Contracting out community services, marketisation and wages

This chapter focuses on contracting out and the marketisation of social and community services to explore how governments' competition policies have kept wages down and are likely to continue to do so under current policy settings. It explores the role of Australian governments in keeping community services wages low through limiting enterprise bargaining. In particular it explores the case of National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to consider how its individualised 'cash-for-care' model of publicly funded social services is negatively impacting on the wages and conditions of low-paid service workers