I’ve been arguing for some time that the government should use the current period of strong demand to make a really strong push to reduce unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment. This piece in the Australian looks promising, though on reading closely it’s hard to see whether there is actually a serious commitment of funds and effort or just another rearrangement of the existing programs. If the government was willing to put the kind of money it’s repeatedly splashed around in tax cuts into a program aimed at driving the unemployment rate down to 2 or 3 per cent (by putting people into jobs, not by pushing them out of the labour force), they would win my support.
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John Quiggin 
JQ, do you seriously believe the governments figures on unemployment?
By counting those doing as little as 1 hr per week as employed (I think that figure is right), discouraging many others from seeking work, transferring others from unemployment benefits to disability support benefits, the current figures are more a reflection of successful cooking the books than a genuine 5% unemployment rate.
I am not a practicing economist witht he figures readily available to do the analysis so rely on others like yourself and Tim Colebatch in The Age and Ross Gittins in the SMH to expose what is really going on.
I recall Colebatch not so long ago estimating that the true rate was 2 – 3 times the ‘official’ rate.
The claimed low unemployment rate fits neatly with the ‘skills shortage’ (AKA ‘failure to train’) to justify bringing in compliant workers from overseas on short term contracts to drive down wages.
Surely you haven’t fallen for this?
I have an idea for reducing unemployment: abolish government wage setting (unions are ok, but only if both sides are allowed to have them) and let labour be sold freely like other goods. Best thing is that it won’t cost a penny!
Sounds good, Joseph. But what about people with very low skills who cannot get wages at a level required to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families. It’d be OK if the government pitched and topped up incomes where necessary. But how to do you subsidise a proper standard of living without creating a massive incentive for employers to pay below market wages?
Anecdote as evidence: Running a job ad produces very few, if any applicants.
In the unlikely event that one of the applicants is qualified to hold the job, or willing to work, there is a very strong chance that applicant will be a citizen of a non-English speaking country.
Statistics can prove what they wish. Reality is: Staff are almost impossible to get, it is a seller’s market, however sellers who have what the buyers want are VERY rare.
Maybe they’ve read your posts and applied elsewhere.
Yes, that is certain to be the answer Bill.
Please list what in my posts would put someone off a job?
Though it does not explain why my competitors and other businesses in town share the experience.
“Reality is: Staff are almost impossible to get, it is a seller’s market, however sellers who have what the buyers want are VERY rare.”
Sounds like the dreaded ‘skills shortage’ (AKA failure to train).
So where are the labour market programs to train up the unskilled or those with skills no longer in demand?
A bogus ‘skills shortage’ was used by many Australian companies to exploit the 457 Visa scheme and drive IT unemployment even higher by replacing Australian IT workers, including migrants, with indentured, compliant workers who were paid far less than the Australians they displaced and expected to work incredible hours.
The result? IT courses now find it hard to get Australian students and are increasingly dependent on overseas students. Less Australian graduates and the prospect of a real ‘skills shortage’ emerging.
The ‘failure to train’ is the real problem. Any genuine skills shortage is merely the symptom.
“If the government was willing to put the kind of money it’s repeatedly splashed around in tax cuts”
Nobody has had any tax cuts. Per capita taxation and total taxation as a percentage of GDP is constantly rising- even with the recent bracket creep adjustments.
The real number of people capable of working, but who are not hasn’t changed for 15 years. The way unemployment is defined over that period has changed. The reduction in the unemployment figures equal the increase in sickness benefits claimants.
If you want to get the bludgers to work abolish the dole and give them food stamps.
Just a thought, but if WorkChoices makes employment more ‘flexible’, doesn’t that mean there’ll always be a specific number of people unemployed as they move (more frequently) between jobs?
John,
I agree that further training is necessary.
What did you think of the 5 Economists proposition some years back?
If we want 2% u/e, tax credits are a better method of generating equity than significant re-regulation of the labour market in the service industry.
I think Beazley has potentially lost the election at the NSW conference: he should have said we will recognise unions right to enter a workplace to recruit and bargain based on an individual request and/or a majority at the workplace (for a collective agreement), and lifted the allowable matters, but complete removal of AWA is not only impractical but inappropriate for the service industry. As an example, unlike many I think penalty rates have been abused in Australia – but complete removal was probably going too far – very tough!
The Fair Pay Commission is also potentially a better vehicle than the AIRC for setting minimum wages – as I think you’d agree – the unemployed have as much interest in wage levels as the employed.
