From Dole Bludger to Mutual Obligation: Activation with an Antipodean Accent (June 2018)

Mr Anthony O'Donnell, La Trobe University

CELRL Labour Law Seminar

From Dole Bludger to Mutual Obligation: Activation with an Antipodean Accent

Seminar presented by Mr Anthony O'Donnell

Wednesday 5 June 2018: 1–2pm at Melbourne Law School

About the event

In the past couple of decades, Australia has imposed an increasingly punitive regime of onerous obligations on claimants of unemployment benefits. This seems to correspond to an international trend toward 'activating' the unemployed and seems to cohere with some sort of new neo-liberal paradigm. But how did we get from there to here? In this seminar I plan to do at least two things: I want to try to think about these recent developments in a way that's grounded in Australia's specific social security history, and then to pinpoint areas of continuity rather than change in the Australian social security system.

About the speaker

Anthony O'Donnell is a senior lecturer in the School of Law at La Trobe University and is an associate member of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law at the University of Melbourne. He has been researching, publishing and thinking about Australian labour law and unemployment policy for the past 20 years. His most recent book is Moss Cass and the Greening of the Australian Labour Party (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2017).