By 2353NM  

So the election has been called. Everybody that believes they should be in Parliament will be travelling around, kissing babies (if that’s still allowed) and proclaiming from the rooftops that they are the best thing since sliced bread and should be your representative on Capital Hill. Most of them have as much chance of getting into the red or green chambers as I had of having the winning Lotto numbers last week (I didn’t), but it won’t stop them from promising the world and presenting themselves in the best possible circumstances.

We, as the people that vote, have to go to a polling booth on the appointed day, collect a couple of pieces of paper and mark them. All the papers are collated at the end of the day and after the implementation of some mathematics and statistics, one of the hopefuls is destined for the next three or so years of travelling to Canberra on a regular basis and – in theory anyway – representing the views of the residents of individual electorates in the Australian Parliament.

For some reason the role of jumping onto a plane and enjoying the delights of the Canberra Airport or driving along the Federal or Monaro Highways on a regular basis is tightly contested. These people can influence how we live our lives and as a consequence of that can inflict their particular moral or ethical beliefs on the rest of us for a considerable period of time.

And so, some of those pretenders to the throne have a tendency to ‘gild the lily’ a little. For example, Health Minister Greg Hunt (who co-incidentally is retiring at the next election) announced on 16 December 2021

The Morrison Government is continuing to implement its response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, with a further financial investment of $632.6 million.

… on top of record funding of $17.7 billion already committed in the 2021-22 Budget. No doubt this funding increase and probably the marketing of it was approved by Federal Cabinet. While the information is factually correct, it’s not really the entire truth. In the 2016 Federal Budget, the same government, with Scott Morrison as Treasurer made cuts to the funding of some services in aged care that according to the industry at the time would

cost the sector in excess of $2.5 billion over the next four years, almost $840 million more than the government has estimated, a major new analysis shows.

It seems the reality is the new funding from 2021 goes some way towards restoring the cuts of 2016.

As you may have guessed, there is a term for this type of behaviour. It is survivorship bias. Effectively, you have to ask the right question or look for all the information.

There was a study in 1987 that suggests that if you throw a cat off the roof of building up to six stories high it will probably have greater injuries than a similar cat thrown from a building higher than six stories. The expounded theory is that cats reach their terminal velocity (they won’t fall any faster) at about the height of a five-story building and in the last stage of the fall have enough time to place their bodies in the best position for landing and the subsequent attention to fractures and so on from the vet. That makes sense until you consider the entire scenario. Most cats that fall from heights greater than a six-story building die, so there is no need to take them to a vet, measure or manage the fractures and so on, so there is no record of their demise.

Another example of survivor bias is during World War 2, the allied forces ran a study of where planes were damaged on their return to the home airfield. The plan was to reinforce and install additional armour in the frequently damaged sections of the plane to enhance the probability of any individual plane making it safely back to base. Columbia University’s Statistical Research Group recommended the armour be installed in areas of the plane that frequently were not damaged on their return to base as the planes that sustained damage in those areas didn’t return. The ‘real’ question was why didn’t planes come back, rather than how much damage can a plane sustain and still return.

So, while additional funding for the aged care sector in Australia is welcome and hopefully will make a difference, the media release is factual but not really the truth. If the announcement was completely truthful, it should have acknowledged that the 2016 funding cut was wrong and this ‘new’ funding restores some of the funding that was removed five years earlier.

It’s very easy for either of the two major parties to declare a decision taken by the other side is wrong (Morrison is still using that excuse after his side has been in power for almost a decade), but generally very hard for politicians to admit they got it wrong or don’t know all the answers. There are of course exceptions – former Queensland Premier and former Australian Rugby League Chairman Peter Beattie made a career out of apologising when he was found to be wrong and promising to do better.

So when the prospective politician, regardless of their allegiance to orange, yellow, blue, red, green, teal or any other colour promises you the world on the glossy brochure, the well-produced television spot or the slick social media post during this election campaign, remember the term survivor bias and ask yourself if this is the answer to the real question. You also have the right to ask the ‘real’ question of your candidate and expect a reasonable and considered response. After all, if they get to Capital Hill, they are supposed to be working for you, not the ‘party hierarchy’ or political donors who expect a return on their investment.

What do you think?

By 2353NM  

Do you feel the sense of desperation in the air?

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has decided that a dam should be built at Urannah in Central Queensland that will according to Crikey

reinforce the Coalition’s electoral dominance of a regional Queensland seat, directly benefiting the Nationals’ holdings of Flynn, Capricornia and Dawson. It would also send an explicit message to the fossil fuel industry that the government is not retreating from spending significant amounts backing coal production — a message it would also hope reaches voters in such electorates as Hunter.

