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Narratives from Down Under

James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree

Partying in 2022

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“Climate change takes centre stage in Australia’s election” was proclaimed in 2019, but then the party of Climate scepticism took the stage. The polls failed to predict the election outcome on the 18th of May 2019, and “climate” wasn’t on the agenda. Even more of a climate denialist than Tony Abbott, denialist Scott Morrison held all the Aces and dealt Bill Shorten a knockout blow few saw coming.  

Here we are in 2022. The French are casting an eye across the Indian Ocean, where once submarines they might have manufactured were to travel to their final destination in Australia. France 24 proclaims, “Australia’s federal election: Climate change becomes top concern for voters“. They noted, “The environmental crisis is high on voters’ minds, and smaller parties and independents are gaining momentum by riding a wave of disillusionment over the conservative coalition’s lack of climate action.” But, after suggesting minor parties succeeding and hung parliaments are the future of the Australian parliament, one must wonder, do these minor parties really have the policies that could shake the foundations of our nation?

Single issue agendas

It is easy to find articles that review how the major parties will address Climate change. But perhaps less so conspicuous is the position of all the parties. But pick an issue that you rate as necessary, such as Queer Rights, and you can find a particular interest group ready to “dish the dirt” on your favourite issue. So is there someone in your circle of associates prepared to do it on various topics? If you are looking for that someone, you have come to the right article and the correct author.

Multiple Parties and Issues

The Political Compass reading of Australian political positioning in 2022
The Political Compass reading of Australian political positioning in 2022

Think again, though, if you thought one should give any credibility to the ABC’s vote compass. I have previously addressed the errors of the ABC tunnel vision in my “Voting values” article. I refer to the international perspective from “The Political Compass“, which does it for every national election in western democracies. They represent their analysis of the classic Right-left / authoritarian-progressive abscissa and ordinate graph. Their results for Australia in 2022 came out recently. They placed the main parties in that two-dimensional framework for any party that has previously received a seat at the political table.

  These evaluators did not look at every party that sought a guernsey at the political table (irrespective of their likely success). 

The AEC informs us that, fundamentally 37 registered parties are seeking to place candidates into parliament. When the Morrison government introduced legislation that lifted the membership threshold for registering a federal political party from 500 to 1,500, some 40 parties found themselves in trouble. Some parties ceased to exist, such as the Australian Workers Party, which I evaluated as having the best range of progressive policies in 2019. Other parties (Science, Pirate, Secular, and Climate Emergency) deregistered their original name and formed their own coalition as the new Fusion Party. Others like the TNL (The New Liberals) went on a successful membership drive. So just like the last election, I began the long task of assessing the policies of 37 parties, some of whom did not exist when I last devoted myself to this task. Some old parties developed new guidelines there were no signs of three years ago, and others dropped policies I had assumed were entrenched from 2019.

In this election, I evaluated 24 specific ideological premises, starting with Climate Change mitigation and ending alphabetically with Worker’s Rights. The list of issues I evaluated from each party was:

  1. Climate mitigation 
  2. Drug Reform 
  3. Economy
  4. Education 
  5. Employment 
  6. Energy 
  7. Environment  
  8. Gender equality 
  9. Government accountability 
  10. Healthcare 
  11. Housing and cost of living 
  12. Immigration & refugees 
  13. Indigenous 
  14. Industrial relations 
  15. Infrastructure 
  16. LGBTQ rights 
  17. Media Management
  18. Monetary principles  
  19. Poverty and inequality 
  20. Public transport 
  21. Security/ Foreign & Domestic
  22. Social justice 
  23. Superannuation & pensions 
  24. Worker’s Rights
The ABC's Overton Window on politics in 2022.
The ABC’s Overton Window on politics in 2022.

Some of these issues came from a list of policies generated by ABC’s vote compass analysis of what participants were interested in from back in 2019. I then added a few other policy agendas or, in some cases, split issues. For example, I split climate issues into direct mitigation separate from environmental issues.  

I documented how I defined each of these with a series of questions about each issue and assessed the contents of each party’s policies. You can find that at: http://auswakeup.info/issues/election-issue-2022.pdf.

Another table was created with columns for 37 parties with 24 rows for each issue.  From this, I began writing notes or abbreviating the lists of policy positions each party gave to that issue. That took a good while, as parties don’t necessarily neatly describe their policies in the categories I generated. In some cases, they had policies whose classes I didn’t evaluate. The PDF for that is at http://auswakeup.info/issues/party-comments.pdf, but you will have to zoom in to get all the detail. Don’t try examining this on your tiny smartphone screen. It is important not to mislead you. I have not listed all the party’s policy positions, and I may have missed some. Some party’s policies are very comprehensive, and when I realised I had enough to make a reasonable assessment, I moved to the next issue. It took me over a week to do what I have done, so I did not wish to get bogged down in extraneous detail.

As I completed the assessment to the point where I had a broad summary for each party, I scored the results and moved to the next party’s website.

Pecuniary Interests Register

First off, I should address my allegiances. As a Journalist, I am a current member of a registered political party that, while still in existence, has no stake in the federal election. I am a founding member of the Arts Party. They voluntarily deregistered from the national sphere well before Morrison changed the rules. They are still registered at the State level, where the executive decided to focus their efforts. I also spent two and a half years on the executive of the Real Democracy party developing and building it. It was a social democratic party that based its economic policy on Modern Monetary Theory.  In 2019 we gave up on the hope of ever getting it registered. 

My Philosophical framework.

I would consider myself a socialist, although the family that brought me up, would be better described as “Small-L” liberals. When at 18 I went off to vote for the first time, my Father, after telling me how they voted for the local Liberal candidate, asked me for whom I voted? My disrespectful reply was, “Well, at least I cancelled out one of those votes!” My Father was aghast but fortunately loved me enough not to disown me.

This is the lens through which I evaluated and scored each party. You can take my notes and re-evaluate how you might score them per your own principles.

Scoring

I rated each party’s position on the 24 issues from minus one to three.

  • -1 : my assessment of the party’s position is that I hold it is deleterious to our society, economy and country. For example, climate denial/recalcitrance always got a minus one, as did evident anti-vaxxer ideologies and support for the crime of offshore refugee detention positions.)
  • 0 : means no policy was mentioned on this issue or was either relatively insignificant or aspects were so mixed between deleterious and reasonable as to cancel one another out. For example, Katter’s lousy policy on creating a new class of Blue Card that applies only to Indigenous communities. Still, he also has an excellent approach to inalienable title deeds issued to First Australians.)
  • 1 : represents the bare minimum or basically a reasonable approach but nothing to write home about. For example, Kim for Canberra says, “religion should not be used to discriminate against others in any context” which, while good, is the bare minimum for Social Justice issues) 
  • 2 : it means good but needs improvement or doesn’t cover the entire scope of the issue. The Reason party has good pro-renewable energy policies and divestment from fossil fuels. Still, there are no specific strategies around subsidisation, phasing from one to another, and energy security, which is a commonly missing aspect.
  • 3 : a great set of policies for this area, perhaps complete or so little missing as to suggest the party would likely progressively fill any gaps in the future. For example, the comprehensive policy for Indigenous people comes from the Indigenous Aboriginal Party of Australia.)

Integrity

Evaluating a policy position has to assess the integrity of the claim. If the party lacks integrity or has a record of lying to gain a political advantage, that has to discredit their claim to a policy. So, for example, when the Liberal party claims to have a policy to “back small businesses with tax incentives”, I have noted that is not so if they are removing the Low and middle-income earner tax offsets. If you want a good laugh at Josh Frydenberg trying to spin it, watch Richard Denniss disassemble his claims on YouTube.

An alternate example might be the new housing policy for young first time home buyers to use 40% of their superannuation. I noted in my matrix that Morrison had already “allowed superannuation depletion by 3 million people” when he permitted people to access these funds during Covid in lockdowns rather than funding them through Job Keeper. Now Morrison suggests taking even more out of superannuation to support the housing crisis. Which even the “Investment Magazine” thinks is a bad idea. They expressed their concerns in their article “Deposit dipping into super not the answer to housing crisis” Sufficient to say, despite what Morrison claimed was a good policy, on the issue of “housing and cost of living“, I awarded the Liberals a negative one rating.

Weighting the results.

In addition to direct scoring, I have weighted my scoring also. I have doubled my initial scores for four policy areas I believe are crucial for this election. Those four areas are:

  1. Climate mitigation.
  2. Economic monetary principles (MMT).
  3. Corruption and accountability management.
  4. The Rights of the Working Class.  

