TY - JOUR
T1 - Inequality of luck
T2 - Accident compensation in New zealand and Australia
AU - Nolan, Melanie
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - The romance and liberating effects of the rise of the modern transport and industrial systems have attracted more attention than how accident victims, and their dependents, coped. Every modern society has a system of dealing with "blood on the bitumen"and "coming a gutser"at work or elsewhere but New Zealand is conspicuous in developing a no-fault comprehensive accident compensation system. About the same time, Australia had draft legislation before its legislature that included sickness too. Only New Zealand, however, in 1974, overturned common law and other remedies to institute a radical law reform over "accidents."This paper considers the failure of policy transfer between New Zealand and Australia on this issue. More generally there has been relatively little historiographical interest in social experiments "down under,"or the expansion in the late twentieth century welfare states, despite the current public policy debate over an Australian disability scheme. It is argued that such expansions of the welfare state, such as no fault accident compensation, are awkward developments for the dominant neoliberal model of the state undermining welfare.
AB - The romance and liberating effects of the rise of the modern transport and industrial systems have attracted more attention than how accident victims, and their dependents, coped. Every modern society has a system of dealing with "blood on the bitumen"and "coming a gutser"at work or elsewhere but New Zealand is conspicuous in developing a no-fault comprehensive accident compensation system. About the same time, Australia had draft legislation before its legislature that included sickness too. Only New Zealand, however, in 1974, overturned common law and other remedies to institute a radical law reform over "accidents."This paper considers the failure of policy transfer between New Zealand and Australia on this issue. More generally there has been relatively little historiographical interest in social experiments "down under,"or the expansion in the late twentieth century welfare states, despite the current public policy debate over an Australian disability scheme. It is argued that such expansions of the welfare state, such as no fault accident compensation, are awkward developments for the dominant neoliberal model of the state undermining welfare.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84884401502&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5263/labourhistory.104.0189
DO - 10.5263/labourhistory.104.0189
M3 - Article
SN - 0023-6942
VL - 104
SP - 189
EP - 210
JO - Labour History
JF - Labour History
IS - 1
ER -