James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree

Vacant Claimants

December 3, 2021 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

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.

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.

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.

This has generated much of the employer claims that they are “struggling to find suitable staff to fill job vacancies”.
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.

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

November 5, 2021 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

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?

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!

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.

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 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.

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?

August 17, 2021 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Much is made of the 21^st 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

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.

Political advantage.

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.

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.

Cultural complacency.

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”.

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.”

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.

Irresponsibility.

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

anti-vaxxers,
the divinity of Trump,
the benignity of Scott Morrison,
refugees are terrorists,
that conservatives are better economic managers,
selfish wealthy freeloaders hoarding franking credits at the expense of the government,
climate change denial,
arsonist claims on bushfires, etc.

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.

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.

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.”

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:

Productivity commission with compromised business executive,
Climate monitors stacked with fossil fuel executives.
CSIRO being compromised with Gisera vested interests in Gas and Coal, and
fact-checking units within public broadcasting.

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.

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

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

July 2, 2021 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

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

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.

ABS unemployment figures (701,100) and
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

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:

exclusions of anyone doing any work in a month (four weeks technically),
exclusions for unpaid work in a family business, or paid busking or street vending,
exclusions of short-term foreign workers through 12/16 rule,
hiding the growing gig / part-time economy by counting zero-hour workers as employed
exclusions of persons unable to take up immediate work,
hiding unemployment via the government PaTH program,
relying on the ILO methodology for data gathering for making international comparisons, not domestic evaluations of unemployment.

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 robodebt and inherent bureaucracy of Centrelink inhibits their ambition to seek out welfare support,
they have financial reserves from working (including JobKeeper – abolished at the end of March but still available till April 14) that facilitates their survival,
they are depleting their Superannuation to remain afloat,
they have family or friends who are receptive to financing and/or housing them while unemployed.

The remaining evaluation?

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

March 5, 2021 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

exclusions of anyone doing any work in a month,
exclusions for unpaid work in a family business,
exclusions of foreign workers through 12/16 rule,
hiding the increasing gig / part-time economy,
exclusions of persons unable to take up immediate work,
hiding unemployment via the government PaTH program.

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%.

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

January 22, 2021 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

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

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.

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.

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 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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Ruby-faced Gladys

October 16, 2020 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Poor old gullible Gladys #koalakiller Berejiklian has all the emotional desires, so many of us have, and the demands of a taxing job that exacerbates her needs. She has always known she might have a lot to deal with, which explains why she has consolidated so many public departments. She just had to silence so many disparate voices making weekly demands of her, to lessen her obligations so that she could focus on matters of the heart. I mean, how many of us have not made the perfect choice of partners, that in later years reflectively ask, “WTF was I thinking?” Give her a break; it was a one-off mistake. “Princess” Gladys’s ruby complexion is a reflection of her private embarrassment. Her handling of public matters, although, has been exemplary – according to her liberal colleagues. I mean, it’s not like she makes a lot of mistakes as a public servant.

So she spent too much money on ferries built overseas with asbestos and too tall to fit under bridges in Parramatta River. But who could have predicted that? So her trains don’t fit the rail lines or go through the tunnels in the Blue Mountains. But who else could have built those trains? Bejesus, who goes to those places by ferry or train anyhow! So she allowed state forests to be logged and Koala habitats to be destroyed. So she approved the expansion of a quarry in the Hunter which will eliminate 52 hectares of prime koala habitat. So she asserted that those lazy public service bludgers (aka “essential workers“) were not worthy of a mere 2.5% wage rise during a recession. Besides the coffers were depleted after the extravagant pay rises awarded to all 65 coalition politicians in Macquarie St earlier in 2019. Still, some public servants were rewarded, such as the $87K rise to our Police Commissioner. You know him, Mick, the fellow who defended the laws Gladys brought in to strip search our kids. A sentiment echoed by the NSW Police Minister, David Elliott.

She is so good with money, though. She got one million dollars for Vales Point Station. Not her fault that it was valued at $730M. Yeah, OK, there were a couple of over-runs. I mean, who doesn’t overrun a budget on the light rail by $3B and Stadiums by $100M? Sadly the modern revamp to replace that old “dump” of a Museum at Ultimo which they were very keen to give to their donor property developers, will be retained after protests by all those caffe-latte-drinking leftist protestors. Moving the Powerhouse Museum to a flood plain was a mistake anyone could make when it was such a dry season, that bushfires were all the rage.

