By Denis Bright

Without access to the vast resources of the federal LNP in Government, Labor has raised sobering realities to deflate the political excesses of the last Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO) before the 2022 election.

MYEFO still provides a window of political opportunities for the Morrison Government as economic indicators show a temporary rebound in the September Quarter in GDP growth, a temporary growth in capital expenditure in mining on real estate and property markets and improvements to business confidence as the holiday season approaches after a lengthy period of COVID-lockdown.

A December Quarter rebound is likely to be a feature of a March election campaign. It is due for release on 2 March 2022.

MYEFO has Machiavellian elements. The most obvious concern is the $16 billion set aside for unannounced election promises as released during the heat of the election campaign as in 2019 in electorates under siege from Labor.

There is also the obvious repeated ruse of our official unemployment figure in the Treasurer’s media statements to talk up MYEFO. The 4.6 per cent unemployment rate needs more qualifiers. Australians from all age groups on training programmes or working on a trial basis for employers do not feature in the official jobless data. Adding the underemployed to the official jobless rate, translates to 13.1 per cent of the workforce. The situation is worse in the most disadvantaged federal electorates.

Besides these obvious lapses are the wildly optimistic assumptions about the post-COVID recovery in the Australian and global economies despite the global shadow posed by the Omicron variant with its record level of cases in Britain.

The Treasury is also over-optimistic about economic relations with China and Hong Kong despite months of sabre-rattling and patrols by Australia through the disputed waters of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits:

In China, GDP is forecast to grow by 8 per cent in 2021 before moderating to 5 per cent in 2022, reflecting the strong recovery to date. Growth has eased recently owing to a slowdown in the property sector and the impact of multiple provincial virus outbreaks on consumption. Despite a high vaccination rate, China has continued to pursue an elimination strategy, imposing aggressive local containment measures and strict international border controls to suppress and limit outbreaks

A third of Australian trade also plies these disputed maritime routes. MYEFO also notes that Australian deposits in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) which help to fund China’s Belt and Road Investment is currently running at $4 billion. Former Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello was a member of the International Advisory Council of the China Investment Corporation (CIC) between 2014 and 2018. The AFR announced on 26 August that Australia had just withdrawn substantial amounts of Australian Future Fund Investments in the CIC to support the sabre-rattling campaigns against our strongest trading partner.

All this suggests that the federal LNP is playing domestic politics in its strategic disputes with China that cuts Australia off from profitable investment partnerships within Australia and in the global economy.

Restrictions on overseas investment on security grounds have contributed to the downward trends in investment flows on the LNP’s long financial watch since 2013. Australian net capital inflows have never fully recovered from the GFC on the RBA’s latest chart series:

Current capital flow data is worse than the RBA charts disclose because the resultant investment is highly concentrated in the mining, real estate and property sectors which make little contribution to the building of a more sustainable and diversified economy. Labor shares Peter Costello’s enthusiasm as Chair of the Future Fund in his 2020-21 Annual Report:

As a result of the Board’s careful long-term positioning, the Future Fund has generated a 10-year return of 10.1% per annum against a target of 6.1% per annum. Since inception, investment returns have added $136.3 billion to the original contributions from the Government.

At 30 June 2021 the Board of Guardians invested over $245 billion across the six public asset funds for which it is responsible for the Commonwealth Government. Each fund has exceeded its target return over every time-period.

The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) generates earnings to provide grants to support medical research and medical innovation. The MRFF delivered a return of 10.9% in 2020–21 and was valued at $22.0 billion as at 30 June 2021.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land and Sea Future Fund returned 13.9% for the year, taking its value to $2.2 billion. The Future Drought Fund and Emergency Response Fund have also performed well, delivering returns of 14.0% and 13.9% per annum respectively.

The Disability Care Australia Fund also continued to perform in line with its Mandate, delivering a return of 0.4%.

The opening up of new subsidiaries of the Future Fund and state-controlled investment funds to corporate hedge fund capital avoids fractious debates about additional taxation burdens. Labor’s National Policy mentions investment seventy times. Sceptical constituents might well ask for more details on the origin of this investment capital. More specific mention of investment options has come with the release of Labor’s affordable housing agenda:

An Albanese Labor Government will create a $10 billion off-budget Housing Australia Future Fund to build social and affordable housing and create thousands of jobs now and in the long term. Each year investment returns from the Housing Australia Future Fund will be transferred to the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC) to pay for social and affordable housing projects. Over the first 5 years the investment returns will build around:

20,000 social housing properties.

4,000 of the 20,000 social housing properties will be allocated for women and children fleeing domestic and family violence and older women on low incomes who are at risk of homelessness.

10,000 affordable housing properties for frontline workers.

A Social and Affordable Housing Fund (SAHF) is operated by the NSW Government. A proportion of the investment returns will fund annual service payments that will reward community housing providers over 25-years to bridge the gap between rental revenue and operating costs. These are far from being radical initiatives and stake out a broad support base that existed prior to the Labor Split of the 1950s.