This should be the climate election; 2019 was not. Catering to the neo-liberal economic principles based on the Monetarism theories of economic models developed by Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and promoted by Alan Greenspan, Robert Murphy, Paul Krugman and Jonathan Hartley is deplorable. It fails to recognise that we are an economically sovereign nation that issues our currency that everyone else uses. Instead, we should be following the post-Keynesian theories based on John Maynard Keynes and regenerated as the Modern Monetary models promoted by Prof Bill Mitchell, Stephanie Kelton, Pavlina Tcherneva and Warren Mosler. Books to read on this include “Doughnut Economics” as espoused by Kate Raworth, Stephanie Kelton’s “Deficit Myth“, “Reclaiming the State” by Prof Bill Mitchell and “Job Guarantee” as written by Pavlina Tcherneva. Corruption in politics costs society and business, and a Federal ICAC with teeth and divestment from corporate political donations are research subjects my wife specialises in and about which she has written extensively. As for Worker’s rights, well, I am, after all, a socialist, so I think that is important. However, while no Australian party declares the workers should seize the means of production as they did in Spain in 1936. Some of us see the value of a less violent uprising that might achieve that goal.

My results

So now that all my caveats, preferences, prejudices, etc., are loudly proclaimed, here are my resulting scores. Presented both with and without my weighting, which is published in the PDF located at http://auswakeup.info/issues/party-policy-scores.pdf.  

You can print it off, and using the data in http://auswakeup.info/issues/party-comments.pdf, you can restore it in accordance with your own values. {Note: you will need to print the latter on A2 sized paper for it to be readable}

Preferences

Some results were unexpected. Parties I scored highly in 2019 have dropped better policies for poorer ones, by which I was disappointed. But then parties that were fair before have lifted their game in 2022. Due to this exercise, I have changed my mind about which parties and the sequencing I will vote for them. “What gets measured, gets managed“, as my small-liberal voting Father often said. He was right in some things, and I honour his memory by respecting that advice.

Use the power of preferential voting
Use the power of preferential voting

The last warning or advice from this article is, for heaven’s sake, Australians, stop being so lazy as to abdicate your choices to party preferences, and choose your own preferences — number all the boxes. Understand how preferences work and use them to your advantage. Even if your best choice doesn’t receive a place at the political table, they might get enough funding from the AEC to keep going. Your preference vote will move to the next party in your choice of preferences until it settles on a winning party. That is the power of preferences, so don’t buy into this propaganda that you can’t vote for minor parties because this is a crucial election (they all are). It is not necessary to vote first for a likely winning party as that constitutes bandwagon voting and diminishes the power of your Australian preferential vote.  Your vote will still get to that party! With all the potential corrupt corporate donations, the duopoly of Labor and Liberal doesn’t need the AEC money, but a smaller party with better policies does.

Summary

My three highest-scoring parties, irrespective of my weighting (but also including it), are TNL (The New Liberals), Socialist Alliance and the Reason Party. Conversely, the three lowest scorings, all of which have accumulated a negative score over 24 areas of evaluation, are Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the Nationals and the Liberal Party.

Saturday the 21st of May 2022 is upon us this week. Choose wisely!

Josh’s Jobless Jargon

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

In essence, there are five claims he tweeted recently.

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

 

Real Unemployment

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

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

 

ABS’s absent considerations

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

 

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

 

International or Domestic terminal

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

 

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

 

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

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

Fig 1. various unemployment measures in Australia post-recession
Fig 1.  various unemployment measures in Australia post-recession

Crossing lines

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

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

 

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

So what measurement methodology addresses these weaknesses and exclusions?

Answer: Roy Morgan’s employment and unemployment estimates!

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

 

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

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

 

Solutions and reassessments

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

 

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

  • Unemployment has risen to 8.5% in Feb an increase of 26,000 from January,
  • Employment fell by 163,000 to 13,216,000 in February, driven by a fall in part-time employment
  • The workforce dropped 137,000 in February
  • Female unemployment is also at 8.5% despite being a smaller proportion of the workforce [see Fig 3]
  • Employment is 344,000 higher than it was pre-COVID-19 (13,216,000 – 12,872,000).
Fig 3: Female Unemployment measure variations in Australia from 2019 to Feb 2022
Fig 3: Female Unemployment measure variations in Australia from 2019 to Feb 2022

 

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

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

Morrison’s feminine appeal

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

Trying to defend himself, he ran the following list past Kymba Cahill during an intense interview on Perth Radio show Mix94.5. [See Fig 1.] Scott Morrison raised these points asserting that the coalition had made significant progress on:

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

 

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

Women’s Employment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More women on Boards and gender pay gaps.

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

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

1. entirely on what State and with whom you are employed,

2. and the changing state of employment and unemployment. [see Figs 2 & 3]

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

Domestic Violence funding

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

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

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

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

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

Assessment

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

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

 

Drought and flooding rains

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Was Banjo Paterson’s 1889 poem “Clancy, of the Overflow”, acknowledging a country of flooding plains? In not, Dorothea Mackellar’s “Sunburnt country” was in her 1906 poem about “drought and flooding rains”. Floods have long been a dominant feature of the Australian landscape, so much so, that “100-year floods” have been featured in recent decades every half dozen years or so. The apparent expectation of a lead-in like this is it’s a conversation on climate change. But, seriously, so many scientists and meteorological experts have spoken of this ad nauseam (see the 6th IPCC report). There is not much this journalist can add to what’s already been said. The latest flooding on the Eastern coast of Australia speaks volumes. Ignoring the need to mitigate Climate change has only two protagonists.

  1. Attitudes to the Flood Crisis show the contempt with which Rural Australians are held by former Liberal Party president.
    Attitudes to the Flood Crisis show the contempt with which Rural Australians are held by former Liberal Party president.

    The most recalcitrant of ideologues in media and political circles who are bribed by corporate lobbying of fossil fuel interests or

  2. The psychologically stunted individuals are driven by a  Dunning-Kruger misperception of their intellectual incapacity.

So if you fall into one of those categories, I will not waste time addressing your issues.

Climate change has created two very typical states of environmental disasters in the Australian landscape. Fires and Floods! The rescue of Australians from either disaster has different primary responder workforces.

Fire Management

Fire Brigades in Australia, began in the NSW colony in 1820, consisting of soldiers trained to use fire fighting appliances. By 1836 the Australian Insurance Company established a Fire Brigade, manned by local volunteers with buckets, ladders and axes. By 1884 the Fire Brigades Act created the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. By 1910 that Act was extended across the NSW state. In 2011 that Fire Brigade became known as “Fire and Rescue NSW”. Nowadays, paid professional and volunteer fire fighting bodies are funded in every state. However, the NSW fire mitigation bodies suffered significant funding reductions in the years leading up to the 2019 fires. Gladys Berejiklian’s government instigated the cuts, but only the alternative media outlets covered this failure of oversight and management.

Flood Management

Flood management, on the other hand, had an even poorer history. European settlement in New South Wales recognised the risk from the flood hazards as far back as 1788. However, the 1810 Hawkesbury River flooding and 1867 floods of Pitt Town and Windsor, resulted in differing strategies by the colonial government. By the 1870s, volunteer ‘water brigades’ arose. This, in time, developed into the State Emergency Service (SES) in 1955. The only professionally paid body associated with flooding is the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology. The under-resourced original SES had no mandate for Flood mitigation. It was not restructured till the emergence of the State Emergency Service Act 1989. Chas Keys, the Deputy Director-General, NSW State Emergency Service, wrote in a paper in 1999:

“Half a century ago, the management of Australia’s most serious natural hazard was very largely a matter of community self-help. Science was not brought to bear, there was little or no prior consideration of potential ways of handling flood problems, and the government was barely active except in after-the-fact relief endeavours.”

While Chas Keys claimed this had changed, recent events demonstrate effective real-time flood management still eludes the government and SES. The SES is still dominantly a volunteer organisation covering a wide range of emergency scenarios from fire, storms, floods, road crashes, as well as alpine, bush & abseiling search and rescue. There is training nowadays for all of these events, but it’s largely dependent on individual interest from the volunteer. At the end of 2018-19, NSW SES had a full-time equivalent workforce of 352 staff but 27 times as many volunteers.

Government reluctance

Locals noticing the lack of Government and Emergency support services in a crisis.
Locals notice the lack of Government and Emergency support services in a crisis.

The State and Federal Government’s response to cries for help by flood victims has been woeful. The Federal Government, in particular, has demonstrated a consistent reluctance to step up, in any emergency, whether that be a pandemic, economic recession, bushfires or floods.