Speaking of the worst bushfires in NSW, wasn’t that a confusing time? Not helped by allegations that Gladys refused assistance by the Navy for fire-threatened south coast towns. Berejiklian pulled up short of suggesting our honourable prime minister was lying. Eliminating public service bloat is important – achieved by cutting rural fire service capital expenditure by 75% ($49.9M). These were efficiency dividends, and besides, they still had 25% of their funds. Such unneeded bloat was presumably why she needed to get rid of 26 out of the 36 specialist fire management officers responsible for doing hazard reduction? Ten officers are more than enough for a State area of over 80M hectares. Slashing 500 full-time positions from National Parks and Wildlife was just being economically rational, surely? She was just clearing the bush her own way, and who could have predicted climate change would result in more significant fires? Probably why she thought cutting $12.9M from the state’s Urban fire fighting budget was an act of foresight.

Think of all the generous help she gave the federal government and irrigators by supporting the water trading of the Murray Darling Water Plan designed in 2012 whose Authority acted unlawfully when it “completely ignored” climate change projections for the determination of water allocations. Gladys did later begin to recant by considering new water-sharing plans for the Namoi River and water registries. This didn’t include the water registries of Helen Dalton’s Bill which would have listed MP’s water interests. That unsuitable Bill was allowed to lapse. Unlike the Broken Hill pipeline or profitable fracking at Narrabri that threatened water security, as they’d already been approved and one doesn’t want to antagonise donors by reversing decisions! So country towns in NSW ran out of water, Warragamba Dam got polluted, and we had to resort to the desalination plant in Kurnell that relies heavily on fossil fuels to run, making Sydney resident’s water bills to rise. Gladys Berejiklian’s degrees were in Arts and Commerce, so it is unfair to expect her to understand climate science and the causality of events that lead to droughts. It is no wonder she refused to meet with representatives of the Menindee Lakes. I mean, what did they expect her to do, raise the fish from the dead? Folks just expect too much from our Premiers who are far too busy meeting reputable donors or partaking in $950/ticket luncheons (a price just under the $1K disclosure guidelines) with dignitaries.

Gladys is good for business. She is raising so much money for her donors from the public and transport industry, via Sydney’s nine toll roads with a locked-in 4% rise in tolls per year till 2060. That donor, Transurban (Westconnex), may have struggled with the planning to get NSW’s road infrastructure built, but Berejiklian’s support did not waver. She not only supports her generous donor, but her ongoing support to the legal industry has been commendable. NSW will be tied up in litigation for decades because of the compulsory acquisitions of houses and the structural damages to still-standing homes wrought by Westconnex’s construction activity.

Let’s not forget the prescience she exhibited when she hired Aspen Medical (whose director hid $15M in the British Virgin Islands) for $57m for Covid-19 work in Newmarch House (which had 19 Aged Care deaths) and for that lovely cruise ship, the Ruby Princess! She seeks out the “best quality” advice when she needs it. But these errors are past us, and now our business-focused Premier has this Covid-19 infection all under control, almost!

The implications of corruption implicit in this ICAC investigation are over the top, surely? It’s not like someone gave Gladys a bottle of Grange Hermitage that she forgot. Although memory failures featured significantly in her testimony to ICAC, but then who needs an excellent memory to run a State? It’s not like she was accustomed to maintaining a detailed memory with “meticulous focus on every minor policy detail“.

I mean has the shock, horror, scandal news rags of Murdoch said anything critical of Gladys other she had been “falling for a bloke called Daryl“? Of course not, so honestly, there isn’t anything to be seen here. Just move along and don’t forget to vote them back in, on March 2023! Besides, who will remember any of her government’s small foibles by then?

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Low hanging Fruit

September 15, 2020 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Disparaging the unemployed youth as lazy pampered and opposed to hard work, is a conservative mantra. Conscripting youth into the army ( as Jacqui Lambie would have it) or off to rural farms to do hard graft, has been a talking point for years amongst conservatives.

