ASPC 2023: What is expertise? Social change as social policy
Channel: Antipoverty Centre
Date: 2024-02-22

This is a recording of a plenary panel session convened by the Antipoverty Centre at the Australian Social Policy Conference 2023, hosted by the Australian National University. See below for a brief description of the panel and talk topics. Thank you to Maiy Azize for assistance with recording and to Lee B./MercurialJester for audio adjustments. 
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WHAT IS EXPERTISE? SOCIAL CHANGE AS SOCIAL POLICY
We conceive of the current policy ecosystem and those who operate within it as forming a poverty machine. Fundamental to the machine is an entrenched belief that welfare recipients do not have the answers to the challenges we face. The Antipoverty Centre seeks to ensure the voices and rights of people on the lowest incomes are at the centre of social policy development and discourse, moving to an approach that prioritises trust and agency for people who rely on Centrelink payments to live.

This panel is an invitation and a challenge to academics and others involved in social policy to engage in critical self reflection. Papers will be presented by people currently relying on income support payments. They will interrogate accepted notions of expertise and explore the intersections and potential of social change as social policy through the following papers:

• ‘Defining “expertise” in poverty’, presented by Mel Fisher
• ‘Novel approaches to incorporating expertise from people with direct experience of poverty in social policy development’, presented by Jay Coonan
• ‘Making space in the academy to elevate people in poverty within conventional research settings’, presented by Mel Powersmith