The Liberal Party’s previous reputation of being notoriously marred by climate-denying recidivists manifests as a reluctance to admit the consequences of Climate Change. So there is a foreseeable reluctance to acknowledge the existence of the symptoms. This follows a consequential hesitancy to act quickly to mitigate a flood crisis. Hence the slow and reluctant response from the Federal Government to the current floods. Considering the American experience of harsh public criticism of George W Bush over Cyclone Katrina flooding, the even slower response by the Australian Government draws understandable outrage. As does the continued reluctance to spend emergency funding of around $4.7 billion sitting idle in the bank! While eventually the ADF was assigned to the task, the perception of their commitment to the flood victims was marred by the need to create photo ops and filmmaking. This only drew further enragement on social media.

Army not trained

ADF Film training unit because the defense department betrays their confident in their crisis response capabilities.
ADF Film training unit because the defence department betrays their confidence in their crisis response capabilities.

Beyond the SES, the Australian Army Reserves have been solicited to provide community aid during the 2010 and 2011 floods. ADF Reservists called upon to assist communities during a flood crisis is problematic, because, as David Littleproud claimed, ADF personnel “aren’t trained in the immediate response”. Still, Army Reservists are called upon more frequently to assist in fire, flood and pandemic situations as they did during the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season. But the reference to a lack of adequate training was implied by the ADF’s flood response in 2022. ADF emergency support was marred by a week-long delayed response and the apparent order to conduct photo ops and training films many saw as a priority above saving lives. The Defence Force’s defence of their filmmaking drew further enragement on social media, but few stopped to query why the defence force thought the training was needed.

SES not ready

The government’s crisis management should not rely on volunteers and reservists.
The government’s crisis management should not rely on volunteers and reservists.

The SES found themselves battered by a “natural disaster of unprecedented proportions” and subsequently demonstrated they were under-resourced and overwhelmed. The capitulation of government to reliance on volunteers to respond to natural disasters was admitted to by Premier Dominic Perrottet on Tuesday the 8th in a Press statement. Perrottet acknowledged people felt let down by emergency services, overwhelmed by the scope of the crisis.

If the Federal & State governments, SES and ADF are not up to the task required of them, for whatever reason, legitimate or otherwise, perhaps we need a more focussed body to deal with floods. Although, there is no dedicated, professionally paid specialist “Flood Brigade”, despite flooding being an interstate issue of significant frequency, resulting in large scale relocations, property damage, and even deaths.

Once in a Century?

The history emerging in the 21st century, complete with lives lost, began in the 2007 Hunter Valley/Maitland and Gippsland Floods. This was followed by the 2011 Queensland floods and again by Victorian Floods, till finally later that year, Gippsland again. A year later, in 2012, Eastern Australia and Gippsland suffered floods between February and March. 2013 saw Eastern Australia Floods in Queensland and NSW. While we got a break in 2014, 2015 saw Hunter Valley/Central Coast/Sydney Floods and South – East Queensland, in which 13 people in total died. Tasmanian Floods in 2016 only killed three, and one died in the Central West and Riverina Floods. After the Western Australian Floods of 2017, Cyclone Debbie caused flooding in Eastern Australia. Townsville floods in Queensland killed five people in 2019. Tropical Cyclone Damien in Karratha in 2020 caused flooding in NSW, but it was one of few floods where there were no deaths (although plentiful damage).

Such good luck wasn’t maintained the next year when widespread flash flooding across Gippsland in 2021 killed two people while 200 homes were evacuated in the Latrobe Valley. That flooding occurred only three months after widespread flooding in the Sydney basin, and the Mid North Coast of NSW had already killed three folks.

In 2022 Australia’s Eastern coast has been inundated with rain, and the current score – as of writing – has been 21 lives between Queensland and NSW. New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet described the extreme weather as a “one-in-a-one-thousand-year event“.

Shane the disaster tsar in charge of Emergency Disaster fund.
Shane the disaster tsar in charge of Emergency Disaster fund.

Describing these floods as the one-in-a-one-thousand-year event (or “one-in-500-year” as Morrison did in Lismore) is not only wholly delusional and contrary to every scientific flood report, but also contrary to the lived experience of Australians seeing floods occur year after year. For example, with extensive Brisbane floods increasing in frequency from 1974, four lives were lost, and some 8,000 householders were affected. From 2011 and on to 2022, the comparisons are startling, given all the flood mitigation work done in between.  As for Shane Stone, the disaster relief chief and head of the National Resilience and Recovery Agency blaming the victims for their choice of residency, that says much about Morrison’s hand-picked disaster tsar.

 

Politicians depicted this as a once in a century event, only to experience more in the coming years, stretching their credibility and the public’s resilience with each flood.

Who’s to blame?

Some elements of the government have been prepared to acknowledge how “unacceptable” emergency flood response has been. Others, especially in the Federal Government, are looking to direct blame elsewhere. Blaming the Bureau of Meteorology for an inaccurate forecast only gets you a day’s grace, not a whole week. These disasters have been consistently predicted. The Australian Rainfall and Runoff report: “A guide to flood estimation” notes on page 22:

“There is also mounting evidence that longer-term climate processes also have a major impact on flood risk.”

It goes on to describe La Nina events and interdecadal pacific oscillation, and after “investigating a range of sites in NSW”, it found floods were 1.8 larger than “normal”. (see the report page 22 for a more nuanced explanation of “normal”) Notably, Wilsons River flooding to Lismore in 2017 has no specific mention in the report, unlike the Hunter, Clarence and Woolomombi because most of the data relied upon only extends to 2015. While this report has some 2016 updates, its release in 2019 does not mean the fallout of 2017 mass flooding is included. It may be time for a revision in 2022. That said, making excuses for why we were not ready in the face of all this data – including all the reports preceding the 2022 IPCC report – is a little pathetic.

 

Alternative?

Seeking fully funded civil disaster response organisations
Seeking fully funded civil disaster response organisations

As the existing system doesn’t work and will become increasingly dysfunctional in the future, we need a complete regime change. Volunteers in Fire Brigade, SES, and Army Reservists (some of whom operate in a mix of either, some or all services) should continue as separate entities. Given that these disasters cross the State lines, funding should be federal at all levels. The temptation for tight budgets at State levels to be a reason to cut back on these services, should be dissuaded by shifting these to a federal responsibility. Professional crewed Fire Brigades and Flood Brigades bodies to manage mitigation, rescue, and recovery for these disasters need launching! It should transition all current State-based professionals. These brigades’ immediate responses should be based on predictive science measuring environmental changes and preparing for the worst.

To have these federally funded bodies respond to these emergencies far faster than this government and ADF have reacted to people in need in Lismore, Coraki, Girards Hill, Southgate, Mullumbimby, Picton and many others, we need one more change. We need a federal government that will not simply announce its intentions without any measurable, functional outcomes or run off overseas or hide from public scrutiny, but act promptly to produce results in infrastructure and finance in the towns that will preserve our communities. But, unfortunately, that government is not our current incumbent, whose leader only now, weeks after the start of the floods, while visiting Lismore, indicated an “intention” to declare a “State of Emergency”.

Vacant Claimants

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

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

To understand the early signs of an economic downturn, we need to go back to when politically acknowledged signs of a faltering economy appeared. The GDP downturn in the third quarter of 2016 was preceded by nearly three years of a per-capita recession. The retail boom of the last quarter (Christmas) saved us from an official recession. However, by the end of 2018, Australia re-entered a per-capita recession. “Australia’s economic output shrank 0.2pc per person in the fourth quarter of 2018, after a 0.1pc decline in the third”.  By mid-2019, economists predicted a recession as employment growth was slow, unemployment high, and wages were stagnating. Then, by the end of 2019, as Australia was literally burning down due to climate change, a global pandemic hit, and the pack of cards came tumbling down, and the recession we were always going to have, hit us.

OUR STROLLOUT

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

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

ZERO-HOURS

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

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

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

EVERY OTHER MEASURE OUTSTRIPS ABS.

Fig: 2 - Variant unemployment measures for 2020-2021
Fig: 2 – Variant unemployment measures for 2020-2021

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

VACANCIES & JOB GUARANTEES

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

SEPARATION OF VACANCIES

Fig: 3 - Variant Job Vacancy figures 2019-2021
Fig: 3 – Variant Job Vacancy figures 2019-2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONSIDERATIONS

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

The results of these considerations are two-fold.

  1. This has generated much of the employer claims that they are “struggling to find suitable staff to fill job vacancies”.
  2. The realisation that low wages you can get away with for migrants, poor conditions, and exploitation will not be acceptable jobs for Australians. Farmers and Restaurants are now forced to engage with better educated Australians who expect better pay and are more aware of their rights as employees. So it is no surprise they have been less successful in filling jobs.
Fig: 7 – 2021 Lead up to October’s advertised job vacancy by role classification.
Fig: 7 – 2021 Lead up to October’s advertised job vacancy by role classification.