Senator Rennick's FB protest disparaging Australian Youth — Senator Rennick’s FB protest disparaging Australian Youth

This opinion has been prevalent during the pandemic associated with mass disappearance of jobs. Senator Gerard Rennick & Colin Boyce MP have respectively expressed these views, in Facebook posts from 16th Aug & 6th Sept 2020.

Similar views are echoed in the Courier Mail articles they posted. “Unemployed youth should be conscripted” by Peter Gleeson and “Crops rot as lazy young Aussies snub lucrative hard work” by Michael Madigan. The first article discussed claims Unions are calling for an end to the working holiday Visa because of exploitation of backpackers on Farms.

Despite the hyperbole, unions were asking for a reformed Visa system, rather than terminating the Visa. This distinction was missed by Peter Gleeson who dismissed union concerns about exploitation with the phrase, “What bulldust“. However, other Murdoch news sources have acknowledged systemic abuse problems when promoting a documentary about Backpacker abuse. Sydney Criminal Lawyers have also documented visa abuse by farmers as has the ABC and business-oriented websites. So, sorry, Peter, these union claims are not “bulldust“. The federal ministers supporting these stories should know that because of their Federal paper on the subject “Labour exploitation and Australia’s visa framework“.

Colin Boyce's FB protest disparaging Australian Youth — Colin Boyce’s FB protest disparaging Australian Youth

The second story by Michael Madigan implies typically extravagant wages of $3800 are being offered by farmers desperate to find workers. Both articles have exaggerated the earning capacity of a good fruit picker (although Peter’s article “modestly” claims that farmworkers can earn up to $1500 a week). According to Madigan’s article, Gavin Scurr managing director of Piñata Farms (a multi-million dollar business) said, “We recently paid a worker $3800 for a weeks work recently, and that is a top pick up working six days a week, probably around 10 hours a day,…”. Now on that basis, one might be forgiven for presuming that you can earn $63 an hour for picking strawberries. This assumption would reflect a misunderstanding of how much growers pay their workers. Despite both Michael & Peter’s claim that farmworkers can earn extravagant amounts of money, it is somewhat contrary to the Horticulture Industry Award of $19.49 for full-time or $24.36 an hour for casuals.

None of these articles mentions the practice of bonus payments paid on top, of a meagre base pay rate. Performance bonuses are only given to their top picker to encourage competition amongst the workers. Neither do these articles mention the standard rate paid, to everyone else who picks fruit. It is only about the total paid to a single worker who had – in the case of Piñata Farms – worked a sixty-hour week for a farmer who “turns over more than $50 million a year and employs 70 full-time staff and 300 seasonal workers.” Contrast this with the projected cash income for Australian farms of an “average $216,000 per farm in 2016–17, the highest recorded in the past 20 years.” cited by the Department of Agriculture.

At least Peter’s claim of $1500 a week is possible if – at $25/hr – the casual worker picks for 60 hours a week. However, maintaining that level of manual labour on a farm would be unsustainable. Which is presumably why Piñata Farms paid one of their workers who did precisely that, a huge bonus, as per Madigan’s article.

Is the picture of the real potential earning for casual farm worker, gaining any more clarity now?

Why is it a backpacker industry?

Lower rates of pay than are legislated, are typical as many citizen’s confirmed on Colin Boyce MP’s Facebook feed. So why do backpackers take on this work? To qualify for the second Working Holiday Visa (subclass 417) applicants have to finish three months (or 88 days to be exact) of regional farm work in the country. The Visa promotes specific jobs such as fruit picking and packing, trimming vines, fishing, working in tree farming, or working in mining. Backpackers put up with being paid under the award and overcharged for food and accommodation and even sexually exploited. With backpackers in short supply, our politicians are suggesting the use of the “many young, pampered Australians [who] have an aversion to hard work“.

Selected social media comments on Colin Boyce's FB page — Selected social media comments on Colin Boyce’s FB page

Australian youth who are not seasoned backpackers, face relocation issues, such as the costs associated with travel, accommodation and feeding themselves while on a farm, which would diminish their earnings considerably. Although being accustomed to the poverty level of dole payments have presumably inured them to scrape by on very little. Current travel restrictions prevalent under pandemic conditions would limit Australian youth to work on farms only in their State. Is seeking minimum wages in an industry well known for underpayment, exploitation and poor working conditions the best we can do for our young Australians?

