| Abstract: | This paper examines the changes in the terms of citizen‐state relations that are coded in Australia's current program of welfare reform. It argues that welfare reform entails a shift from welfare as a limited social right of citizenship to welfare as a form of support conditional upon completing specified obligations, and from the provision of support as a cash payment to support coupling cash with personal services. Together, these shifts have the scope transform the relation between citizen and state fundamentally. This is no less than a shift from social policy citizenship in which claimants are presumed to act on their own behalf to paternalistic support and care directed to reforming character and values as well as to meeting need. The paper argues that this shift violates the fundamental equality essential to social policy citizenship. |