There are a couple of problems with Joyce’s grand plan. Joyce claimed the money was in the March 2022 Federal Budget. First, he has to convince the Queensland Government to stump up the remaining money to build the dam. The Queensland Government doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to do that. Then he has to convince the Queensland Government to approve the dam under state legislation as well as apply to the Federal Environment Department for Federal approvals, which again the Queensland Government doesn’t seem to be interested in.

And then the final obstacle is Joyce’s Cabinet colleague, Senator Sussan Ley who is the environment minister. When asked for comment, Ley’s response was

The first step had to be made by the Queensland government: “We will consider matters of environmental significance that impacts the dam, on world heritage places, on natural heritage, on migratory species, on threatened species and so on.
“There is no suggestion that this proposal steps outside our national environmental law.”
The dam was first considered about 60 years ago and 25 feasibility studies have denied it environmental endorsement. Local Indigenous groups have also opposed it.

Joyce’s claim that the proposed dam will enhance the country’s economic growth and stability is argued by others. Again, from Crikey

This wealth guarantee is contradicted by an economic analysis prepared for a Mackay conservation group which argued the return on every dollar spent on the dam would be just 75 cents. A separate report claimed the dam would cover 9850 hectares of suitable high-value cropping farm development and 12,250 hectares of improved grazing land.

Parts of Bundaberg are in the electorate of Flynn. Current Mayor of Bundaberg (and former LNP Queensland Minister) Jack Dempsey claims

“It’s a false stereotype that all regional Queenslanders are coal-loving climate-change deniers,” Dempsey said.
“The minister for coal – Keith Pitt – he doesn’t actually reflect the views of our community on environmental issues.”
“We’re about clean, green, quality products.”

Keith Pitt, the Federal Resources Minister, is the federal member for Hinkler, who represents the rest of Bundaberg and surrounding areas.

A week later, the Morrison Government announced they would fund the $5.4 Billion ‘Hells Gate Dam’ on the Burdekin River in North Queensland despite the environmental assessments and business case being incomplete. The ALP’s environment and water spokesperson, Terri Butler reminded us that the dam was originally announced before the 2019 election. Independent North Queensland MP Bob Katter has been promoting this dam since he was a state MP in 1981 and has claimed the current scheme is incomplete. Queensland’s Water Minister Glenn Butcher commented

it was “interesting” to see the Commonwealth investment earmarked so early.
The state is still providing technical assistance to proponent, Townsville Enterprise, for its business case.
“Investment decisions should be informed by completed detailed business cases, the Hells Gates business case is not yet complete – this means it hasn’t even received necessary federal approvals,” he said.

It seems to be common practice in Australia to ‘means test’ in some ways government assistance to the public. Should you qualify for an aged pension, or child support or any number of other government assistance programs, including assistance after natural disasters, you have to be able to demonstrate that you meet a financial test. The test might be based on your income, your assets or apparently which electorate you live in and is mostly ‘designed’ to ensure that recipients who need the assistance are prioritised over those that only want it. That is fair enough. If someone doesn’t have the income or assets to support themselves, we pride ourselves on living in an egalitarian society and should be happy to assist. That’s how the process works, and it has done so for decades.

So how do we explain the governments of Australia funding private schools? While a generalisation, independent schools are usually the ones with the marketing departments to generate more students, the ‘better’ facilities including ‘necessary’ things such as indoor Olympic standard pools, elite level sporting grounds or permanent ‘camp grounds’ well removed from the school’s main campus, glossy advertising of Year 12 results, private transportation services for students and so on. At the same time, some public schools in the major cities around Australia have to roster their student lunch breaks so there is a little circulation room in the bitumen square that passes for a playground. Yet, significant funding is given to private schools along with inaccurate and uneducated opinions on the alleged differences in educational standards between public and independent schools. Stand-in Education Minister Stuart Robert – yes Morrison’s ‘Brother Stuie’ – has claimed that independent schools don’t employ teachers that are in the bottom 10% of some undisclosed rating process, those teachers are forced to work in public schools where they are protected. The inferred logic being if you want the best teachers for your Tarquin or Madison, send them to a private school. Remember all schools teach to the same curriculum and their student’s work is moderated across the sector – not just schools in the private or public cohorts.

Like Joyce, he’s dreamin’. We commented on Citipointe Christian School in Brisbane (a school run by a Pentecostal Church) demanding early this year that parents sign a document that restricted the students to religiously acceptable gender roles and attitudes. The school’s principal at the time (who has theological but no educational qualifications) chose to take leave for an indefinite period after the justified public outcry. Now the same school has asked teachers to sign a contract that forbids all personal relationships except those that are acceptable to the particular religious principles of the church that operates the school.

Robert’s claim is demonstrably false because if the best teacher for the job falls foul of the implications of the teaching contract and is not employed, that particular independent school won’t employ the best teachers. Not because they are a bad teacher, only because their lifestyle is not acceptable to the church that owns the school based on their literal reading of the parts of a religious text that suits their purpose, regardless of the hundreds of logical and factual errors contained in the bible. Robert has apparently offered no evidence to support his claim, so it is logically based on either privilege or snobbery, not reality. The reality is there are plenty of good teachers who successfully engage with their students at public and private schools. There are also some teachers that underperform across the sector, just as there are good hard-working politicians and others that don’t adequately represent their electorates while claiming as much as they can from the system.

