ABSTRACT
The impulse towards the welfare state has been characterised as a widening of citizenship. Social rights ‘imply an absolute right to a certain standard of civilization which is conditional only on the discharge of the general duties of citizenship’. The history of reform in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often reveals such a progression from civil to political to social rights. The report of the Social Welfare Commission provides fascinating insight into the new approach to welfare provision. Commissioner Woodward’s instructions, it should be noted, did not require him to consider the merits of Aboriginal land rights. The government had decided already that Aborigines were entitled to land since, as the Prime Minister had put it in his policy speech, ‘their case is beyond argument’. The reality of Aboriginal life was quite different: a pattern of persistent discrimination that extended from education to employment, housing to health care.
