Historical and comparative perspectives on the Australian welfare state: a response to Rob Watts

In response to Rob Watts' critique of my work as being that of a non-historian and as being structural-functionalist in orientation, I simply plead guilty. I suggest, however, that there are extenuating circumstances in the fact that my work on the Australian welfare state is in no way intended to be a contribution to historical studies, but is rather a contribution to comparative social policy research utilising the proper sociological tools for that task. On the other hand, I plead wholly innocent of Watts' other charge that my research findings have somehow deflected Australian historians from their proper research tasks. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary—and Watts provides none—any defects in the work of historians of the Australian welfare state must be attributed to the deficiencies of that discipline and its practitioners, not to the influence of non-historians such as myself.