In The Boom-and-Bust Traditions of Conservative leaders, MYEFO conceals the likelihood of a near trillion-dollar public debt in 2024-25 as private sector investment falters while government spending programmes move southwards after the election to reduce the economic boost from deficit spending which has contributed to favourable short-term MYEFO indicators.

I hear the confidence of Bill Hayden in the enthusiastic responses of Dr. Jim Chalmers to the current MYEFO. The adjacent seat of Oxley became a safe Labor seat for the first time after the defeat of the Liberal Health Minister in 1961. Being taken for granted, both then and now, raises Labor’s enthusiasm for the possibility of a change of government this time around despite all the media hype in MYEFO and in the future December Quarter economic indicators.

This public relations advertisement warns everyone about life delivering curved balls during the cricket season. Take good advice from leaders who are on our side is already a strong feature of Labor’s media agendas. This style of narrative advertising could be broadened with inputs from other cross-sectional characters who are committed to level-headed critical policies that are appropriate for a middle-ranking Australian economy with a still underdeveloped financial sector.

This would be a variation of the It’s Time Advertising from 1972. This campaign was challenged fiercely by the Federal LNP. Labor’s victories in twelve new seats were partially offset by losses to the LNP in Bendigo, Forrest, Stirling and Sturt. Out of this mix, Labor secured the seat of Cook which is Scott Morrison’s current seat.

State of the art advertising can attract attention and fire the appetite for change over that conventional wisdom offered by the LNP to justify more market ideology and militarism to worsen the Australian social divide. Readers might take a few minutes to evaluate this style of the public announcement by checking the You Tube Channel.

Narrative advertising should be endorsed by members of Labor’s Shadow Ministry, high profile candidates and popular Australians as in 1972.

A call to electoral enrolments is the first step in getting sceptical potential constituents onside before the rolls close in early 2022 as the voting returns in many Labor heartland electorates were unbelievably soft at the last election.

By 2353NM

Those of us who are old enough to remember the Sydney Olympic Games will probably also remember there was some talk at the time that some countries were less than enthusiastic to compete because of Australia’s treatment of its First Nations people. Prime Minister at the time, John Howard, was under considerable pressure to apologise to our First Nations peoples for the dispossession of their lands, and ill treatment since Australian Federation in 1901. A mockumentry series on the workings of the Sydney Games Organising Committee starring John Clarke (RIP) and Brian Dawe called ‘The Games’ broadcast an apology by John Howard here from about 21:50 into this episode.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did apologise to our first nations people in 2008 and Howard was reported as saying it was a mistake. While Howard is correct to the extent that equality across all ethnic groups in Australia is still a long way off, the Rudd apology did clear the way for a new beginning of understanding between Australians. The dire consequences suggested at the time didn’t occur. Instead, those that deeply felt the dispossession of their land and destruction of their culture and way of life had their values vindicated.

Fast forward a few years and marriage equality was on the agenda. Despite overwhelming public support as expressed in opinion polls, the Coalition Government, this time with Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, determined they would waste public money by running a ‘non-binding’ plebiscite across Australia to settle the issue which would ‘direct’ parliamentarians how to vote (yes, you read it correctly, the ‘non-binding’ part meant that parliamentarians could ignore the ‘direction’). On this occasion, the opinion polls were correct, there was overwhelming support for marriage equality so the legislation was put to Parliament. Because the Australian Electoral Commission was responsible for the plebiscite, not only did we know what the country thought, we also found out what the voters in each federal electorate thought of the proposal. The ‘carbon tax’ liar, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and current Prime Minister Scott Morrison both abstained from voting despite both of their electorates being strongly in support.

Marriage equality was legislated despite the attempts of the Coalition to derail the process. Again, the dire consequences suggested at the time didn’t occur. In fact the mental and physical health of a number of Australians probably improved immensely as they no longer had to hide part of their lives from those around them.

While demonstrating a complete disrespect for the majority opinion of the Australian public, at least the Coalition Governments of the past weren’t playing around with the future of not only the country but potentially the planet we live on. Scott Morrison rolled Malcolm Turnbull in essence because Turnbull was going to introduce an emissions trading scheme. If Morrison had believed in climate change at the time, he could have just as easily protected Turnbull from the leadership challenge. After going to the 2019 election claiming that climate change was crap, and mandates (that were never mandates anyway) for electric vehicles would ruin the weekend, Morrison scraped back into government with a majority of two.

It’s now history that we were all shamed by the actions of the Morrison Coalition Government at the recent COP26 meeting in Glasgow, when even fellow conservative headline grabbing Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Australia to commit to greater emissions cuts. Morrison’s ‘technology not taxes’ mantra is shorthand for walking away from a problem he helped create in the hope that someone, somewhere will fix it for him, while he hides behind the claims of ‘enormous’ economic costs of climate action.

It’s a similar behaviour to the ‘not holding a hose’ claim during the bushfires that battered a lot of Australia in early 2020 when he was holidaying in Hawaii. It’s a similar behaviour to the “it’s not a race” management of the pandemic response in aged care, vaccine procurement and quarantine – all of which are Federal Government responsibilities.