I’m sure I’ll cop it for that, but hey there are too many vested interest in this area for either side to really make good policy on IR.
There is a logical tax-transfer approach that in many ways mirror the Accord that is fairer and better at generating work than either of the major parties policies.
The Gruen tax approach was excellent in my view as an example.
Cheers,
Corin
I think the supposedly good news on jobs contains the seeds of a looming clash. The figures hide underemployment in terms of inadequate hours and deskilling. Secondly I wonder if the ‘can’t get good staff’ line is a convenient myth in which employers and government are complicit. It thereby justifies guest worker programs and outsourcing as opposed to training, paying higher wages for onerous conditions or taking on staff with nonstandard backgrounds.
Apart from this potential boilover I’ve noticed something else; guest workers interviewed via translators convey the clear impression they think it is the first step to permanent residence. Another sleeper.
Corin Says:
From David Peetz’s book Brave New Workplace (via The Road to Surfdom:
So 2% of workers were on AWAs before the new legislation, and most of them highly paid because they were either in short supply in mining or communications, or were senior management.
Your dictionary must have strange defintions of “impractical” and “inappropriate”.
Fair enough – but they will apply to more people as we go forward.
SJ – what is your argument? Are you making one apart from the banal – you’re wrong!
No, my argument was limited to the “you’re wrong” bit. That was the only potentially factual content in your comment, as far as I could tell, and it was wrong. The rest of it was just your opinion, from your lofty vantage point in London. And, well, if you don’t know the basic facts, what’s your opinion worth?
Done your homework on me – I guess you have no opinion then – nor identity. Be a man SJ – reveal yourself in your lofty vantage. Otherwise your just another smart guy aren’t you – with nothing else on offer.
Questions:
What’s wrong with labour flexibility (better and fairer than Howard – see above) matched up to tax-transfers to create jobs, incentive and fairness?
This is the optimum policy setting for getting 2% u/e. Tax credits with an appropriate method of phase-out for welfare are the best means of reducing the crushing EMTR’s on welfare to work.
By the way I also agree with education for long-term jobless so this is no replacement policy.
If u/e keeps falling the ALP will lose seats as Howard will have one hell of ascare campaign to use: think of what business will say.
Ok – before someone asks – by “phase -out” I mean taper – not removal of welfare. i.e. how welfare payments interact with earnings.
Bemused & Hermit clearly are talking in the abstract. Anybody who has tried to hire staff in the past couple of years would not be talking as they are.
Neither of you know what you are talking about.
You believe that skills shortage is bogus? or a myth? Please type for us where you think the moon landings were faked at, where you think Elvis is living, and how much you will pay for Sydney Harbour Bridge.
steve at the bar- I can supply evidence of a job ad or two that attracted 50 plus applicants.
The skills shortage is lumpy and geographic as well.
It is impossible to find a carpenter here in melbourne but it’s also impossible for someone to get a carpentering apprenticeship. Shortage of nurses, no shortage of cleaners. Can’t find a sparkie for love nor money. Lots of unemployed PhDs.
My son tells me theres a big shortage of good drummers, plenty of bad drummers, I told him thats always been so. Shortage and good and bad bass players.
As long as there are good or even fair incentives for people not to work or to work less than they otherwise would (like “topping up” someone’s salary as was mentioned above), people won’t work as much.
What’s worked well in the US is giving people a time limit, letting them know that they can have help for some period of time, but not forever. Not if they’re able-bodied.
What I’d be interested in knowing is an estimate of the number of people in Australia who actually want to work but cannot find it, which seems to be a better determinant than just the number of unemployed.
FX,
I’m a good drummer. But I doubt your son would want a 49 year old drummer. 😉 You are right, good drummers and even more, bass players, are always in demand.
…Hit Submit too soon… but, since only a few people can support themselves in any reasonable degree playing any instrument, your drummer/bass player will probably need a day job for much of his/her life, so that doesn’t address the unemployment problem much.
steve at the pub Says:
June 14th, 2006 at 12:55 am
“Bemused & Hermit clearly are talking in the abstract. Anybody who has tried to hire staff in the past couple of years would not be talking as they are.”
Well I do like to be acknowledged as an abstract thinker but there is a solid base of empirical evidence for what I say.
We are, under the inspired leadership of ‘honest John’ & ‘Peter the smirk’, working hard on creating a skills shortage by ‘failure to train’ and by allowing some employers to shirk any obligation to Australian job seekers by bringing in short-term indentured workers who can be relied upon to be compliant and accept bare minimum rates (or less) and whatever other conditions are imposed.