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

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

LAZY AUSSIES

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


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

MONEY FOR MATES!

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

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

Dear Gladys

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Dear Gladys,

Our relationship has curdled, and I am concerned about your mixed messages. Despite maintaining it was finished between us (The voters, not Daryl), you remain in the house. Using our joint account to pay $10,000 a day for your expensive addiction to lawyers. When lovers tell each other it is over, they separate as soon as possible. We have moved on to Dom “Opus Dei” Perrottet. Our heart has changed allegiances; once we realised you were representing Daryl, and not us.

Obviously, we need to rethink this, adding a little candour to how our relationship has transpired. Yes, we (NSW) voted for you in high hopes you would be better for our economy (as you always promise but don’t deliver). You’d think we’d learn that, but like Charlie Brown, we want to hope Lucy isn’t lying to us, and we have another punt at that ball. Your words were beguiling, and we always fell for it. Some friends warned us, but we are all too forgiving in 2019. Just look at how heartbroken we were in 2021 when you said you were leaving us.   Then you didn’t leave, toying with our feelings.

Deep down, we know it hasn’t been working well for years. Some of us had misgivings only a year ago. Both Bernard Keane and I expressed our doubts in October last year, three days apart from one another.  OK, I admit I was a lot harsher than Bernard, as he seemed to think your most prominent sin was cheating on us with Daryl Maguire.  But, even lately, Bernard has not been as tough or honest with you as he should be.  Instead, Bernard sugarcoats it as “two remarkable misjudgments” as though they were your only ones, which “until 2020, was a glittering career”.

Are we dating the same woman?

#Koalakiller tag burnt into our memory.
#Koalakiller tag burnt into our memory.

Bernard and I must be “dating” different women named “Gladys”. I don’t want to dwell too long on matters raised before, so I will be quick. I thought we both loved koalas, but instead, others gave you the tag #koalakiller because of your environmental policies on logging forests. You promised me public transport but gave us tragically built ferries not designed for our bridges and Trains not made fit for our tunnels. You said you valued our cousins in the public service. But you spent all our money on pay rises for 65 coalition politicians and a police commissioner and refused to fund public service workers. You said you were good with money, but there were overpayments for some properties and underpayments for others. Was it just empty promises when light rails, stadiums and museums were under-costed or facing undisclosed financial discrepancies?

Your cuts to Rural and Urban fire services and de-staffing fire management officers and National Parkes and Wildlife, all before the most extensive bushfire in NSW. All despite having been predicted a decade earlier. The dodgy water trading, fracking and conservation failures, all while you hid MP’s water interests and were not straight with us. You switched on the desalination plant in Kurnell when water ran out in country towns and Dams were contaminated and then made us pay the subsequent price rises.  Westconnex did well, while we saw the prospect of rising toll road costs and lost properties to compulsory acquisition. So, Gladys, you just needed to do a little planning. Then you put our lives at risk via the Ruby Princess and Aged care deaths under the management of Aspen Medical despite the fraud associated with them. But Bernard thinks you made only “two remarkable misjudgments”. Really Bernard, how could you overlook all this?  Love, really is blind!

Her “glittering career”!

Climate Chaos is now unavoidable, but NSW corruption, unnecessary!
Climate Chaos is now unavoidable, but NSW corruption, unnecessary!

Look, Gladys, I was really hoping we could all move on to “a glittering career”. But the end of 2020 and 2021 hasn’t been covered in glory, have they?  Barely had I finished talking about our relationship concerns in October 2020, then the “Stronger Communities Fund” pork-barrelling to coalition local councils showed up. You tried to hide your infidelity by shredding documents relating to those councils’ $252 million grants scheme. Even Scotty from Marketing could have told you that you don’t go on TV and refer to pork barrelling as the “common parlance” and at least try to look a little contrite.

Before the month was out, we discovered you’d previously given Wagga Wagga $40K worth of Grants out of a discretionary fund and to nobody’s surprise, it was Daryl’s electorate. (You’re our representative, not his.) True, the Premier’s fund was at your sole discretion, but you were not very discrete (as ICAC has the tapes). Daryl got millions for projects without business plans or discussions of substance.  You seemed to “just throw money at Wagga” to benefit him. In November, the Upper house voted to refer you to ICAC for failing to disclose your relationship with Maguire.

By December, the ABC was reporting your involvement in the project for new headquarters for the Australian Clay Target Association Daryl Maguire championed. You have to admit Gladys he always one with an eye for a profit which ICAC tapes revealed you knew, despite seeking to maintain plausible deniability coyly with, “I don’t need to know about that bit“.

In March 2021, ICAC confirmed they were still investigating Daryl. The highway running past his properties in his electorate came under scrutiny, as did your meeting over it with him. His Airbnb plans for his Ivanhoe properties didn’t strike you as a conflict of interest issue?  Really, Gladys, really?

While the NSW government defunded it, the people clamoured for it.
While the NSW government defunded it, the people clamoured for it.

By May, when the upper house voted to provide for ICAC’s $7.2 million budget shortfall due to their declaration that its annual funding had been below inflation for most of the 30 years since its inception, but your friends in the lower house voted it down.  It doesn’t help sell the image of integrity for someone for whom “all proper processes were followed” to underfund the very organisation that could establish that.  If you have done “nothing wrong”, why undermine the one organisation that could prove it?

Daryl resigned from the party in July of 2018 over those scandals, and despite this entire sordid history, he remained on the crossbench.  Does either of you understand the concept of “resignation”? Despite “quitting”, he stayed till August of 2018.  Despite that, did it never occur to you to break it off with him and serve your constituents? Why wait till September of 2020 when the further announcement of ICAC investigations transpired?

Meanwhile, Wagga Wagga was doing very well, from their $12m cycling complex to their Australian Clay Target Association. Wagga Wagga seems to be the epicentre of sport in NSW. No surprise that more people in Wagga Wagga voted for the Liberal Candidate than for the Independent that won via preferences. Pork Barrelling works because the public is gullible and shallow.

Corrosive Covid

But enough of corruption charges, let’s look to your handling the pandemic and how you developed your competencies following the early mistakes of the “Ruby Princess”.

By June 2021, our attention moved on, as had yours. Your new beau, Arthur Moses, stepped up, being one of many who offered support. The AMA advised you to lock Sydney down when the Delta Variant made its way to Sydney.  But you didn’t take the help they prescribed and relied on “business advice” for matters related to a virulent disease that had killed millions in India by June. Your own report coinciding with the Bondi cluster starting June 16 mentions “business” 21 times and “health” three times. Although “businesses” were still upset! You knew what happened when Dan delayed locking down the first time, yet you waited for School holidays to start a soft lockdown? Afterwards, you listened to medical advice. Who suggested that was a great idea, given you locked down the Northern Beaches during the previous Christmas over similar numbers? You waited another four weeks after the school holidays to get serious about a lockdown for what reason? How did this demonstrate your competence? Indeed, the 408 people who died from the virus before you resigned will never know.

So our infection rate rose over 1500 a day, Nurses and Doctors ran themselves ragged, and even though Morrison offered you the lion’s share of vaccines, NSW struggled to serve communities from the beginning.

The legacy of Gladys.
The legacy of Gladys.

The other Eastern States provided their resources for contact tracing because you weren’t coping independently, but the public was told your State was the “Gold Standard”. You even needed help from the military to enforce lockdowns.   Still, some people believed you were better than a Premier that had to break his back before he stopped doing public briefings. Whereas you stopped doing so because you needed time to run the State? To do what exactly? To open up around August/October when we still had hundreds of cases which seems a little contrary to the idea you expressed that “the number of positive coronavirus cases infectious in the community must drop to “as close to zero as possible” for the shutdown to be lifted”. But, of course, our new Premier, Dominic Perrottet, disagreed with that as a policy as the State recorded 477 new COVID-19 infections and six deaths on the weekend before restrictions were eased the following Monday.  That was October 11, and you had resigned nearly two weeks before but were (and are, as of writing this) still a fully paid member of Parliament.

When are you leaving us?

So now I am writing the letter we should have written earlier if only we’d had the gumption and realised just how dysfunctional this relationship was.  Instead, the media and public mourned your departure like it was a Shakespearian tragedy.  I have never witnessed so significant a case of Stockholm Syndrome.  Like the victimised battered wife who excused everything he did, outsiders are left wondering, why we didn’t leave long ago? All the indicators were there even from a year ago, yet too few remembered or noted.

