13 Social Security Administration: Producing Poverty and Punishment Scarlet Wilcock Introduction In the chapter on social security in Law and Poverty in Australia: Second Main Report (‘the Sackville Report’), 1 Professor Ronald Sackville throws light on the ways in which social security law and practice can exacerbate poverty. Sackville begins by affirming the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty: First Main Report (‘the Henderson Report’) to introduce a guaranteed minimum income in Australia. 2 But, as Sackville warns, even if the issue of payment adequacy is comprehensively addressed, unfair or ineffective administration of payments could still lead to ‘grave’ outcomes for recipients, many of whom rely on payments ‘for their very economic survival’. 3 In short, social security administration can itself produce poverty and injustice. In the forty years since the Sackville Report, the Australian social security system has undergone seismic shifts. Philip Mendes describes this era as one of ‘backlash’ in Australian welfare policy. 4 These reforms have centred on the retraction of many welfare programs, the imposition of more restrictions and obligations on the receipt of social security, particularly unemployment benefits, and the roll out of a compliance regime designed to detect and punish non-compliance by recipients 5 These local reforms epitomise a global trend underpinned by waning support for the Keynesian welfare state, once an accepted feature of Western statehood. 6 Whereas Sackville described the dominant view of income maintenance in 1975 as a ‘right … rather than a privilege which can be denied or withdrawn without sound 1 Australian Government Commission of Inquiry into Poverty, Second Main Report, Law and Poverty in Australia (AGPS, 1975) (the ‘Sackville Report’) 2 Australian Government Commission of Inquiry into Poverty, First Main Report, Poverty in Australia (AGPS, 1975) (the ‘Henderson Report’). 3 Australian Government Commission of Inquiry into Poverty, above n 1, 163-164. 4 Philip Mendes, Australia’s Welfare Wars Revisited: The Players, The Politics and the Ideologies (University of NSW Press, 2 nd ed, 2008). 5 Ibid. 6 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, ‘After the Golden Age? Welfare State Dilemmas in a Global Economy’ in Gøsta Esping-Andersen (ed), Welfare States in Transition: National Adaptations in Global Economies (Sage, 1996) 1; Basak Kus, ‘Neoliberalism, Institutional Change and the Welfare State: The Case of Britain and France’ (2008) 47 International Journal of Comparative Sociology 488.