A CIVILISED COMMUNITY: A HISTORY OF SOCIAL SECURITY IN NEW ZEALAND 1898-1998.

• Author: Elworthy, Juliet
• Position: Review

by Margaret McClure Auckland University Press

The parameters of "A Civilised Community" are set out in its Introduction. First, the book was commissioned by the Department of Social Welfare as a history of income support, defined as the state's programmes of regular cash transfers to its citizens through a statutory national system. Second, it has attempted to include the perspectives of consumers of social security. In keeping with these parameters, "A Civilised Community" is a history of social security rather than social welfare, and is based largely on material from the files of the Department of Social Welfare and its predecessors, including correspondence from "ordinary individuals".

In the Introduction, Margaret McClure describes the account as a social history which traces both income support -- in particular, major shifts in its ethos -- and those affected by it, with the aim being "to put flesh on the bones of earlier accounts and take a broader view of the participants in social security history" (p.2). Noting the complexity of social security, McClure says that the account also "aims to reflect some of this complexity and convey the continuing tensions in social security policy-making" (p.4).

Its status as a commissioned history inevitably places some restrictions on the book's scope. With its subtitle of "A History of Social Security", the book accordingly omits discussion of the history of other forms of income support that have played a role in New Zealand but do not come under the general umbrella of "social security". Accident Compensation is discussed principally with reference to the 1972 Royal Commission on Social Security, with regard to basic differences at this time between Accident Compensation and the Commission's proposed approach to social security. Earlier, in discussion of social security in the 1950s and 1960s, reference is made to the Needy Families Scheme administered by the Child Welfare Division of the Ministry of Education. This raises the questions of how Child Welfare got involved, under what mandate, and for what ends, but these issues are not discussed.

The book's status as a history has also resulted in a chronological approach to its material. McClure states in the introduction that the chronological organisation has been chosen "because change in any one security provision needs to be seen in the context of what is happening to the whole system, and the ways in which these are a response to the mood...