Correction to the original post - Australia is placed 27 out of 35 on the OECD list of social spending, and is therefore one of the lowest spenders on public social expenditure as percentage of GDP, allocating only 16.02% GDP.
Explanation: The only place I could find the 28% of GDP number was a businessinsider article here, which was 'social spending', not 'welfare spending'.
I followed the article's link to the OECD and found this table, which shows Australia spends 16.02% of GDP as 'public spending including health'. France spends 28.3% GDP and the USA spends 16.2% GDP. Australia is below even the USA!
The USA outspends Australia as %GDP on old age pensions and health by quite a bit! (USA health costs per capita are extremely high, it's a very inefficient system.)
I can't find anything else at all and conclude the businessinsider article is very wrong.
PS looking through the comments to the article, I see that other people have picked up that the businessinsider article is completely wrong!