Onset of Memory Loss upon exposure to ICAC.
Onset of Memory Loss upon exposure to ICAC.

But you are still in Parliament, you are still charging the State taxpayer for your legal fees, and you haven’t left yet. As a result, most days lately, we hear about your memory loss, despite a previous reputation for maintaining a detailed memory with “meticulous focus on every minor policy detail “.

You said you were going, Gladys.  Put the money back you have taken from the State coffers and leave!  There is only so much corruption, pork barrelling and taking advantage of us that we can stomach.

Curiously wondering for how much longer before you pick up your toothbrush and go!

Regretfully,

The NSW Public.

 

Why alternative truths?

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Much is made of the 21st century being a post-truth world. Many identified it when presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway defended White House Press secretary Sean Spicer’s fallacious claim about attendance numbers at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Kellyanne Conway infamously referred to Spicer’s assertions as “Alternative facts“. This became a catch cry of satirists, comedians and news broadcasters reflecting the absurdity of presidential lies and fallacious propaganda. However, political manipulations of the “truth” are older than the writings of the ancient Chinese military treatise of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.

Populist lies

Post-truth world equals Pre-Fascist realm
Post-truth world equals Pre-Fascist realm

What does mark the 21st century is not the strategic lie of clever politicians but the blatant lie of the Populist. The blatant lie has replaced clever self-serving lies that take time and nuance to unravel. It’s an appeal to a demographic wanting the smallest of justifications to rise in the insurrection at the Capital or organise a packed, mask-less protest rally during a pandemic.

Great swathes of humanity descend into the 21st-century rabbit hole, emerging catatonic and confused into a world of irrationality, conspiracy theories, and QANON. Framed by shameless populist’s admonition, whose goal is greed, popularity and personal gain/power at any cost to society. However, the political class has always been tarred with the brush of falsehoods by the public. Those goals aim to serve ideological or personal ends, but for the population, the falsehoods of this century have more dire consequences.  These blatant lies blind us from the existential threats to us all, such as Covid-19 pandemics, climate change and biodiversity collapse.

We should ask ourselves both why and how “alternative facts” (or, to put it bluntly, “mendacious lies”) dominate and hamper the cultures of the modern world and warp our perspective of the truth.

Here are my ten reasons why “alternative truths” hold sway.

  1. Political advantage.

Manipulating the populous through algorithms
Manipulating the populous through algorithms

Contemporary manipulations of the public for political gain are outsourced to the private capital of organisations such as Cambridge Analytica that resulted in the election of Trump and other populists. The data mining and psychological manipulation on behalf of Trump were detailed in the whistleblower’s book, “Mindf*ck” by Christopher Wylie. The broader European perspective of “This is Not Propaganda” by Peter Pomerantsev explores the dark world of influence operations run amok. It is a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots and alternative fact propagation. This would include Firecrest technologies, Emerdata and SCL Group companies and even i360. The latter aided the conservative political gains in the South Australian elections but were abandoned despite protests from state branches by the evident lack of digital nous exhibited by federal Liberal Party operators. Nevertheless, it is a global phenomenon with many agents producing propaganda in social and mainstream media.

  1. Media Power and control.

The dominance by organisations like the Murdock press, OAN, and Fox News engage us in divisive propaganda instead of news and accurate journalism. Instead of holding power to account, the Fourth Estate is more frequently complicity with power. This is not merely an opinion but the legal defence used by Fox News to defend their hosts. Legal complications over the lack of veracity in reporting have long plagued the Murdoch press, but its power over parties and electoral influence is also a matter of record.

  1. Cultural complacency.

Cogitative progressions and the death of reasoning
Cogitative progressions and the death of reasoning

There is a culture of acceptability for political lies and even allowing the lies to slide by with populist politicians. Manipulative social media posts that appeal to emotional or perceptual biases are propagated. “People feel free to make unsupported claims, assertions, and accusations in online media,” said Vint Cerf. As Dan York also notes, “The ‘mob mentality’ can be easily fed, and there is little fact-checking or source-checking these days before people spread information and links through social media.”

Not only do we disparage fact-checking and frequently could not be bothered to check political veracity, but partisan “fact-checkers” also have weaponised “fact-checking”.

  1. Experiential evaluation.

There is a cultural belief in the fluidity of truth in which opinion and anecdotal expressions are given identical or greater weight than fact-checking and well developed & robust methods of statistical analysis.  Cognitive Research states, “People are also more persuaded by low-quality scientific claims that are accompanied by anecdotes and endorsement cues, such as a greater number of Facebook ‘likes’ as well as prior exposure to misinformation. In particular, the presence of anecdotal evidence can serve as a powerful barrier for scientific reasoning and evidence-based decision-making.”

  1. Underfunding education.

The defunding and elimination of free university education has resulted in an inferior quality of education for the Australian/American/British populations. As John Biggs and Richard Davis’s paper on “The Subversion of Australian Universities” concludes, “Today, our tertiary system is no longer able to fulfil its proper function in the community.” The deteriorating quality standards in Australian Universities leaves many graduates unequipped for the working world.  Academic bodies have for years petitioned against the cuts to higher education to increasingly deaf ears in parliament.

It is not just tertiary education in Australia that is suffering a decline. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reports that high school test scores have been plummeting for years.

The deteriorating education results in a plummeting of quality standards in Australian Universities.  Access is based on economic capacity to afford education and the resultant financial pressure to pass mediocre students. Instead of passing students based on individual intellectual demonstrations of academic quality, a culture of grading on a curve is the acceptable standard.

  1. Irresponsibility.

A list of Rabbit-holes to dive down
A list of Rabbit-holes to dive down

People have not been held accountable for the results of their inane opinions, whether they range from:

These people have largely been able to get away with their foolish choices and claims that have generated destructive results for Australian society and civil liberties as a whole.

  1. Poverty.

The paucity of resources available for adequate discernment or investigation of the truth is underscored by the crushing weight of surviving poverty. Ill-equipped communities, schools, and teachers have to scale inter-generational poverty and abuse that impact brain development, breadth of opportunity, material resourcing, and starting education at an expected time and age. Economic disadvantage is linked to chronic tardiness, lack of motivation, and inappropriate behaviour in school children and follows them into adulthood. Eric Jensen documents this in his book “Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids’ Brains and What Schools Can Do About It.” This is before we even contemplate the issues of remote and regional education in the vastness of Australia. Underfunding public schools and TAFE and tertiary education have a long history in Australia. Extracurricular activities such as music, languages, travel/excursions, and etc are only available to children of wealthy parents or private education as public education has suffered multiple ongoing budget cuts that date back decades.

  1. The “Means” of Production.

Beyond poverty, the working class and the demands of their labour, of time and energy in terms of excessive working hours and inadequate wages and working conditions limit their socio-political awareness.  One’s financial needs for personal and family obligations leave little time or energy for contemplation into the truth of State propaganda and media bias. Moreover, juggling more than one job to meet the financial demands of survival depletes time and resources for contemplative thinking. The ABS reported recently, “Filled jobs increased by 73,700 in the March quarter, 56,100 of which were jobs worked by people as a secondary job.”

  1. Dismantling opposition.

Diminishing critical public resources results in the inadequate assessment of proposals and developing ideas. The data necessary to evaluate deteriorating social and economic business concerns vanishes. This has been exemplified by defunding and closure of legal advice, research facilities and a raft of labour market monitoring (specifically during Abbott’s reign) along with compromising formerly independent bodies  such as:

The result is that critically based research becomes more inaccessible. Misinformation is easier to find, and the partisan media spoon-feeds that to the masses by the bucketful.

  1. Illiteracy.

Literacy is a surprisingly large issue in Australia; as Benjamin Law wrote some years ago, “…an OECD study surveyed Australians aged between 15 and 74 and rated them on their literacy skills. The results were shocking: 43.7 per cent had below-proficiency-level literacy.” Some indicators since then have seen improvement but as Helena Burke in the Australian noted: “According to the OECD, one in eight Australian adults are functionally illiterate, reading at an OECD Level 1 or below.” Unfortunately, though, she continued to say, “At present, there is no national adult literacy policy within Australia.”

