ABSTRACT
Consideration of social welfare developments in Australia in the 1940s must inevitably be dominated by the initiatives of the Curtin and Chifley federal Labor governments. Treasury experts continued to express concern at the proportion of federal government income committed to welfare payments. The focus of government shifted inevitably to Canberra, away from the entrenched systems previously built up by state governments and public charitable societies. The concept of social welfare as a residual system outside the marketplace remained undisturbed. Meantime, Chifley set about giving the appearance of spending the National Welfare Fund. The question of whether the welfare of even more needy people would therefore suffer was examined by a Labor Party caucus committee. But the medical benefits scheme to which the Chifley government was now committed as a result of the argument over the referendum required the co-operation of the medical profession as the expert intermediaries in the application of this form of social welfare.