This process is probably most advanced in the IT field where at a time of record unemployment in that sector, there were claims of a skills shortage which was used to replace Australians with 457 visa holders. I referred to this previously.
Part of the scam is for employers to insist on improbable skill mixes so they can say they had found no-one locally who could do the job. Next thing a foreign graduate, with no experience to speak of, and a 457 visa is doing the job while Australian IT graduates couldn’t find jobs in their chosen field for which they had qualified.
Bob Kinnaird has written several times on aspects of this in ‘People and Place’ http://elecpress.monash.edu.au/pnp/.
Perhaps the best rejoinder was an email sent to Graeme Philipson (Age & SMH columnist) which concluded PI9017]”I will only believe there is an IT skills shortage when you start to see jobs advertised that say something like `Skills Required: Network Admin (any) RDBMS (any), Unix (any flavour), OOP (any) – Will Train’. I have never seen any ad like this, even before the current slump.” Testimonials put the lie to the myth of IT skills shortage, By Graeme Philipson, July 16 2002, The Business Review Weekly
Now Australia Universities struggle to fill IT courses (AFR 16 Jan 2006) and we are on the way to a genuine self-generated IT skills shortage.
Were it not for the human tragedies involved I would feel a certain sense of schadenfreude.
Have another beer Steve!
Bemused, if Australian companies employ people from outside Australia then they cannot find a better domestic applicant by definition. Australia has a proud tradition of importing foreign workers and a dark past of racism against them (returned to recently with ALP/ACTU dogwhistle scares). I’m not calling you racist, but consider your argument resonates with those who are.
steve at the pub,
What particular aspect are you having a hard time finding? Are having trouble finding people with
* appropriate formal qualifications ?
* length of experience in the role you need ?
* just general competence and drive ?
* or something else ?
What are the people you can find lacking that makes them unhirable? And does offering higher wages make any difference ?
Joseph, please read some of the work done by Bob Kinnaird. Go over some of Graeme Philipson’s columns on this topic too.
I am not against genuine immigration from anywhere and I would add that some migrants are deeply resentful of those they see taking a ‘back door’ and undermining ther status as bona fide migrants who met rigorous selection criteria.
These ‘indentured’ workers on 457 visas are in most cases being exploited and I do have some sympathy for them.
The definition for ‘better domestic applicant’ that seems to be applied is that they are prepared to take a 20-30K salary cut and increase their hours of work by at least 10 – 15 hours per week. Yep, this offer has actually been made in some companies.
In many instances Australians have been sacked after training their cheap 457 Visa replacements.
It all fits in nicely with workchoices and the ideology of cost cutting as opposed to productivity improvement. Productivity improvement is driven by investment and training.
oops sorry Helen. Didn’t see you there. I think they want Keith Moon or John Bonham loud pyrotechnics with the skill of Gene Krupa and simplicity of Charlie Watts.
Oh and being a drummer for them would add to the unemployment problem.
Do female skin tappers curse Karen Carpenter as perhaps the highest profile thumper of that gender? Maybe the younger people haven’t heard of her and think Meg White?
I notice COAG is going to do something about Apprenticeships and training, but it does look like a little fiddle around the edges.
Its a weird situation where a person labouring on a chippie can earn 4 times what the apprentice will earn for doing much the same thing. There needs to be a staged qualifications system for the trades so that there are articulated graded qualifications. I don’t understand why we still have the centuries old apprenticeship system which assumes all apprentices are 15 years old illiterate simpletons who sleep under the workbench at night and live on gruel and scraps.
Joseph Clark, discussing immigration numbers is not racist. Temporary worker programs in particular have very little to do with immigration, and huge potential for abuse.
One of the problems of temporary worker programs is that they facilitate forms of discrimination against local workers, including age discrimination. Paradoxically, perhaps, migrants suffer from this and, overseas, are some of the strongest critics of temporary worker programs like the US H1-B visa.
An introduction to this can be found in Matloff’s US work, which applies equally to the Australian context.
* Matloff, N, On the Need for Reform of the H1-B Non-Immigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Vol 36, Issue 4 2003 pp 815-914 (500KB)
In the Australian context, Kinnaird points out that IT graduates faced unemployment rates of 30 percent over the years 2000 to 2005, and that their starting salaries declined from $40,000 in 2001 to $38,000 in 2004. Those figures are not consistent with shortages.