Infotainment or Knowledge

Broadsheets to Youtube how conditions have worsened
Broadsheets to Youtube how conditions have worsened

Criticism of relative illiteracy notes how many in the community get their knowledge base from YouTube videos rather than reading and comprehension. Short podcasts and videos provide a superficial education with little by way of citations to follow up. In pursuit of easy to digest snippets of short-form, educational content (infotainment) provides an ephemeral intellectual reward and a diminished perspicacity. As a freelance journalist, I am aware this article exceeds the Guardian’s word limit of 800 words and Independent Australia’s at 1200. Long read articles are a small specialist market for a limited audience as the response of the larger public is usually conveyed by the acronym “TL;DR”. So even for the literate, reading can be viewed as onerous. Ask yourself when did you last read a non-fiction book? While the Australian Council for the Arts determined that 92% of Australians self-identify as ‘readers,’ the time spent doing so averages 6 hours and 18 minutes a week. That put our country in 15th place in the world.

These ten factors contribute to the ongoing undermining of truth in society.  We often seek simplistic answers to complex questions. Too many of us will not spend the time reading and examining the nuance and subtleties of issues. (Especially when they can be breezed over in a five-minute video.)

Too Long; Didn't Read!
Too Long; Didn’t Read!

Still, you are here reading this article. Did you just scan it quickly out of idle curiosity? Did you click on even one embedded link out of that curiosity to further your knowledge of something herein written? Perhaps, I got something wrong, but would you know from reading the link’s contents? Was that “reading”, or did you skim over what was written quickly because it was a bit long and … hell … who has the time, education, or philosophical inclination for in-depth understanding?

 

Frydenberg’s maths problem

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The media on both ends of the political spectrum promote Australia’s Liberal Party, as the party of economic management. Pandemics and recession have not slowed the recovery down. “Frydenberg spends the bounty to drive unemployment to new lows.” reads one title from the Conversation. The Australian says of their Treasurer: “Australia to aim for less than 5 per cent unemployment: Treasurer.”

“Mr Frydenberg said it was necessary for unemployment, which stands at 5.6 per cent, to drop before workers would see their wage rise“, wrote McHugh of the Australian, in April 2021. In May, the ABS reported April’s unemployment was 5.5% or 756.2K people. The last time Australia saw 5.5% under a Labor government, according to the ABS, had been in March 2013, when the numbers were lower at 687K. In 2013, the workforce was smaller; therefore, 5.5% in 2020 is more significant than 5.5% was in 2013. Perhaps percentage comparisons with previous administrations or even different time periods are misleading.

ABS unemployment percent divergencies 2013 and 2020
ABS unemployment percent divergencies 2013 and 2020

Still, imagine Frydenberg’s delight when “The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 5.1 per cent in May as the number of people employed surged by 115,200.” according to the SBS. As historically comparative percentages may be inherently deceptive, it is more accurate to state that the ABS reported the seasonally adjusted unemployment figures for May 2021 to be 701,100.

So much for Treasury doom forecasters who said that as the JobKeeper wage subsidy was to expire at the end of March 2021, that thousands could lose jobs. Treasury estimated 100,000 to 150,000 JobKeeper recipients could lose employment when the scheme ended.

Despite this, Josh Frydenberg tweeted on the 1st of June that Treasury confirmed: “150,000 Australians have come off unemployment benefits since the end of JobKeeper.” As the Treasurer, Frydenberg had some advanced knowledge of the Jobseeker statistics ahead of the May figures being released to the public.

At the end of JobKeeper, the March Statistics for people on JobSeeker were 1,167,392, and later in June, the Jobseeker stats released for May were 1,021,880. The difference being 145.5K. To be fair to Frydenberg, he would have received early estimates, and that is pretty close. I am not going to quarrel over rounding up of figures. As far as I am concerned, that was a reasonable claim based on those figures. Mr Frydenberg advised Canberra reporters in mid-June, “Unemployment fell for the seventh consecutive month to 5.1%“. He maintained, “The Australian economy is roaring back- bigger, stronger & leading the world.” Not that other economic analysts agreed. Frydenberg was proud to boast of his government’s accomplishments based on these figures.

One more time by the numbers?

I want to point out that Josh Frydenberg is intimately aware of two specific sets of figures from May 2021.

  1. ABS unemployment figures (701,100) and
  2. JobSeeker figures. (1,021,880).

These are 320K apart from one another. It almost seems that the Government was paying 320K more people JobSeeker than the ABS was claiming were unemployed. ABS is an estimate based on surveys, so perhaps it was a little out that month? The ABS statistics list as employed “the number of people working fewer (or no) hours in May 2021” or what Roy Morgan refers to as “Australians who were working zero hours for ‘economic reasons’.” If these non-workers (58,200) are added back, the ABS unemployment estimate for May increases to 759,300, and the unemployment rate rises to 5.5%. That still leaves a difference of 262K people.

Having mentioned Roy Morgan, it should be noted that Roy Morgan has their own reporting of unemployment which for May 2021 was 1,493,000 people. This is 733K above the figure ABS claims even if we add back in the zero-hours “workers” numbers.

The numbers go further awry in the “JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance recipients – monthly profile” figures in Government Data record table 1. According to their spreadsheet, these figures reference only “payment for recipients aged between 22 years to Age Pension qualification age“. Payments to ages 15 to 22 are classified as “Youth Allowance“.

ABS unemployment figures are supposed to represent ages 15 to age pension qualifying age. If you add back in Youth Allowance to Job Seeker to make it cover the same age groups as ABS, then the figure for May increases to 1,132,478 people (see Table 3). Mathematically it is 373K larger than the ABS figures (even after adjusting it for zero-hour workers).  This is 360K less than Roy Morgan’s figures.

Number patterns

Unemployment measurement variations
Unemployment measurement variations

However, Roy Morgan’s claims are not our government’s numbers.  Frydenberg, (Treasurer of the Nation and the man responsible for the Federal Budget) seems oblivious to the mathematical difference between just the Government’s figures despite quoting other mathematical discrepancies, over different time periods. Perhaps it is some anomalous aberration of May 2021. With that in mind, I have charted the figures since the early recession. Included are Roy Morgan’s figures, Jobseeker (with and without Youth Allowance), ABS Seasonally adjusted and a dotted line representing the zero-hours worker’s discrepancy collected since June 2020 and noted by Roy Morgan.

The ABS stats were always much lower than the Government’s JobSeeker numbers. Although the ABS acknowledges that zero-hours workers are not paid, it dubiously recognised these people as “employed“. There is something unreliable about Frydenberg using ABS’s statistics to measure real domestic Australian unemployment.

More on ABS methodology

Unemployment seems to have declined if you consider the most inaccurate statistical method for counting the unemployed. However, the ABS methodology is apparently flawed when you consider what is and is not evaluated when it comes to measuring employment:

ABS’s inaccuracies are highlighted by real numbers when you realise that the Government is currently paying more people on Jobseeker than they are contending are unemployed. So the question should be what statistical gathering methodology does incorporate the multitudes being paid JobSeeker, as well as those managing without welfare because :

The remaining evaluation?

Roy Morgan unemployment vs IVI job vacancies
Roy Morgan unemployment vs IVI job vacancies

That leaves us with Roy Morgan’s statistics that illustrate unemployment has increased in May after Jobkeeper was discontinued. As Jobkeeper stopped from April onwards, it was always unlikely that April’s statistics might reflect that. Unemployment layoffs would not have occurred instantly, nor would wage payments supported by Jobkeeper evaporate immediately as processing these continued till mid-April. ABS has a one month delay requisite to its data collection, so it is no surprise unemployment appeared to fall in May. The Government rightly assumes that few follow why their claims about ABS numbers do not reflect our domestic unemployment. Nor, how only once, briefly, in the last year did unemployment fall below 10% in April (9%), and that in May, 10.3% is a more accurate assessment of Australian unemployment. Recall that Treasury suggested that unemployment might rise as much as 150K. Roy Morgan’s figure for April was 1,307K, and May was 1,493K generating an unemployment rise of 186K, which is far more consistent with Treasury’s expectations.

The question remains. Why does Josh Frydenberg promote these obviously fallacious numbers? He isn’t stupid, nor is he deceived or deluded. He is well aware of the numbers from these divergent sources as he has not only referenced them but made sound mathematical calculations based on subsets of these numbers. He is our Treasurer, and he has to be aware that the Commonwealth is paying more people on Jobseeker than the ABS is claiming are unemployed. There is, therefore, only one conclusion left about his economic assertions!  I leave that to the reader to discern.

Dob in a bludger

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Morrison announcement of “permanently increasing the rate of working-age payments by $50 a fortnight from 1 April 2021” received a lacklustre response. The Australian reporting about the lead-up to this said, “The base rate of JobSeeker is currently $570.80 a fortnight. But pressure has been mounting on the government to raise the rate with the $150 coronavirus supplement for welfare recipients ending in late March.”