If it wasn’t so tragic, it’ll be funny.

What do you think?

By Kathryn  

Everything – absolutely everything – that comes out of the lying, conniving mouths of the reprehensible political baboons in the LNP is either:

1) an outrageous lie – so often told by the Mother and Father of all recidivist pathological liars, Scott Morrison! A lie that is always preceded and followed by that infamous and thoroughly irritating self-satisfied, contemptuous smirk!

2) a vicious, and thoroughly incredulous piece of scurrilous, character-assassinating slander used to discredit, maliciously defame or ridicule anyone and everyone who stand up to justifiably condemn or, understandably, oppose the LNP’s rising level of condescending arrogance, self-serving corruption, callous inhumanity and/or nauseating level of bible-thumping hypocrisy! This type of virulent, offensive “attack” is so often focused on our most vulnerable citizens but is now directed at Albanese and the ALP (and/or The Greens) especially when we are so close to a federal election which, if the polls are correct and, more importantly, if there is any type of justice in this nation, the deeply unpopular, totally corrupt, disingenuous, pathological liar, Morrison, is due to lose in spectacular fashion!

3) a cynical, tongue-in-cheek, chest-beating piece of self-promoting BS that has absolutely no connection to reality.

4) an unspeakably vile, callously inhumane attack against the most vulnerable citizens in our community, especially the poor and/or anyone receiving any type of welfare! Members of the nauseating LNP go on and on attacking, degrading and vilifying the poor, the disenfranchised, the homeless and the disadvantaged yet refuse to realise that they are the worst, most prolific, non-achieving, taxpayer-funded political parasites in living memory! Morrison – a non-achieving political psychopath who has been exposed as the fifth highest paid politician in the western world. This is in spite of the fact that Morrison has been suspiciously “dumped” from just about every job he has ever failed to hold before he became one of the worst, most corrupt political sociopaths in our history. The fact is that Morrison and the LNP have not achieved a single thing that provides any type of benefit to ordinary working- or middle-class Australians – never have and never will!

5) consistent contemptuous, offhand misogynistic statements used to put women “in their place” which – according to the ex-LNP MP, Julie Bishop – is used by the majority of appalling, alpha-male “swinging d*cks” in the male-dominated LNP who believe that most women should be kept barefoot and pregnant in front of the kitchen sink!

6) a thoroughly offensive racist remark (or a surreptitious utterance implying a racist attack) against anyone who is not a white, Anglo-Saxon male with a conservative, right-wing Presbyterianism-type of “Christian” background!

7) an offensive sanctimonious “lecture” that has its foundation deeply embedded in judgemental religious hypocrisy!

There is absolutely nothing good one can find to say about the LNP. This diabolical, self-serving regime is made up of the worst type of political misfits ever seen in this nation! The LNP has degenerated into an internationally condemned pack of smug, totally ruthless, unconscionably cruel gang of lying, conniving, misogynistic bible-thumping hypocrites who don’t give a rat’s behind about anyone but themselves and their multi-millionaire, non-taxpaying donors in the Top 1%.

Wake up, Australia and kick these smug, corrupt and self-serving parasites to the gutter at the next federal election – they do not care about you and never did!

By John Haly  

Josh Frydenberg is spruiking the coalition’s accomplishments claiming, “Our Govt’s economic plan to create more jobs is working”. However, his statistics based on these claims crumble under scrutiny.

In essence, there are five claims he tweeted recently.

• Unemployment has dropped to 4% in Feb,
• 77k jobs created
• The participation rate is at a record high
• Female unemployment is at a 48 yr low of 3.8%
• 375k more Aussies in work than pre-COVID

Real Unemployment

Despite an attitude of incredulity at the idea that we have such a trim level of unemployment, Josh boasted of unemployment being “the equal lowest in 48 years”. The government is very proud of its apparent economic credentials. So are we to believe that unemployment is the lowest in years with, ascending rental rates and the cost of living, escalating petrol prices, but for obvious reasons wages are stagnating? ABS reported seasonally adjusted unemployment approaching this figure, last in August 2008 (4.1%) and February 2008 (4.0%). So 48 years ago Josh? My maths is not what it used to be.

So employment is better now, only a couple of years out from cataclysmic bushfires that caused over $100B in damages amid a continuing pandemic and massive floods damages? We are also just out of a politically recognised “drop-in-real-GDP” recession but still in the per capita recession that began in mid-2018 (acknowledged in 2019) and showed no real prospect of improvement. Does anything about our Economy ring right?

