An almighty battle over press freedoms – and potentially, how that may snowball towards defining the public’s freedom of speech – is currently brewing in the federal Parliament, between pockets of Parliamentarians advocating for greater press freedoms and the body’s Intelligence Committee seeking to restrict them.

While matters have not yet reached a boiling point, the Press Freedom Inquiry hearings in the Senate this week will go a long way to dictating the directions of future press freedoms.

The open hearings, which began on Monday and remain ongoing at this writing, involve submissions and testimonials from a wide spectrum of interested parties.

Being chaired by Sarah Hanson-Young, the Greens senator from South Australia, representatives from the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Department of the Attorney-General speaking on behalf of Christian Porter, the Department of Home Affairs and, representing the unions’ perspective, the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) would be on hand to present views and evidence.

The hearings are occurring under shadows of political suspicions and vested interests on all sides. Raids on the home of NewsCorp journalist Annika Smethurst as well as those on the ABC’s Sydney offices in recent times have sparked rumblings over what is allowable in the public interest and what sort of protections can be afforded to whistleblowers’ contributions to journalists, as a couple of examples.

However, as the case of Smethurst – who herself recently admitted that she is taking a sabbatical leave from her duties at the Sunday Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald Sun, citing a personal toll suffered during the ordeal – was thrown out by the High Court, the case of ABC journalist Dan Oakes over the network’s “The Afghan Files” documentary report still hangs in the balance, and the decisions lying in the mercy of Porter will determine Oakes’ fate.

This is where the presumption of political bias raises its ugly head. Why would the High Court act relatively quickly on the Smethurst case – given Smethurst’s employer’s relationship with the Morrison government being allegedly as cushy as it is – while Porter’s inaction on the Oakes verdict forces the ABC, amid its contentious relationship with the same body in the past, to endure a nervous wait?

This remains a matter which certainly angers and perplexes the MEAA.

“The ABC’s journalism clearly embarrassed the Government and the Department of Defence because they had classified the war crimes allegations as ‘secret’ so it could be hidden from the public,” Marcus Strom, the MEAA’s president, said at the time when the AFP admitted that it would continue to pursue Oakes’ case – even in the face of legal inconsistencies which remain quite clear to them.

“The story needed to be told because it was clearly in the public interest. We now know, from subsequent news stories, that there are multiple allegations of war crimes under investigation. And yet it is the truth tellers who face jail time,” said Strom.

“We should never forget that the AFP used a dangerously wide-reaching search warrant when it raided the ABC. It allowed the AFP to ‘add, copy, delete or alter’ material in the ABC’s computers. Such powers in the pursuit of whistleblowers and the criminalisation of legitimate public interest journalism should have no place in our democracy,” Strom added.

Fast-forward to this week’s hearings, and nothing has changed in the potential to prosecute journalists and whistleblowers for their work in the public interest.

As the hearings opened on Monday, AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw preached for a status-quo approach, where any new procedures, if enacted via legislation of a proposed “notice to produce” framework to be introduced, would not eliminate the need for search warrants to be executed on journalists or whistleblowers.

“There still will be some instances where it is appropriate for police and law enforcement agencies to seek a search warrant in respect of a journalist or media organisation,” Kershaw told the panel.

“For example, where there is reason to believe material could be concealed or destroyed,” he explained via a broad example.

Meanwhile, both Hanson-Young and Strom entered into this inquiry united in their convictions that – while pursuing greater protections and shield laws for journalists and whistleblowers – that recommendations from the Morrison government laid out prior to the inquiry do not go far enough in order to achieve their aims to serve the public in the common good.

For starters, Strom feels that jail time remains a very real possibility for journalists and whistleblowers without any reform towards stronger shield laws, in the ages-old premise that one should be assumed innocent before proven guilty.

“Despite a year-long inquiry into the impact of security laws on the public’s right to know, journalists still face jail for legitimate news reporting in the public interest,” Strom said.

“We still have a situation where journalists are considered guilty before the law. It should be up to the government agency to prove a case, not for a free media to prove it hasn’t breached any laws,” he added.

The MEAA has also praised the inquiry’s committee for recommending support for defamation law reform, improvements to freedom of information and information flow from government sources, the improvement of public interest disclosure arrangements for public servants in addition to general improvements in press freedom and shield laws.

And in doing so, Strom has advocated greater bipartisan legislation to assure that these goals are met.

“The MEAA has never said that journalists are above the law,” added Strom, “rather that bad laws must be reformed.”

Hanson-Young also feels that journalists’ livelihoods and whistleblowers’ rights need to be protected, even via a solitary piece of legislation.

“The Parliament’s secret Intelligence and Security Committee has failed to protect journalists, democracy and the public’s right to know what the government is doing in their name,” said Hanson-Young last week heading into the final submission stages of the inquiry.

“Journalists should not be charged for doing their jobs full stop. They should not have their homes raided. They should not be intimidated or threatened. They should not be attacked by the government for reporting what is in the public interest.

“A secret process concocted by a secret committee doing the bidding of a secretive government will not protect the public’s right to know. We need a Media Freedom Act to protect public interest journalism and the rights of journalists to do their jobs without fear or favour,” Hanson-Young added.

As Hanson-Young and the Greens have been pushing for a general Bill Of Rights since 2017, that which would define press freedoms along with the general rights for all Australians, it would be expected that a Media Freedom Act could form a least-possible outcome as a legacy of this inquiry, once it has finished.

For comparison purposes, August 28 marked the date which commemorates Equal Pay Day, where a total of 59 more days would constitute how many more days from the start of the current financial year that women would have to work in order to find their pay being on an equal footing with that of their male colleagues and counterparts.

A statistical reflection of the disparity of pay between women and men, as pointed out by the Equal Pay Day Alliance (EPDA) and citing data calculated annually by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) and quoting a series of data presented by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), presents some very sobering facts for the 2020 edition of Equal Pay Day:

• The national gender pay gap is 14%.
• On average, women working full-time earned $1,558.40 while men working full-time earned $1,812.00.
• Full-time average weekly earnings difference between women and men is $253.60.

And just some of the institutionalised factors, those dictated by the reality of our society and otherwise, do make suggestions which bring it all into focus:

• discrimination and bias in hiring and pay decisions
• women and men working in different industries and different jobs, with female-dominated industries attracting lower wages
• women’s disproportionate share of unpaid caring and domestic work
• lack of workforce flexibility to accommodate caring and other responsibilities, especially in senior roles
• and women’s greater time out of the workforce impacting career progression and opportunities.

