MSWPG7210 Social policy, Development and Impact - Research Essay

Introduction

The design of mutual obligation requirements is such that it ensures that unemployed people who have been receiving activity tested income support payments and are actively looking for work along with participation in activities which will help them in in future employment. This particular essay therefore studies the fundamental concept of mutual obligation requirements for job seekers. The essence that the essay holds is that of the neoliberal ideology which has been discussed in great detail in the same.

The Mutual Obligation Requirements Contract vis-à-vis the Neoliberal Ideology

The neoliberal market principles to be disused in the context of the mutual obligation requirements in Australia are underpinned by the control and choice that is related with the provision of hybrid rationalities. For instance, Soldatic (2018) describes how “markets are practically perceived to be a better platform for the organisation of the economic activity due to the reason that these markets are associated with the economic efficiency, intense competition, and choice. The fact of the matter is that the market then makes the provision for a mechanism so as to deliver for the diverse needs and requirements of the people - the citizens of Australia - centred on the individual. For instance, the case of the disability movement may be considered as an example; the disability movement may be considered as a policy actor which has often been critiqued in contemporary research literature and argued for the recognition of the people’s autonomy with any sort of disability and impairment through control, choice and planning of an individualised nature in such as way so as to fit with the neoliberalism emphasis on the market.

The act of positioning of the job seekers as the job consumers in the market fundamentally means that the job seekers are actually empowered in their relationship with the providers of service the latter of which have the choice to withdraw the funding in case, they do not realise the desired outcome. As suggested by Mendes (2017), the active consumer is actually the force which requires the most modern public services to be responsive and adaptive or dynamic, flexible and diverse. At the same time, authors such as Stafford  et al. (2019) have argued that these must bear an entrepreneurial mindset and must be characterised by an innovative and enterprising nature rather than paternalist and operating on a rigid model which, in turn, is characterised by the notion of ‘one size fits all’. This actually puts the job seekers in charge of the support and care system which previously used to control, rather manipulate them, and also determine their livelihoods and life chances.

The second example, in the context of this discussion, is that of the reflection of the experiences of numerous people who have been suffering from a disability under the former care 217 and support system. Wheller (2015), for instance, discusses the testimony of Tofuaipangai & Camilleri (2016) to the productivity commission’s inquiry into disability care and support. In the light of this enquiry, the services of disability through the market are perceived to be provided by those suppliers who are considered to be efficient and are perceived to be disciplined by the competitive market realities. This has resulted into a shift in the provision of disability service from the public to the private industries legitimized in a number of ways. At the same time, the private industries also reflect the criticism the already existing services of disability by the disability movement and also the people who are currently suffering from any sort of disability. For instance, there are many submissions and statements by commentators to the senate community affairs committee enquiry into the NDIS bill of 2012, thereby highlighting the excessive amounts of red tape, waiting list, inadequate provision of service and a complex system. The statement by Deeming (2016) is that at the core an attack on the bureaucratic inertia and the inefficiency, along with the celebration of the dynamic nature of the market and also its innovativeness and flexibility. The fundamental nature of criticism which has been put forth in the work of the author is actually from the context of the United Kingdom, there are still some similarities between the critiques defined about public provision and the Australian criticisms of the already existing disability support and care system. It has been noted that search types of critiques are actually envisaged to be addressed only through the market. On the contrary, at a time when the market is actually perceived to deliver control and choice to the job seekers thereby engaging the job seekers to engage with the mutual obligation, it is actually the gateway to funding of an individualized nature. This is particularly goes hand in hand with the arguments put forward by the author Stevenson (2015, November) in relation to the mutual obligation contract as it has been discussed in the context of Australia; the argument of the author is that power is actually disproportionate in the context of a welfare state and that there is only a little scope for any sort of negotiation, that those who approach the welfare state in a general manner do so in a position of financial instability. In addition to that, parts of the mutual publication contract are actually dismantling the existing services of disability in order to align these services with the principles of the market and also work on set a model which is in individualized nature rather than established on block funding. While most importantly this kind of dismantling is justified as delivering a new system which is based on control and toys that can sufficiently provide for the needs of the people with disability, it essentially abandons people with disability with a severe lack of choice. For some of the job seekers, it particularly means that their current choice may be deconstructed and problematized. 