But Morrison and his fellow climate deniers such as Joyce, Canavan and Christensen are wrong. The economics doesn’t support their argument

The debate over the costs of inaction saw Treasurer Josh Frydenberg use a speech to the Australian Industry Group last month to warn households of a potential rise in mortgage rates unless Australia gets its act together on climate.

“Australia has a lot at stake,” he said.

“We cannot run the risk that markets falsely assume we are not transitioning in line with the rest of the world.”

Separate analysis by Deloitte Access Economists (DAE) estimates that the Australian economy could lose $3.4 trillion worth of GDP in today’s dollars by 2070 if climate change is unchecked.

One of Australia’s richest people, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest told Morrison in October to commit to significant emissions reductions claiming

“clean” hydrogen, which is sometimes championed by the Morrison government, was a carbon-based product. Clean hydrogen, he said, was “a sound bite covering the fact it’s made from carbon-emitting fossil fuel – it has carbon all through its supply chain”.

Forrest likened “clean” coal and “clean” hydrogen to “cancer-free tobacco”.

“It all adds up to the same thing – misleading sound bites put out by industries wishing to continue a duplicitous social licence to operate,”

Even the industry body representing the purveyors of the emissions intensive utes and SUV’s that are apparently needed to ‘enjoy the weekend’ disagree with the Morrison Coalition Government’s approach

“Around the world, emissions targets are a clear sign of a governments [sic] intent to reduce emissions and sends a positive signal to automotive manufacturers to provide more electric-powered vehicles to those markets.

“This is exactly what is needed in Australia,” said [Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries] chief executive Tony Weber.

“… Governments should focus on setting targets, not trying to pick winners through specific technology,” Mr Weber added.

If you consider that to be a little harsh, you probably don’t want to read this contribution from Nine Newspaper’s Drive website

That the Government even acknowledged electric vehicles as an enabling technology for their Net Zero by 2050 plans, was an amazing backflip on their 2019 election mocking of Labor’s electrical vehicle ambitions, which they decried as the death of the Australian weekend.

When pressed this week on that 2019 circus, Mr Morrison said he never had a problem with electric vehicles and the Coalition was moving forward with “technology, not taxes” and “choices, not mandates”. The Prime Minister claims it is “the massive change in technology” since 2019 that has seen the Government readjust its sights.

And yeah. We are calling bullsh*t on that.

If the war against climate change could be won on rhetoric alone, Australia would surely be at the front of the pack.

Fortunately for the rest of us, some are actively making meaningful change to mitigate the imminent (based on the research of scientists) climate catastrophe. A regional bus company in Queensland is moving it’s 120 vehicle diesel bus fleet which, the owners claim

[annually] consumed more than a million litres of fuel and produced 3,100 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

to a fleet powered by green hydrogen which they will produce themselves using solar power and rainwater. The real irony of this is the bus fleet is located in Emerald – one of the the principal service communities for the ‘Coalfields’ in Central Queensland. The same ‘Coalfields’ that Senator Canavan claims to represent. Somebody’s making it up – and it’s unlikely to be the people investing capital to reduce emissions in their own business.

When was the last time a Coalition government actually acted to validate the country’s public opinion rather than those of vested interests?

What do you think?

By Ad astra

It’s becoming alarming. Every day our Prime Minister becomes more verbose, more shouty, more insistent. The old-fashioned word ‘blatherskite’ comes to mind. Listen to him as he fronts journalists, answers questions in Question Time, or delivers his characteristic off-the-cuff oratory on any subject he chooses, from protestors to carbon capture and storage to electric cars.

In a cute appraisal in The Guardian you can read how Sarah Martin mocked his electric car approach with these acerbic words:

In a galling pivot, Scott Morrison hopes he can peek under the bonnet of an EV and be accepted as a convert.

Not so long ago he said Labor’s electric cars policy would ‘end the weekend’, and now he’s spruiking his own plan, but there’s no substance to it.

It’s hard to say which element of Scott Morrison’s new electric vehicle strategy is most galling. If you missed the unveiling on Tuesday, there’s not much to catch up on, given the strategy has all the substance of a Corn Thin.

The Coalition’s “strategy” for electric vehicle take-up contains $178m of government spending on EV infrastructure but no new policies, just like its “Australian Way” plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It rebuffs calls for vehicle emissions standards and provides no market signal to incentivise take-up – the two measures viewed by experts as the most important to drive change.

But while a policy document three years in the making that is entirely bereft of substance is certainly offensive, it is nowhere near as galling as the way in which Morrison expects voters to forgive and forget the Coalition’s position on electric vehicles ahead of the 2019 election.

As he unveiled the government’s new clean car policy that embraced electric cars, Morrison attempted to deflect accusations of hypocrisy by denying he had attacked electric vehicles before the 2019 federal election when he had insisted Labor would “end the weekend”.

