Malcolm Turnbull has been doing some peculiar things lately. Even more peculiar than his hissy-fit on election night. Even more peculiar than Barnaby Joyce’s admission on AM yesterday: “Well, as I’ve said to everybody including Tony, these are questions for Tony to answer, you know, not for me. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t read another bloke’s mind; I’ve got enough trouble dealing with my own”, because that is probably the most accurate thing that Mr Joyce has ever said.
For starters, there’s Malcolm’s little video trumpeting a year of achievements, not just “headlines and press statements”. Now, are we meant to infer from this that he didn’t achieve anything in the previous year? Or was the election a reset and we were meant to treat it like the start of a sporting event and the score has gone back to zero for both sides so not only can’t the Labor Party claim credit for anything they achieved – like reducing the number of seats the government holds – he also can’t be blamed for anything that Tony did.
Of course, given that they haven’t changed their policies in a whole range of areas, it’s hard to argue that Malcolm is trying to draw a line in the sand and say, “Look, forget Tony, he was an aberration, nobody really wanted him and his silly ideas but once he looked like winning an election it was pretty hard to shift him. At least, until after the election…”
Take raising the pension age to 70, for example. It’s still Liberal Party policy… Which sort of makes Turnbull’s “I’m not too old at 62” seem a tad obvious. Of course not, Malcolm, you should be working for another eight years, you bludger!
And speaking of bludgers, isn’t it great that they’re going to get all those people off the dole by offering “internships” or as they used to be known “slave labour”. From what I understand, businesses will be paid to train unemployed people and, in return, the government will get a drop in the number of people listed as unemployed.
Yes, it’s true that the unemployed person will get $4 an hour on top of their unemployment benefit. I presume that it’s on top of their unemployment benefit, but I better check that because, while the idea that someone could live on $100 a week is ludicrous, given they tried to leave young people without unemployment benefits for six months, being ludicrous is no reason to presume that it wouldn’t be their policy.
A trial of 1200 participants has been so successful that over 80 have them have since found a job. Awesome. Given that we’ll soon have 10,000 interns that means that almost 900 will have jobs. Of course, one could wonder how many might have found jobs anyway, but surely a figure of nearly ten percent can be considered an enormous success. Particularly when compared to all the government’s other initiatives. Look at their success at “Budget Repair” or reducing government debt. And if you check out the fifteen or so things listed as achievements on the Liberal website you have such wonderful things as “An innovation and science agenda to help create the jobs of the future”. Great we have an “agenda”. Absolutely spiffing. For some reason, the term “hidden agenda” springs to mind.
Still, one might wonder, with all these internships about, whether some businesses will have any need to hire at all when they can just keep getting people “job ready”, but that would be a cynical way to view this wonderful opportunity that Malcolm and the big retailers are providing.
As Malcolm said at the launch, ‘They will get a start at a job and, you know what, they could go on to great heights.’ And no, he didn’t just mean window cleaners in high rise buildings. He was suggesting that they “could go on to, like many others before them, running big businesses, owning big businesses and employing lots of other people, realising their dreams.”
All that from a simple internship, where the young person gets the opportunity to see that the way to get ahead isn’t by hard work, but by exploiting people without paying them and relying on a handout from government to boost your bottom line. Yes, I can see that Freddie after a few weeks as an intern will be going to the bank and asking for a business loan because he’s ready to start his own retail chain where he can be paid to provide “training” for others while pocketing a subsidy from the government.
But perhaps most peculiar of all is Mr Turnbull’s public shot across the bow followed by his assertions about thing he has no real control over. While Malcolm’s “I’ll leave politics if I’m no longer PM” was widely interpreted as “I will spit the dummy and cause a by-election (as opposed to his putting in $1.7 million to buy election) if you dump me”, he quickly moved to reassure everyone that he intends to be PM for a very long time. I don’t know about anyone else but it seems like he’s already been PM for a very long time, but that could be because time flies when you’re having fun, and clearly nobody’s having fun. But given he could be voted out by Liberals if he doesn’t start improving in the polls his assurance “I will be running at the 2019 election and will win”, seems a little like bravado more than a promise. No, bravado isnt’ quite the right word. Umm… I know. It sounds more like bullshit than a promise.
The bosses love this scheme – gives them a $1,000 payment on taking on the “intern” – the government keeps paying the “intern” their $250 a week Newstart plus an extra $100 per week – and after 12 weeks the boss can just toss them aside and say Not Suitable! And start again. But, if they do keep them on, the government pays the boss $10,000 !!! Amazing how they have money to spend when they want to. I say they would be better investing that into “getting ready for work” programs, which the unemployed can attend, building their confidence and various general skills, and which could include a fortnight (say) in a real workplace, just as workplace experience does. But the Libs PaTH policy is totally slanted at the bosses, and themselves, getting as the author says, getting the number of unemployed down. Thats just a bandaid, and these kids are collateral damage. I found many comments on articles from young people who already worked in places like Bakers Delight, who said there was minimal training needed and within a week or two they were productive workers. Another great bit fail for the Libs.
Spot on, Rossleigh.
Mal was throwing a little temper tantrum ‘if you don’t like me I’ll leave’, but then later that night he was told by Lucy: You are still young, you can’t lose to Tones twice, daddy wouldn’t like it…
Now we are witnessing the new Mal, friendly, smiling, forgiving, confident, almost cocky….
