BOOK: Welfare Wars Revisited
Date: 26 January 2008
Australia's
Welfare Wars Revisited: The players, the politics and the ideologies
Philip Mendes
Published by UNSW Press
RRP $44.95
This book 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.
This edition brings the reader right up to date through the use of new case studies that help to explain contemporary Australian welfare policies and outcomes, and to assist readers as they predict likely future directions.
Rigorous and informative, this is the only Australian social policy text which systematically analyses the impact of ideologies, political parties and key lobby groups on welfare policy debates.
THE AUTHOR
Dr Philip Mendes is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Community Development in the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Medicine, Monash University.
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