A universal basic income could rebuild social cohesion
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Politics Opinion
A universal basic income could rebuild social cohesion
By Bronwyn Kelly | 16 June 2026, 12:00pm | comments |
Supporters argue a universal basic income could strengthen social cohesion by reducing financial insecurity (Image via InfoMofo | Flickr)
Declining social cohesion and rising financial stress point to the need for a universal basic income, writes Dr Bronwyn Kelly.
THE AUSTRALIAN Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has recently released its latest General Social Survey and the results are quite disturbing.
They indicate that Australians are less satisfied with their lives than they were during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and significantly less satisfied than in the decade before the pandemic. The Bureau has also recorded a very significant drop in appreciation of multiculturalism, with only 75% of those surveyed agreeing that ‘it is good for society to be made up of different cultures’, down from 85% in 2020 and 81% in 2019.
This decline in social cohesion appears to be coincident with a growth in the percentage of households experiencing financial stress.
The ABS does not venture into a discussion of whether financial stress has been a causal factor in the apparent decline in cultural tolerance. Doubtless, the decline is a function of a web of interrelated factors, not all of which are economic. But the extent of the decline in social cohesion ought to be of great concern to our governments.
Social breakdowns are incredibly hard to recover from; they are much better prevented than cured. So any potential economic factors that may aggravate problems in social cohesion should be neutralised before the breakdown gets any worse and spirals into frequent civil unrest or – to use less polite and sanitised descriptors – mass protests, mass shootings, police brutality and riots reminiscent of pre-World War II fascism.
Universal basic income for a more prosperous Australia
A universal basic income will not only benefit those suffering from poverty, but will also provide a more stable economy for all Australians.
In Australia, the incidence of some of these forms of civil unrest is increasing. Witness the recent Bondi Beach shootings and the police brutality in the protest in Sydney against the visit of the President of Israel in early 2026. These are unusual events in Australia and any government would be well advised to remove as many contributors to this unrest as they can.
The ABS is not the only agency whose research is pointing to a breakdown in social cohesion in Australia. And it is not the only agency noting the coincidence of the growth in financial stress with declining cohesion.
The Scanlon Foundation, in its most recent research, has implied that there is a direct correlation between the two, saying that ‘financial circumstances remain the most important factor associated with social cohesion’. And if the Scanlon Foundation is right about that connection, then the Government should be very concerned, given the magnitude and speed of the growth in poverty and financial difficulties for families and individuals over the last decade.
Since 2015, according to the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) and the University of NSW, the number of Australians living in poverty has grown from 3.05 million to over 3.7 million. And each year since COVID, according to the Scanlon Foundation and the Australian National University, between 35% and 40% of adult Australians – which equates to about 8.5 million adults – have suffered financial difficulty.
This is a scale of financial stress that the Government would be very unwise to ignore. If social harmony is desired by the current Government – and we might hope that it is – it would be best to attend to the diverse causes of unrest before millions more are added to the ranks of the financially insecure.
It should be good news to the Labor Government, then, that there is a way to stop the potential fragmentation that may yet arise in Australian society from the growth in financial insecurity.
The Government can collaborate with Australians to build a new agreement that will protect everyone from the possibility of falling into poverty and, at the same time, protect the Government from being unable to provide us with full access to services sufficient for our health and wellbeing. An option for a process in which Australians and the Government could come to this agreement has been sketched out by Australian Community Futures Planning (ACFP) as an Australian Public Interest Collaboration.
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