Agenda setting, framing and wage theft in Australia

Abstract

Over the past decade the problem of wage theft has burst onto the Australian policymaking scene, seemingly out of nowhere. Its meteoric rise, from a largely unrecognised issue to the broad public agenda, then onto the narrower governmental and decision agendas of state and federal governments, was a major feat in policy advocacy. It stands as a particularly outstanding example of the power of framing to change the salience and esteem of an issue. By tracing the journey of the wage theft issue through the different spheres of public and governmental attention, this research illuminates under-studied aspects of the re-framing and agenda-setting artforms and advances the study of advocacy group interventions in policy conflicts.