ABS’s absent considerations

Cracks are showing when it comes to the ABS unemployment statistics, which the government is quoting ad nauseam. Social media is replete with scepticism. There is a lack of credibility in employment stats when one hour’s work represents employment. It is not one hour a week; as they review the previous three weeks from your reference week. Go read my June 2020 article titled “Unemployment by COVID exploded” under the subheading “6.2%? Really?” for the explanation.

The issue is not just the one-hour criteria. It is the zero-hours criteria that should also concern you. People in the Gig economy who have been given zero hours and zero pay should not be considered employed. Yet that is precisely what ABS does for reasons that have nothing to do with it being a measure of domestic internal unemployment. The ABS states: “The term ‘labour force’, as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in the international standards, is associated with a particular approach to the measurement of employment and unemployment.”

International or Domestic terminal

ABS follows the ILO methodology measures, for international comparative purposes. The methodology was never designed to measure the domestically internal unemployment of any country, because it excludes too many people. The integrity of a domestic measure of unemployment has to be questioned if, for example, it discounts the numbers of people just because they work in the Gig economy under zero-hour contracts. Gig workers are still counted as employed by the ABS even when given zero hours and zero pay.

Every other measure of unemployment is far larger than the ABS’s measure. Still, people are largely unaware of the size of the alternate and more accurate measurements of domestic employment. It is not merely that adding the 130,800 people on zero-hours to the ABS measure of 563,300 unemployed – for international comparative purposes – would raise the 4.04% figure for global comparison to 694,100 or 4.98%. There are more extensive assessments. For example, the sheer number of JobSeeker stats has only recently dropped just below a million people.

At 949,937 people on Jobseeker in February – a number Josh Frydenberg has demonstrated familiarity with – it stretches credibility that 949K versus 563K are simply relegated to margins of error.

Beyond these numbers, there are the estimations made by Roy Morgan, which indicate that 1,227,000 people were unemployed in February 2022. ABS and Roy Morgan’s unemployment figures are estimates based on surveys. At the very least, Jobseeker is a hard count of people receiving a benefit. To review the history of all these numbers, post-recession, I have charted them in Fig 1.

Fig 1.  various unemployment measures in Australia post-recession

Crossing lines

My reasoning for choosing any measure requires accepting the reasonable postulate, that any internal measure of unemployment should minimally accept that people who have worked zero hours should be included as unemployed. ABS does account for zero-hours workers. So if the current ABS figure and zero-hours workers were added together over the last two years, the graph reveals an interesting anomaly. There are two periods in which that combination exceeds the value of JobSeeker, and that is why Jobseeker by itself – although a hard count – does not represent domestic unemployment numbers.

The combination of ABS unemployment plus Zero-hours numbers exceeded the Jobseeker numbers twice in the last two years. The first occurred in April 2020, and then again for the three months from August to October 2021. Now the first one, to be fair, is at the recession’s start, and it is reasonable to ascribe that to the chaos of the time and errors in measurements. I have previously pointed out how often ABS altered at random intervals their unemployment measures reflecting much uncertainty in my aforementioned June 2020 article. But a sustained series of measures over three months draws different conclusions in a calmer time.

Crossing lines

My reasoning for choosing any measure requires accepting the reasonable postulate, that any internal measure of unemployment should minimally accept that people who have worked zero hours should be included as unemployed. ABS does account for zero-hours workers. So if the current ABS figure and zero-hours workers were added together over the last two years, the graph reveals an interesting anomaly. There are two periods in which that combination exceeds the value of JobSeeker, and that is why Jobseeker by itself – although a hard count – does not represent domestic unemployment numbers.

The combination of ABS unemployment plus Zero-hours numbers exceeded the Jobseeker numbers twice in the last two years. The first occurred in April 2020, and then again for the three months from August to October 2021. Now the first one, to be fair, is at the recession’s start, and it is reasonable to ascribe that to the chaos of the time and errors in measurements. I have previously pointed out how often ABS altered at random intervals their unemployment measures reflecting much uncertainty in my aforementioned June 2020 article. But a sustained series of measures over three months draws different conclusions in a calmer time.

Crossing lines

My reasoning for choosing any measure requires accepting the reasonable postulate, that any internal measure of unemployment should minimally accept that people who have worked zero hours should be included as unemployed. ABS does account for zero-hours workers. So if the current ABS figure and zero-hours workers were added together over the last two years, the graph reveals an interesting anomaly. There are two periods in which that combination exceeds the value of JobSeeker, and that is why Jobseeker by itself – although a hard count – does not represent domestic unemployment numbers.

The combination of ABS unemployment plus Zero-hours numbers exceeded the Jobseeker numbers twice in the last two years. The first occurred in April 2020, and then again for the three months from August to October 2021. Now the first one, to be fair, is at the recession’s start, and it is reasonable to ascribe that to the chaos of the time and errors in measurements. I have previously pointed out how often ABS altered at random intervals their unemployment measures reflecting much uncertainty in my aforementioned June 2020 article. But a sustained series of measures over three months draws different conclusions in a calmer time.

