Since Federation the Australian Bureau of Statistics has recorded in its Year Books a comprehensive set of demographic and social statistics, which now document more than a century of changing trends in Australia. As the graph below indicates, there was generally stability or improvement in social well-being to mid-century, but a marked and escalating change for the worse on many counts began in the decade between 1963 and 1973. Were these dramatic deterioration the irresistible consequence of economic and/or technological developments, or were they the effect of new ideologies flowing into social policy? This was the decade of greening, of liberation, of war on social injustice – the decade in which opinionated secularism finally overpowered the ethical teachings of Christianity. This book reviews the contrasting social philosophies and policies of the first and second halves of the 20^th century that produced such different social outcomes, in order to address the question, How did we get it so wrong?

Lucy Sullivan has a BA Honours degree in English Literature from the University of
Queensland and in Psychology from Sydney University, and a PhD in Psychology from
Macquarie University. She has worked in Drug and Alcohol research at the University of
New South Wales and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, edited the Perinatal Newsletter
of the Perinatal Statistics Unit (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare), and researched
and written on social issues and policy for the Taking Children Seriously programme of
the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS). Her publications for the CIS include Behavioural Poverty, Taxing the Family, and State of the Nation (co-author).