Talk:Social security in Australia

Move?
Can we please move this to Social Welfare (Australia). I don't think the term "Social Security" is relevant to Australia! Any thoughts? Ansett (talk) 13:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Given that Australia has a Social Security Act I think the term is highly relevant124.186.125.209 (talk) 10:17, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality/sourcing
I'm concerned the section on ARO and SSAT reviews is not neutral, and where references are made to criticisms of Centrelink, those references are not sourced.

--Mkativerata 14:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Page Move from Centrelink
Please note the bulk of this page was moved from Centrelink

Actuarial disco boy 10:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

A lot of work
I have split this page into sections about Social security and Family assistance as they are seperate systems. I intend to individually clean up each of the payment sections, add all the citations needed and include sections on the means tests of each system. Ideally there should not be much that is needed to be said about each individual social security payment other than their specific entitlement.

I'm kinda thinking somthing like this would be appropriate:

Social Security Act Payments -Income and asset tests -Residency requirements --(individual payment sections)

Family Assistance Act Payments -Income test and reconciliation -Residency requirements --(individual payment sections) Hopefully I will get some time to get this somewhere near this so we at least have a decent article to start fixing as it is a bit of a shambles at the moment.--Jabberwalkee 03:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Application for Payment Images
I am concerned about the Application for Payment images in the Newstart Section

2 of the pages have the author's customer reference number on it - this surely must not be good should they wish to maintain their privacy

Is there a way that they can be removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackaroo1970 (talk • contribs) 11:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The images look unfree to me (all Australian government material is copyright). Disclosure of a CRN is also a breach of the law. I'm going to propose these images for deletion. --Mkativerata (talk) 18:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Historical Information
This page needs some background about the progres of welfare in 20c Australia for example: When were Un/Ben started? E.G. Prior to the Whitlam govt benefits were only payable to those over 21 and married, whilst he made them universal. 203.219.152.235 (talk) 01:27, 26 September 2010 (UTC)gabe76

Editor assistance needed at Talk:Welfare
It would be useful to have some input from editors whose native language is Australian English to provide their perspective to help resolve a dispute over the article Welfare. In essence the argument is about the meaning of the word welfare. One school of thought is that Welfare nowadays mostly means "financial aid for the poor" and that the article about that topic should be simply Welfare. The other school of thought is that the word "welfare" has two meanings ("well-being" and "financial aid for the poor") and that the article welfare should be a disambiguation page explaining the two meanings and then link off to the many articles there are about "financial aid to the poor" such as Social security and the national articles such as this one. One idea is to move the content now in welfare moved over to Welfare (financial aid).

If you have the time, please read the discussions here and record your thoughts here. Cheers--84.250.230.158 (talk) 19:05, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 16:36, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Social Security (Australia) → Social security in Australia – The scheme in Australia is not known by the proper name Social Security despite the name of the Social Security Act. The title should refer to "social security" (in lowercase) as a common name for the type of scheme instead. This is consistent with other articles where "Social Security" is not the formal name of the scheme. See also the antecedent discussion at Talk:Social Security. —sroc &#x1F4AC; 12:22, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 4 one external links on Social security in Australia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100123091615/http://www.centrelink.gov.au:80/internet/internet.nsf/payments/parent_income_iat.htm to http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/parent_income_iat.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20101222200858/http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/fam_means_iat.htm to http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/fam_means_iat.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20101222084710/http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/ya_independent.htm to http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/ya_independent.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100212104141/http://www.centrelink.gov.au:80/internet/internet.nsf/individuals/changes_youth_allowance.htm to http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/individuals/changes_youth_allowance.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 12:55, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Totally out of date
The information about the specifics of programmes are out of date and do not reflect reality. Someone reading this page would have an inaccurate perception. I do not have enough domain knowledge to get this correct, though.

124.169.248.34 (talk) 04:35, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Copyright questions
The are questions about the coipyright on some items on the page. i can address the copyright status of 2 pages linked, the DHS page (http://www.humanservices.gov.au/business/services/centrelink/paid-parental-leave-scheme-for-employers/ ). on the DHS webpage there is a disclaimer that says: Unless otherwise noted, copyright in this website is owned by the Commonwealth of Australia, represented by the Department of Human Services.

it's possible the post linking to centrelink is the same (DHS is the new name for centrelink)