It indicates the absolutely unemployed with not even an hour of work for each month exceeded the Jobseeker’s hard count. However, that anomaly doesn’t factor in all the other reasons ABS undercounts people as unemployed, such as:

• exclusions for unpaid work in a family business, or paid busking or street vending;
• exclusions of short-term foreign workers through the 12/16 rule;
• exclusions of persons unable to take up immediate work;
• hiding unemployment via the government PaTH program;

So what measurement methodology addresses these weaknesses and exclusions?

Answer: Roy Morgan’s employment and unemployment estimates!

Now the reasons for the gap between Jobseeker and Roy Morgan I previously explained in my article titled “Frydenberg’s maths problem”. So what does Roy Morgan show us regarding underemployment and unemployment? What does either ABS’s quarterly measure of Job vacancies or the Department of Employment’s monthly measure of internet Job vacancies tell us about the jobs available for folks looking for work?

The graph of those figures [Fig 2] shows the harsh reality of a paucity of job opportunities and a frightening level of underemployment and unemployment. But, unfortunately, this government has done little to rectify that plight. Frankly, when you consider their dismissal of the public service and their deliberate undermining of manufacturing, it has simply exacerbated the situation.

Fig 2. Under and unemployment in Australia 2013 – 2022 vs Job Vacancies

Solutions and reassessments

There are solutions to the unemployment crisis, such as a Federal Job Guarantee. However, there is a complete ideological unwillingness to implement such solutions because it would end wage stagnation. The private sector would have to compete with the government for workers by offering better wages and conditions.

So what does Roy Morgan say is the truth compared to Josh Frydenberg’s list of accomplishments with which we started?

• Unemployment has risen to 8.5% in Feb an increase of 26,000 from January,
• Employment fell by 163,000 to 13,216,000 in February, driven by a fall in part-time employment
• The workforce dropped 137,000 in February
• Female unemployment is also at 8.5% despite being a smaller proportion of the workforce [see Fig 3]
• Employment is 344,000 higher than it was pre-COVID-19 (13,216,000 – 12,872,000).

Fig 3: Female Unemployment measure variations in Australia from 2019 to Feb 2022

The conclusion about Frydenberg’s claims leaves us with two options. That the man delivering the budget for the whole of the Australian economy has either

1. no idea what the actual state of the economy is, or
2. is a _ _ _ _ (well, I don’t want to be the one to say it – these guys are litigious, and I can’t afford it).

This article was originally published on AUSTRALIA AWAKEN – IGNITE YOUR TORCHES and Independent Australia.

By John Haly  

From THAT women’s network logo to a corseted perspective where he can only understand women through the lens of his wife or daughters; Scotty from Marketing can’t recognise the inequality, bias and dangers that women face.

Trying to defend himself, he ran the following list past Kymba Cahill during an intense interview on Perth Radio show Mix94.5. [See Fig 1.]

Scott Morrison raised these points asserting that the coalition had made significant progress on:

• women’s employment and unemployment,
• Women in executive roles and gender pay equity,
• domestic violence funding.

Fig 1: Extract from News article on Morrison’s actions on behalf of women

Women’s Employment

Using unemployment figures from the ABS is a dubious exercise, as I have noted previously, but this will be the data to which Scott is referring [see Table 1]. According to ABS, Females employed in the workplace in Australia in Feb 2022 was 6,407,730 (Men were 6,964,2820). This left 256,378 of the female workforce unemployed. That is a 3.85% unemployment rate for women in the workforce. I will dispute this claim later.

In the meantime, the lack of inclusion of zero-hours workers (which the ABS calculates) in the unemployment percentages is a blatant misrepresentation. People with registered employees (usually in the Gig economy) offered zero hours of work in a month and zero dollars for pay, while considered “employed”, are not segregated by gender in the ABS stats. However, people in employment are segregated by gender. So calculating the ratio of women in the workforce to men at 47.9% in February 2022, provides a reasonable basis for extrapolation. Zero-hours workers for February 2022 were 130,000 people, and multiplying that by 47.9% for February gives you an estimate that 62,678 workers were likely female.

Adding zero-hours female workers back to ABS’s unemployment numbers means that 319,056 women (or 4.79% of the workforce) are without paid work. That means women in employment dropped to 6,345,053. Making the same relative month-by-month calculations over the last three years generates a female ratio that varied between 49.9% and 46.4%, resulting in the Fig 2 Graph.

Another consideration is that since our Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, claims our economy has recovered to pre-pandemic levels (i.e. 2019). Commencing with ABS stats from the beginning of 2019 will allow some trend analysis. Of course, other journalists have demonstrated Josh’s claims are fallacious propaganda, but let’s overlook that for now.