Dubious claims that CQ with 4.4% of State pop' is a booming jobs zone — Dubious claims that CQ with 4.4% of State pop’ is a booming jobs zone

Senator Gerard Rennick echoing these sentiments elicited reaction to his post varying from gratuitous approval like, “Totally agree with this…” to criticism noting why relocation and picking work was fraught with problematic issues. These included the propensity for exploitation and anecdotal stories of the poor working conditions on farms.

Logistic Viability

Is farm work a viable option to occupy our “indolent” and unemployed youth, irrespective of possible low pay rates?

Under/Unemployment and Job Vacancies under the coalition

Total unemployment is massive under the pandemic. Historically, it has not dipped under a million workers since May 2012, and it did so, only for that month, according to Roy Morgan. For regular numbers below one million you have has to look back before September 2011. ABS only reports half the numbers of domestic unemployment because of their international methodology, which I have explained previously.

Youth unemployment (15-24 yrs) has had a long history of being more than twice as high percentage-wise as the national average, even by ABS’s low standards. Which in July 2020 measured 16.3% of the youth labour market (Table 13) or 345,900 people.

Youth Unemployment

So what are the job prospects for this mostly unskilled market of unemployed youth? Are there plenty of jobs in the market?

ABS Youth Employment/Unemployment and unskilled Labour jobs

The Government publishes such data every month in the IVI job vacancy statistics. Under the classification of Labourers, there is a sub-classification for “Farm, Forestry and Garden” Workers. Early September’s seasonally adjusted figures show that in July of 2020 there were 750 such jobs advertised in a class of general unskilled labourers of 10261 vacancies, that were a subset of total job vacancies advertised in Australia of 131072. Unemployment figures, according to Roy Morgan in July were 1,786,000 although the August figures (at the time of writing) were released showing a rise to 1,980,000 people. So from July’s perspective, we can note that farm labour vacancies represent 7.3% of general unskilled labour and 0.57% of all job vacancies advertised.

Keep in mind that the IVI job statistics only drill down to the level of “Farm, Forestry and Garden” Workers which means that Farmworkers specifically are a subset of that 0.57% of Australia wide job vacancies. Given that the Courier Mail stories are spruiking the idea that Australians should be taking up these jobs, I think it is also safe to suggest farmers have been increasing their advertising for workers.

No matter how you cut the numbers and consider all the variables of remote location, physical suitability, skill limits, accessibility limitations, competition, financial limits, of young people; coupled with accounts of employer discrimination, exploitation, feeble pay and working conditions; one has to ask this question. Is the conscription of young people or shaming them into compliance, the best possible recourse of action, for which our political senators and ministers should be lobbying?

Advertised job vacancies segregated by type

There are far greater vacancies in other industries. Should not these parliamentarians not be focusing on where the greatest needs are? Not that farmer’s needs are illegitimate because they are not. These crops do need to be harvested. But professional job roles like engineers, scientists, Health (particularly now), ICT, Lawyers and the like for which there are at least 39580 jobs advertised or 30% of the job market. Managerial roles have 13800 job vacancies (10.5%); Technical and trade workers have 18194 job vacancies (13.8%); Community and personal services workers have 12821 job vacancies (9.8%); Clerical and Administrative workers have 18655 job vacancies (14.2%). These jobs need an educated population to fill them so a better focus for young people would be – one might presume – to promote policies to make education more universally available to young Australians.

Instead, our political conservatives and Murdoch media are focused on the largest unemployed group in Australia to fill jobs in one of the smallest markets for jobs in the country. Dare I make the pun, that there will be no bonuses for your work ethics as you’re all targeting, the easy pickings of the lowest hanging fruit!

Unemployment by Covid exploded

June 4, 2020 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Locking down the economy to save lives in a pandemic comes at the cost of unemployment, but how much, is the issue. Measuring that unemployment in Australia has been the focus of much dissent of late, in both social and mainstream media. The variations post-COVID have been extreme and rigour in methodology and measurement primarily abandoned.

Headlines like the ABC’s “Almost a million Australians out of work due to coronavirus; RBA tips economy to take 10pc hit”, are common. The Reserve Bank and Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre asserted similarly, “unemployment rate will rocket from 5.1 per cent past the 1992 high of 11.1 per cent as quickly as August before hitting 12.7 per cent in May 2021.”