Bjkaus (talk) 14:31, 21 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Immediately underneath that sentence it says: "Except where otherwise noted, content on this website is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia Licence" followed by some exceptions, none of which appear to apply to the previous content of the article. I don't see why there would be any copyright issue with the DHS stuff here. The department of veteran's affairs form linked does appear to be copyrighted though: https://www.dva.gov.au/site-information/copyright &lt;Karlww (contribs&#124;talk) 20:12, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Some of the content in the sources on the copyvio core template are released under license and some are not. Most of the content is what has been here since 2007, when it was moved here from the Centrelink article. It's impossible to track down or prove copyvio on material that old. This also means that the article is woefully out of date. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 20:04, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 20:04, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Why is this page called "Social security"?
The phrase "social security" is almost never used in Australia, and is really only used in the United States to describe welfare payments... a bit Americentric considering this article is about Australia. How would we feel about a RM? ItsPugle (talk) 11:32, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 9 July 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved.  Calidum   03:57, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Social security in Australia → Welfare in Australia – In Australia, the term "welfare" is used over 4 times as often as "social security" in searches (common name policy). "Social security" would be more appropriate for US/North American articles, whereas in Australia, "social security" is very rarely used. Even Services Australia, which operates Australia's welfare programs, uses the term "welfare" in publications: Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation. Within the broader Australian Government ecosystem, "welfare" is also used by other agencies, including: Treasury (2018-19 Budget measures document) and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (Australia's welfare Overview) (official name guidance). This also aligns with the concise name policy and the regional name variations policy. ItsPugle (talk) 05:11, 9 July 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. Jack Frost (talk) 02:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The nomination seems reasonable to me, but I'm going to refrain from making a bolded !vote since I'm not all that familiar with Australian politics and this is a potentially touchy subject. Can some Australian editors please weigh in here? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:52, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose – I'm not sure this can possibly be an ENGVAR issue when the series of laws that established the system are called the Social Security Acts. See Social Security Act 1991, &c. On that basis, I find the proposer's rationale unsatisfactory, and must oppose this proposal. RGloucester  — ☎ 01:21, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't necessarily think that this is purely a thing of the regional variations of language in article titles policy, "welfare" is used significantly more extensively than "social security" in Australia, so if it was, this move would still hold its ground. And when it comes to the name of legislation, that demonstrates only the Canberra bubble of terminology in 1991; such has changed as demonstrated by the Google Trends page, as well as the Services Australia, Treasury, and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare documents. Plus, the Social Security Act 1991 article title is a proper noun for a piece of legislation, so it won't change unless the government changes the act's name (which they have much more important things to argue about). Oh, and for more 'reviewed' or reliable sources, the Google Books' library shows that "welfare" has always been used more than "social security" (which only started to be commonly used after the United States' passage of their Social Security Act 1935). ItsPugle (talk) 13:30, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I don't think Google Trends or Ngrams support the conclusion you are making. The word 'welfare' may well be used more, but that's because it is a broader term than 'social security'. As mentioned below, there is animal welfare, and also the general meaning of 'wellbeing' (i.e. 'the people's welfare'), &c. 'Social welfare' is only one potential meaning of the word. As far as I can understand it, 'social security' is the specific name of the system as implemented by the Social Security Acts, whereas 'welfare' is a broader, more general term. Therefore, again, I can't support this proposal.  RGloucester  — ☎ 15:32, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, Google Trends and Google Books Ngrams are standard convention for analyzing and representing the use of terms in search and books respectively - to suggest they aren't reliable or valid would be to put into question hundreds of thousands of edits and consensuses. I also don't think that "social security" is necessarily a subset of "welfare", at least not for the general public. And again, those acts are of a particular proper name and reflect Canberra's 1990s linguistics and motives, not today's real world. For the general public (which these articles are designed for) who haven't studied the legislation etc, welfare is not different from social security. If this article was purely about the legislation proper, then I'd support "Social Security Acts", but it's not, its primarily about Services Australia's welfare programs (which SA calls "welfare") ItsPugle (talk) 23:45, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand me...I don't think Google Ngrams or Trends are not reliable...I think that the specific search that you inserted into them does not support the claim you are making. A search for 'welfare' does not just return results related to social welfare programmes, but also results related to a variety of other meanings of the word welfare, and therefore cannot be considered in comparison to the results for the much more specific term 'social security', which can only refer to such programmes. RGloucester  — ☎ 15:13, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Again, I disagree. "Social security" and "welfare" are synonymous in the real world, and even if they weren't, "social security" as a phrase could also refer to the US' Social Security Administration since they operate under the branding "Social Security", couldn't it? Even then, we want to use the most searched for term for this article; Google's algorithms will interpret what the user is looking for any will show the right results. ItsPugle (talk) 07:13, 25 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose the use of the word welfare is less human and more animal against Trove searches - https://trove.nla.gov.au/search?keyword=welfare%20in%20australia - https://trove.nla.gov.au/?keyword=social%20security%20in%20australia - social security looks more apt. JarrahTree 14:55, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, I think it's pretty nonsensical to think that "welfare" is only animal welfare. Someone isn't going to search "Welfare in Australia" on Google in the hopes of finding the RSPCA. Also, the Trove link for "welfare in Australia" only animal-related results in the images section - the research, reports, books, diaries, etc, sections all are completely based on human welfare. There's also more search results by about 20,000 for "welfare" than "social security" on Trove. ItsPugle (talk) 23:45, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * FWIW I would have voted to move if I'd come across this earlier. I don't think it's accurate to call it an Americanism - take the Department of Social Security (Australia) which existed longer than most government departments - but in my experience you don't really hear much discussion about "social security" nowadays. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 14:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)