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For most of the twentieth century, New Zealanders could cross the Tasman Sea freely to live and work in Australia, with access to citizenship and social welfare benefits, similar to those enjoyed by Australians who moved to New Zealand. Migration was not difficult as the systems were similar. From 2001, however, while Australians living in New Zealand could still gain access to citizenship with social welfare benefits, many New Zealanders moving to live in Australia have been unable to become citizens and, despite paying taxes, cannot receive some social welfare benefits or have rights to permanent residence. Effectively, they are in welfare limbo. Clearly, Australian political processes drove changes to welfare eligibility for New Zealanders living in Australia. This ‘limbo’ raises the question, however, as to whether New Zealand governments could have done more to protect the rights of New Zealanders living in Australia. This intriguing social issue has implications for other similar close nations in th...

There is no more imposing figure in the history of Australian anthropology than W.E.H. ('Bill') Stanner (1905-1981). While some of his contemporaries produced more ethnography, none matched his skill and eloquence in describing the life-worlds of Aboriginal people. While others of his age were just as closely involved in arguing for the defensibility of Aboriginal society, none did so with such convincing passion. With these two legacies in mind, anthropologists in the here and now would be hard put to describe Stanner's oeuvre in either/or terms. He is best remembered for his scintillating, sympathetic analyses of Aboriginal myth, ritual and local organisation, together with his trenchant critiques of Durkheim and Freud.

This article explores the establishment of women factory inspectors in the wake of a common sweating furore in Britain and New Zealand. Sweating reformism was not simply transplanted in New Zealand from the motherland. It is argued that Britons and New Zealanders developed related illusions about anti-sweating which had important implications for the confinement of women's work. In New Zealand female factory inspectors were held to be symbols of successful anti-sweating reform, while in Britain they were celebrated for their investigation and exposure of industrial conditions since here reform was limited. The women themselves knew the limits of their success. And they embodied a contradiction. The rationale for their employment was that women's work was different from men's and female employment needed to be regulated. Female factory inspectors accepted this formula for factory workers but were averse to it being applied to their own employment. In this regard, the female factory inspectors expe...

Several Australasian historians are reassessing the 1950s. The decade may not have been as consistently traditional and conservative as once thought. It may not have been the peak of the traditional family with its male worker and female homemaker. This article argues that the tide was turning on the male breadwinning model by the 1950s. An examination of family benefits, the rising number of married women in the paid workforce and equal pay in the public service are evidence of the erosion of the male breadwinning system. The degree to which these developments occurred simultaneously on both sides of the Tasman is striking. However the models and approaches that labour historians have adopted to consider the period means that these changes have been overlooked. Much attention has been given to the rise of ‘male breadwinning’ or the family wage’ and, often associated with that, a wider state policy of social protection in twentieth century Australasia. This article concentrates not on the foundat...

(2001). Putting the state in its place: the domestic education debate in New Zealand1. History of Education: Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 13-33.

(1997). The white blouse revolution: Heroic and anti‐heroic interpretations of the feminisation of work. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 21, Designing women, pp. 54-66.

Harry Braverman argued that the application of scientific management in large American workplaces was the important tool employers used to achieve a homogeneous, deskilled, alienated and passive workforce. In particular, white collar employers promoted women's employment. Since the publication Braverman, feminization has been linked to mechanization, rationalization and homogenization. In this paper I argue that these variables are in fact separate. Disentangling these concepts through a case study of interwar Victorian shops and offices leads to a critique of Braverman. It reveals that mechanization, rationalization of work processes and feminization occurred in some small workplaces but that there was slight application of Taylorism or Welfarism. The major conclusion is that employers deliberately set out to divide their workers and unions do not seem to have objected. Segmentation rather than homogenization was the most important managerial strategy in Victorian shops and offices: employers pr...