The government has already ruled out subsidising the expansion of electric and hybrid vehicles through rebates or tax breaks, saying it expected only 30% of new sales to be EVs by 2030 – a date by which a growing number of countries plan to ban altogether the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

The “future fuels and vehicles strategy” instead includes $178m of new funding, mostly for new EV and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and to help businesses set up charging stations for fleets. It said the government would “co-invest with industry” to install an estimated 50,000 smart chargers in homes. Under questioning at a press conference in Melbourne, Morrison denied he had criticised EV technology before the last election. But the records show that at that time he had insisted: ”battery-powered cars would ‘not tow your trailer’; ‘not tow your boat’; ‘not get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family’.” Touché!

Morrison claimed his criticism had been limited to Labor’s then-policy, not the technology itself, and that he did not regret saying EVs would “end the weekend”.

“I don’t have a problem with electric vehicles, I have a problem with governments telling people what to do and what vehicles they should drive and where they should drive them, which is what [former opposition leader] Bill Shorten’s plan was,” Morrison said at Toyota’s hydrogen centre in suburban Altona.

“I’m not going to put up the price of petrol [for] families and make them buy electric vehicles, and walk away from the things they have. That is not the Liberal way and the Nationals way.”

The Shorten-era Labor policy was not to tell people what vehicle they should drive, require anyone to buy an EV or put up the price of petrol. It included a non-binding target of 50% new car sales being EVs by 2030 and the promise of a vehicle emissions standard to reduce the average carbon pollution of the national car fleet.

Morrison stressed the government would not “be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes. Just as Australians have taken their own decision to embrace rooftop solar at the highest rate in the world, when new vehicle technologies are cost-competitive, Australians will embrace them too”.

The expansion of rooftop solar – which, according to the Clean Energy Council, has now led to 3m systems being installed across the country – was encouraged for more than a decade through federal and state incentives and subsidies.

The government vehicle strategy suggests its approach will have only a limited impact as a climate policy. It is projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by just 8m tonnes – less than 2% of the national annual total – over the next 14 years.

Transport emissions are nearly 20% of the national total, were increasing rapidly before Covid-19 lockdowns and are projected to escalate in the years ahead.

Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, said the future policy was “another pamphlet, rather than a serious announcement”. He said a Labor government would make EVs cheaper by removing import and fringe benefits tax. “I think people will look at Scott Morrison today and this announcement and just shake their head and say, ‘What’s changed?’,’This is a guy who says he’s about new technology. Yet he’s resisted it.”

The energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the government’s strategy of helping install charging infrastructure, rather than phasing out fossil fuel cars, was about helping motorists “embrace the increasing range of technologies available to keep them moving in an informed and fair way”. He claimed credit for the number of low emissions vehicle models available in Australia increasing by 20% over the past eight months, but did not explain how the government’s policy had contributed to this.

Car manufacturers across the globe have released a wave of new EV models as governments have announced emissions limits for passenger cars and future bans on fossil fuel cars. Industry representatives say Australians have fewer options than comparable countries due to a lack of policy support.

Once more, Australians face the risk of being left behind. What’s new!

By John Haly

Predictably the crises of climate change and the pandemic highlighted deficits in health services, markets, welfare and education. Both have accelerated a predictable economic recession.

To understand the early signs of an economic downturn, we need to go back to when politically acknowledged signs of a faltering economy appeared. The GDP downturn in the third quarter of 2016 was preceded by nearly three years of a per-capita recession.

The retail boom of the last quarter (Christmas) saved us from an official recession. However, by the end of 2018, Australia re-entered a per-capita recession. “Australia’s economic output shrank 0.2pc per person in the fourth quarter of 2018, after a 0.1pc decline in the third”.

By mid-2019, economists predicted a recession as employment growth was slow, unemployment high, and wages were stagnating. Then, by the end of 2019, as Australia was literally burning down due to climate change, a global pandemic hit, and the pack of cards came tumbling down, and the recession we were always going to have, hit us.

Fig: 1 – Australian GDP Per-Capita for last decade.

Our strollout

The political response to the health crisis, lockdowns, quarantine handling, welfare support, vaccine strollouts has been underwhelming. Yet despite Government mismanagement, we moved from the least vaccinated nation in the OECD to a position by early November 2021 with 80% vaccination rates. Although we still had thousands of active cases, hundreds of newly acquired cases and hundreds in hospital. It isn’t over, but considering the state of other Western countries, we could be worse off.

The Federal Government celebrated some States opening up and criticising those that did not. Our Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had been spruiking our “recovered” unemployment numbers as the ABS claimed we had unemployment around five per cent. However, despite apparently rising job vacancies and falling unemployment (relative to 2020), business sector elements have complained that they cannot find staff to fill jobs on offer.

Zero-hours

So let’s explore the nuances of these circumstances where businesses claim they cannot fill vacancies despite insufficient jobs in the economy and millions without adequate levels of work. That assertion in itself is a reasonably broad claim, so let’s establish its bonafide. First, the ABS has stated that unemployment is low, although it has recently risen to 5.2% in October from 4.63%. This is only because the methodology for the measurement ignores several factors I have discussed previously, including and certainly significantly the thousands of people who have “worked zero-hours” in any given month of 2020/21.

If you define employment as widely as the ABS does and unemployment a narrowly as it does, then the dictionary meaning of employment is lost in the equation.

