The politics of the new welfare state: social tax expenditures and the second tier of Australian welfare

"Classifying Australia as a 'targeted' welfare state overlooks the rising significance of social tax expenditures (STEs). As tax provisions that offer selective welfare benefits, STEs are increasingly relevant to Australian welfare because of their large scale, inequity and rapid growth. This thesis incorporates STEs into our understanding of the Australian welfare state by situating them within its institutional framework and explaining their political development. [The thesis explores] the relevance of STEs by analysing two case studies - the tax expenditures for private health insurance and superannuation. Both cases are difficult to understand as 'evidence-based' policies because they are inequitable and expensive... My analysis of the political development of STEs shows how they have emerged as core second-tier institutions through two 'overlapping processes' that coincided with the winding back of the wage-earner model. STEs have grown as both an indirect consequence of developing new wage-earner institutions and a means of meeting new demands for social provision in a policy environment hostile to extending social expenditures." -- abstract.