Fig 2: ABS’s Female Employment estimates in Australia 2019 to Feb 2022

Looking at the trends in the Graph for Full-time, part-time and workforce numbers for women, it is evident none of the categories has made a full recovery. Compared to February 2019, the ABS figures claim: 5.996 million women were employed and 314K unemployed. However, it is 375K, if you add back the female proportion of zero-hours “employed” estimated in Feb 2019. That would have reduced our wage-earning employed to 5.954 million. So Morrison seems correct that more females are employed.

Still, it should be apparent that his claiming credit is a misdirection. Over that same three years, the total workforce moved from 6.310 million to 6.664 million. The population of women over 15 went from 10.417 million to 10.687 million. Unless Morrison is claiming credit for population growth or women entering the workforce – both of which are rising at similar levels. Is a rising level of employment, therefore, something for which he can claim the credit? Significantly when they have not even risen to a level that an extrapolation of 2019 figures would predict? What legislative change has Morrison’s government passed that has even achieved this underwhelming rise in employment?

As for “the lowest level of unemployment” for women, the evidence for real domestic unemployment for women demonstrates otherwise. This is where I will review not just ABS data but also include zero-hours data, Jobseeker and Youth Allowance and Roy Morgan’s unemployment figures. These measures demonstrate that unemployment exists at around 8.5% for women. This was lower than current levels for all of the second half of 2019. However, just as zero-hours “employees” are not segregated into gender statistics, neither are Roy Morgan’s estimates. Roy Morgan’s methodology has more in common with the Jobseeker and Youth Allowance as a measure of unemployment. Accordingly, I have used their month-by-month ratio of men and women on both stats to extrapolate the proportion of Roy Morgan’s total estimates, likely female. The results in the following graph [see Fig 3] and accompanying sources and internal explanations demonstrate why Morrison’s claim is inaccurate. Please see my articles here and here if you want further explanations concerning this multi-data analysis.

Fig 3: Female Unemployment measure variations in Australia from 2019 to Feb 2022

More women on Boards and gender pay gaps

I assume Morrison boasting of more women on Government boards doesn’t include former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate, who is still waiting on his apology. It should be noted that “more than 50%” of women on government boards is larger by a factor of 0.2%. In short, it is 50.2%. The history of that climb resembles a long and tortuous effort. Not unlike Morrison’s appointment of women to his cabinet – another point he raised.

This may be true for a tiny percentage of women who represent the country’s government executives. Still, many social and economic issues for women who are non-board members (i.e. the vast majority) remain unresolved. Women’s Agenda publishes a range of these issues, like sexual assault through to women’s career anxiety. As for Morrison’s claims about the gender pay gap, beyond some minor fluctuations, it has sat around 14% for the last three years. Taking credit for a recent 0.4% drop is hyperbole when you consider it depends:

1.  entirely on what State and with whom you are employed,
2.  and the changing state of employment and unemployment. [see Figs 2 & 3]

One doesn’t have to take a human’s claim that falling gender pay gaps are fallacious in a volatile employment economy with stagnating wages. Even internet bots are pointing out the disparity.

Domestic Violence funding

The Domestic Violence Package of $1.1 billion announced by the Minister for Women’s Safety, Anne Ruston’s media release from October 2021, is full of self-congratulatory praise for their “landmark” contribution to DV.

Keep in mind that the DV funding was not considered sterling before this point. Monash University’s assessment in 2020 was that previous funding arrangements for women were woefully inadequate. Although the subsequent $1.1 Billion in the following budget might improve on previous efforts, “it does not yet reflect the level of investment so desperately needed to address, interrupt and ultimately prevent what is a national crisis.” according to two Violence prevention experts. Other critics have noted it is hardly enough, and falls short of the need.

In truth, all this expenditure is a transparent effort to put a bandage on the gaping wound left in the wake of

• Brittany Higgins’s allegations,
• Grace Tame’s public condemnation of Morrison,
• the former Liberal MP Julia Banks’s confession or Industry Minister Karen Andrews’ complaints,
• Morrison’s disparagement of Christine Holgate,
• the Jenkins review,
• Gladys Berejiklian’s and other’s texts,
• Coalition staffers masturbating over the desks of female MPs, and
• the innumerable stories about the misogynistic predators in Parliament, such as Barnaby Joyce, Christian Porter and Andrew Laming.

But while that was a long sentence, no sentences of any length have been applied to any of the misogynistic male perpetrators responsible for these abuses.

Despite the massive protests by women over these issues, not even the Minister for Women, Marise Payne, showed solidarity by attending “March 4 Justice” at Parliament House. And I suspect we all recall Morrison’s bullet point based response in Parliament to that protest.