Small bickies

Australian Welfare no longer in last place.
Australian Welfare no longer in last place.

The Australian Council of Social Service’s disappointed response reported that they would have preferred $25 extra a day rather than a week. The cheapest coffee I can buy around in my suburb is $4, an extra $3.57 a day is hardly enough. It has, although, lifted our unemployment allowance from 37.5% to 41.2% of the national minimum wage. That means we will no longer have the lowest level of unemployment benefits as a percentage of the average salary in the OECD. Fifty dollars lifts us above Greece to second-last place. Mind you, the original Covid Jobseeker supplement incrementally lifted the unemployed for the first time, above the Henderson Poverty line.

Welfare payments and the poverty measures of Australia
Welfare payments and the poverty measures of Australia

Paying such low levels “under the false pretence of encouraging more unemployed Australians to look for jobs” has no evidentiary basis. The international market demonstrates it has the opposite effect. Higher unemployment payments internationally are more often correlated with lower unemployment rates. More money flowing into Jobseeker generates spending in the economy, and drives demand. The multiplier effect of which, our country in recession has shown it desperately needs to boost the economy. 

Training?

Job vacancy classification breakdown
Job vacancy classification breakdown

Despite the Coalition undercutting higher education, Michaelia Cash supported the idea that after six months on Job Seeker, recipients undergo training to help them get a job. Department of Employment figures show the smallest job market in January were the unskilled labourers (8.1%), Sales Workers (7.7%), Machinery Operators and Drivers (5.9%). This collection of low skilled jobs (37,975) are in rare supply in the Australian economy. Therefore, any Jobseeker training to elevate them to the skill level needed to widen their prospects would require extensive TAFE/University level education; well beyond “approved intensive short courses“.

Dob ’em in.

These were not the only changes Morrison implemented to job welfare. That Australian article also reported, “Under a raft of welfare reforms, Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said employers would be able to dob in unemployed Aussies who don’t take up jobs they are offered.” A move even Business groups denounced, let alone the welfare groups and unions. Social media references to “Dob a bludger!” accompanied curiosity as to the probability of emerging hotlines for “Dob in a wage thief” for businesses that were “accidentally underpaying workers“. Further suggestions provided ideas to establish hotlines for dob in a rorter, silencer of whistleblowers, white supremacist and sexual predators. It is tantamount to licensing abuse and employee exploitation which already occurs in industries like farming, retail and service.

Get off the couch!

The prevalent attitude towards the unemployed by politicians suggests that the unemployed are dominantly lazy, and distracted by Netflix as Nationals leader Michael McCormack claimed, or on drugs as our currently on leave, Attorney-General Christian Porter claimed when Social Services Minister. Several Federal ministers like David Littleproud MP, Senator Michaelia Cash, Senator Gerard Rennick, and Colin Boyce MP attacked the unemployed demanding they “get off the couch“, and get farmhand jobs that Australians discovered were not available. Others would suggest this patronising attack on people who, because of a recession and the pandemic, are without work, is merely targeting “low hanging fruit“. These Federal Ministers all would have us believe jobs are plentiful.

Job Vacancies in Murray District, SA
Job Vacancies in Murray District, SA
Unemployed in Murray District, SA
Unemployed in Murray District, SA

They are not alone in spouting propaganda that jobs are readily available. Minister for Families and Social Services Anne Ruston, in a Triple J Hack interview with Avani Dias on the 23rd of February, repeated the fallacious claim. That there are “plenty of jobs” in her region. This was demonstrably wrong. Based in Renmark, her territory in the Murray had 8,364 people on Jobsearch in Jan 2021 but only 626 job vacancies (13 times less than the people looking for work). That ratio is better than the national average (approx 18x), so perhaps she might have had something to boast about if she had only bothered to tell the truth.

What Jobs?

Statistical variations of Unemployment reported.
Statistical variations of Unemployment reported.

It isn’t easy to be finding a job in our economy, as reflected by any measure or methodology:

– jobs claimed by ABS (254,400 jobs), Dept of Employment (175,100 jobs), Seek (182793 jobs);

verses

– the unemployed registered by Jobseeker (1.236M people), ABS (877,600 people) or Roy Morgan (1.68M people). {All Stats currently published as of the end of Feb 2021 for January 2021}

These measures demonstrate that irrespective of what stats you accept, there are far more unemployed than available jobs. Beyond understanding the basics of how unemployment is measured, it is crucial to understand what some methodologies do not appraise.

The difference between ABS and Roy Morgan’s stats are considerable, and while the government and Main-Stream Media lean heavily on the ABS measure, we should appreciate what it represents. I have for a long time explained the ABS’s shortcomings from it’s

Subsets

These exclusions mean that what the ABS measures is not our internal domestic unemployment, but a subset of the numbers of unemployed for reasons of international comparison. A long time economic analyser of ABS statistics, Alan Austin, expressed similar conclusions, to that of my recent article on this subject.

To be clear, ABS measures a subset of our internal unemployment, as are JobSeeker numbers. The disparity between them illustrated in the variations graph depicts the entire period over which Job Seeker has existed. ABS’s subset, guided by the ILO methodology, facilitates international comparison, but does not measure any country’s national unemployment numbers. These stand in stark contrast to Murdoch and Nine Media’s claims that unemployment is a single whole digit percentage rate. Roy Morgan reveals unemployment hasn’t been under 10% since February 2020, and neither has under and unemployment been under 20%.

Under and Unemployment vs Job Vacancies
Under and Unemployment vs Job Vacancies

So ABS’s claimed 877,600 unemployment numbers are a subset of the domestic reality. Similarily ABS claimed a 2.08 million subset of under and unemployed. Alan Austin and I are in enthusiastic agreement that “It might be time for the unemployment rate published by Australia’s Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to be put out to pasture.” Alan continued affirming “the steam engine that is Roy Morgan’s real unemployment rate”. Roy Morgan shows in January 2021, unemployment is 1.68 million people, and adding underemployment reaches 3.118 million souls looking for a decent job. The Department of Employment’s IVI job vacancy report for January reveals that over three million people in Australia are competing for 175,100 jobs. Nearly 18 people for every job advertised, and we are not even beginning to deal with the logistic issues of job searching.

Location, location, location.

Beyond Australia’s 19 cities, over 100K population, there are 1700 towns with populations between that and a thousand people. Spreading 175,100 jobs across a continent representing 5% of the earth’s landmass, when the towns are dominantly coastal, represents the first challenge to job seekers. An “off the back of an envelope” averaging for any given town/city would tell you that more than 100 jobs in a given population centre mean you are probably living in a city. Which might mean less than ten jobs advertised in that region will be for unskilled labour (8.1%). That’s not a nuanced presumption, as industry and commercial activity vary considerably from place to place, and I’ve given no consideration to rural areas. Still, one might understand that job locality has to be one of the most considerable obstacles for the unemployed.

The government’s expectation announced on the 23rd of February is “job seekers will be required to search for a minimum of 15 jobs a month from early April, increasing to 20 jobs per month from the 1st of July“. Purely considering the subset of the unemployed on Jobseeker (1.236M people) generating 15 applications per month creates 18 million letters and has the potential to cover every advertised job in Australia 105 times until July, when it will be 141 times. Given the likelihood of the number of jobs existing in your city or town as aforementioned, just how long will it take any given unemployed person to run out local employers?

Limitations to employment are locality and factors such as job requirements for education and/or skills, competition for work, financial limitations/burdens, physical/mental impediments, security clearances, pay awards not commensurate with needs and employment discrimination and/or exploitation.

Nobody in the coalition government is prepared to concede they are failing the unemployed. The party of “Jobs and Growth” has in reality been expanding “Unemployment and Recession” for years and no policy the government has implemented in Morrison’s $9B Social Security Safety Net seems capable of changing that path.

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Guide to an insurrection

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Just when we thought 2020 was finished, 2021 got off to a foreboding start as Americans attacked their own capitol building in scenes reminiscent of some third world coup.  Fortunately, it was completely unsuccessful.  Trump has ignominiously left office with a whimper rather than any fanfare.  Still, it is worth reviewing this coup/insurrection attempt by Trump and his allies, to understand both the depths of their treason and the legacy America has yet to deal with appropriately.