The state of the COVID-19 pandemic is only making the gulf of disparity even worse at present. At least parity has reigned in Australia’s unemployment rate up to the month of July sitting at 7.5 per cent, as both men and women have incurred unemployment at that very exact rate for each gender. And as such, the actual number of women being unemployed exists at its highest rate in the nation’s history – and it has even doubled since last December.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has also championed the day not just to talk up the disparities of the present, but how damaging the future for women in the workforce may potentially become.

The ACTU’s concerns naturally address any of the above statistics and trends, but also go on to attack insecure work in the way of casualisation, lack of paid pandemic leave, how women in traditionally female-dominated areas such as healthcare and early childhood education are underpaid by the nature of their awards, and the rates of participation of the Morrison government’s early superannuation withdrawal scheme.

“The refusal of the Morrison Government to address insecure work which disproportionately effects women has left a third of the workforce without sick leave during a pandemic and means that women who are returning to work are returning to jobs which are lower paid and more insecure,” Michele O’Neil, the ACTU’s president, said on Friday.

“[And] the overwhelmingly female workforces in aged care and early childhood education and care are systemically underpaid and deal with extreme levels of insecure work. Women in the community sector are facing funding shortfalls which will undermine equal pay,” O’Neil added.

But the vicious cycle, according to O’Neil and the ACTU, does not end there.

Insofar as the withdrawal of superannuation has happened, over 1.3 million women have accessed their funds early in order to pay bills and – in the case of unemployed and under-employed women – fill the gaps in the commitments of their daily lives.

While this trend has occurred at a higher rate than that of men – and some would contend at a ratio close to two-to-one – in addition to those who have taken advantage of both available windows to withdraw totals of $20,000, more than 300,000 women have completely emptied their superannuation accounts.

And of that, 80 per cent of those, said O’Neil, are 35 years old or younger.

And in that demographic of being female and under 35, she added, members of that group may very well be $95,000 worse off in retirement once fees are taken into account.

“It is essential that the recovery from this crisis address the long-standing issues which have reduced the pay and retirement income of women,” said O’Neil.

O’Neil also implores the Morrison government to examine the ACTU’s National Economic Reconstruction Plan (NERP) as a foundation not just to stimulate the economy in the way of general post-pandemic recovery, but also provide a backdrop towards addressing the disparities women face in employment and wage equality issues.

“Addressing equal pay requires investment in secure jobs, and improving women’s legal rights to win equal pay,” said O’Neil.

Believe it or not, the reading of the Morrison government’s federal budget lies just six weeks away. As Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, and members of the cabinet sweat out the details going into the October 6 unveiling date, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) have continued to plead to have their jobs-based plan to be included.

The Commonwealth government’s delay of five months remains completely understandable this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in that interval, a once-in-a-generation economic recession has also complicated matters for the government to devise a budget that would engineer a post-pandemic recovery.

The ACTU remains adamant that they have a jobs-based plan which should exist as the foundation of any recovery scheme, and that the government would be foolhardy not to even consider including it.

As details go, there is nothing new nor earth-shattering about the ACTU’s jobs-based plan drawn up to inspire the national economy out of the recession. It’s just that at this point in time, they are pushing the advocacy of it into a state of overdrive with Budget Night approaching sooner than one may think.

The body which governs the nation’s unions and the union movement actually released this blueprint in late July, as a five-pronged recovery scheme geared towards the creation and salvation of jobs, the protection and growth of existing industries, the support of private and public sector jobs, an emphasis in skills training, and a means to strengthen the country’s infrastructure.

The only difference which exists now consists of the ACTU, under the leadership of its president Michele O’Neil and its national secretary Sally McManus, to take their plan to the next level and submit it to the government – whether they are willing to listen to its details or not – towards consideration and acceptance into the upcoming budget.

And up to this point, O’Neil remains perplexed as to any reasons why, within the last four weeks, the Morrison government has not adopted any of the points on its blueprint.

Insofar as the upcoming budget is concerned, O’Neil and the ACTU also point out that when compared to nine other countries – including New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong within the Australasian region alone – Australia possesses a smaller proportion of GDP.

Which puts a need for the government to adopt the ACTU’s National Economic Reconstruction Plan (NERP) into a special perspective, according to O’Neil.

“Throughout this pandemic the Morrison Government has been consistently slow to act and has put forward a smaller fiscal response than many other developed economies,” O’Neil said on Friday.

“The crisis has been made worse by persistent uncertainty about the economy and the lack of a national economic reconstruction plan from the Morrison Government,” she added.

Add in two other common obstacles to any plans of economic recovery, the current 7.5 per cent rate of unemployment per the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and the 13-to-1 ratio of unemployed to available jobs, regardless of qualification, and one can notice and observe that the Morrison government runs the risk of falling under the weight of the hefty challenge before them.

And the ACTU, on multiple occasions, are just trying to help, and offering assistance with this jobs-based plan.

Naturally, they possess a vested interest – to get jobs for members within their affiliated organisations, and for the working classes in general. But they also fight for greater rights and welfare for all working people, which would be deemed essential for kick-starting the economy.

But O’Neil and the ACTU identify a greater need – without a “society over economy” approach, there won’t be people around to take advantage of an economy, a bustling one or otherwise.

“We need a comprehensive jobs plan which will put working people first and ensure that we have better, stronger rights as we recover from this crisis than we did going into it,” said O’Neil.

And as the application of the ACTU’s NERP scheme would achieve a means to inspire and grow the Australian economy out of the doldrums of the current recession, O’Neil is also advocating for the Morrison government to do more to consider its blueprint at budget time for its risk-versus-reward element.

The risk being for the LNP government to adopt plans outside of the comfort zone of its own values and beliefs.

And the reward, the carrot at the end of the stick, as advocated by O’Neil and the ACTU, being people returning to work and spending their salaries in a way which stimulates economic growth.

“Our plan calls for the government to use its power to create secure jobs for the millions of Australians without a job, or reliant on government support to stay in work,” O’Neil said.

All O’Neil and the ACTU have been doing is standing by with a high level of commitment and great patience with a blueprint at the ready, hoping for a bipartisan spirit not much unlike what was displayed at the start of the pandemic, and what brought McManus and Attorney-General Christian Porter together to hammer out the JobSeeker and JobKeeper schemes at that time – and what may be possible now, as hope springs eternal.

“We stand ready, as we have for months, to work with government to create jobs and support Australian industries,” she said.

The Morrison government released its latest unemployment statistics on Thursday, and the immediate interpretation from the numbers possesses a deadly truth: it’s unprecedented, bound to get higher, and the recession occurring in the midst of a pandemic isn’t going to end anytime soon without a jobs plan to combat it.

