Changing needs of the Australian community

Abstract

In Australia, as in other industrial nations, expenditure on social policy items consumes the largest single item of public expenditure. This has led to intense political debate about whether we can continue to afford these expenditures. On the one hand there are those who maintain that we cannot continue to spend the amounts that we do on social well being; and on the other is the view that we cannot afford not to spend as much, or more, than we presently do.