FOR PRESS 22 MAY 1977
ADDRESS AT THE CENTRAL METHODIST MISSION, SYDNEY
It is a great pleasure for me to be here and participate in
your annual mission rally. I am particularly pleased to have
this opportunity to applaud the work which your mission has been
carrying out for the past 93 years, and for the innovations
and ingenuity that the mission has demonstrated in caring for those
in need in this city.
The life-line centre, established here in 1963, and subsequently
emulated in many centres around the world, has given new hope
to thousands.
The 23 homes, hospitals and service agencies which the mission
manages throughout Sydney provide residential care for over
a thousand people, and a wide variety of assistance to many
others, every day and night of the year.
It is developments such as these and I would add,
the whole concept of operating a mission through a theatre
which effectively refute the suggestion that the Australian
christian churches are moribund.
The Federal Government, this mission and the many other
voluntary social welfare agencies in Australia, are partners
in the task of providing effective and prompt help to the
disadvantaged and underprivileged in our community.
Our roles are complementary. There are many areas in which
government services can never match the service which
voluntary agencies can provide. The large government
bureaucracies that are associated with social welfare often
cannot by their very nature have the flexibility to meet
the needs-of the poor and disadvantag~ ed in a complex industrial
society. Their needs are not confined to material aid. Many people
are most in need of warm and understanding advice how
best to cope with the complexity of our society, to assist
them in overcoming feelings of powerlessness in the face of
large institutions. / 2
2.
The rules which regulate government organisations limit
their ability to provide the personalised assistance necessary
in coping with these problems. Government organisations can,
because of their size and apparent impersonality actually
heighten people's sense of their inability to cope.
The most personal assistance provided by voluntary organisations
is essential in overcoming problems of this kind. The voluntary
work which organisations such as your own undertake, has the
enormous strength that it is undertaken out of a genuine
and personal commitm ent to a cause, and no amount of money
could buy the dedication and commitment which organisations such
as this mission can mobilise.
We have sought to give maximum possible encouragement and
assistance to voluntary agencies with their sense of commitment
and sensitivity to each individuals problems. This mission,
for example, has received capital grants of $ 220,000 for two
centres which assist handicapped persons the Pinaroo Hostel
and the David Morgan sheltered workshop -together with
substantial annual subsidies towards staff salaries.
The Government has also paid over $ 40,000 towards the running of
the Francis Street hostel for homeless men, and has undertaken
to grant over $ 1 million for your exciting new venture a
centre for the homless at Darlinghurst. This very week
Departmental officers have been discussing with the mission
details of the tenders received to build and equip the centre.
What we must strive to achieve is-the most effective cooperation
and interaction between us. We must also all be prepared
to look at what our real objectives are and see that our
programmes actually do serve their objectives, that they do
assist those in need.
For a government department, or for a voluntary agency
such a seemingly sensible and deceptively simple exercise
is in a practice extremely difficult. There is a tendency
for programmes to continue unchanged because they are there, we
are used to them, continuation does not disturb vested interests
nor disrupt established work-patterns.
Somtimes a programme plods on when, if subjected to impartial
analysis, it should be changed, to ensure that those most
in need get priority in assistance, and as the need of those the
programme was designed to help, change. We have acted to
redirect the thrust of a number of our programmes towards
those most in need, and to ensure that such assistance actually
reaches them.
In the area of children's services, the programmes of the
previous government were primarily directed to funding pre-schools.
Yet it was clear that the most urgent need of low income families
was the provision of full day care for working mothers.
The failure to provide such care is to allow many children to have
unsuitable care while their mothers are at work or no care
at all. / 3
Accordingly, we changed the direction of our programmes
to give greater emphasis to the provision of full day care
facilities. In the provision of legal aid, we -found that inadequate aid was
being received by the poorest in our community. We acted to
tighten the means test and redirect funds to those most in need
of assistance. To ensure that this programme was fully
effective, we increased total spending on legal aid by 23%
this year.