Via data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the rate of unemployment in Australia has risen to 7.5 per cent, equating to 1,009,400 people out of work – rising over the 1,000,000 mark for the first time in the nation’s history – and the underutilisation rate which defines a combination of those who are unemployed in addition to those who aren’t working a minimum of 20 hours per week has risen to a whopping 18.7 per cent.

For perspective, nearly one in every five people who are able to work are not working enough hours to qualify for the title of part-time workers.

Another bit of perspective: Back in January, when the words “pandemic”, “coronavirus” and “COVID” were not a part of the daily lexicon, and the word “recession” was an absolute afterthought, the unemployment rate stood at 5.2 per cent, and was considered as “steady”.

Therefore, in the last seven months, the key economic indicator of the nation’s economy that the public generally identifies with has gone from “steady” and mildly acceptable, to “record-breaking” and unprecedented – and in no way of making a U-turn anytime soon.

In order to inspire that recovery, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) maintains that a plan to create more jobs remains as a key foundation point to engineer some sort of a National Economic Reconstruction Plan (NERP), as the organisation has put in its own blueprint before.

And if the Morrison government fails to do this quickly, the ACTU fears that concerns will increase for the country’s working classes, that the economy and unemployment figures will continue to veer out of control like a heavy vehicle on an old country road.

“These figures show that Australia is on track – as predicted by the government’s own department – to reach 10 percent by the end of the year,” warns Michele O’Neil, the ACTU’s president.

O’Neil also points out that the government’s statistics on unemployment and underemployment would be worse if not for the 3.5 million workers currently receiving payments under the JobKeeper subsidy scheme.

“Even with a national wage subsidy scheme which unions fought for, more than a million people are now looking for work,” O’Neil said.

“Even with a national wage subsidy scheme which unions fought for, more than a million people are now looking for work.

“The million Australians now out of a job, and the millions more who are either reliant on JobKeeper or worried about their future, need leadership from this Government. They need a plan for jobs,” O’Neil added.

O’Neil also said that any jobs-creation plan would have to result in a particular “if-then” scenario: if the government can put masses of people to work, then they can have the foundation blocks to rebuild an economy upon, and where the newly-employed can spend their money.

“We need to make sure that the recovery creates secure jobs which will kick-start the economy by putting money in the hands of working people and giving them the confidence to spend it,” she said.

To review the ACTU’s economic recovery blueprint from nearly four weeks ago, it focuses on areas in training, infrastructure, sustainability, hospitality and tourism, and childcare.

And the ACTU has even said to the Morrison government, in no uncertain terms, “feel free to adopt our plan” – an insistence that the organisation was offering, on general principle, even at the start of June – and adapt the blueprint’s fundamentals and build upon it to aid in its economic recovery aims.

“People need reassurance that Australia isn’t going over an economic cliff so the sooner the Government tells people the plan the better for everyone,” O’Neil said at the time.

And at that time, unemployment stood at a similar rate of 7.4 per cent, so these appeals are nothing new, adds O’Neil.

“We have 13 times more unemployed people than jobs available, and record rates of young people either out of work or needing more hours,” she said.

“People need a real pathway that builds on skill development into real work so expanding the program to include new apprentices and making sure there are government projects with mandated minimum numbers of trainees and apprentices is what we need to see now,” added O’Neil, using a reinvestment into the country’s TAFE system as a focal point to put people back to work.

Overall, O’Neil has implored for those in the Morrison government to consult with the ACTU, in the name of camaraderie and bipartisanship towards a common goal, over any plans which it has proposed in the past.

“The ACTU has put forward a detailed plan, what’s needed now is for the Government to act to create jobs and to ensure that working people have better rights and more secure work as we recover from this crisis,” said O’Neil.

While the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has been calling out the various LNP governments since 2013 for stagnant wage growth, statistics reveal that wages have slowed to their lowest points since wage price index statistics started being tracked in 1997 – no matter how they’re to be measured.

Both the ACTU and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) have interpreted Treasury figures that wage growth is down by 2.1 per cent in the quarter ending in June, 0.2 per cent lower than the previous quarter ending in March, and down 1.8 per cent over a 12-month span – numbers which justify that a once-in-a-generation recession is happening in Australia.

“Working people have been living through a wage growth crisis for more than seven years, but this crisis has driven wages to new lows,” said Sally McManus, the ACTU’s national secretary.

And while the ACTU has been making deafening calls for the Morrison government to institute programs promoting jobs creation, not to cut existing schemes of JobKeeper and JobSeeker, come up with a plan for national paid pandemic leave, as well as promoting their latest push to fully expand JobKeeper, they now have a range of like-minded allies to help advocate for those economic remedies.

The ACTU now has the backing of three key ALP members as well as Greens leader Adam Bandt’s passionate pleas to reinforce their calls.

“The biggest lesson we’re learning from COVID-19 is that you can’t leave anyone behind,” Bandt said last week.

“It’s important that we provide everyone with the support they need to be able to cope with this pandemic and ensure restrictions have the best chance of working,” he added.

In addition to Bandt’s emphasis of a fundamental socio-economic truth arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, MP’s within the ALP echo those concerns, along with pointing out the shortcomings of which ministers in the Morrison government have already done.

“On its latest attempt to fix the program, the government has still failed to support millions of workers that were originally excluded,” said Tony Burke, in his role as the shadow minister for industrial relations.

Burke specifically points out the potential impact of the government’s revision of JobKeeper last week, that far too few workers were standing to benefit from it.

“Labor is still concerned that other aspects of the wind down of JobKeeper will come at the worst time for workers and businesses in Victoria and in other parts of Australia and that the Government continues to exclude millions of workers from JobKeeper,” he added.

Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers, in concurring with Burke, has been critical that the Morrison government has little to show for its intermittent efforts – aside from the establishment of a few schemes and programs in the five months that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Australian society and culture, as well as the nation’s economy.

“We’ve been saying for some time that the deterioration in the economy should force the Government to reconsider its changes to JobKeeper,” said Chalmers.

“These changes are welcome but they are a tweak, not a plan, and don’t do enough to tackle the jobs crisis that continues to worsen,” added Chalmers.

McManus insists that a comprehensive jobs-creation plan – defined within her declaration of “working people have to lead this recovery” – exists as a key element of the government’s recovery blueprint.

In doing so, McManus has called for the government to make it public, in areas falling under that of jobs minister Michaelia Cash’s portfolio within the Morrison government.

“We are almost six months into this pandemic and we have no jobs plan. This data shows one is desperately needed,” said McManus.

“We need to put money in the hands of working people and give them the security they need to spend it. If we don’t support working people, they can’t support the economy,” McManus added.

