‘No Man’s Land’: Disability, Rehabilitation, Welfare Policy and the British Ex-Service Migrant in Australia, 1918–39

An inter-war analysis of the British and Australian departments charged with compensating disabled First World War veterans and the British ex-service migrant in inter-war Australia illustrates how nation-states have failed to unify welfare and disability rehabilitation. Contemporary welfare states continue to codify and establish categories of prioritisation regarding communities with disabilities for public finance administered by national government departments. This binational case study identifies reoccurring type one and type two error problems: policy can deny legitimate claims for state assistance while also validating and financing potentially illegitimate claims. This underlines the factors that dictate which error type is ruled to be the least significant and the impact the resulting model has on individual claimants. This study reinforces the thesis of David Gerber who stresses the ahistorical centrality of ‘biopolitics’ or the relationship between societal and political perceptions of a conflict on state policy, in the treatment of veteran communities.