promised further relaxation of the means test. In 1960, however, in what probably signalled the end of the battle for a full contributory system, the 'no means test’ and
'contributory' clauses of the original platform were altered to 7
'progressive liberalisation' and 'incentive'.
The main argument used by Liberals for a contributory system in g
respect of age pensions was that it permitted payments to be made as a matterof 'right', whereas a non-contributory system inevitably required 1 See the debate on the bill, C P D , HR2.
2 See Forming the Liberal Party of Australia, pp. 14-15. 3 'Social Security', cl. 2. (1948).
4 p. 9. 5 p. 22. 6 p. 18.
7 cl. 100(b). The phrase 'on a contributory basis, free from a means test' was also deleted from the revised platform.
8 See Kewley, Social Security in Australia, chs. VIII and X, and Australia's Welfare State, ch. 5.
a means test which involved a person in the ’humiliation* of having to reveal his assets. Obtaining their benefits as an entitlement from
contributions, without any of the 'stigma of charity’, enabled recipients to preserve their self-respect. In their most telling argument, critics of the non-contributory system argued that the means test was intrinsically unjust because it penalised thrift, often leaving the person who had saved conscientiously no better off than the less deserving person who had not bothered to make any provision for himself.
The Liberal government’s compromise solution to the problem — to encourage contributions through a subsidised medical benefits system and to progressively liberalise the means test — did not satisfy some sections of the Liberal party and its supporters. The Federal Council regularly passed resolutions calling for the abolition or swifter liberalisation of the means test. An investigation of the means test in 1959 by the social services committee of government members resulted in criticism which forced the government to review the operation of the test. This led to the greatly
O
liberalised means rest of 19bl in which ’property’ and ’income’ were merged." Individual back-benchers occasionally pressed for its complete abolition or for the removal of its more objectionable features. K.C. Wilson, chairman for many years of the social services committee, advocated the abolition of the means test for persons reaching 70 years of age. He suggested that his
3
scheme could be financed by a compulsory contribution. 17.C. Wentworth 4 persistently argued for the removal of the means test over three years. Among the Liberal party’s supporting interests, the ACCA was a staunch proponent of national contributory insurance. These critics together made
four main points in their argument against the principle or actual operation of the means test. It discriminated unfairly against the more provident person; it discouraged people from working and saving; it tempted people to deliberately dissipate or hide their assets in order to avoid disqualification and it obliged departments to pry into an applicant's private affairs.
1 As one example: 'That this Council request the Federal Government to continue its policy of liberalising the means test on age pensions in v/ays that will encourage thrift'. (Minutes of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Federal Council. 29-30 September 1958, p. 158.)
2 Kewley, Social Security in Australia, pp. 296-7. 3 ibid., p. 299; cf. Tierney, 'Social Policy', p. 215.
A
ibid«, pp. 300-1; and see a report cn one of his speeches in the Australian L i b e r a l , November 1965, pp.ll, 13. Wentworth, UHR for MacKellai (A3<3 1949- , was a prolific publicist for this and otherfavourite causes.
While they did not openly repudiate the principle behind the
compulsory contributory system of insurance, ministers for social services and others replying to these arguments''" threw doubt upon the reputedly just and self-supporting nature of contributory insurance. Not all citizens, they pointed out, were able to contribute, and frequently the most needy could not contribute at all. The classical notion of insurance was, in
2
any case, for a 'pooling' of risks. Furthermore, the evidence of overseas schemes indicated that inflation and the inevitable expansion of social services produced deficits which could only be made up through taxation. Their most practical argument drew attention to the enormous cost of
abolishing the means test completely. The effect of abolition, they added, would be not to make any more aid available to those already dependent upon pensions, but to make eligible for pensions those ’whose circumstances had been sufficiently favourable for them previously to have been disqualified.
From 1956 the L-CP government departed even further from the strict principle of contributory insurance by paying special attention to the needs
3
of more indigent groups. In that year it provided for the payment of an additional pension for second and subsequent children of widow pensioners. Two years later it introduced supplementary assistance for single pensioners. The Minister for Social Services explained that the government was
recognising for the first time in Australia's history that there were groups of pensioners 'with special needs' even within the general scheme of social services. New standard rates for single pensioners and a new benefit
(mothers' allowances) were also introduced in 1965 on the basis of the principle of special needs. The principle underlying this series of acts was then publicly defined in 1965 by the minister of the day as being that of the 'relative needs of households'. In framing a more equitable
structure of social services, the minister said, the government had been guided by the general policy of 'ensuring that people in the poorest circumstances received the most assistance'.
1 See, for example, A.G. Townley (then Minister for Social Services), A Few Thoughts on Social Services, [Canberra, 1952]. This is a
summary of an address given by Townley to the Federal Council on 27 October 1952. See also his article on 'Social Service Benefits the Means Test', Canberra Comments, Vol. IX, No. 2, (February 1952), pp. 1-3. Cf. the extracts from the speeches by H. Roberton, a later L-CP Minister for Social Services, in Kewley, Social Security in Australia, pp. 254, 386.
2 This phrase was used by Beveridge in his Report, p. 13.
3 This paragraph is based on Kewley, Australia's .'.eI fare State, ch. 3, esp. pp. 109-17. The quotation at the end of the paragraph is from p. 114. The minister was I.M. Sinclair (Country Party).
To the mid-sixties only minor amendments had been made to the main items of Liberal social service legislation. The debate between the parties after the National Health Act of 1953 continued to turn on those same differences of principle which had emerged in the debates between 1944 and 1953.^ Liberals lauded a structure which in their own terms incorporated aid to the unfortunate who were unable to provide for them selves and still rewarded self-help. Labour contended that the fundamental right of every citizen to proper medical care demanded the setting up of a comprehensive system in which full hospital and medical care was available to all without charge and without means test. It promised to introduce a
scheme in which commonwealth benefits were not conditional upon subscription to voluntary insurance funds. It also pressed for the extension of
medical services to cover chronic illness, mental health and dental care and to provide special facilities for all disadvantaged people. Liberals did not deny that the health scheme had shown some weaknesses; but they argued that their government had done as much as possible for social welfare and security consistent with its other commitments and with the need to retain incentives. They claimed that the controls and salaried medical service which were entailed by Labour's proposals constituted the
basis of that same system of socialised medicine which had proved unworkable in the 1940s.
From the late 1950s criticism of the entire Liberal social service structure began to mount in more conservative quarters. In 1961 and again in 1964 the Federal Council passed resolutions calling for a thorough
2
examination of the national health scheme. The Federal Women's Committee, which had earlier expressed concern at the plight of civilian widows and
3
deserted migrant women, urged the government in 1959 to establish pensions 4
on a basis in keeping with the cost of living. The State Council of the NSVv 5
division made an examination of the problems of aboriginals in 1965. A con tributor to Australian Liberal who declared herself to be both a Liberal and pensioner pointed out the suffering -- and possible electoral antagonism to 1 See, for example, the debates on the National Health Bill 1957, CPD,
HR17, pp. 1935 ff.; and on the Social Services Bill 1962, ibid., HR32, pp. 33ff.
2 Minutes of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Federal Council, 12-13 November 1962, p. 215; and Minutes of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Federal Council, 6-7April 1964, p. 229. In 1964 the Council set up a committee to report on ways and means of abolishing the means test on social service pensions.
3 See liberal Opinion, September, 1955, p.6. 4 Australian Liberal, September 1959, p. 3. 5 ibid., September, 1965, p. 6.
the Liberal party -- of those from the middle and lower middle classes who now had to live on the pension.^ A'special correspondent' for the same journal presented evidence that Australia was lagging behind other
2