And according to Brendan O’Connor, the ALP’s shadow minister for small and family business, a jobs plan leads a positive domino effect of getting people employed so that they can participate in a revitalised economy.

And with those intentions and goals in mind, it is something which Prime Minister Scott Morrison, his cabinet, and his ministers have to plan and think through as thoroughly as possible.

“We don’t want people left out and left behind in Australia’s first recession in 30 years, we want them to get ahead in the recovery, and that’s why Australians can’t afford for the Government to get this wrong,” said O’Connor.

With the power in numbers that the ACTU has behind them, even if Labor do not hold a Parliamentary majority, their collective efforts will do their best to keep the Morrison government honest.

The Morrison government responded to public pressure on Friday to expand the JobKeeper payment scheme to a greater volume of workers, as well as extending the program’s expiry date to March 2021 – although the payment rate is being reduced and a lower payment rate is being introduced for those working a limited number of hours, as previously announced by federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

However, Sally McManus, the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ (ACTU) national secretary, points out for as well-intentioned the government’s revision of the much-maligned scheme is, those revisions do not extend far enough.

According to McManus on behalf of the ACTU, only relatively small percentages of casual workers and those on visas are included in the changes – leaving most workers from those categories with no change in status from when JobKeeper was unveiled in late March.

And moreover, McManus has taken society-over-economy and no-worker-left-behind approaches towards the likely impact of those changes, with the objective remaining to slow and stop the spread of the coronavirus.

“The outbreak in Victoria has shown us again that insecure workers are the most vulnerable during this crisis, and need to be supported so that they can protect themselves and the community,” McManus said on Friday.

An examination of the casual workforce statistics reveals that the long-term casuals coming into the fold on the JobKeeper revision confirms the ACTU’s claim that a significant amount of the casual workforce remains excluded from the scheme.

Two million workers are currently classified as casuals, as attributed by the ACTU, while the federal government claims that overall, roughly one worker in every four is classified as a casual worker.

That latter study also cites that among the casual workforce – in a case where this group could, in the context of the JobKeeper expansion, become poisoned by its own chalice – one million of those workers had been with their employers for 12 months or less, and that the demographic of 15-to-24-year-olds are more likely to be members of the casual workforce.

Within that demographic, 26.4 per cent of those had been with their current employer for 12 months or less, while 46 per cent of all casual workers exist as being of the short-term variety.

As for the Special Category Visa subclass 444 visa holders, the Department of Home Affairs defines that class of visa holder as one who is permitted to “to visit, study, stay and work [in Australia] as long as [one] remains a New Zealand citizen” merely by presenting a valid New Zealand passport and an incoming passenger card upon entry into Australia – thereby making quite limited in scope as to who can qualify for the JobKeeper scheme under visa provisions as a whole.

While the subclass 444 visa holders constitute the largest group of Australian temporary residents via a 2019 study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the impact of those working and holding the Temporary Skill Shortage (subclass 482) – which replaced the old subclass 457 visa in 2018 – cannot be underestimated as those workers face uncertain futures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment, underemployment, visa expiry, deportation, and other factors having a domino effect.

These analyses thereby justifies the ACTU’s position that the revision of the JobKeeper scheme isn’t ranging far enough – and the body which governs unions in Australia remains resolute to push for these benefits to all workers, whether they are union members or not.

“People on work visas have been excluded from JobSeeker and JobKeeper. They have nothing, so they are desperate for work,” McManus said.

“This makes it more likely they will be working, some while sick, in our essential services like meat processing and aged care,” she added.

McManus also stated that the JobKeeper scheme only exists as one such piece of a puzzle to accommodate casuals, visa holders, and any workers previously left behind, pointing to a continued push for a national paid pandemic leave program to be installed alongside another revision to JobKeeper.

“We need to expand JobKeeper to casuals and visa workers, and make federally-funded paid pandemic leave available to all working people,” said McManus.

But above all else, McManus and the ACTU point towards the human impact emanating from the shortcomings of the Morrison government’s revisions of the JobKeeper scheme, no matter how well-intentioned they are.

And they are concerned with the actions of human nature and basic sociology connected in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the workforce around it.

“If we do not treat all workers equally, some will be more desperate and take more risks. This will only create opportunities for the virus to spread,” said McManus.

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Michele O’Neil has hit out at the hypocrisy of the Morrison government’s committal of funding geared to support Victoria’s mostly privatised area of early childhood education centres while doing nothing to aid marginalised workers within the sector.

O’Neil and the ACTU have pointed out that the plan jointly announced on Wednesday by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Dan Tehan, the government’s education minister, have provisions to support the centres and parents who were leaving their young children there prior to any pandemic-related closures, but leaves no guarantees for support for early childhood educators.

Whereas JobKeeper was not reinstated as a part of the government’s $33 million plan of investment to the early childhood education sector, O’Neil pointed out its other flaws which would have otherwise seen early childhood educators being looked after in the COVID-19 crisis.

“Working people need to be supported so that they can stay safe and stop the spread of the virus. Not one dollar of what Minister Tehan has announced today is guaranteed to make it into the pocket of an early childhood educator,” said O’Neil.

“The so-called job guarantee only requires that workers remain employed, but does nothing to stop widespread unpaid stand-downs which would be devastating to the workforce.

“Under this scheme, a centre which is running at 80 per cent of its usual profit would not be required to guarantee work and pay for its workforce,” O’Neil added.

The government’s plan would only apply to Victorian centres and families affected by the Stage 4 lockdown measures across Melbourne, over the current six-week block of restrictions, and an additional 30 days of absence for areas of regional Victoria currently under Stage 3 restrictions.

As for the centres’ early childhood educators, the government is providing $16.3 million of income support, but it only covers 30 per cent of centres’ pre-pandemic operating revenue, which the ACTU says falls well short of the 80 per cent of cited profit margins.

“We will also make direct payments to childcare centres, so they stay operational and staff are kept with an employment guarantee, while remaining open for workers and vulnerable families,” said Morrison, speaking in general terms about the government’s plan of investment.

“We all owe a debt of gratitude to our early learning and childcare workers who have done such important work this year as our country has dealt with the coronavirus – every parent values your commitment to their children and their early education,” Tehan said, in an attempt to try and place a compassionate human-based spin on the program.

However, O’Neil remained adamant that much more can be done to ensure that early childhood educators are looked after and compensated on the same scale as the bookends of the centres and the parents as their clients.

“The Morrison Government is trying to save money during a pandemic when it should be fully committing to programs which will keep people in jobs, with pay, and allow them to prevent the further spread of this virus,” she said.

But overall, O’Neil insists that returning the JobKeeper subsidy to early childhood educators, after it was stripped away last month under the government’s revisions to the JobKeeper scheme, would be a proper complement to the government’s investment program.