Assessment

So yes, Morrison has poured in more money into domestic violence, but it isn’t anywhere near enough to deal with the scope of the problem. Yes, employment has risen but so has unemployment amongst women. Yes, the ruling class women at the height of the government echelons have enjoyed more executive work. But, in contrast, the non-executive women (known as the vast majority or working-class) are still increasingly unemployed, poorly and unequally paid, compared to their male counterparts.

So if this is Morrison’s idea of “action” in response to women’s needs, dare I suggest his “action” is quite definably “small” and “inadequate” to meet the real needs of women in Australia?

This article was originally published on AUSTRALIA AWAKEN – IGNITE YOUR TORCHES.

By 2353NM  

James Taylor released ‘Fire and Rain’ in January 1970. Taylor’s song is about a number of his personal issues including drug addiction, professional upsets and the suicide of a friend. If it was released today it could have been a commentary on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s current term in office. Morrison’s term as Prime Minister has been bookended by (unprecedented) bushfires and (unprecedented) flooding. Morrison is a part of his problems as he doesn’t ‘hold a hose’, or send a flood boat either – apparently.

Morrison has been a ‘front bencher’ in all of the versions of the current Liberal National Party Coalition Governments since Abbott came to power, as have the current pretenders to the throne, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Defence Minister Peter Dutton. Abbott came to power promoting the false premise that an emissions trading scheme was a ‘carbon tax’ that would mean $100 lamb roasts and wipe out the City of Whyalla. To be fair, the ALP didn’t sell the trading scheme well because the leadership were more interested in stabbing each other in the back than having a genuine and honest conversation with Australia on the need to reduce emissions. The expert scientists in the CSIRO have been telling us to have the conversation about emissions reduction since the 1970s.

Probably with memories of the less than stellar reaction to his televised visits to firegrounds in NSW at the beginning of 2020, Morrison chose to tour South-East Queensland and Northern NSW without the media as he claimed that people in distress don’t like having cameras shoved in their faces. That’s probably true, however Morrison’s ‘personal photographer’ was in attendance. (One has to ask in passing why the Australian taxpayer is paying for a photographer to accompany any Prime Minister to produce glossy propaganda photos?)

The media didn’t use many of the photos. The Nine Network’s Today and Seven’s Sunrise show grilled Morrison and Emergency Services Minister Bridget McKenzie about their pitiful response to the flood disaster – with Nine’s Karl Stefanovic telling McKenzie he didn’t know what her response to a question actually meant. Crikey and others took Morrison and McKenzie to task over the declaration of a National Disaster being made a week after the flooding event started in Gympie (Queensland). Morrison and McKenzie claimed they had to wait until they had agreement from the affected states and there was a scale of magnitude to the disaster. As Crikey observed

Still, the serious question remains: why the late declaration? The correct answer is the obvious one: there was no reason to not declare a national emergency earlier, unless the prime minister was insisting on announcing it himself, standing on a pile of waterlogged furniture like George W Bush at Ground Zero. And Morrison, as it happened, was in COVID isolation until the day the emergency was declared. Coincidence? With this government, there is no such thing.

The National Disaster was eventually declared without the support of the Queensland Government.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of climate change causing greater volatility in the weather across Australia, Morrison’s lack of effective action to promote emissions reduction had his supporters. The News Corp keyboard warriors such as Bolt and Kenny were claiming there is no correlation except bad luck therefore climate change doesn’t exist. Some of the lunatic fringe politicians, such as Malcolm Roberts and Mark Latham agreed with Kenny and Bolt.

The week after the flood event, when communities from north of Brisbane to south of Sydney were starting the clean-up, it was announced that the Coalition Government had successfully appealed a court case that determined the Federal Environment Minister had an obligation to protect our children from climate change. It is a sad commentary on the Government’s priorities that eight teenagers and an octogenarian catholic nun feel so strongly about the Government’s apparent lack of consideration of our children that they have to take the Government to court in the first place. It is absolutely criminal the Government appealed the initial decision. Unfortunately, it looks like the case will have to proceed to the High Court.

An election is due within a few months. A number of Australians have chosen to run for office as conservative independents in Coalition held seats. Most, if not all of these ‘teal’ independents are partially motivated by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Collation Government’s complete and utter disregard for the environment that our children and grandchildren will have to endure. They seem to be confident of changing the voting habits of a reasonable number of formerly rusted on Coalition voters. We also know from history, that once an electorate chooses an independent candidate, it is difficult for the major parties to regain the seat.

Poetic justice would be that when the next ‘unprecedented’ natural disaster hits Australia, Morrison is sitting on his couch and watching the rolling coverage of the unfolding disaster. with the Prime Minister of the day showing Morrison how the job is done and the media making the comparison for all to see. At the same time his daughters are telling him in no uncertain terms that he could have done something when he was PM to stop the tragedies of the future, and didn’t.

What do you think?

By 2353NM  

Queensland and New South Wales have recently suffered greatly as a result of literally flooding rains. Queensland Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk claimed In just two to three days, Brisbane received about 80 per cent of the rainfall it would normally get over the whole year. The same weather system went on to devastate eastern New South Wales a few days later.

