Social Legislation in Australia

Abstract

Despite strong public interest in law reform by both state and federal governments, very little has been written about social legislation in Australia. Discussions about social legislation frequently proceed with each participant assuming an individual and subjective definition of social legislation; rarely is there agreement about the role and purpose of social legislation.This paper examines some writings on social policy in an effort to provide a definition of social legislation; a basis for identifying legislation as ‘social’ is provided. It is argued that for legislation to be social it must have a distributional character.Further consideration is given to the role of social legislation and the motivations for introducing legislative measures to deal with social ills. Attention is focused on approach, rights and tokenism in social legislation.