The government announced in June that once the JobKeeper scheme ceased to be offered to workers in the early childcare education sector, all early childhood educators would be switched onto a “transition payment” which would equate to 25 per cent of a centre’s fee revenue or the hourly rate cap, whichever is less per fortnight.

When Tehan announced this alternate payment in June, he also said that a return to the previous Child Care Subsidy (CCS) package – a means-tested program to examine which families on the lowest set of earnings deserve the highest entitlement of subsidy – would also be included.

Which in the six weeks that passed between these announcements and the actual application of replacing JobKeeper with the transition payments, a different context was required at that time – a potential outcome which has neither been realised nor maintained.

“A review of the package found it had succeeded in its objective of keeping services open and viable, with 99 pe rcent of around 13,400 services operational,” Tehan said in early June.

“Because of our success at flattening the curve, Australia is re-opening for business and that means an increase in demand for child care places, with attendance currently at 74 per cent of pre-COVID levels,” he added at the time.

But O’Neil feels that early childhood educators would remain better off under their old JobKeeper scheme, versus any revisions and programs that Tehan and the Morrison government has unveiled since early June.

“The Government [has] stubbornly refused to admit their mistake in bringing JobKeeper support to an early end last month for workers in this sector,” she said.

A bipartisan attack led by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and followed through by a key Labor minister has been launched towards putting pressure on the Morrison government to install any sort of a national paid pandemic leave program – five months after both the ACTU and the ALP introduced the concept when the COVID-19 pandemic was initially declared.

The ACTU and the Business Council of Australia (BCA), a pro-business lobby group, released a joint letter on Monday to implore the government’s Attorney-General Christian Porter to “move quickly” to coordinate a scheme which falls in line and complements existing public health directives around COVID-19 testing and isolation policies around Australia, in support of all affected workers.

As the ACTU and BCA have joined forces to express a sense of urgency being required to make a paid pandemic leave program happen, shadow industrial relations minister Tony Burke has warned that any further delays by the Morrison government to install such a program could possess “deadly” consequences.

“Every day the Morrison Government delays on paid pandemic leave puts Australian lives and livelihoods at risk,” Burke said on Monday.

Burke added that as the government is wasting valuable time on bureaucratic procedures, all they need to do is examine the recent spike in positive cases in the state of Victoria that have led to Stage 4 restrictions around Melbourne and Stage 3 restrictions within regional Victorian areas.

“It has been obvious since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March that paid pandemic leave is a critical measure to protect workers’ lives, public health and the national economy. And yet five months later the Government is talking about consultation processes and evidence gathering.

“The crisis in Victoria should be all the evidence they need.

“With 80 per cent of new coronavirus infections linked to workplaces, it is clear we need financial incentives to keep people at home when they’re sick or have been exposed to the virus.

“There can be no doubt a universal paid pandemic leave scheme could have prevented some of Victoria’s terrible toll. If we don’t move now, other states could follow,” Burke said.

Meanwhile, ACTU secretary Sally McManus, allied with BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott, echoed Burke’s concerns while pointing to the Victorian example, but also unveiled a three-point plan to recommend a starting point for any paid pandemic leave program.

Those points expressed to Porter consist of:

• The amending of the Fair Work Act (2009) to incorporate a leave entitlement consistent with the decision of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) in relation to the Aged Care Awards (2010);
• The provision for reimbursement to business to facilitate the leave entitlement. Mechanisms such as those used for JobKeeper or the Paid Parental Leave payment may appear appropriate compared to any paid pandemic leave program;
• And the funding would come from the Federal Government and, where necessary, the relevant state governments

“For many workers who have no or inadequate sick leave, that the cost of isolation can be particularly burdensome. Furthermore, whilst many businesses have implemented policies to provide for paid pandemic leave, not all are able to do so given the cost, especially in the current circumstances where workers are often required to isolate and get tested on multiple occasions,” McManus and Westacott jointly said in the letter.

McManus and Westacott also acknowledged the recent scheme unveiled by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews to provide financial one-off incentives to eligible affected workers, in the way of $300 for anyone tested and awaiting results and $1500 for anyone testing positive and requiring prolonged isolation plus any additional instructions from public health professionals.

But they said plans such as Victoria’s may require some enhancement, as a model for other states and territories.

“Unfortunately, the mechanisms available to state governments to effectively implement and administer such a scheme are inadequate and consequently we have seen minimal take up over recent weeks,” they said.

The comments from McManus, Westacott and Burke came before the Morrison government announced a $1500 payment only for a small group of Victorians who would have to isolate after returning positive COVID-19 results but had no other form of leave entitlements – and McManus was quick to slam the government’s move as reactionary and an underpayment against workers’ average wages.

“Any money for workers who are saving lives and saving jobs by staying home and doing the right thing is welcome, but this payment does not address the full scale of the problems which [a] fully-funded paid pandemic leave [program] would address,” McManus said on Monday evening.

“This payment will mean that nearly all fulltime workers who are forced to rely on it will take a pay cut while they isolate. This will mean that [while] a financial penalty still remains, this just weakens our COVID-19 defences.

“We need to do better. We need to do everything we reasonably can. The Morrison Government cannot stop at this half-measure,” added McManus.

While McManus and Westacott – an alliance perhaps viewed by some observers as unlikely of a pairing as when McManus and Porter met ahead of the declaration of the pandemic for talks which eventually yielded the JobSeeker and JobKeeper schemes – have saluted their ability to work together and appealed to Porter for his immediate feedback, Burke has sternly warned that any further delays would have severe consequences.

“Workers cannot be forced to choose between paying their bills and protecting their colleagues, customers and patients,” said Burke.

“Unless we get a universal scheme, we will have more community transmission, leading to more outbreaks and economy-smashing lockdowns. We cannot afford not to do this.

“The Government needs to wake up. It is out of time. It was out of time on this months ago.

“Further delay will be deadly,” Burke added.

As both the union movement and the business lobby continue to maintain their poker faces in the ongoing industrial relations reforms discussions in Sydney and Canberra, KPMG – one of the major players in the business lobby – has risked the integrity of the negotiations after a document of theirs was leaked this week.

The Guardian reported in its online editions on Friday that KPMG, after having been invited by both the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) to partake in the negotiations, were excluded from two end-of-week discussions with immediate effect after their document detailing proposed wide-ranging changes to the industrial relations landscape.

And those proposals being discussed by five key focus groups – two groups of which KPMG are partaking in – are still considered to be works in progress, to be determined between now and the panels’ adjournment in September.

