News of the Government’s push to merge its infrastructure policy with its ambition of reducing indigenous disadvantage came as Kevin Rudd told business lobby the Australian Industry Group his Government was embarking on the biggest infrastructure project in the country’s history as part of the Labor tradition of nation-building.

For too long, welfare has been seen as an unfettered right, without any attendant responsibilities. Now, the children of the generation lost in the rights-based culture of the 1960s and ’70s risk being lost too unless policies encourage parents to accept responsibility for their children. Accordingly, Labor’s belated acknowledgment of past policy failures is to be applauded.

The key to understanding why we have to recruit unskilled overseas workers from thousands of kilometres away when Australians, including a disproportionate number of indigenous people, are out of work lies in the perverse effects of our welfare system. Unemployed Australians have little to gain from swapping welfare for casual, unskilled pay rates.