False economy: New Public Management and the welfare-to-work market in Australia

Abstract

In 1994 the Australian Government opened case management services for the long-term unemployed to the market, laying the foundation for its now fully privatised employment services system. The system was a pioneering exemplar of New Public Management and it is widely hailed as a successful model of outsourced service delivery. However this thesis argues that the system’s measures of success, focused on aggregate employment outcomes and service delivery costs, mask the adverse impact of its marketisation on ‘hard to place’ jobseekers and ignore the flow-on economic and social costs of their persistent unemployment. Going beyond the existing literature and drawing together multiple sources o..