KPMG, for the purpose of the layperson, is a professional services firm with global reach, and deep expertise in audit and assurance, tax and advisory, and management and risk consulting. An examination of their corporate values also details words such as “integrity”, “excellence”, and “courage”.

“Integrity” sits right at the very top of their list of corporate values. And with great objectivity, somehow the open disclosure of details of ongoing discussions in a summit’s culture where both major combatants are – for reasons of great protection to themselves – keeping the news and progress of the ongoing negotiations close to their vests, “integrity” might not be the best word to describe what they have done.

Especially when these actions may jeopardise the progress and process of negotiations not just for their business lobby colleagues, but the to-and-fro discussions from both sides altogether.

The working classes, hoping to come away with better rights and conditions after all negotiations are said and done, likely wouldn’t lose much sleep – or might even be rejoicing – over a setback from the business lobby during these negotiations. However, what does this mean for the current point in time of the negotiations, and also in the context of what may be yet to come?

An understanding of the contents of the document in question – ironically entitled, “Working Together For Reform” – may be required, now that the proverbial horse has bolted from the barn. It details the following:

• the wrinkles of working from home and JobKeeper in the context of award simplification;
• the extending of greater powers to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to alter employees’ shifts and schedules, whereas this has been the domain of employers, managers and supervisors in the past;
• generally speaking, using the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses as a means to alter or “vary” workers’ awards, as one application to “simplify” them;
• giving the FWC the power to “vary” workers’ awards, under the circumstances of the pandemic;
• instituting an “Employee Share Schemes” structure, similar to a U.S.-based industrial relations model, purported to “better align interests of employees and employers,” in order to bring about greater productivity;
• with regard to enterprise agreements, putting a greater and more literal emphasis on the Better Off Overall Test in the means of collective bargaining against awards;
• and the altering of Greenfields agreements to cover the life of a project, as opposed to the first six months of a given project.

The business lobby, as detailed in KPMG’s document, would seek to amend the Fair Work Act of 2009 in order to install the above aims.

It is also important to ascertain that Scott Gartrell, KPMG’s workplace relations advisory partner as well as being their main representative in these negotiations, had been scheduled to speak on a panel for Friday, but was dropped as of Thursday evening.

In the aftermath of the leaking of the document, Gartrell had told The Guardian that his organisation’s engagement with the other working groups was “subject to confidentiality.” By this time, the concept of confidentiality exists, at least for the time being, as being irrelevant.

The negotiations, with or without the reinstatement of Gartrell or even the involvement of KPMG, will continue. And they will continue through to the September deadline. But as KPMG has inadvertently tipped the hand held by the business groups’ lobby, an argument can be made that the process of fair, objective negotiating has been compromised.

Whether the ACTU and the union groups in attendance can take advantage of this twist of fate remains to be seen. According to ACTU president Michele O’Neil, a yardstick of success would consist of meeting its goals of no worker being worse off as a result of any proposals as a minimum expectation and that better job security would constitute a victory for the union movement.

Nonetheless, any momentum would have to belong to the ACTU in these industrial relations reform negotiations at this point.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) have put the Morrison government and its economic experts on notice over the current state of the nation’s superannuation scheme, with a basic message: leave the system alone.

Stemming from the government’s announcement of the early withdrawal option for superannuation that was brought on by the COVID-19 global pandemic, and arguably made somewhat viable by the nation’s recession which followed, over 2.9 million Australians have taken out an aggregate total of the government’s initial $28 billion estimation on the scheme, thereby causing them to revise its expectations to $42 billion and extending the scheme until the end of the year.

While ACTU officials harbor particular warnings over the impact of a scheme which has gone awry, even government ministers – led by none other than treasurer Josh Frydenberg – are perplexed by the revising of the scheme’s initial plans.

“We know that almost 60 per cent of those accessing their super early have used it or plan to use it to meet essential day-to-day expenses, including paying down debts, with another 36 per cent adding the money to their savings,” Frydenberg said on Thursday, in clarifying the revisions.

“Opponents [of the scheme] are basically saying to 2.6 million Australians that ‘we don’t trust you to make your own financial decisions with your own money’,” Frydenberg added.

But according to the ACTU, that trust is occurring the other way around.

If Frydenberg was referring to the nation’s union movement as opposing continued use of the superannuation early release scheme, the ACTU possesses good reasons to oppose it – or even illustrating workers’ lack of trust in the LNP government with their own money.

The warnings issued by the ACTU have come in the form of many salvos fired in the wake to the extension of the scheme. Not only is the union movement allied with the superannuation industry dead set against the concept of any form or extension of early release of funds, the ACTU has also voiced its opposition to a reported cutting of the superannuation guarantee from its current proposal of 12 per cent.

“This Government can’t be trusted with workers’ retirement savings, tens of billions have been ripped out through its disastrous early access scheme. The size and scale of the early release of superannuation shows that now more than ever, all workers need 12 cents on every dollar earned to ensure a dignified retirement,” said Scott Connolly, the ACTU’s assistant secretary.

“The early access scheme will push huge numbers of workers into poverty when they retire. This will be the legacy of the Morrison Government.

“The Government should immediately rule out cutting the legislated increase of the Superannuation Guarantee to 12 per cent and focus on improving the superannuation balances and retirement incomes of women and Indigenous workers,” added Connolly.

Another red flag raised by the ACTU concerns the consequences of what has already happened as a result of the superannuation early release scheme, and they have revealed some very telling uncomfortable truths in the way of statistics to illustrate this.

• The basic fact: over 2.9 million workers have partaken in the scheme, the vast majority of whom have taken out the maximum allowable of $10,000.00 in either of the two financial year windows.
• Over 500,000 applicants, with some cross-section to the above, have emptied out their superannuation accounts in order to pay their bills.
• As far as leading demographics go, women have been taking out a greater proportion of their superannuation balance than men have been doing 21 per cent to 17 per cent for men, and approximately one in three applicants to the Australian Tax Office are aged 30 or younger.
• The average payment given has been $7,719 since the early release scheme began.
• For the 2019-20 financial year window, the average amount taken out has been $7,407.
• For the current 2020-21 financial year window, the average amount taken out has been $8,619.
• And something about “sloppy seconds”: Of the 2.9 million overall applications received by the Australian Tax Office (ATO), one million of them are repeat applications from one “financial year” window to the next. (On trend, one in three are coming back for more money.)

And all of this leads to an extended level of inequality to one particular group. As the ACTU keeps pointing out that an average of 13 applicants exist nationally for every available job, the impact on the nation’s young people becomes magnified.