From Wikipedia: “Employment is the relationship between two parties, usually based on a contract where work is paid for, where one party, which may be a corporation, for-profit, not-for-profit organisation, co-operative or other entity is the employer, and the other is the employee.” So if you’re not paid, and you do no work then by any definition (except that of the ABS) you are not “employed”. The ABS stats do not reflect Australian domestic unemployment (Figure:2 below).

Every other measure out-strips ABS

Jobseeker payments shown in the graph vastly outstripped the numbers classified by ABS as unemployed. It makes a farce out of the misuse of ABS’s statistics as a valid measure of internal unemployment. As previously explained, Roy Morgan’s more accurate assessment becomes more evident when ABS plus zero-hours numbers – has of late – been larger than even jobseeker and youth allowance combined.

Fig: 2 – Variant unemployment measures for 2020-2021

Vacancies and job guarantees

The question is now, what do poor Job Vacancy measures indicate? There aren’t enough vacancies to cater to the overwhelming majority of unemployed by any measure. This has been the case for decades and is the failure of conservative governments and the private sector. The Government could easily provide a Federal Job Guarantee but is ideologically opposed. Similar opposition was prevalent when Prime Minister John Curtin, postwar, established a not dissimilar mechanism resulting in unemployment remaining beneath 3% in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, successive governments have diminished the public service by privatisation, undermined manufacturing and “deter investment” in renewables. Ross Garnaut, who produced two Climate Change Reviews for the Australian government, wrote the book “SuperPower”. In it, he notes we have squandered an enormous economic advantage. Worth reading unless you are susceptible to depression at discovering how the “fog of Australian politics” has obscured tremendous economic and employment potential for our country.

Separation of vacancies

This aside, there are two recently diverging measures for job vacancies. The Department of Employment generates the IVI stats for internet job advertisements. ABS does a quarterly vacancy survey amongst businesses. When I first began writing about the anomalies of unemployment stats, the variation between these two figures was negligible enough to be ignored. For example, in 2016, I wrote, “The ABC reported in January that “…newspaper ads rose 0.4 per cent last month, but now make up less than 5 per cent of employment advertising…”.” So I focused on IVI statistics because newspaper advertising, shop windows ads, and private networking recommendations for applicants appeared to be statistically irrelevant.

Increasingly in the internet age, jobs recruitment can occur on various sites: Seek, CareerOne, Australian JobSearch, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The problem is that there is no government break-up in the last three like the IVI does for the first three. (Figure:3). However, private recruitment agents, “shop window” ads, or boutique specialist websites are applicable for the local low-skilled workforce expected to find work in rural areas for labour, like fruit picking.

Fig: 3 – Variant Job Vacancy figures 2019-2021

The ABS survey reported smaller numbers than the IVI statistics over a decade ago. That period aside, there was no significant divergence between ABS and IVI until the last four years. You can see the change in Figure 4. While we can’t blame pandemics, it is worth referencing the coincidental timing of the economic falterings discussed initially.

Fig: 4 – Roy Morgan employment stats and both Job vacancy measures.

Businesses shifted from under-reporting vacancies over a decade ago to reporting more vacancies than were reported as advertised. This is partly due to recruitment alternatives arising in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube that are not included. The most recognised recruitment platform, LinkedIn, is becoming drastically less popular because of stats on how many LinkedIn profiles are exaggerated and out of date. Despite Linkedin’s internal exaggerations, according to Jobvite surveys, the number of recruiters using LinkedIn has dropped from 92% in 2017 to 77% in 2018 to 72% in 2020 to 65% in 2021.

Pre-pandemic economic faltering in Australia meant companies relied on natural attrition or dismissal to shed employees they didn’t replace, sometimes even modifying the job description to force people out. They overworked the ones they employed, but didn’t want to finance their overtime. This became evident as companies were increasingly being outed for wage theft for unpaid overtime. Corporates lobbied to have conservative governments undercut penalty rates on the spurious claims to pay for more employees. Basic maths reveals this was not applicable for anything but a small number of large companies with significant numbers of employees. (Figure:5) Such companies shed employees when penalty rates dropped, and nobody got more work. So jobs continue to be shed.

Fig: 5 – Employment capacity required to benefit from penalty rate changes.

Businesses reported more contingent vacancies than they appeared to advertise, and then the recession hit. Demand bottomed for all but the largest enterprises, people stayed in lockdowns, the economy recessed, and unemployment rose to nearly a quarter of the workforce. Finally, however, its slowly returning status of between 1 to 1.5 million unemployed of 2019 has emerged. From mid-2021 onwards, unemployment settled between 1.2 and 1.5 million. (Figure:6)

There has undoubtedly been higher average unemployment for 2021, but for the last six months, it hasn’t exceeded the boundaries of 2019. So there are – to be fair to the conservative political commentary – grounds for saying employment has recovered to the range of pre-pandemic levels. Just don’t look at the figures (Figure:6) or the relative range too closely.

So now, business is over-reporting vacancies to the ABS that they do not advertise or intend to fill without a demand surge. Yet even advertised vacancies have gone up. (Figure:3/7). So why might specific labour markets be advertising more? Does it represent an increase in new jobs, or does loss of employment markets contribute?