Workers who come to Australia on 457 visas or otherwise believe that they are better off than their outside option. Employers who employ foreign workers (457 or whatever) consider these workers better (by whatever measure they use to decide) than what they can find in the domestic pool. The term `exploitation’ is completely meaningless in this context.
Tony and Bemused,
For me the discussion comes down to four things:
1. The very popular perception that when foreign worker comes to work in Australia they take the job of an Australian worker. This perception is wrong.
2. The belief that foreign workers are ‘exploited’ by coming to work in Australia on temporary visas. This requires that the worker is acting against his own interests by coming to Australia.
3. The idea that companies employ foreign workers in preference to better qualified Australian workers (wages notwithstanding). This requires that the companies act against their own interests.
4. The argument that if you increase the labour supply by allowing foreign workers to participate in our labour force there will be a decrease in the wages/conditions of Australian workers. This is more credible, but it comes down to a simple protectionist argument that we should not allow foreign goods into the country because they compete with domestic goods.
Most of these arguments are something much simpler: discriminating against people on the basis of where they were born. This is also called racism.
On Quiggin’s orginal post, the problem with these schemes is they just lead to queue jumping. They allow those who recieve the assistance to jump ahead of those who don’t, without creating much increase in aggregate employment. A much better way to acheive this, as other posters have identified, is to make the labour market more flexible. In any case, surely a job (even if it is low wage) is better training than any government funded program.
On the immigration points, who cares what effect immigrants have on local wages. They are such a small part of the market it is going to be very small in either direction. They will, however, lead to some losing their jobs, but again the best response is to make the market flexible so that the ‘losers’ can find other work. Look at the Beaconsfield miners. Most of thees blokes will end up on $100K+ AWA contracts working 5 days on/5 days off in the regions. Yep, livin’ in Howard’s Australia is real tough!
Joseph, I note you’re now accepting that this is not about shortages.
It’s perfectly fine with me if we have completely open borders. But let us stop this selective openess that is nothing more than subsidies for weak businesses.
For example, the 457 scheme lets labour hire businesses compete against and undercut the professional local workforce. It is also an essential part in the operations of the Indian offshorers and thus assists in the exporting of Australian jobs to India. (See Hira.)
At some stage, government will have to consider the end game. Why do we spend millions protecting our fishing industries while assisting Indian firms to take our software jobs? DFAT used to run invitation-only seminars promoting the use of Indian firms.
Also, when we refer to migrants, we mean permanent migrants. Migrant doesn’t just mean someone from another country. Migrants suffer from temporary worker programs for the same reason that locals do – they get displaced from their jobs. Indeed, they usually have a much better understanding of how it all works than do the locals.
Re your points, quickly –
1. Most 457 holders are under 30 and by definition accept a job in a company. They do not create jobs.
2. This is a wash. Some are and it should be stopped.
3. You ignore the role of competing businesses such as labur hire firms and offshorers.
4. By about 20 percent.
No it’s not racism. Racism means discriminating against people based on their race. As I pointed out to you, migrants (people born elsewhere) are among the critics of temporary worker programs.
John,
I don’t share your (tentative) optimism on what is contained in Patricia Karvelas’ article. While it is opaque and contradictory, a punitive “workfare” regime for some LTU is definitely on the cards. See:
http://paulwatson.blogspot.com/2006/06/stubbornly-high-levels-of-long-term.html
To Steve the employer, complaining he can’t get good staff: what planet are you on? (Plainly not Melbourne, or anywhere resembling it.)
To those who assert that there’s plenty of even unskilled work in outback mines, yada yada. So if one million plus (unemployed plus DSP-malingerers and misc working-age NILFs) male job-seekers descend on the outback tomorrow, there’ll be work for us all? Yeah right.
“Most 457 holders are under 30 and by definition accept a job in a company. They do not create jobs.”
Mate, you gotta be kidding me. If, as you say, these workers undercut wages they will for sure create jobs because they will lower costs and make goods cheaper. This will raise the ‘income’ of all those who consume these products, allowing these people to spend money on more other goods (or more of the same good) and thus creating jobs.
You’re not far from suggesting that we should all go and break some windows thus creating more glazier jobs.
Matt, that is a slightly different issue that I don’t intend to go into here. My point was in reply to Joseph Clark’s claim that 457 holders don’t replace local workers. I argue they mostly do.
The argument of whether such replacement is beneficial for the wider economy is a much bigger topic.
On what basis does the FPC provide a better vehicle for setting minimum wages than the AIRC Corin?