According to Michele O’Neil, the ACTU’s president, factoring in a terrible jobs market with low wages growth which has been in poor shape for years, and combining those with statistics pointing towards younger unemployed workers raiding their superannuation accounts, inequality towards that demographic becomes worse and worse.

“We know what’s needed is for the Government to lead and urgently intervene in the jobs market, otherwise young people will suffer the effects of this recession their entire working lives,” said O’Neil.

O’Neil also points towards a jobs-based economic recovery blueprint recently unveiled by the ACTU, and insists that the Morrison government would be wise to consider it, especially to inspire the employment hopes for the nation’s younger workers.

“Australian unions have put forward a jobs-led economic recovery plan to help steer the country through the next stages of this crisis and provide a lasting legacy in the society and economy.

“Young people need support from Government. They need the Government to step up and invest in their future,” she said.

On Monday evening, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) extended paid pandemic leave to workers in the aged care sector, in an attempt to help quell the spread of COVID-19 virus cases. This financial incentive would encourage those workers tied to the healthcare industry to stay home should they show even the smallest symptoms of coronavirus, and not suffer should they miss work.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has hailed the FWC’s move as a step in the right direction, especially given that the aged care sector’s workers have been characterised as a group of casual workers employed in multiple jobs, and thereby more apt to pass on their symptoms to their co-workers – or worse, to the elderly patients they are required to look after, or to their families.

While the topic of the recent trends in COVID-19 cases have centered around the aged care sector and three related factors – the privatisation of the sector in recent years, the resulting trends of ever-growing casualisation within the sector, and the impact of the findings of the interim Royal Commission report into aged care – the extending of paid pandemic leave by the FWC to the sector is potentially the bigger story with a greater outcome to the nation’s workforce.

In fact, the ACTU would prefer to see the benefits of paid pandemic leave extended to workers across all industries of the Australian workforce.

“The problem of workers having no leave goes beyond the aged care sector,” said Sally McManus, the ACTU’s national secretary.

“We welcome this decision but it still does not remove the trap door for casual workers with irregular hours, or workers in other industries,” she added.

McManus also points out the added benefits of the scheme advocated by the ACTU, benefits which bear greater rewards than just mere financial ones, focusing on public and mental health areas.

“Paid pandemic leave is a crucial public health measure that provides a circuit breaker to stem the rate of transmission by allowing those with symptoms to stay home without losing income,” she said.

While the trend towards privatising the aged care sector within the healthcare system industry as a whole has existed as an agenda item by the LNP since the Howard years, the actual finished moves to make it happen have happened within the last few years. And with that, has come greater actualisation rates within the sector – to the tune of a shocking 70 per cent compared to a 40-per cent rate of “private, for-profit” residential aged care facilities – and the findings of an interim Royal Commission into the sector which have found, in general terms, “fails to meet the needs of its older, vulnerable, citizens.”

And with all of that, while the full Royal Commission findings into the aged care sector have been delayed until July 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the FWC still deserves full marks of praise for launching the ACTU’s paid pandemic leave plan into action.

But it still does not remove the sting of what has been said in the past about industries where casuals dominate the numbers of the workforce.

Back in March, Attorney-General Christian Porter, who doubles as the Morrison government’s minister for industrial relations, opined that casual workers should be prepared for emergencies due to illness due to the extra casual loadings they receive “in lieu of entitlements” normally received by full- and part-time workers.

But to be fair to Porter, he did a quick about-face the following morning to clarify that while not every worker, particularly casuals, would be prepared for time off due to illness, the potential existed for “a much larger… number of people in all categories of employment” would need economic support for the foreseeable future. Perhaps the guilt of being at the forefront of a global pandemic changed his mind.

Truth is, casual workers remain as a marginalized segment of the workforce, and that perception has only become magnified during the pandemic.

The ACTU, via the aims of its pleas for paid pandemic leave, has set the modest goal to look after all workers displaced by COVID-19 cases if and when they should fall ill. And among them, casual workers most of all, by virtue of the very nature of the culture of their workforce – working for multiple employers within the same industry, such as what has been exploited in the aged care sector, just to make rent, pay their bills, buy groceries, and just to make ends meet in general.

“We need paid pandemic leave for all working people. No one should face a financial penalty or risk losing their job so that they can isolate or get tested. This needs to happen immediately,” ACTU president Michele O’Neil said earlier in the organisation’s campaign.

But at the end of the day, McManus is aware that only a bipartisan action can bring paid pandemic leave available and to workers across all industries. And she is imploring for the Morrison government to make it happen.

“Only the federal government can step up and deliver paid pandemic leave to protect all workers,” she said.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has come out with a two-minded approach to the Morrison government’s announcement to upcoming changes to the JobKeeper and JobSeeker schemes: grateful that they will still be around, but wary that the cuts could place millions of Australians in danger of being in threat of greater poverty during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, in fronting the Canberra press corps on Tuesday, announced that the two programs would be incurring respective $300-per-fortnight reductions from the end of September.

Additionally, in the case of the revised JobKeeper, it will now be a case of being a two-tiered system with payments based on the number of hours an employee within a business had averaged prior to the start of the pandemic – thereby placing employees in the lower category liable to lose more welfare entitlements compared to those on the current JobKeeper award.

And to help confuse the situation further on JobKeeper, there will be two windows of payments before the Commonwealth government reviews it again in March 2021.

From late September until December 31, the two tiers will consist of one which pays workers $1200 per fortnight, minus tax, and $750 per fortnight, minus tax, on the other tier for those employees working fewer than 20 hours per week.

Then from January 1 until the March review, the two tiers reduce themselves to paying a company’s workers $1000 per fortnight, minus tax, with the exception of those working 20 hours per week or less, who will receive $650 per fortnight pre-tax.

As for JobSeeker, the base rate – otherwise known as the old NewStart entitlement – remains at $565.70 per fortnight for single recipients without dependants, not counting entitlements such as rent assistance or the energy supplement, while the coronavirus supplement which created the JobSeeker scheme has been cut from $550 per fortnight to $250 per fortnight.

Therefore, the maximum pre-entitlement amount a JobSeeker recipient could receive from Centrelink will be $815.70 per fortnight from October, whereas the current amount sits at $1,115.70 per fortnight.

The window on that new payment expires as of December 31, after which time it will come back up for government review.

The ACTU had harboured fears over the JobKeeper and JobSeeker schemes being completely dashed after their September 27 expiry dates, but Sally McManus, the ACTU’s national secretary, has held firm on the belief that the government’s cuts have been too severe when the nation’s workers and unemployed need as much help as they can get in the middle of the pandemic-influenced recession.

“This announcement has delayed the economic catastrophe that would have resulted from pushing these programs off the cliff during the pandemic, but we need far-reaching government investment to create a path out of recession and to create the jobs we will need to rebuild the economy,” McManus said.

