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Archives for April 2017

457 to?

April 28, 2017 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree 1 Comment

“We are bringing the 457 visa class to an end”, announced Mr Turnbull after Easter, “…We will replace it with two new temporary skills visas.”  With a quick sleight of hand, Turnbull re-branded the much criticised 457 visa with two – as yet unnamed – programs to bring foreign workers to Australia.  Though new rules and security checks were mentioned, he ensured that he would guard us against the impending “threat of permanent citizenship” of intelligent and skilled foreigners whom our employers have sought out.   Rest assured, Turnbull has proclaimed he will keep us safe from having people of this calibre, stay in Australia.

Malcolm will be in search for a new visa number
Malcolm will be in search for a new visa number

As Australia returned to work after the Easter long weekend, Malcolm Turnbull reminded us we were a nation of immigrants, but we should not be overrun by too much more. With the Australian workforce apparently foremost on his mind, Turnbull told the nation (first via Facebook) that the 457-visa program was being scrapped for two new innovative temporary foreign worker schemes to tackle our unemployment issues. In restricting that program and although unnamed, he proposed two new visa programs with fewer job role options, new market tests, English language, skills and experience requirements.

Malcolm doesn't appear to like 457 changes?
Malcolm doesn’t appear to like 457 changes?

The first reminder that comes to the fore concerning these new reforms that “put Australian’s first”, is a reference to the similar policy  I’ve previously heard. Didn’t Julia Gillard propose something similar herself in 2013? Didn’t Malcolm Turnbull criticise her for striking at the “heart of the skilled migration system”?

457 in decline?

Leaving Turnbull’s change of perspective aside, the numbers of 457 workers in Australia have been a subject of much speculation and false rhetoric by politicians seeking to introduce alternative facts and in some cases, outright bigotry. 457 visa numbers have been following a pattern of decline in the last few years but a significant aspect of that in the annual cyclic pattern.

Regarding the 2016 decline of numbers in Australia in any quarter – providing you limit your scope – it looks significant. The first quarter of 2016 (March) there were about 177,390 people in the country working under 457 visas.

Annual patterns of 457 workers in Australia
Annual patterns of 457 workers in Australia

Since then it dropped slightly to 170,580 (June), up a little to 172,187 (Sept), and dropped significantly to 150,219 (Dec).  Now, while these last figures may create the illusion of a significant fall, you need to look at the seasonal pattern of numbers over the last few years. Stepping back and reviewing the last seven years, a pattern emerges for every year. (Rising sharply, slight fall, slight rising, sharp decline) The pattern – as graphed here – will show you that it is about to jump back up again, so there is a deception inherent in quoting the last quarter’s figures of any year as indicative of where 457 numbers are or will be. 457 visa data have a predictable annual cyclical pattern. Turnbull’s timing made before the Department of Immigration released the last quarter’s figures creates the short-term illusion in media reporting that the coalition is indeed clamping down on 457 workers.

Workers come and go. Totals expressed in net movements of visa entrants – over periods such as a year – hide the significant seasonal change in numbers in the country. So when it is stated that 33,340 of the 40,100 primary applicants lodged 457 visa requests in the first quarter of 2016 were successful and that this is a decrease from the same time last year, what is notably absent is how many 457 workers left. This is also dependent on which quarter you choose. So pointing out that – during the third quarter of 2012 under Gillard – that 35,452 foreign workers entered the country, ignores that only 14,665 came in the last quarter of 2009. The coalition cherry picking numbers from specific quarters to disparage Rudd/Gillard’s record – that in actuality had both the highest and lowest intake of 457 Visa workers – is perhaps a tad disingenuous.

Annual cycle aside, it is still true to say the average number of 457 workers in the country since the coalition took power has been larger than the number of government recorded job vacancies in Australia.  To keep it in context, the last 457 worker totals released by the Immigration department said there were 165.9K vacancies in Dec 2016. 457 workers had done their customary annual December quarter drop to 150K, down from 172K in the previous quarter. Unemployment at the time (Roy Morgan’s figures) was over seven times that amount at 1,186K or 9.2%. If you added Morgan’s December underemployment numbers to the unemployment, then you reach a number nearly 16 times the vacancy rate at 2,584K. I am not going to entertain the ABS figures because of their inherent inaccuracy.

So even if you threw out all the 457 visa holders in December representing less than 1% of the workforce and made all their jobs available, it would have little impact on the 2.5 million both under and unemployed. This is particularly the case, as the presumption is there are no available Australians in the market who have the skills necessary to fill these roles. This begs two questions.

  1. Why is it so?
  2. Is it so?

Why 457?

