A Decent Provision

A Decent Provision is a narrative history of how and why Australia built a distinctive welfare regime in the period from the 1870s to 1949. At the beginning of this period, the Australian colonies were belligerently insisting they must not have a Poor Law, yet had reproduced many of the systems of charitable provision in Britain. By the start of the twentieth century, a combination of extended suffrage, basic wage regulation and the aged pension had led to a reputation as a 'social laboratory'.