We could spend time analysing Defence Minister Peter Dutton setting up a GoFundMe webpage to seek donations for his flood affected electorate of Dickson in Brisbane’s outer north, which may be illegal under Queensland law. Dutton was justly criticised by a large number of commentators and false contributors to his funding effort, most of whom reminded him that governments are there to fund the recovery from natural disasters.

We could also attempt to work out why Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended Dutton’s abysmal knowledge of how government works. His motherhood statements while defending Dutton were all about the magnificent level of immediate Commonwealth Government grants to those adversely impacted while not admitting the value of the grants per person hasn’t changed since 2006! Doesn’t that logically negate the need for Dutton’s GoFundMe page? It was claimed this funding is apparently separate from federal/state funding to start the rebuilding phase after the dust had cleared (or in this case the water went down).

While 2022 hasn’t started very well for South-East Queensland and New South Wales, the Commonwealth’s Department of Home Affairs Disaster Assist website lists 44 ‘natural disasters’ in 2021 (that’s almost one a week) from floods through cyclones to bushfires. While journalistic licence probably influences the adjectives that surround the reporting of natural disasters, more and more of them are being called ‘unprecedented’. One definition of ‘unprecedented’ is never done or known before and arguably receiving around 80% of your annual rainfall in two or three days is unprecedented. But there has to be a cause for ‘unprecedented’ rainfall, or ‘unprecedented’ storms, cyclones, bushfires and so on.

It’s not just bad luck. It’s climate change.

As has been seen by recent events, Australia is ill-prepared for a changing climate. If the past couple of years has taught us nothing else it should have taught us to listen to the experts. When Australian Governments were doing so, COVID was broadly contained in the community until State Governments could get their countermeasures into place. This wouldn’t be the first time we have criticised the Federal Coalition Government for ‘showboating’ on the states’ efforts. At the end of 2021 – when Morrison and fellow political traveller NSW Premier Perrottet decided to throw caution to the winds – hundreds of thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths ensued, a significant number of the infections and deaths being in areas where the federal government was responsible such as aged care.

Yet the experts have been warning about climate change since the 1970s. In 1990, the federal ALP government were discussing a 20% reduction in emissions, only to be outflanked by the Liberal Party! Years later, The Conversation reported then Environment Minister, Ros Kelly, brought a package to Cabinet,

Her initial cabinet proposal seems to have been for a commitment without caveats, but this was unacceptable to resources-minded ministers. As treasurer, Keating was reportedly instrumental in modifying the text to demand that:
…the Government will not proceed with measures which have net adverse economic impacts nationally or on Australia’s trade competitiveness in the absence of similar action by major greenhouse-gas-producing countries.

Australia did eventually listen to the experts, Eventually there was an emission reduction program legislated, implemented by the Gillard ALP Government in the early 2010s. It was scuttled by the Abbott Coalition Government, amid clams of $100 lamb roasts and the complete wipe out of Whyalla in South Australia. Morrison, Dutton and Frydenberg were all ‘senior Coalition MP’s’ in the Abbott era.

So we’re back where we started from. Australia is being affected by more ‘unprecedented’ weather events. The Morrison Coalition Government is the latest in a long list of predominately conservative Coalition Governments who have done little to engage with our country about the need to reduce the emissions of carbon into the air. According to the IPCC, Australia is coming close to irreversible change to our climate in most part due to ignoring the experts who have been telling us for the past 50 years that we have a problem!

As the ABC suggests, now is the time to talk about climate change and how we can mitigate it – not sometime when there is no natural disaster to be concerned about. There is no guarantee there will be a time in the future when there is no natural disaster. After all, South-East Queensland has just lived through the second ‘1 in a 100 year’ flood in 11 years! We had a natural disaster almost every week last year.

Ironically, the current high price of petrol may be inadvertently helping the environment, because the government isn’t. If the increases are sustained, consumers will look for methods to reduce the cost of transportation. As The Conversation suggests a logical reaction to higher fuel prices is to trade the large SUV or dual cab ute in on something smaller and more efficient. Certainly, the smaller, more practical car may not make it to Cape York or tow the van around Australia – however most of the larger SUVs or utes in Australia never do that either. Again, we have no leadership from Morrison’s Coalition Government here – even the USA has emissions and fuel consumption standards for vehicles.

We need a government that will lead a conversation about not only climate change but accountability and working with others to achieve an outcome that benefits our society now and in the future. Instead the Coalition seems to ignore the problems and hope they go away. Time and time again the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Coalition Government has ignored the increasingly urgent need for emissions reductions. Morrison talks about nuclear submarines and increasing the size of the defence forces as desirable to protect Australia. Surely he’s missing the elephant in the room by ignoring climate change.

What do you think?