Fig: 6 – Under and Unemployment and variant job vacancy stats.

Considerations

Due to international border closures, consider the loss of migrants, pacific Islanders and backpackers coming to Australia – on visa conditions that require rural employment. Consider the access to work of migrants who, out of economic necessity, live in crowded low socioeconomic LGAs with higher exposure to the Covid-19 virus to jobs in external LGAs that had travel restrictions. Third, consider how travel restrictions and lockdowns restricted high-end recruitment that previously used in-person networking meetups or travelling to interview overseas. Fourth, consider that net migration away from cities has accelerated during the recession and remote work opportunities, which has fuelled the rise of alternatives in smaller towns with lower living costs. Finally, consider that the absence of visa workers revealed an entrenched culture of exploitation and inadequate financial compensation in the farming and service industries.

The results of these considerations are two-fold.

1. This has generated much of the employer claims that they are “struggling to find suitable staff to fill job vacancies”.
   
2. The realisation that low wages you can get away with for migrants, poor conditions, and exploitation will not be acceptable jobs for Australians. Farmers and Restaurants are now forced to engage with better educated Australians who expect better pay and are more aware of their rights as employees. So it is no surprise they have been less successful in filling jobs.

As localised markets for exploitable employees have dried up, businesses have had to advertise outside their LGAs. Figure 7 shows that according to the Department of Employment, rises in advertisements for labour with the only significant dips in recruitment across all industries were during the Covid-19 Delta outbreak. However, this does not necessarily translate as a rise in real jobs. Instead, some portion likely reflects the need to expand advertising into previously unutilised media, with further reach than LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Fig: 7 – 2021 Lead up to October’s advertised job vacancy by role classification.

Recruitment for hospitality, manufacturing, warehouses, leisure sectors and farming industries relied on a willing pool of locally exploitable, low-skilled, migrant labour on tap. This has vanished for all the aforementioned reasons. Moreover, constrained reach advertising via social media might have limited scope to attract Australians. Many don’t want to work for the exploitative conditions or the low wages on offer.

Lazy Aussies

The political and MSM dialogue to cover the exploitation hasn’t changed in years. “Lazy Aussies just don’t want to work” was an excuse to hire cheaper, exploitable 457 visa migrants when Abbott was PM. Under Morrison, “Laziness” and “JobSeeker is too generous” are the absurdities brought to bear. These diatribes never address the wage rates or the conditions, and employers will lie about them, while politicians facilitate labour exploitation. Corporate Australia seeks to frame this as a “labour shortage”.

In contrast, the ACTU and other Unions call it a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, or a shortage of non-discriminatory, non-toxic management. So instead of being responsive to the needs of Australians in a time of crisis and expanding public sector employment, welfare or active labour market policies, the government are facilitating a gig economy. One complete with exploitation and underpayment and ensuring labour mobility and wage growth are at an all-time low.

Money for mates

In the face of a recession, the recent history of record-breaking under and unemployment levels, stagnating wages, a surge in the part-time and gig economy, the Liberal Party’s solution is support for bringing “up to 160,000 foreign workers and students a year into Australia”. So how do they facilitate this amid a global pandemic? Via a private quarantine scheme recommended by DPG Advisory Solutions, “linked to former deputy NSW Liberal Party director Scott Briggs”. The scheme “was awarded a $79,500 “limited tender” contract by the Home Affairs department to provide “consultancy services”. Also, the founder and director of DPG is David Gazard. A close associate of Scott Morrison and former ministerial adviser. The Department of Home Affairs chose these private quarantine reviewers without government tender.

This is the quality of solution for a federal government that had till now avoided building quarantine facilities, as “carefully vetted” consultants are brought into resolving the issue of businesses – who, despite massive unemployment numbers – are “struggling to find exploitable employees”. This deliberately cast illusion of economic prosperity hides the poverty suffered by millions in Australia and is challenging to maintain with the recent GDP drop – the largest on record. It leaves real solutions of federal job guarantees, active labour market policies, and adequate welfare support in the dust. Is this the land of the “fair go” we want Australia to be, or is that just a myth we abandoned generations ago, if indeed such an ethos ever existed?

This article was originally published on Australia Awaken – Ignite your Torches.

By Shane Crocker

A person could grow very weary trying to keep up with Scott Morrison’s lies. Below is a section of his falsehoods, which by no means is an exhaustive list and some of them you no doubt know, while others may be new to you. Either way, there are many more out there.

September 3, 2018: Told Melbourne radio station 3AW that homosexuality is a choice and that he supports conversion therapy.

October 10, 2018: Told Melbourne radio station 3AW that schools have a right to expel homosexual students and fire homosexual teachers, and that hospitals have the right to fire homosexual doctors and nurses.

October 10, 2018: Lied when he promised to introduce legislation to protect LGBTIQ+ students. (Note: this was the same day he told Melbourne radio station 3AW that schools have a right to expel homosexual students.)