ABS instability

ABS's Unemployment website record of changes to unemployment figures in 2020 — ABS’s Unemployment website record of changes to unemployment figures in 2020

Meanwhile, the underfunded and understaffed ABS produced statistics on unemployment that needed readjusting between January and May of 2020. Between 5.1% to 5.2% for any given month, raising or dropping unemployment estimates month to month anywhere between 5,500 to 10,900. The month of February shifted from 689.9K (5.1%) on the 19^th of Mar by an additional 10.9K to 709.8K (5.2%), by the 16^th of Apr. The adjacent chart shows the other four adjustments. Data accuracy was problematic under Covid-19.

Apparently, the ABS had stopped surveying the whole of March during the lockdown. By the 14^th of May, the ABS announced that unemployment had only risen from 5.2% (718.8K) in March to 6.2% (823.3K) in April. No trend estimates for April were released, despite being widely perceived as an underestimate. If this is to be considered valid, then this constituted a percentage of drastic unemployment which had previously been unseen, … since September of 2015 – when it was last 6.2%. In the middle of a Pandemic with apparently massive job losses, we were expected to believe it was as “catastrophic” as most of 2014 & 2015. Although if you look back far enough, it was much worse (as unemployment exceeded 6.2%) in the first half of 2003, back as far as the time ABS kept records, using the redesigned sample methodology developed, back in 1992.

6.2%? REALLY?

To everyone’s surprise, a certain level of healthy scepticism has arisen about the ABS statistics. There were dozens of social media posts that bandied the “one hour a week” rule for defining employment, as a criticism.

Questioning of Sen. Michaelia Cash 19th Sept 2019 at Doorstop Canberra

The idea that “anything over one” hour a week constitutes “employment” arose from a question raised by a journalist to Michaelia Cash. The reaction to Cash’s “one hour a week” measure of employment is problematic because neither was, the question well-posed nor the answer, accurate. The problem is the “one hour in a week” rule is a misnomer. Statistically, that is true of what is known as the “reference week”, BUT the ABS also takes regard of the four weeks before the end of the reference week. So “what counts as full-time work” is not measured in any one week, neither do they count your work history for only a week. Besides, no one works for merely one hour a week as Greg Jericho is quick to point out. It is far more likely the minimum is at least a single work shift a week. Although, Greg’s focusing on the “one hour a week”, ignores the other points of exclusion.

You also have to be actively looking for work during those four weeks to be counted as unemployed. Other exclusions include working without pay in either a family business or farm during the reference week. Steve Keen in “The Australian”, of all places:

“Herein lies the problem with spin in economic data: sometimes the spin turns your way, sometimes it doesn’t. The ABS uses the internationally sanctioned definition of unemployment, which is similar to Tom Waits’ definition of being drunk: you have to be really, really out of it to qualify. Not only must you not be in employment, but you can’t have done even one hour of paid or unpaid in the four weeks prior to the survey. Nor can you be discouraged by the absence of available jobs either — you must have applied for something in the previous four weeks — and you must be available to start immediately.”

This explains why – for the ABS – unemployment is only 6.2%. The Lockdown by Scott Morrison announced on the 13^th of March began on March 16^th – after his Church’s Pentecostal conference was over. Closures of pubs, clubs, cafes and restaurants weren’t mandated till the following Monday. Further closures of Auction houses, real estate auctions, eating in shopping centre food courts, amusement parks, play centres, etc., were not decided on, till later that week. Wage subsidy packages were decided on, by the end of March.

So, given people have to be unemployed for four weeks to begin to registering to the ABS as “unemployed”, many former employees, would not have even been designated as “unemployed” in April. Also one needs to factor in, that Jobkeeper “hid” people who were later fired in April or thereafter.

International vs domestic

The ABS unemployment methodology is often criticised for the wrong reasons. What people don’t understand is the methodology championed by ILO that ABS has a context – international comparisons. That is the correct context. The “I” in ILO stands for International not Intra-national.