The actions of the government on cutting JobKeeper and JobSeeker, when weighed against the growth aims of McManus and the ACTU – confirmed the day before in a wide-ranging jobs-based skeletal program designed to reinvigorate the economy – have drawn concerns from other organisations as well.

GetUp!, a progressive community action and advocacy group seen by some as a political lobbying organisation, outlined the impact of what the changes of JobSeeker would have on the nation’s unemployed and under-employed workers.

On their social media outlets immediately following the media conference, GetUp! broke down what the changes mean for the underclasses.

“The poverty line is around $457 per week for a single adult.

“The new rate of JobSeeker [is] $405 per week.

“During this pandemic recession, we need to be protecting people forced out of their jobs, not putting them in poverty,” GetUp!, through its national managing director Paul Oosting, said on its Twitter timeline.

Morrison and Frydenberg did announce that the JobSeeker threshold of earnings while on the entitlement – that is, money that one may earn before other earnings are taken dollar-for-dollar off the remainder of the payment – has been increased to $300.

However, GetUp! and Oosting view that as being of little other benefit for its recipients.

“The government is going to force 1.7 million people below the poverty line, and force them into pointless job searches while there are 13 job-seekers for every job available.

“The new $300 income threshold will be no relief to millions for whom there is no work,” they tweeted.

And beyond any further statistical analysis, GetUp! and Oosting point to the real human cost of the cuts to JobSeeker – and to some extent, JobKeeper as well.

“The JobKeeper focus in this presser distracts from the fact that unemployment is getting worse, and the government is throwing people who lose their jobs under a bus.

“The economic data is saying that the stimulus is woefully inadequate to support a fast recovery,” they tweeted.

https://twitter.com/GetUp/status/1285390661831684097

Moreover, the return of Centrelink’s old NewStart wrinkles such as the mutual obligation agreement and the income test for any new JobSeeker claims strikes McManus as putting poverty-level individuals in a series of compromising positions.

“The union movement has been campaigning for continuing the JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs, the gaps also need to be closed so everyone who has been badly affected by the pandemic is supported,” McManus said, while seeing the obstacles the jobless and under-employed face.

And those obstacles are more mental and emotional than they are physical, upon those people.

“The increase of the income-free threshold to $300 for JobSeeker is welcome but the reintroduction of mutual obligations is a worrying return to the punitive approach to welfare payments which we hoped the Morrison Government had left behind,” she said.

Days after the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) hit out at the Morrison government for not having a vision to reinvigorate the nation’s economy through a jobs-creation strategy, they unveiled one of their own on Monday.

Previously, Michele O’Neil, the ACTU’s national president, had attacked the government on its shortcomings over the JobTrainer scheme while citing its inactivity towards expanding the JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs, and two weeks after vowing themselves to provide the leadership on a jobs revival blueprint that the government has appeared lacking in its efforts to do, O’Neil and the ACTU have provided a thorough National Economic Reconstruction Plan (NERP) to attack the nation’s current unemployment crisis.

With unemployment figures for the month of June revealed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week at 7.4 per cent, O’Neil – in encouraging the Morrison government to pick up the ideals of the plan and run with it – sees her organization’s five-pronged NERP as one which is realistic as opposed to being aspirational.

“We need Government to put in place an ambitious and comprehensive National Economic Reconstruction plan to get the country back to work. Government must help build ongoing local jobs, more training and education opportunities to get people into jobs and provide support for people who are making things here in Australia,” O’Neil said in unveiling details of the NERP.

The ACTU’s five points defining the goals of the NERP – which aims to create or support jobs for one million people – include:

• Early Childhood Education, which would:
• promote free childcare permanently
• the construction of new not-for-profit facilities via capital investments
• funding of universal access to 15 hours of preschool for three- and four-year-olds
• and the ongoing maintenance of the JobKeeper subsidy for early childhood educators who are currently employed within the system;
• Training for Reconstruction, which would:
• rebuild the TAFE system to the extent of 150,000 places in the system nationwide
• return control of the system to state and Commonwealth governments, and make the system free to all students again
• advocating the extension of JobKeeper subsidies to the university system – which currently is not covered by the scheme – until the end of the 2020 academic year;
• Rediscover Australia, aimed at the tourism, hospitality, arts, travel and regional services for the next 12 months. This area would entail:
• supporting 350,000 jobs in those sectors
• Commonwealth sponsorship of those sectors’ events, productions and exhibitions in all states
• additional grant support for the Australia Council, and the expansion of the JobKeeper subsidy to include the arts and entertainment sector;
• National Reconstruction Investment Plan, which focuses on infrastructure and nation-building projects.
• $30 billion per year would be committed to boost investment in public capital projects, including funding for transportation, community and public housing, cultural and public service facilities, forest and fire management investments to better prepare for future fire seasons, and renewable energy assets and efficiency upgrades
• 75,000 jobs in the construction industry and over 100,000 additional indirect jobs in supply and consumer industries would be created
• benchmarks and KPI’s for Australian-made content to be measured;
• and a Sustainable Marketing Strategy:
• based around government rules to ensure Australian-made products were produced for all new infrastructure and public service projects
• zero interest loans to encourage new renewable energy developments possessing direct links to the manufacturing sector
• expanded Commonwealth investments in rapid decarbonization of the energy sector
• technology grants to support commercialised research and development
• five new Sustainable Manufacturing Clusters in key areas including: lithium battery and value-added manufacturing; renewable hydrogen production; green primary metal manufacturing; electric vehicle manufacturing and servicing; and renewable energy machinery
• a Superpower Investment Fund to undertake co-investments (including public equity shares) in new sustainable manufacturing activities.

The terms of the NERP’s programs may be heavy on the details, but O’Neil sees the comprehensive nature of them as something which the Morrison government can invest in, to add to its advocacy.

“We need big and bold Government investment and action in order for Australia to return to health – both socially and economically,” she said.

“We are calling on Scott Morrison and his Government to think big by investing public money for public good, in creating jobs that support people and communities now and into the future,” O’Neil said.

Moreover, from its lobbyist’s position, while O’Neil and the ACTU are putting NERP’s details forward for a good reason – in O’Neil’s words, “currently the Government has no plan to rebuild our economy and steer the country through the next stages of this crisis” – their objective is clear.

And the NERP’s objectives promise to possess a wide-ranging impact, with the ball now in the court of the Morrison government.

“Our initiatives will support and create jobs for women and men, for cities and towns, and for young people as well as older workers,” said O’Neil.

“This is a plan for a jobs-led economic reconstruction,” she added.