December 12, 2018: Lied when he promised to create a new federal level anti-corruption and integrity commission based on New South Wales’ ICAC. No progress has been made in the three years since because he had no intention of following up on the 2018 promise.

April 7, 2019: Lied about electric vehicles when he said:

“[An electric vehicle] won’t tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat. It’s not going to get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family. Shorten wants to end the Australian weekend.”

December 10, 2019: Refused to allow volunteer fire-fighters to be paid or compensated with tax breaks. He further alienated the fire-fighters by saying they “want to be out there“.

December 16 to December 21, 2019: Went on an unannounced holiday to Hawaii during the bushfire disaster. Instructed the Office of the Prime Minister to falsely tell the media that he wasn’t in Hawaii.

January 6, 2020: Announced a $2 billion fund for bushfire disaster recovery. Nearly two years later most of the relief money has yet to be distributed to the bushfire victims.

March 12, 2020: Dismissed the announcement by the World Health Organisation of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, saying on Twitter, “I’m going to the footy this weekend & I’m looking forward to it…& I encourage you to, unless you’re ill.”

https://twitter.com/_justinstevens_/status/1238614247556255744

May 11, 2020: Said, “It’s a free country” in response to the violent anti-lockdown protest on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House in Melbourne. He gave support to the protesters two more times; on November 12 and November 19, 2021.

"It's a free country." @ScottMorrisonMP asked about the protests on the weekend. #auspol pic.twitter.com/peKniCKNzB

— David Marler (@Qldaah) May 11, 2020

August 19, 2020: Lied when he said:

“Australians will be among the first in the world to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, if it proves successful, through an agreement between the Australian Government and UK-based drug company AstraZeneca.”

There was no agreement.

October 22, 2020, March 31, 2021, Apr 24, 2021, June 22, 2021: Lied and exaggerated four times, between October 2020 and June 2021, about the number of Australians who have received the COVID-19 vaccine saying; “everything is on track”.

November 4, 2020: Lied when he said; “Our strategy puts Australia at the head of the queue.” The UK and the US started vaccinating their populations a month before Australia. In the UK half of all adults had their first jab before any vaccinations started in Australia.

February 23, 2021: Undermined former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins allegation of rape by saying she is “confused”.

March 11 2021, March 14 2021, March 31 2021, July 21, 2021: Mishandled the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program, saying three times in March “It’s not a race”.

July 9, 2021: Lied when he said Australia is leading the world in the vaccination rate. In fact Australia is rated last among the 38 OECD nations for vaccinations (Iceland is Number 1.)

August 30, 2021: Lied when he said all the problems with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout had been “overcome” when several states still couldn’t get supplies of the vaccine.

August 31, 2021: Refused to strengthen laws to protect women from sexual harassment and sexual violence.

October 31, 2021: Lied to the President of France about the French contract to build submarines for Australia.

October 26, 2021: Lied when he told a press conference saying Australia would be taking a net zero emissions target to the COP26 in Glasgow.

October 31, 2021: Lied to the President of the USA when he told President Biden that he told President Macron about terminating the submarine contract much earlier than he really did.

November 2, 2021: Leaked private text messages between himself and French President Emmanuel Macron for domestic political points.

November 10, 2021: Announces the Australian government will do nothing to reduce greenhouse emissions:

“We believe climate change will ultimately be solved by ‘can do’ capitalism; not ‘don’t do’ governments seeking to control people’s lives and tell them what to do.”

November 11, 2021: Lied when he said he’d never said anything negative about electric vehicles.

November 12, 2021: Says; “I’ve never told a lie in public life. I don’t believe I have, no.”

Image from Twitter (@sacarlin48)

November 12, 2021: Sends mixed messages by giving comfort to the extremists involved in the violent anti-vaccination protests in Melbourne by saying “I understand people’s frustrations.” This was actually the second time he gave tacit support to violent demonstrations. The first time was on June 12, 2020 when he said, “It’s a free country.”

November 13, 2021: For the second time in a week he equivocated over the violent protests in Melbourne. He said he didn’t have sympathy for the violent protests but that he had sympathy for their cause. Asked if he had sympathy for the protesters, Mr Morrison said he did have sympathy for those who have had a “gutful of government’s telling them what to do”. This was after he said; “My message couldn’t be clearer.”

November 18, 2021: At a photo-op at a NSW brewery, he made a sexist and racist joke about “an Irish girl in a brewery.” It made the news at Irish on-line news site, Independent.ie. Scott Morison has now upset the Irish. They are not amused.

November 22, 2021: Lied about telling the Federal Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese where he went during the 2019 bushfire disaster.

November 25, 2021: Blocked debate on the creation of a federal integrity corruption commission despite making a promise in 2018 to set up a federal version of ICAC.

November 26, 2021: Refuses to guarantee teachers and students won’t be expelled and sacked if the Religious Freedom legislation is passed. Said that the legislation will be “reviewed” in 2023 despite promising gay students will be protected by legislation by Christmas 2018.

That’s just a collection of his many lies. I’m sure there will be more to come, and we should call him out for every one of them.