As a stand-alone domestic measure, it is fundamentally flawed—realised by the concession that there is an element of “hidden unemployment” that is not measured by the ABS methods. There is also a concept of “discouraged job seekers” and “underutilisation”. All these additional descriptions are an admission that the ABS does not wholistically measure Australian unemployment. The ILO standard was never designed to be used to measure the internal or domestic unemployment of any country. Alan Austin often uses ABS statistics to compare nations but continues to demonstrate that, there is more to Australian unemployment than just the 5+% the ABS has been claiming in recent years.

Australian Domestic Employment

Roy Morgan vs ABS statistics on unemployment

The ABS does not adequately measure real domestic unemployment. The government frequently engages with these measures to deceive the public as to the actual extent of domestic unemployment. This is where the non-internationally comparative Roy Morgan’s statistics should be used. They are a far more accurate measure of real domestic unemployment in Australia. Roy Morgan is quite capable of defending its methodology. Comparing Roy Morgan and the ABS shows that the ABS has become increasingly misaligned.

Workforce, employment and job vacancies in Australia over 13 years

Charting Roy Morgan’s employment statistics for over a decade and adding the Department of Employment’s IVI statistics for job vacancies reveals several long-standing trends.

Full-time work has been falling as a portion of Employment in Australia, and Part-time has been rising.
The rate of entry into the workforce is not matched by employment growth. Unemployment now at 15.3% from 6.3% in April 13 years ago as illustrated by the gap between workforce and employment.
There have never been enough job vacancies to fill the unemployed’s needs for work.
There was no robustness in the economy for jobs to survive any emergency that might disrupt it.

This graph shows a stark drop in full-time employment when pandemic lockdown occurred, but not so for part-time employment. While these are early days to track significant reductions, there is another explanation.

Corporation’s human capital is often hard and expensive to acquire. Expertise that marches out the door from an enterprise can be irreplaceable, especially in high-end jobs. Drilling down into the IVI stats for job vacancies reveals numeric disparities between entry-level jobs and highly skilled positions.

The combination of managers, professionals, technicians, social workers, clericals, etc., represent the largest portion of job vacancies whereas Labourers, Machinery operators, Drivers and low skilled jobs are a much smaller proportion. I’ve outlined these proportions previously via Anglicare’s Jobs Availability Snapshot.

Shifting full-time workers to part-time helps employers retaining critical staff when their business recovers. The ACA promoted this as an option for keeping staff, and the JobKeeper legislation enables that approach.

Australian Under and Unemployment

Under & unemployment and the poor job vacancy opportunities in Australia

Still, where is our recovery going to come from when you consider the figures of this graph on under and unemployment and job vacancies? Consider:

Given the enormity of under and unemployment (24.7%), how can our economy recover?
Given the trend in falling job vacancies to less than half what it was at the beginning of the year, from where is employment going to come?
Given Australia has been in a per-capita recession since late 2018 where is the pre-existing economic robustness for a functional recovery?
Poor economic indicators for Australia leading into 2020

Given the previous falls in business & consumer confidence, Wage rates and household saving, and rises in CPI, Utility pricing, through household debt where is the cushion for a soft landing?

The methodology for unemployment measurements during the great depression of the 1930s was different from how we measure today. Pointing out that Unemployment reached a record high of around 30% in 1932, is problematic as we are not using comparable measures. That hasn’t stopped the media from making the comparison, and it is not that far fetched, given the enormity of the problem.

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Not so Covid Safe

May 23, 2020 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

The CovidSafe app has triggered innumerable privacy and security concerns amidst the public, who are already deeply suspicious of a government that has eroded public trust. Amongst recent instances of the diminishment of our trust are:

accusing arsonists of being responsible for the Summer fires,
much pork barrelling in coalition seats (including but not restricted to the Sports-Rorts),
the draining of Australian river waters by the continued attempt to privatise water supply,
the recalcitrance over climate change and the attacks instigated by many levels of Government upon members of the public raising the issue,
government recalcitrance in addressing issues of wage stagnation, welfare reform, and phony debt recovery.

Despite the trust deficit, the Australian Government has spent $1.5m on CovidSafe, including over $700,000 for Amazon to host the data.

But is the issue Trust or Competence?