Introduced by John Howard in 1996, the 457 Visa program has been beset by concerns about fraud, corruption and need. Fraud, we will get back to, but the need for it is still a failure of policy. Howard claimed it was to enable employers to address labour shortages in the Australian market and yet after 20 years; we still need to address skill shortages? You’d have to wonder after 20 years, about an economy and a national policy framework that has so failed to raise the skill levels in Australians, that we still need 457 visa workers. How is that “in the national interest” as Mr Turnbull so frequently repeated? A medical degree takes 6yrs, engineering 5yrs and a commerce degree 3yrs.  So what has the government been doing for the last two decades?  Why have we been unable to educate and upskill our population?  Why is this foreign labour market even necessary? To answer that, we need to go back initially to Howard and ask how he began to prepare our children.

As a western nation which once boasted of free education for its population, the growing restriction of education to the people has had consequences for our labour market. Howard changed how education was funded by allocating considerable funding to private schools and undercutting public schools. Students drifted away from public schools to the better-funded private schools, where they could afford the luxury. The public education system retained a community of poorer demographics with less time or capacity for higher education and an increasing inequality of educational results. The social class division between the affluent and the underprivileged then began at school for children. Two decades later the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey shows Australian children falling behind in education.  Segregated our schooling system by either academic or social class boundary have been largely to blame for our children’s poor performance. Our ranking for investment on the OECD league tables for education is 22 out of 37 1n the OECD.  Small expenditure is followed by weak results.

Whitlam onwards.

Leaving high school for TAFE or University has done little to revoke the class distinctions established by Howard’s redistribution of education funding. Whitlam abolished fees for TAFE and university students and provided support for apprenticeships through the National Apprenticeship Assistance Scheme (NAAS). Hawke reduced funding and re-established costs to students as well as changing labour market programs around apprenticeships and introduced traineeships as a significant response to rising youth unemployment. Trade apprenticeships flourished as the government focused on traineeships. Mr Keating started governments down the neo-liberal path of privatising the public sector.  The problem with privatising the public sector was that these were the main generators of apprenticeship training such as electricity utilities, telecommunications, defence industries, rail, roads, and Australian airlines.  Howard also continued to undermine the public sector which contributed to a reduction in skills training – via public sector apprenticeships. Howard quickly consolidated apprenticeships and traineeships under a single umbrella and wrested it away to unions and into the hands of employers. Skewing support for apprenticeships profoundly in the interests of employers was followed by a decline in training delivery, apprenticeship completions, pay and conditions.  None of which was aided by the further dismantling of the industrial relations system, through the introduction of enterprise bargaining.  While Rudd and Gillard dismantled Howard’s “work choices”, they still followed the traditions of the Hawke/Keating legacy by “make[ing] concessions to the big mining companies, reduc[ing] corporate tax, and restrict[ing] unions rights and push[ing] through spending cuts to maintain a budget surplus.” The decimation of manufacturing under Abbott destroyed yet another training base for trades and reduced the intake of apprentices.  The budget cuts of his administration also severely impacted apprenticeships.  Tracking the causes, consequences and level of damage to our employment economy have been made all the more complicated by Abbott’s savage dismantling of expert advisory panels as compiled by Sally McManus.

The combination of factors including the dismantling of education, expert advice, the industrial relations system and the public sector meant that a four-year apprenticeship in the building trade gets replaced by a shallow sixteen week CBT course as the bare minimum for that particular role.  The results were described as “a disaggregation of skill which is ‘modularised’, ‘flexible’ and ‘atomised’ … [that] will ultimately leave skills ‘fragmented’ at their core.”

Many apprenticeships as a means of training up in skills for increasing levels of youth unemployment have mostly vanished by comparison. For example, Federal funding for NSW Tafe reached it’s zenith in 2011 and after that decreased.  Deregulation of training provision meant funding to non-TAFE, and private providers increased by 20%. The consequence of this produced the rise of dodgy private providers of vocational education and also the unscrupulous practices by some private providers which have become a scandal in Australia.

No matter the skill training, your always schooled in Finance!
No matter the skill training, you’re always schooled in Finance!

Add too, what Abbott euphemistically referred to as “Fee Deregulation”. Attempts to rectify the class based education system via Gonski funding were scrapped, and the vocational training sector simply received new student loan systems, all of which has done little to encourage Australians to “buy” education. The result has been a drop-off in the teaching in Australia as students fall by the wayside, get ripped off or – even if they do complete their degrees – are faced with indexed debts that limit their employment capacities.  All this in a market of decreasing full-time jobs, low vacancies and huge competition from other under and unemployed members of the workforce. Skills shortages have been a function of deteriorating access to Education driven by political policy.