By 2353NM

There must be a federal election coming – the infamous yellow and black Clive Palmer funded billboards have made a reappearance. One of the billboards has a statement that suggests COVID-19 related restrictions and vaccinations are a waste of time because it is still possible to be infected. It’s claimed the vaccine and restrictions are an attempt to restrict your ‘freedoms’.

There are two small problems in Palmer’s logic. First, there is no guarantee of ‘freedom’ in Australia because there is no Bill of Rights or similar legal instrument. Second, if Palmer had bothered to listen to the health experts and the State Premiers, he would have heard that restrictions on movement and constant requests to ‘get vaccinated’ were to ensure that the health system actually has enough infrastructure to cope with the potential hospitalisation of those that do need assistance to recover from a bout of COVID-19.

Health facilities and infrastructure cost money to build and run. While we have seen evidence of the federal government ‘printing money’ to increase stimulus, the state governments who run the hospital systems around Australia don’t have the ability to ‘print the money’ to build new hospitals to cater for a large influx of sick and dying COVID-19 patients, a likely outcome if there had been an uncontrolled pandemic. The reality is someone has to pay for it, and in the case of services supplied by state or local governments we pay through our taxes. Palmer should know this – he was a Federal MP for a short period of time.

As usual, Palmer is making the ‘facts’ suit the particular biases of his likely followers. His followers are likely convinced that the ‘income tax’ component they see in their payslips is wasted and things were much better for them (and others) in the glory days – whenever they were. Palmer hasn’t spelt out how he will protect ‘freedom’ – would it be the introduction of a ‘Bill of Rights’ to enshrine ‘freedom’ in legislation or some other process?

It’s very easy to suggest in retrospect that the pandemic restrictions weren’t needed as our health system wasn’t swamped (unlike other places in the world). Retrospect is always 100% correct and in this case the proposition hasn’t been tested against a ‘let her rip’ strategy that was ineffective at best in the UK and parts of Europe. Recent news reports also suggest that the public health systems in a number of Australian states are close to, or at full capacity without pandemic related illness. Full capacity is good from an economic point of view, but considerably below what is desired if you are the one on an ambulance gurney at 3am waiting for a bay in Emergency or a bed ‘upstairs’ to become available.

Palmer’s followers will probably only think about the need to potentially conserve health services if they, or one of their ‘nearest and dearest’, are the one in the gurney at 3am. They also won’t consider the need for schools, public transport, roads, regulatory bodies (that for example ensure that granny has food to eat and some comfort in Happy Memories Retirement Village, regardless of the operator’s desire to make bigger profits) and so on unless the lack or insufficient supply of the particular service directly affects them. When the service is not there on demand, the rationale is “it’s the ‘gummints’ fault” which further reduces their trust in the ‘gummint’.

And that’s the problem – ‘trust’. Palmer’s political party and others of a similar outlook only get their oxygen to survive because the large political parties have lost the trust of a considerable number of Australians. As evidence consider that the election results and opinion poll estimates suggest that either of the ‘major’ parties are flat out getting 40% of the electors directly supporting them. Even more concerning is the ‘marketing’ of the Liberals, Nationals, CLP and LNP as a combined force – except when facing an election. In a parliament that has a requirement of 50% plus 1 of the votes to form the government, there are a lot of people that feel they are unrepresented.

Some electorates take the plunge and elect someone without a large party machine of acolytes and rent seekers that have to be accommodated. When that happens, we get representation of the likes of Helen Haines and Bob Katter and the Parliament is all the better for it. However, for the rest of us, unfortunately if we choose to vote for an alternative to the major parties, almost inevitably our vote ends up with the one we typically hold our nose while numbering one higher than the other one on the ballot paper.

Arguably, the Gillard Government that relied on the support of the trio of Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor was the most effective government Australia has had in the past 50 years. The reason is simple – to survive the government of the day had to actively listen to the concerns, aspirations and ideas of people ‘outside the ALP tent’. Gillard and current Opposition Leader Albanese (who was Leader of the House) did so, which is to their eternal credit.

Yes, there is an election coming up. Palmer’s advertising is effectively a lie as there is no legislated ‘right’ to freedom in Australia and he hasn’t articulated what he would do to create the ‘right’, How do we know? We asked weeks ago and are still waiting for a response, any response, even a ‘we’ve got your email’. The problem is that people like Palmer can promise utopia because they know they will never have to deliver. Based on the contents of Palmer’s advertising, he doesn’t understand the economics of health care at a basic level or the distribution of powers between states and federal governments, which is concerning from someone asking for your vote so he can run the country.

Voting for the major political parties is like buying a Toyota or Kia. It’s a justifiable, safe and reliable decision and a considerable number of others also make the same decision. Do you trust the car manufacturer or dealer to consider your individual objectives rather than theirs – of course not. However there are alternatives in a number of electorates. This time around, look at all the candidates and read the material shoved into your letterbox (despite the ‘no junk mail’ sticker). Make the candidates accountable and remind them they are there to represent you, not the powerbroker and rent seekers that seem to infest the political parties. Ask questions, insist on answers and vote accordingly.

What do you think?