(there’s a hint of deja vu in all is, or is the desperation)
I am sure that you can make $4 an hour by simply begging on the streets. No nasty boss, No travel expenses and no RoBodebt eventuality hovering over you. At the end of the day, you still won’t have a job! A friend of mine actually paid for a 3 months internship with AMP only to be told at the end of the 3 months that she was wonderful and they would love to employ her but….sorry no vacancies at the moment. But they would definitely put her details on file and get in touch with her as soon as there was a spot! Funny how she never heard from them again!
Gina’s dream of the workers of Oz on a $2 a day pay is getting closer and closer!
I think those teenagers would earn more by babysitting…
All those coalition’s ‘innovative’ policies mean that there is no, or hardly any, money involved…the kids will work for peanuts, and what’s more, the employers and the government don’t need to spend money.
The money goes to border protection.
A Government sponsored ‘internship’ to be a shop assistant???
Turn up about 5-10 mins before start time – This is a cash register and this is how it works- smile and greet the customer and ask them “how can I help/assist you” never ever “you right, waddya want” listen carefully to the customer
$1000 thanks Mal
I must be wrong in thinking that the all dancing, all singing ‘market’ should be taking care of this.
As a multi-millionaire living in his harbour-side mansion with fibre to the premises and spending time meeting, smiling and taking selfie’s with infant & junior school little people, this man is so out of touch with reality & the adult world, as indeed so many of his front bench are. The sooner he stops playing a role he is ill equipped to play, with Tony’s help it may be sooner rather than later, we might get a government with some scientific, and technological interests that can move Australia forwards rather than backwards where we have been going for too long-at warp speed,
Why don’t they give all the money they give to businesses for interns and job agencies for helping people, to the unemployed themselves ? It would do a lot more good, and then the unemployed can focus on finding their own job instead of spending meaningless hours reporting to their job agent that they are still unemployed.
Is it just me or does anyone else think Turnbull is starting to adopt the Trump strategy of declaring himself and his achievements wildly more successful than reality??
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it…………
????
Sorry, call me Mr Negative, if you like but I have have another opinion about this and not if it is a good police or not ( it is very bad but that is no going to be my point) it is that it appears that those affected because they can lose their job or have to work for peanuts are silent.
So far I cannot see any workers join the union to complain about this issue and further more there is a decline in union membership.
I cannot see any massive protest about it on social media.
The government knows that the people are not united, further more that policies like this create disunity between those that have the “head screw above their shoulders” and the others that have the attitude “who cares, I am Ok and that young people are dole bludger”
Jacquix my daughter had personal experience with a local franchised Brumby’s. After a few shifts she was handed the keys and told to open up the next day. When she cut her finger there was no first aid kit. Eventually she quit and the owner refused to give her her due pay. We contacted the Fairwork ombudsman but could not convince a friend of hers to do the same after he refused a shift having given the owner his euni exam timetable when she rostered him on to skip his exam and slice bread instead. He was also sacked and told no pay.
What on earth makes these out of touch politicians think businesses will behave ethically with this numbskull plan??? She also did a trial shift at a local pizza restaurant and was not paid! This is also against the law but rife because teenage kids want work and don’t want to rock the boat! There needs to be a union for teenage employees to represent their legal rights when they are too afraid to question their conditions etc.
The PaTH scheme is a load of tripe. Exploitation at its worst.
Also it is called PaTH when the full title is Prepare, Trial and Hire.
Correctly it is PTaH!!!!! And so it is!
Keitha, yes, the agencies get the money, but the young ones don’t get the jobs…
kerri, no it’s not just you, I also think that some leaders are just playing different roles; they pretend- wrestle to please the voters, some wear neat leather jackets to be hip with another group, or like dear old Tones, cycling, surfing, putting out bushfires…the image: ‘fit and sporty’, your beer-drinking mate.
In capitalism the only thing that trickles down is exploitation.
When I mentioned that 80 (a whopping 6 and a bit per cent) out of the 1,200 got jobs her reply was, “How many of them got work because of the slave labour trial?” Personally, I think maybe that, at most, 5 – 10 people got a job from the trial. What Malky and his cronies don’t mention is that was it full-time, part-time or casual? Going, very roughly, by the figures, if you include all those have dropped out, Trumpbullshit would need to create around 16,000,000 internships to give them all jobs of any sort.
Another giant con job from a con job of a gummint.
I feel for the young folk being used as political pawns again. I looked up the 2013 announcement of the coalition’s Green Army :
I knew a number of the young folk involved with the Green Army and worked with them and then it was scrapped with much work still to be done : at least they got a pair of boots, hat, high-viz shirt and pants but not permanent jobs. Will they front up to be exploited again ?
How about returning this money to TAFE and other targeted vocational training schemes so that we build a skilled workforce?
Spot on Graeme!
Now we talking. Graeme, what happened to TAFE…?
Terry 2,excactly, a pair of boots; I’m a tree planter, but I’m a retiree, I do it for free and for my love of trees…
TAFE was defunded and students were thrown to the private sector wolves. …some of whom are in the news right now for folding after taking students and government money.
I love privatisation and corruption Lying Nefarious Parasite COALition style – now we’ve got a plan which effectively sees people paid below the minimum wage – these guys are completely clueless
Glenn Barry. They know exactly what they are doing.