Quasi-Market Irrationality in Welfare Servicing: The Case of Remote Indigenous Housing

Abstract

Though economically-rationalist belief systems seem less invasive than they were in
the 1990s, market and quasi-market ideology is still being applied as a strategy for
improving the outcomes of welfare programs. The following discussion examines
remote Northern Territory (NT) Indigenous housing provision as a case study of the
potential irrationality of using quasi-markets within social intervention strategy. This
case study is a generalizeable example of ideology-based quasi-market provision.
Thus the discussion concludes by considering implications associated with private
sector participation in social intervention, and explores a better way to conceptualize
and deal with problematic policies.
The study incorporates a brief historical foray into the terminology and quasi-market
assumptions which underpin the logic of NT social intervention strategy. The
examination reflects on the nature of Indigenous living conditions; the intentions of
government intervention; the interpretation and logic of these intentions and the
consequent processes of intervention. It is assumed that such reflections are essential
to the formation of good policy and that insights into existing policy are possible if
this logical process is used. Thus the discussion commences with an examination of
Indigenous living conditions intervention in its historical context, and then it reflects
on the intentions of this intervention. It hinges on a re-examination of human need as
the focus of existing and future policy development.