Is there a skills shortage?

The distribution of 457 visa workers
The distribution of 457 visa workers

It is, of course, true to say we do have skill shortages. The question as to what extent any occupation is genuinely suffering from a talent shortage – is problematic. Questions arise as to whether the request for that skill just represents an opportunity for an employer to take advantage of a compliant, cheap and de-unionised workforce. Most reports whether from Flinders University or the National Institute of Labour studies  have all rather reflected the opinion of the Flinders University report that “Despite the attention paid to skill shortages, the evidence used to evaluate their incidence and the causes and responses by firms remains thin.”

The problem predominately is that the labour market testing for skills shortages will still be conducted by employers – not by an independent panel.  Employer “testing” will do nothing to affect the corruption at the core of exploitation of 457 workers.

Turnbull has announced that 216 job roles that are not covered by the renamed 457 visa scheme. The problem is that Turnbull’s new visa jobs list would affect just 9 per cent of the current 457 visa holders. So mostly he has cut an already redundant list of skills requirements – at least a quarter of which have had no application for in the last year. Turnbull has not addressed the issue of employer rorts because the determination of a genuine skills shortage has been so easy to defraud. Underpaying 457 workers has been pervasive amongst dishonest businesses.

In the absence of a plan to rectify education, the public sector, independent labour market analysis, unemployment, jobs and growth Malcolm Turnbull’s reinvention of the 457 visa scheme does little to aid Australia out of the economic malaise. Without attention to this issue now,  we’ll be obsessing over skill shortages and “temporary” foreign workers in another twenty years.

Filed Under: Employment, Privatisation

Bribery or Donations

April 22, 2017 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

There is a growing awareness that our conservative government’s policy needs a little work or is that a massive understatement?  The Sydney Morning Herald listed just a few policies that it had no problem in describing as “Bad Policies“.

Politics, Corporates and corruption
Politics, Corporates and corruption

The article (in the link aforementioned) doesn’t touch on the one cause and two reasons for bad policy decisions. That being – Money driving Bribery and Financial Corruption! Neither reason alone but a combination of both –  as well as to whom they are directed – is necessary. Major industrial complexes that can afford significant donations to the Liberal party keep their industry alive and prosperous. The call for a Federal ICAC has been growing.  Not one like the NSW ICAC which has been recently neutered by the very party that is currently being caught with their collective hands in the cookie jar.  Especially as Australia’s ranking in global corruption index has been falling.

For example: consider the case for Mining versus Tourism.

Mining interests are primarily big consolidated industries heavily subsidised by the government who return portions of that welfare subsidisation, by way of donations to political parties. Despite Minings falling demand on world markets, falling contribution to our GDP and the diminishing employment of Australians, they continue to be supported as “welfare” recipients to the tune of around $18B. However, Mining was only paying taxes of around $12.7 billion (in 2013 according to Deloittes). Inclusive to this they are exporting our finite resource to foreign markets and actively channelling profits overseas to tax havens rather than back into our economy. It makes one think supporting these grifters is a losing proposition, long term. Taxes paid by –

  • Financial redirections
    Financial redirections

    Adani’s Abbot Point Terminal: Nothing;

  • Exxon Mobil Australia: Zilch;
  • Chevron Australia, Peabody Australia, and Whitehaven: Nada.

Somebody paid that $12.7 Billion of the $18B we paid them.

 

Tax avoidance losses to Australia
Tax avoidance losses to Australia

Consider the case of one company where in 2014-15: BHP Billiton contributed $1.7B in taxes on $33B income although they declared only $6.3B as taxable but still paid under the 30% company tax threshold. BHP Billiton utilises its Singapore marketing office to be channelling iron ore sales and profits overseas to avoid Tax. A practice protected by our political legislation and given our Prime Minister hordes $200M in the Cayman Islands; such protective policies are not going to change. In fact, Turnbull’s latest legislated decision to cut $24B in taxes for corporates means these companies will contribute even less! Is a picture forming for any of you yet?

It is not just local mining magnates such as Gina Rinehart who bribed the political class. Foreign Chinese mining interests also participated.  One of these was Sally Zou, who alone donated $400,000 to the liberals. When Origin, Santos and Beach Energy can contribute about $226,000 to the LNP to keep fracking alive, you can be guarantee legislation will provide aid to keep them in place on farms around Australia.

Tourism is where the real money is.

