Book Review: Third Sector. The Contribution of Non Profit and Cooperative Enterprises in Australia

Mark Lyons Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001. This book provides a useful broad-brush, historical, political analysis of the third sector in Australia. Beginning with definitions, working through the major locations of third-sector organizations--from community services to philanthropic intermediaries--it then briefly discusses the place of the third sector in Australian history. The second part of the book focuses on how these organizations work, how they are interlinked with other sectors (household, business and government) and finally the social and political contributions of the sector to Australian society. The impact of economic rationalism on Australian society can be historically traced from a number of levels. The identification in the late 1970s of a `crisis in the welfare state' resulted in a plethora of academic analyses of various responses by governments (primarily of the right) in policy development. This market-led approach to the non-government sector can now also be seen to have reshaped the contributions of various non-profit, volunteer based organizations--the so-called `third sector'. Working within one of these organizations today is a very different experience to that of 20 years ago, a challenge that its current leadership faces and one to which Professor Mark Lyons suggests they have `failed to respond' (p. 226). Lyons argues that many people join third-sector organizations as volunteers as an `opportunity to shape the policies and strategies [of civil society] by democratic means' (p. 14) and that it has been estimated that between 500,000 and 700,000 people volunteer for the sector. However, while the third sector does incorporate the small, non-incorporated bodies such as the local arts group or sports group, it also, according to Lyons, includes such large businesses as NRMA with a $2800m turnover or the Panther's Rugby League Club with $83m (p. 16), a fact that then tends to move the sector into what many may consider `for-profit business'. In addition, the sector also includes many paid staff--according to Lyons--as much as 7.6 percent of the Australian workforce. These statistics show how complex the sector has become, and how challenging it now is to both analyse and document. For sociologists searching for a cutting-edge text that provides depthful and challenging analysis this book may disappoint. The literature used is reasonably focused on economics and public policy, there is little or no gender analysis and, as a result, some of the classic texts in the area are missing (e. …