Perhaps you should do a little research before you rush to print with ecomiums designed to illustrate your ‘flexible’ approach to current debates. FYI, the AIRC is open to the public and accepts submissions from all parties including government. The FPC by contrast, is not required to hold ‘open hearings’, publish reasons for decisions, and has been stacked by government appointees, one of which is a broken down old Grouper who used to masquerade as a union official in one of Australia’s less successful unions. Oh and BTW Corin, individual businesses are interested in profits, not productivity, and a lower minimum wage will lift profits, but will in fact lower overall productivity over time. As to eliminating unemployment, I wonder what dreadful moral virus suddenly infected the Australian people between say, the mid 1960’s when u/e was around 1.5% and now, when the lazy bludgers apparently just won’t get off their backsides and work eh?
Now to the issue of 457 visas. These visas are explicitly designed to ensure that employers have a compliant labour force who are tied to the employer not by good benefits, conditions and wages, but by the little inconvenience (for the worker) that their visa may be cancelled at any time by the employer if they give any lip or cheek. One result of this subsidy to employers is the return of indentured labour. A young man was bashed, held against his will and paid $5.00 an hour by an employer in the Construction industry recently. He hails from the Pacific. His plight was discovered when he was taken to hospital with brain damage (permanent) after a particularly savage beating.
If we have a genuine skills shortage then we can lift the migration program. No-one I know has any problems with immigration from anywhere at all. But I and many others have a problem with a policy which detaches political rights from the labour force the country presumably requires, and that is precisley what the current scheme is deliberately designed to do. Once you detach the labour force you need/require from the franchise, you have returned to a system of indenture, and thus the threat is not simply to the wages and conditions of the indigenous labour force (which BTW includes thousands of migrants, both recent and not so recent), but contains within it, a clear and real threat to the civil and political rights of both existing citizens, and those who are brought here to work under these conditions. It is irrelevant whether the wages such people earn are more than those they could earn at ‘home’. The point is that the scheme detaches civil rights and obligations from the employment contract.
It is a scandal and a major public policy **** up, which ever way you look at it.
SATP, if you want proven pub workers, you can always offer jobs to people who are working in other pubs. You can even check them out by seeing how good they are at serving customers.
Of course to attract them you will have to pay them more than they are getting now. But that’s what happens when there are labour shortages. It’s a seller’s market.
Just the point, Uncle Milton.
By the way, if anyone out there needs a job, some of the mines in the north of WA are hiring dishwashers at nearly 100K p.a. Move over, we need the labour. Please.
Following on from Uncle Milton.
If SATP is paying more for his better quality workers he and they will have an incentive to work together to improve productivity so that higher than average wages can continue to be paid and SATP can get an even better bottom line.
They might look to improving the way work is organised, some capital investment on better bar equipment etc.
A much better way to go than the cost cutting ‘screw the workers’ path as implemented in workchoices.
Folks might like to recall the media campaign last year about the urgent need to import 10,000 Chinese fruit pickers for the Sunraysia region, especially to pick the region’s grapes. Like all these campaigns, that one was driven by the labour hire firm that would pocket the margins from renting out the Chinese workers.
A mere 12 months later we see that there’s actually a gross oversupply of grapes and that one growers association now wants $60 million from the government to pay growers not to pick their grapes.
Even DEWR >a href=”http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/contract_labour/submissions/sub030.pdf”>argues against the need for guest workers in the region.
“It is important to consider why reports of harvest labour shortages are generally exaggerated. These stories can be generated by growers as a means of attracting more labour to a harvest area and are not necessarily indicative of actual shortages. With no concrete evidence of actual shortages, these stories might be generated by interested parties to strengthen support for the introduction of unskilled agricultural visas and guest worker schemes.”
Should be
Even DEWR argues against the need for guest workers in the region.
Andrew Reynolds wrote:
“By the way, if anyone out there needs a job, some of the mines in the north of WA are hiring dishwashers at nearly 100K p.a. Move over, we need the labour. Please.”
Huh? I thought that you were a risk expert, Andrew. If you understand anything about risk-management from an unemployed person’s POV, it’s that income security is much more important than income quantum.
Thus, moving 5000 km for the possibility of a high-paying job carries a substantial risk of one’s being worse off (compared to staying put on the dole), in both the short and long-term.
If there really are unskilled jobs at the wages you speak of, filling them with unemployed people like me should be a cinch. I’d wash dishes anywhere for $30k, but on condition of housing security (and, in inflated property markets, housing subsidy) *and* job security (a minimum ten-year contract).