Tourism - diversified & small businesses
Tourism – diversified & small businesses

Tourism, on the other hand, is dominantly comprised of diverse micro & small businesses that are not heavily subsidised and yet contribute $87.3 Billion to our economy according to government records. In June 2012 there were over 283,000 tourism businesses in Australia. The individual business interests do not contribute as significantly to the political donation process/bribery and soliciting donations.  Bribes from them are difficult, because of the sheer logistics of chasing numerous entities to give – from what little margins they make – to maintain the government protection racket.

As the mining sector is largely dominated by a few large firms, it is far easier to approach the much smaller numbers of mining CEOs and therefore extract significant financial support in return for subsidies and legislative protection. Only .5% of tourism businesses are large companies – there are still over 1000 of them. One can, therefore, begin to see why tourism doesn’t get enormous political support.

LNP's preferred mining project.
LNP’s preferred mining project.

Thus, when an Indian mining company “Adani” wants to drink up the Great Artesian Water Basin and pollute an already two-thirds bleached Barrier Reef, guess whose side our political elite preference? This bias exists despite Reef tourism being a direct contributor (according to Deloittes) to our economy of over $7.04 Billion. Indirectly, Reef Tourism contributes another $3.1B to our economy and employs well over twice the number of people employed by mining. The Liberal’s do not come down on the side of who makes the most money or who supports the largest employment of Australians – as many might believe they do.

Conservative governments are not interested in Australians making money or employing people. They come down on the side of those who can contribute or donate more efficiently to their wealth, employment and power base.

Filed Under: Politicians, Taxes

MOAB meets Afghanistan

April 21, 2017 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

America once again participates in its favourite past-time of bombing countries that can in no way retaliate.  There is a word that describes people who act that way, but the name alludes me.

Obama's bomb tally
Obama’s bomb tally

It’s not just Trump or republicans for whom this is an engaging “sport”, as the last few administrations have bombed the “proverbial” out of Afghanistan.   Worth noting: The Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone, although distributed unevenly across seven countries (and of course Afghanistan received some of that “rainfall”.  The seven countries he did bomb were Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia and Trump’s national Muslim ban included 5 of these countries.

How to drop the Mother of all bombs.
How to drop the Mother of all bombs.

This time, however, America set about to destroy a facility they built in Afghanistan. At least you can assume that the MOAB bomb was dropped with pin point accuracy to cause the most damage. Especially since the CIA would have likely retained the blueprints of the facility they built in collaboration with Osama Bin Laden. Spending $314M building a bomb – that by itself cost $16M each –  is an expensive way to destroy a constructed facility which had cost untold millions in the first place.

All this for a country that can’t afford the “horrendous expense” inherent in serving meals to the elderly, as Trump decides that Meals on Wheels is a burden the economy can’t afford. As many a pundit has observed, money to conduct war is always in plentiful supply. For example, here in Australia, $195B on defence is affordable, but increases in spending on health, welfare and education are not. The hypocrisy and bullying of nations previously beaten into submission to the point that – because of America – a violent caliphate arises called Daesh/ISIS. It has repeatedly been said “wars against states which do not pose an imminent threat to America’s national security increases the threat of terrorism“. Having done that, it doesn’t help if you start funding and supplying equipment to these terrorists as America did for a long time for ISIS.

ISIS loves Toyota
ISIS loves Toyota

The shock discovery for the American senate, for example, that Toyota appeared to be supplying ISIS with massive numbers of Toyota vehicles, was ultimately revealed to be sourced from the America US state Dept dropping crate loads of vehicles into Syria. Without America, ISIS would never have been as well armed, trained or supplied. It would have died as a movement in the Middle East without the American military education and equipment to support them. Presently America is bombing their creations in both the insurgency they funded and the facilities they build and funded, yet they apparently can’t spare to resolve the poverty of their own country.

Not unlike, in an obscure manner, Gerhard Richter taking to 60 of his photo-based paintings with a box cutter and matches. Odd coincidental numbering, but wasn’t that the number of Tomahawk missiles fired at Syria recently at an Airfield that was operational 24 hours later? OK, OK, I am stretching my analogues to the point of ridiculousness but perhaps my weird segues will induce you to remember the facts.  The truth is that neither America or Australia should be putting air-force, troops, or bombs into the region.  That is presuming we want to establish peace in the middle-east, which admittedly is probably an invalid assumption.

The CIA is a fan when it suits them
The CIA is a fan when it suits them

It is small wonder that when Wikileaks revealed this rampant corruption and hypocrisy by America that the CIA director, Mike Pompeo,  branded them a “hostile intelligence service“.  Odd change of face as Mike was apparently a fan when the information Wikileaks supplied suited his agenda.  But for now, Julian Assange is the “bad guy”?  Really? So what does that make America in the light of everything else!?

 

Filed Under: Foreign, Race

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