Media, Marketing and the Dole Cruisers - a Welfare Discourse Case Study Gareth Robinson
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University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2010 Media, marketing and the dole cruisers - a welfare discourse case study Gareth Robinson Recommended Citation Robinson, Gareth, Media, marketing and the dole cruisers - a welfare discourse case study, Master of Arts thesis, University of Wollongong. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 2010. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3331 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact Manager Repository Services: [email protected]. MEDIA, MARKETING AND THE DOLE CRUISERS – A WELFARE DISCOURSE CASE STUDY A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree MASTER OF ARTS – RESEARCH (JOURNALISM) from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by GARETH ROBINSON FACULTY OF CREATIVE ARTS 2010 Certification I, Gareth Robinson, declare that this thesis, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Arts (Journalism), in the School of Journalism and Creative Writing, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document and associated audio recording have not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Gareth Robinson November 2010 ii Abstract Over the past two decades there has been an increasing policy focus on the obligations of unemployed Australians to seek work in return for unemployment benefits. Simultaneously, government has emphasised that the integrity of the national welfare system depends on vigorous pursuit of those who abuse taxpayer-funded support. In 2002 the Australian government announced what it said were unprecedented research findings that identified the prevalence of unemployed people who exploited welfare support and avoided their obligations to seek work. Through use of social marketing techniques, researchers produced an attitudinal segmentation of job seekers and thus provided government with the means, in effect, to conduct the first head count of dole bludgers. In line with the novel nature of this development, the government applied a new nomenclature to the research population; the dole bludgers were renamed as dole cruisers and it was in these terms that their existence was brought to public attention via the media. Although the media has played a significant role in presenting stories about aspects of the welfare system, there has been little detailed scrutiny of media participation in welfare discourses in Australia, particularly those relating to welfare fraud. For this reason, analysis of media presentations of the government’s dole cruiser story provides additional information about media contributions to the development of welfare discourse in the public sphere. iii Through discourse analysis of media texts and related analysis of research reports and internal government documents obtained through a freedom of information process, this thesis demonstrates previously unreported findings. In particular, the thesis finds that media reports that more than 100,000 Australians were dole bludgers in 2002 were incorrect and based on invalid official data and misleading government statements. Further, no journalists identified the central error in the government claims or raised questions about the policy implications indicated by the alleged prevalence of a significant number of rorters in a welfare system that featured stringent administrative controls based on the policy known as mutual obligation. With several significant exceptions, media reporting of the dole cruiser case lacked scepticism and endorsed a government agenda that linked unemployment to moral deficiencies in individual people. iv Acknowledgements The protracted but ultimately rewarding process of researching and completing this thesis owes much to my parents, Tom and Ruth Robinson, who laid the foundations; to my supervisor Dr David Blackall for his advice and encouragement over a period of years; and to my wife Libby O’Donnell, for her support in this, as in all things. v Chapter 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 ‘(derogatory) any person on social security benefits’ 2 1.3 Methodology 4 1.4 A research problem 7 Chapter 2 2.1 The literature 8 2.2 Aims of the thesis 16 Chapter 3 3.1 Introducing the ‘dole cruisers’ 17 3.2 ‘Self respect and manly independence’ 18 3,3 ‘Loafers’ paradise’ 20 3.4 ‘Casuals, strikers and alcoholics’ 21 3.5 ‘Hippies’ and ‘Surfies’ 22 Chapter 4 4.1 The mutual obligation policy 23 4.2 Public opinion and unemployment 25 4.3 A ‘victims’ versus ‘duties’ debate 26 4.4 ‘As effective as the stocks’ 27 4.5 ‘Rip…rort…grab’ 29 vi 4.6 A ‘dishonoured system’ 32 Chapter 5 5.1 The New Zealand model 35 Chapter 6 6.1 Freedom of information 38 Chapter 7 7.1 Attitudes ‘can have major impact’ 48 7.2 ‘Attitudes clearly matter’ 53 Chapter 8 8.1 ‘Attack…purge…blitz’ 59 8.2 Cruisers and ‘the Australian people’ 71 8.3 Cruisers ‘will find it an embuggerance’ 76 Chapter 9 