This particularly gives out a reflection of the underlying complexity which has been referred to in the work of Watts (2016); according to the author, concerns are raised about the existence of neoliberal market principles that underpin the provision of support and care to the people with profound disability in the context of Australia. The author argues that despite the fact of deregulation of the disability support system being transactioned as a continuation of activist drive for the people to have more toys and control over the services they use, the market principles are fundamentally not being broadly employed so as to challenge the barriers to inclusion and participation that people with disability actually experience. In this particular model, rather, the rights of the people that are being defended are actually those of individualized consumers within a market facing deregulation with little or no expectations of any sort of structural change. The author has also suggested that as a consequence, there is actually unravelling of the social contract between the government of Australia and the citizens of the country with the help of a focus on funding packages with individualisation to be met by the Australian market. The author also argues that this could essentially mean that the government of Australia practically has little or no obligation to deliver any sort of a broader social change and break down the social barriers that are experienced by the people which are not experienced by a healthy citizen of the country. However, the question as to whether the individual choice will facilitate the structural change for the people still remains to be answered by contemporary research literature in the very same domain.

The barriers to work that are faced by the people who have remained unemployed for a very long period of time and also the people at risk of long-term unemployment actually traverse policy and service boundaries. They travers the regional and the federal government jurisdictions, departments and portfolios and also the national frontiers. They are fundamentally overlapping, compound, multidimensional and mutually reinforcing. They practically highlight the lack of coherence and the inconsistencies in the social and economic policies (Watts, 2016). If the government decides to overcome these barriers, there is an eclectic range of considerations on part of the government to demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of public services. While the targeted incentives and new models of delivery might as well alter the behaviour of the actors in a specific sphere of policy, the quantification of the overall impact of those actions can be quite difficult in the broader environment of shifting government regulatory, contracting, funding and reporting arrangements. Affecting real change practically challenges the capacity of the government to draw different is trends of policy simultaneously, to practically reconcile priorities that are competing against each other, to articulate explicit and clear, overarching goals for public investment, and to protect the service users who are vulnerable to any sort of exploitation or neglect in the pursuit of efficiency. Theoretically, this is actually encapsulated by the phrase ‘creating public value’ through a strategic design and the implementation of public policy, thereby achieving the worth of shareholder value in a form of public management that focuses on the collective good. Get at the same time, the rhetoric of strategic, coordinated and integrated delivery and design of public services is very really backed up by any third of structural or infrastructural collaboration or even systematic attempts to understand and capture the communicative influence of policy in the government.

Responsibility which is associated with the receipt of government or taxpayer funds for the resources that are specifically in the welfare state is actually reflected in the governing people with a PCW. For instance, the regulation through the mutual obligation contract in welfare to work practically reflects the responsibility is to be tied to income support receivership (Deeming, 2016). For the people with a PCW, the conduct of the people is actually surveyed and monitored through job capacity assessments, activity assessments, thereby mandating the people to report their weekly earnings, searching for and actually recording a specified number of employment contracts per a stipulated time frame, and also producing certificate soft employer contact which document their work application. 

As illustrated earlier in contemporary research studies, the welfare to work legislation states, for instance, that “the person must give the secretary a written statement from each employer whose job vacancy the person applied for during that period that confirms that the person applied for that job vacancy”. The workers are also disciplined through imposing penalties where take and potentially lose their payment for 8 weeks if they demonstrate an inappropriate conduct and hence lose their job in return. At the same time, the workers also must ensure that they practically do not commit a new start participation failure. Furthermore, with the help of income management on part of the people who are the citizens of Australia, a part of the income of the people is actually quarantined and their spending behaviour is actually restricted through this allowing their access to lump sum payments rejected AUD 200 (Deeming, 2016). 

Conclusion

To conclude, this essay has discussed extensively the case of the mutual obligation contract for the job seekers in the Australian settings. The discussion has been specifically conducted in the context of the neoliberal market principles and hence, is actually and raised with the contemporary debates in theoretical research literature pertaining to the same subject area of focus. Many examples of how the mutual obligation contract for job seekers of Australia has worded the neoliberal ideology have been discussed in this particular essay.