Across the globe, welfare conditionality and sanctioning increasingly permeate social welfare programs. Paternalism is one of the key normative rationales invoked when both scholars and politicians debate the legitimacy of this reform. With a view to bringing the scholarly and political debates into closer conversation with each other, this paper examines how paternalism manifests in political debate. We systematically analyse the paternalist arguments made by Australian federal parliamentarians in favour of the virtually identical 2017 and 2018 policy proposals to drug test welfare recipients, both of which resulted in a stalemate. We find that paternalistic arguments primarily employed soft, weak, and welfare paternalism, with heavy emphasis on the purported benefits of the intervention, limited emphasis on the issue of personal liberty, and noticeable silence about autonomy and consent. These findings shed light on the scholarly features of paternalism that are obscured in contemporary political discourse. This analysis can direct political philosophers to features of paternalism that need more attention as well as suggest ways that drug and welfare policy advocates may engage more effectively with paternalist arguments.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚议会辩论中的家长作风：药物测试社会保障受益人的案例

在全球范围内，福利条件和制裁日益渗透到社会福利计划中。当学者和政治家争论这项改革的合法性时，家长作风是关键的规范理由之一。为了使学术和政治辩论更加密切，本文探讨了家长作风在政治辩论中的表现。我们系统地分析了澳大利亚联邦议员提出的家长式论点，这些论点支持 2017 年和 2018 年几乎相同的针对药物测试福利受益人的政策提案，这两项提案都导致了僵局。我们发现，家长式论点主要采用软、弱和福利家长式作风，过分强调干预所声称的好处，有限地强调个人自由问题，而对自主和同意则明显保持沉默。这些发现揭示了在当代政治话语中被掩盖的家长式作风的学术特征。这种分析可以引导政治哲学家认识到需要更多关注的家长制特征，并为毒品和福利政策倡导者提供更有效地参与家长制论点的建议。