Long History

Percentages hide the depths of the problem in America that real numbers might reveal
Percentages hide the depths of the problem in America that real numbers might reveal

America has been deeply embedded in rebellion from its inception, commencing with British setting fire to the U.S. Capitol in 1814 during the British invasion of Washington. By 1861 to 1865, the American Civil War tore the country apart, demonstrating internal schisms have a deep-rooted history. The end of the American civil war gave rise to the KKK and a growing racist and fascist movement in America.   By the time German Fascists emerged in the 1930s, America had established its own fascist movement as manifested by Charles Lindbergh’s “America First” isolationists rhetoric.  American support by corporate fascists for the German’s authoritarian efforts in WW2 are well known. Enabling corporations such as IBM, Ford, GM and industrialists like Fred Koch (father of the Koch brothers) enabled a fascist regime. They experienced no real reprisals for supporting the German’s murderous regime. The USA continues to breed fascists and racists and strengthen its growth within its borders. For all the Americans’ rhetoric that protests “this is not who we are“, they might consider a review.

Insurrection or Çoup?

The rest of the world recognising what happened.
The rest of the world recognising what happened.

These “movements” breed the insurrectionists amongst their constituents. Trump’s leadership encouraged their “activism” within America.  I use the description “Insurrectionists” as defined under U.S. law to mean “a violent uprising by a group or movement acting for the specific purpose of overthrowing the constituted government and seizing its powers.” However, the Capitol riot’s description as a “coup” by Fiona Hill of Politico is compelling. On Wednesday, 1 pm on the 6th of January 2021, America’s right-wing racist/fascist community descended upon Washington’s Federal Capitol building. They began climbing its walls and smashing into its doors and windows, beating – and in one case killing – Capitol police officers. All to gain access to modify the outcome of the Electoral count, due to be finalised inside what many other Americans, consider the epicentre of American democracy. The insurrectionists were driven by either/or Qanon conspiracy theories, white supremacist racism and a Trump glorifying conservative Christianity.  Despite philosophical contradictions, one consistent belief shared by all who stormed the Capitol was a false idea that Trump somehow won the 2020 election.  This, despite all the evidence in recounts, court cases and scrutiniser’s oversight evidence, that the opposite is true.

It has been described as a failed attempted coup, long-planned by the rioters and motivated by America’s white supremacist-in-chief, Donald Trump. A president who has now been impeached, yet again, and this time for “aiding and abetting” the insurrection. Accepted now even by his previously most fervent supporter amongst the Republicans, Mitch McConnell. What has become increasingly evident is that the most significant reason for its failure as a coup was the insurrectionist’s incompetence and imbecility.

Election countermoves

Not, although for the lack of endeavoured planning. It wasn’t until the 12th of November a little over a week after the 2020 election that Trump tweeted his alignment to a debunked Qanon claims about voter fraud connected to Dominion Voting Systems that makes voting machines. Having descended into that “rabbit hole”, the claims became more absurd over time. Unfortunately, too many Donald Trump followers began to believe the lies and follow him down that “rabbit hole“. On the other hand, these rioters-to-be had been preparing and training, as revealed in intercepted Zello conversations.

The fascists certainly advertised they were intending to do damage, but America didn't take them seriously. Any regrets now?
The fascists certainly advertised they were intending to do damage, but America didn’t take them seriously. Any regrets now?

Plans fermented over Social Media on sites such as Twitter and Facebook and later Gab and Parler.  The consequences of which pushed Twitter and Facebook to crack down on QAnon and other conspiracy nonsense over the summer.  Qanon followers frequently openly called for violence and an event known as “the storm“. Many expected January the 6th, was “the storm” although, given the way “after more than four hours, the mob was cleared” and subsequent protests fizzled away, it blew itself out as most storms do.

If journalists knew it then so did America's security apparatus but only 500 capital police were assigned to the Capitol Building
If journalists knew it then so did America’s security apparatus but only 500 capital police were assigned to the Capitol Building

By the 22nd of December, the media (social and otherwise) raised the alarm about January the 6th. Arieh Kovler Twitter thread expressing anxiety about that date also speculated about the 2200 Capital police officers’ inability to defend the capital.

Capital offences

Instead of a cast of thousands, the Capital police felt they did not need a full complement nor any extra support from the FBI or Pentagon despite foreknowledge by US Security services. Barely 500 Capital police without riot gear were deployed to defend the building against a cast of thousands.  This failure of command led to U.S. Capitol Police Chief’s resignation, Steven Sund, as he fed his woefully equipped police force to the “lions”. Oddly the Capitol Police arrested only 14 people in sharp distinction to the 400 people arrested protesting Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, or the 181 people arrested in 2017 objecting to the GOP’s elimination of aspects of Obamacare or the 575 people arrested in 2018 while protesting the president’s immigration policies or … well it is a long list.  The anomalous treatment of protesters gives credence to the idea that amongst the Capitol police were sympathisers to the “cause“. This was also evidenced by some police taking selfies with the rioters and providing unrestricted entrance to the Capitol while staff and lawmakers were still inside.

Accusations of complicity with the rioters were not isolated to the Capitol Police. Investigations into Republican lawmakers giving Capitol tours to insurrectionists in the week before the riots are being opened. Many events before January 6th prepared the insurgents, as Sandi Bachom, Video Journalist reported. Alex Jones (of Infowars) held a rally inciting crowds in preparation for January 6th where Donald Trump was scheduled to address the crowds at the Ellipse near the Washington monument. By Wednesday the 6th at midday, President Donald Trump in a recorded address encouraged thousands of supporters to march on the US Capitol to protest the election results. Promising to “be there with you” as they proceeded with his march on the Capitol, Trump had other premeditated plans. Trump travelled back to the White House to continue to view what he had unleashed, after having spent time in a Tent equipped with monitors, where his family had drank and watched the coup develop in complete safety.

Meanwhile, on Capitol grounds, some insurrectionists organisers armed with megaphones attempted to coordinate an orchestrated event with a coordinated plan. Many others had not been so well briefed or had the pre-riot tours. The results, although, were chaotic.  As some called for peaceful protests, other demanded and exhibited violence dragging police into the crowd and beating them. What was ironic was the numbers of law enforcement and military personnel amongst the rioters and racist support staff amongst the Capitol Police.  Eventually, Mike Pence authorised the National Guard to end the riots, as Trump had no stake in ending the chaos.

Aftermath

While Electoral Certification proceedings were halted when the riot began, they resumed at 8 pm. Despite ridiculous objections raised during the proceedings and the mass of Republicans who voted against the count, Biden was confirmed to be the next president.  Thereafter the innumerable videos posted by the insurrectionists became the evidentiary material for their subsequent arrests. The FBI’s capacity to track the insurgents was aided by collected Parler posts’ depositories (including deleted entries), as used by the insurrectionists.

Despite whatever planning was put into the coup, it would seem they did not take into their considerations some features of telecommunications infrastructure unique to the Capital building. The Capital has it’s own “cellular and wireless data infrastructure of its own to make communications efficient in a building made largely of stone, and that extends deep underground and has pockets of shielded areas.” Hence every insurrectionist that entered the building were tracked and triangulated by their phones, that innumerable rioters were using to photograph and record. The computers that constitute that telecommunications infrastructure logged everything from their phone number to their location in the building.

The subsequent rebellion petered out in due course but not from a repentant intention but a desire to suppress their identity till another opportunity arose. They will be back in 2024.
The subsequent rebellion petered out in due course but not from a repentant intention but a desire to suppress their identity till another opportunity arose. They will be back in 2024.

Emboldened by the day, right-wing agitators planned further protests in the following days at other capitals. However, the turnout to these was classified as non-events by observers, as National Guard, and law-enforcement agencies were assigned to protect many other State’s capitol grounds.

Despite never winning the popular vote in either election, the twice impeached Donald Trump’s ascension to the president’s office was always supported by racism, religion and xenophobia. On page 13 in his book “Everybody Lies” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, it was demonstrated that racist Google searches had the highest statistical correlation with support for Trump in the Republican primaries. Trump’s support amongst the bigots for whom racism, xenophobia and misogyny are psychological norms, I discussed four years ago, so I need not rehash that again. Nor do I need to discuss Trump’s relationship to Fascism which has apparently being rediscovered. The American’s support for this social dysfunctionality has not diminished, it has been – for now – merely suppressed.

The embers are still hot, & the passion for conspiracies, racism, and RW Christianity still smoulder.
The embers are still hot, & the passion for conspiracies, racism, and RW Christianity still smoulder.

The insurrection fire supporting installing Trump as president for an indeterminable further term of office cooled, spluttered, but has not died. They are repressed, not repentant. The embers are still hot, and the passion for conspiracies, racism, xenophobia and authoritarian Christianity still smoulder amongst the 74.222 million Americans who voted for Trump.  God help America if they ever find a competent fascist to vote for in 2024.

 

[Correction: An earlier version of this article misrepresented the timing the events of the tent monitoring of the insurrection by Trump and his family.]

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