The lack of trust in this Government’s promotion of this CovidSafe App may be justifiable on their record on privacy and security. Still, you have to keep in mind their frequent displays of incompetence in science and technology. Remember Abbott and Brandis trying to tell the public what metadata was? Remember Malcolm Turnbull trying to come up with a better NBN? Recall both the Australian Census online or the Centrelink portal failures were falsely blamed on convenient DOS attacks? Attacking them on untrustworthiness can be done. Still, it is easier to criticise the App’s lack of suitability both technically and statistically. So I am going to stay away from the privacy and security issue and ask the question, is the CovidSafe App fit for purpose?

The Physics of Radio signals

My analysis begins with a comment in a recent ABC article concerning the software bugs and issues of the COVIDSafe contact-tracing app
“ … “Because mobile phone device models are different in Bluetooth strength and how they operate, all contacts within Bluetooth range are noted on the user’s device,” a DTA spokesperson said. …”
Bugs and issues can be fixed (although not in time before lockdown lift begins), but there are limits to what our science can discern about the physics of radio signals, like Bluetooth.

Let me ask you, dear reader, a few questions.
Do you live in the country, city, an apartment or have anyone who lives within 10 metres of you? Do you stand in a social distancing line keeping the required 1.5m while waiting to get into a shop? The answer to the last question ought to be yes, but bear with me. If you are within 10 metres – or in right circumstances, perhaps twice that – then you and a stranger or a known neighbour can be tagged with “associating” because this App uses Bluetooth to detect other phones.

Bluetooth Ranges are extending not contracting.

Before you protest that it is supposed to be when you are within 1.5 metres, keep in mind using BlueTooth for localisation is a very well researched field of study. Bluetooth and other narrowband radio systems can only reach an accuracy of several metres at best without accompanying geolocation or triangulation of wifi data (a strategy later IEEE papers raise as attempts to overcome localisation inaccuracies). Naturally adding geolocation data, raises all the apparent privacy and monitoring concerns (which I said I was not going to go into). This App, for now, doesn’t use geolocation except on the Android/Google version of the App in a limited capacity.

Google Phone providing geolocation permissions

Signal strength isn’t a good indicator of distance between two connected BlueTooth devices, because it is too subject to environmental conditions. Is there a person between the devices? How is the owner holding his/her device? What is its proximity to metal plates that impede the signal path? Are there any other radio frequency reflecting surfaces? Is there a wall? Concrete walls will attenuate the radio signal. Using BlueTooth is essentially wholly inaccurate, and it has absolutely no sense of direction. Much like our Government, but I digress. Whereas the virus can’t traverse walls and floors (unless it is brought into enclosed spaces by people), Bluetooth can. Generically for a distance of approximately 10 metres. Although my testing on a five-year-old iPhone 5 running iOS 9 can make a connection from nearly 20 metres through two building walls or doors. So Bluetooth can’t tell when you are 1.5 metres away.

Meaning two neighbours sitting alone watching TV in their lounge room – according to their respective phones running the App – have been in close contact for hours if your binge-watching a good series. Let’s not even discuss how long you and your neighbours have spent “sleeping” together, while alone in your adjacent houses or apartments with your phones on the charger by your beds. For all you know, anybody’s phone might be standing in the adjacent store, approximately ten or more metres away but with whom you never interact. The Government App will be rife with false positives without you even knowing who these “contacts” are.

But alternatively, a passing stranger’s viral cough load, can in seconds, infect you. So can contact from a surface contaminated with coronavirus. Someone coughing into your face is undetectable by your mutual phones, unless he spends 15 minutes in your proximity, apologising. At least if that happens, you have plenty of time to ask for name and contact information for the contact tracers, when one of you gets unfortunate news after being tested. Touching an infected surface and forgetting to wash your hands before shovelling food into your mouth, means the time between contact and infection, can be hours, but either the wrong or no phone, might be blamed.

The App can detect none of these scenarios that tell you when another person with the same App, has a phone. None of these things will trigger a 15 minute Bluetooth alert. It is not just false positives that it will generate, but it simply can not detect anything other than another phone. Let me reiterate. It is a Phone detection facility, not a virus detection facility!!

The Lottery Probability.