That supposedly desperate-for-staff employers never offer such packages in reality reinforces how flimsy their supposed labour shortage is.
An employer can (I assume) buy insurance to cover long-term employment contract liabilities (should the business go sour), but for an unemployed person, the dole *is* their insurance, also.
Do employers anywhere in Australia provide housing security?
What rubbish, Paul. No, employers cannot buy such insurance – such a market would never work because of the adverse selection problem (only bad risks would take it out, and the premiums would reflect this, which means only the very worst risks would take it out, which pushes the premiums up further, which means … etc).
And are you seriously demanding a ten year contract and someone to give you a house before you deign to consider a job offer? If so, I want my dole money back from you!
derrida derider wrote,
That is not what he wrote. Why don’t you re-read Paul’s post?
He was saying that he would not be prepared to make a move 5,000 km away to the remote regions of Western Australia without guarantees of security of employment and afordable housing. Given the removal of legal guarantees protecting the working conditions of Australian workers and the growing trend by unscrupulous employers to use imported labour to replace Australian workers at much cheaper rates, one would be foolish to base one’s long term future on the said jobs allegedly going at $100,000 PA.
James,
I was directly responding to comments about low wages. If you have a good work ethic and a reasonable employment history there are enough jobs going in Perth. Granted they do not pay 100K for doing dishes, but they pay well and housing in Perth is cheaper than Sydney (if not as much as it used to be).
The condition of 10 year contract is a nonsence, Paul. I have not worked for 10 years for any employer and possibly never will. If employment was only provided on those terms there would be no jobs at all – who would employ anyone on those terms?
If you want a housing subsidy, that would be part of the wage – so it is not really 30K is it. In any case, the 100K salary is after housing costs as on site housing is provided.
Still Working it Out:
* Appropriate formal qualifications: Tradesman Chef = the one job for which my staff need formal quals. Applicants tend to have their papers.
* Length of Experience: Chef & management applicants usually have sufficient experience. However 80% of bar staff applicants are greenhorns in the industry, compounded by them never having encountered yakka in their life.
* General Competence & Drive: This is the main problem. Abscence of these qualities regrettably seems to be the default scenario for job seekers I encounter.
*Something Else: Reliability. Lack of both drive & reliability seems to be more common. Not only in my industry, other industries I deal with report similar frustrations with quality & reliability of staff. Eg, Accountants, Motor Dealerships, Butchers, Taxis, Banks.
Andrew, I would concede that a 10 year contract would be excessive, but Paul Watson’s essential points remain valid.
Andrew, you wrote:
The implication I draw from these sorts of posts is that those of us who don’t have good jobs, who are unemployed, or stuck in dead-end low skill jobs, are there because they don’t have a good work ethic.
Speaking for myself, I have made a total of 7 inter-city moves including 4 interstate moves since I was retrenched from my job in 1994 in order to complete my tertiary education and to find work. In spite of this, I have had to accept unskilled low-paid insecure work to earn my income.
Just possibly, the solution for people in my circumstances does lie in packing my bags, yet again, and making the 6.000km move across to Western Australia, away from family, friends and familiar surroundings.
However, given that housing prices are skyrocketing and that there doesn’t apppear to be sufficient water or other natural resources to sustain Western Australia’s current population and given that much of the growth in Western Australia’s economy is based on the unsustainable extraction of non-renewable mineral resources, which are fed into overseas industries which are threatening the planet by polluting the earth’s atmosphere, soil, rivers and oceans and accelerating global warming, others should not too judgemental if I choose not to jump at this opportunity.
In any case, just how secure are those high-paid unskilled jobs in Western Australia’s mining regions, if they truly exist? A speech by Independent MP Bob Katter in Parliament on 23 May bears repeating:
I just heard on the news that John Howard has, yet again again declined Kim Beazley’s challenge to publicly debate the Government’s Industrial relations legislation. By my count this is at least the third time he has declined to publicly debate the so-called ‘Work Choices’ legislation that wasn’t even put to the Australian electors in 2004.
Here’s some of the earlier ABC news item which reported Beazley’s challenge :
Debating ammunition is temporarily running low for Beazley now that it transpires the “Spotlight Campaign” was falsified by Stephen Smith & the ALP has been running with a lie.
How so? The lady had been shifted to a casual arrangement and could have lost all her pay for the week, not just the theoretical lost pay for the weekend shift.
The change was that she went from a guaranteed albeit small income to a week-by-week arrangement where her hours and income could have been zero.