9.1 Media strategy 85 Chapter 10 10.1 ‘Australia’s true dole bludgers’ 88 10.2 ‘Shocked Government Ministers’ 93 vii 10.3 Michael and Adam 97 10.4 ‘Un-Australian and immoral’ 100 10.5 ‘Welfare cheats’ or ‘government ploy’ 111 10.6 ‘Blaming the victim syndrome’ 114 10.7 ‘Happy jobless targeted’ 116 10.8 A follow-up report 123 10.9 ‘Doubt’ about the numbers 125 10.10 ‘Cynical and unfair’ 133 10.11 ‘Notorious’ Kiwis 147 10.12 ‘Sick of life on the dole’ 151 10.13 Presentation and prominence 156 Chapter 11 11.1 ‘Brough Releases First Report’ 160 11.2 ‘Insightful, honest and intimate understanding’ 163 11.3 ‘The stereotype…is not supported’ 168 Chapter 12 12.1 Response from the department 169 12.2 Bludgers ‘set to return’ 173 12.3 The cruisers’ legacy 176 viii Chapter 13 13.1 Conclusion 179 References 192 Appendices 196 ix CHAPTER 1 1.1 Introduction After a six-year period in power that included a continuous punitive policy focus on allegedly idle unemployed people, the Australian government led by Prime Minister John Howard found a new way to tell an old story about those recipients of unemployment benefits known in popular vernacular as dole bludgers. As the responsible minister suggested, lazy State-funded jobless people were a given, but an unquantified one. According to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, everybody knew about dole bludgers, but nobody really knew how many there were. The minister, though, now had the numbers: There has always been a certain amount of anecdotal evidence about [them]; however, this is the first genuine research that I am aware of that confirms the existence of a substantial body of non-performers in Australia. (Brough, 2002a) The story the Government told about these ‘non-performers’ was paradoxical because it contained information that was simultaneously familiar and unprecedented, generic and unheard of. The story was told in a conventional political vernacular but also contained terms that were linguistically novel. It was presented as both revelation – the first actual quantification of the work shy – and prediction, because the Government’s story also contained a description of what purported to be the community’s reaction towards these newly numbered bludgers. 1 This was the story of the dole cruisers. Its elements of construction included social marketing, government and media relations, social policy, language, empiricism, and scepticism. In the terms of this thesis, however, the dole cruiser story is primarily an account of what the news media did – and what it failed to do – in presenting the story to the Australian public. The central argument of this thesis is that the story the media relayed to the community contained both misrepresentation and falsehood and that the news media failed to discern this, although in a minority of cases failure was qualified by a degree of scepticism about the information provided by the government. Overall, this failure was a product of media culture, of ideologies of organisation and practice, coupled with the influences of an ideological consensus involving journalists and their sources concerning the nature and causes of unemployment and, more broadly, relationships between individuals and the State. Additionally, the dole cruiser story represented a failure of analysis at a basic level. Journalism’s self image – based on notions of scepticism, empiricism and interrogation – proved, at least in this case, to be transparently self deceiving for journalists and ultimately misleading for recipients of the reporting. 1.2 (derogatory) any person on social security benefits The dole bludger has a place in Australian culture that is in some ways analogous with the rabbit. Each is widely regarded as a pest and each has been subjected to a series of attempts at eradication. Governments have sought to limit the proliferation of one with 2 disease and physical barriers and to control the other with punitive policies and critical statements. The rabbit is a successful coloniser, far removed from Europe but retaining links to its English past that feature, for example, in some children’s literature in Australia. The dole bludger also has old-world predecessors but is simultaneously an Australian original – part of an authentic vernacular drama but equally capable of being considered ‘un-Australian’. Bludger and beast are both fringe dwellers and central actors in national narratives about the land and how to live in it. Unlike the rabbit, the dole bludger is – at least in linguistic terms – a relatively recent arrival in Australia’s socio-political ecology. The Macquarie Dictionary defines the term as a colloquialism representing either someone who lives on social security benefits without making proper attempts to find work, or a derogatory reference to any recipient of such benefits. Since the mid 1970s, the dole bludger has made frequent and repetitive appearances on national and local stages, mainly as a result of the combined efforts of political and media forces.