The Covid infection Status in Australia as of 6th of May

Now let’s discuss some numbers! The ABC reported on the 6th of May, that 5 million phones that had uploaded the App. The Government reported on the same day we had conducted 688K tests Australia-wide for the virus. This lifted our testing stats to 2.6% of the population, presuming not too many people have gone in for repeat tests. Our consequent testing regime has risen (as of 21st of May) to 1,137,684 tests or 4.4% of the Australian population of 25.695 million. Simultaneously, the upload of CovidSafe has slowed to only 5.87 million by the 19th of May. So 22% of the population (a long way from Morrison’s desire for 40%) with an App that can only potentially detect 4.4% of the population, and a lot of these tests will be negative – for now. Only 0.65% of all those tests have been positive.

So let’s rephrase that.

More recent Covid-19 infection status in Australia as of 21st of May

So 22% of the population – if paired with mutual phones running a working version of the CovidSafe App – can confirm the 0.65% of 4.4% of our population, has coronavirus. To be fair, it might have a remote possibility of identifying someone with an infection, but the probability of my winning the lottery has a better chance. Let’s not forget the only alert the App – in theory – sends, is AFTER someone has been infected and have informed authorities and a tracing team has triggered the alarm, which, if they have infected you, is a little too late. Note I used phrases like, “might have” and “in theory.” Sadly as of writing this, the capacity of the App to do any of this is non-existent.
Why?

Operability

As of the 19th of May, no State in Australia has reported any use of the CovidSafe App data, and the State with the most substantial documented infection rate (NSW) “has had issues integrating it into the existing contact-tracing method.” In addition to the incapacity of States to process the data, many smartphones can’t run the CovidSafe App. The Guardian reports, “there are no plans to make it work on phones operating older software than iOS 10 and Android 6.0.” This is not a recent discovery, as we have known for some time that the tracing capacity is inoperative.

Risk factors

The most significant risk is the public’s misunderstanding that it will keep them safe. That leads to complacency, which means people may ease their due diligence and not be so cautious about social distancing and washing their hands regularly. That is where it becomes dangerous.

People's misunderstanding of how the App works leads to risk taking. — People’s misunderstanding of how the App works leads to risk-taking.

To quote one woman I interacted with recently on social media said, “I have the app because l want to be notified if l have come into contact with a positive person and get tested ASAP.” The App was never even conceived to be a buzzer that alerts you to positive people nearby. Perceptions like that actually make it dangerous! Not only does it not keep you ”safe,” but it also has the potential to increase the risk of infection through complacency. The Government has been negligent in educating the public not only to what it is supposed to do, but what are the limits of the physics of radio waves and statistical probability.

Alternately?

Instead of focusing on a dysfunctional App, perhaps we should be following the examples of Iceland, South Korea, Germany, or our neighbour New Zealand and upscaling randomised asymptomatic testing or regular testing for critical workers. All the success stories of countries handling the virus have the common thread that testing was crucial.

Conclusion.

Unfit for purpose? Gov't or App? — Unfit for purpose? Gov’t or App?

The App is not a panacea for tracing infection. It is a placebo to placate the masses who are too technically illiterate to understand the nuances and limitations of technology, by an incompetent Government that focuses on misunderstood technology at the expense of more robust asymptomatic testing of Australians.

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James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree

OUR STROLLOUT

ZERO-HOURS

EVERY OTHER MEASURE OUTSTRIPS ABS.

VACANCIES & JOB GUARANTEES

SEPARATION OF VACANCIES

CONSIDERATIONS

LAZY AUSSIES

MONEY FOR MATES!

Are we dating the same woman?

Her “glittering career”!

Corrosive Covid

When are you leaving us?

Populist lies

Political advantage.

Media Power and control.

Cultural complacency.

Experiential evaluation.

Underfunding education.

Irresponsibility.

Poverty.

The “Means” of Production.

Dismantling opposition.

Illiteracy.

Infotainment or Knowledge

One more time by the numbers?

Number patterns

More on ABS methodology

The remaining evaluation?

Small bickies

Training?

Dob ’em in.

Get off the couch!

What Jobs?

Subsets

Location, location, location.

Long History

Insurrection or Çoup?

Election countermoves

Capital offences

Aftermath

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

Why is it a backpacker industry?

Logistic Viability

Youth Unemployment

ABS instability

6.2%? REALLY?

International vs domestic

Australian Domestic Employment

Australian Under and Unemployment

But is the issue Trust or Competence?

The Physics of Radio signals

The Lottery Probability.

Operability

Risk factors

Alternately?

Conclusion.