We have also made many changes in the administration of the
Department of Social Security to enable it to provide
a more efficient and sensitive service to its clients.
These changes particularly assisted those whose circumstances
were such that they needed immediate payment of benefits,
and those who had difficult in obtaining benefits due to them,
through problems of language.
It will sometimes be necessary for government to grasp the
nettle and replace an entire programmne by another more
effective one. A classic example as the former system of
providing tax deductions for dependent children. Such
deductions could only be used by taxpayers who had sufficient
income against which to set off the full deduction permitted.
Significant numbers of the poorest in our community could
not avail themselves of this subsidy. We acted to replace that
system by a new programme of family allowances, under which cash
payments are made directly to every mother in Australia.
This has been of greater assistance to 300,000 poorer families
with 800,000 children, including in particular many single parents,
migrants and aboriginal families.
A further advantage of the family allowance scheme is that it
gives the mother who receives the monthly cheque complete discretion
how to use the funds provided. This increases her independence
and her ability to make effective choices about the welfare of
her family.
While making major changes we have also heeded the warning
the Henderson Report offered Australian governments against:
" Falling into the inflationary trap of attempting to carry out
so many social reforms or other public expenditures at once that
they accelerate an inflationary spiral that does more to damage
poor people than the assistance provided by the reform."
We have also sought to continually review the manner in which
social welfare programmes are carried out. In less enlightened
days, many, programmes for the poor, the sick and the homeless
were well-intentioned but demeaninga for the recipients.
Doling out soup through an iron grille to homeless men may well
have great merit in staving off starvation for those fed; a
regular weekly hand out may provide the basic necessities;
but neither jin itself is sufficient to meet the needs of people
for independence. What is required now are programmes which
help to increase dignity and scif-resnect, which provide
warm and relevant advice on how to become independent, not
breed a debilitating dependence on those who provide the service. / 4
Wherever necessary those benefitting from our programmes
should have a choice in the way such benefits are used.
Responsibility for the important decisions in an individuals life
should be placed where it belongs,-with that inidividual
and not with any social welfare agency or government department.
It is often difficult to devise programmes which meet this
objective. Governments must be prepared to experiment and
exercise some ingenuity in finding a scheme that
really works. I shall mention two such experimental programmes
which we are presently in the course of trying out. We are at
the moment preparing to launch the housing assistance
voucher experiment. This programme will assist low income earners
by paying to them, in cash, subsidies towards the cost of their
family's accommodation. It is up to them how they use such
subsidies they may rent housing commission flats, or they
may prefer private accommodation. The choice and the responsiblity
is left to the recipient.
Another experimental programme is our migrant resources
centre in Melbourne. Instead of the government bureaucracy running
the centre, we have contracted out this responsibility to a
voluntary organisation, the Greek Welfare Society. Early
indications are that the centre is working well and that some
other ethnic groups see the centre as a possible-model for their
own operations.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that the cooperation of voluntary
associations and government provides the best basis for providing a
system of social welfare that meets the needs of contemporary society.
The Government has shown its readiness to try new methods of
tackling the constantly changing problems in our community.
None of us can afford to oppose innovation and new ideas when
existing programmes are not fulfilling their desired objectives.
It has been a strength of this mission that you have shown a
willingness continually to rethink the work you are performing.
The steady stream of new proposals which the mission has
devised in recent years, such as the new Darlinghurst Centre,
provides ample evidence of this. Your willingness to adapt
will again be put to the test next month when, as part of the new
Uniting Church, the mission changes it name and coordinates its
work even more closely with the activities of the many other
agencies operated by the Uniting Church. For the past
years, your superintendent Alan Walker has led your mission
through a difficult period to even greater strength and effectiveness.
I congratulate him on his new appointment as Director of
World Evangelism for the World Methodist Church, and I wish his
successor every success it will be a hard act to follow.
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