Just before last year’s federal election, I read Neal Blewett’s Cabinet Diaries. The book is a good read, but I was also interested in reminding myself – in the dying days of the Howard Era – what a Labor government felt like. One of the things that really jumped out at me was regular discussions around the Cabinet table about assistance for the unemployed, and several of Keating’s measures to stimulate the economy were targeted to people on the dole, among others. Those with longer memories might recall Labor’s opposition to Malcolm Fraser’s “fight inflation first” austerity regime in the late 70s. Mike Steketee has a very good column today which shows just how much things have changed in the era of the deserving poor (and not so poor) and the undeserving poor. He rightly points out that some of the pensioners receiving payments will have substantial assets and incomes of up to $66000, and self-funded retirees with incomes up to $50000 for singles and $80000 for couples will also receive the one off payments. It would be very hard to argue that they are the folks in the community doing it toughest, and as Steketee suggests, there’s no guarantee the money will be spent rather than saved.
What we’re seeing here, I think, is a combination of Kevin Rudd’s very conservative personal values and political calculation.
Ps: Incidentally, Julie Bishop’s point on Lateline about the contrast in the degree of information given in Keating’s economic statements compared to Rudd’s announcement might have some validity in terms of transparency, but it ignores the fact that the Keating government’s interventions occurred after recession was well and truly entrenched (and arguably thus too late) and were prepared over a time scale of months rather than a weekend in response to an emergency. The opposition appears to be playing a complicated game – trying to weave together a message of holding the government to account, blaming the government partially for what’s occurred, and suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull is a bright spark who thought of it all first. I’d have thought all this – combined with the whining about briefings – puts them at the centre of their message rather than the economic situation itself, and risks looking petulant. I think they’d have done better to stick to their initial reaction – nobly supporting the government’s endeavours in the public interest at a time of crisis, blah blah.
NB: Previous post and thread discussion on the stimulus package here.
This is a substantial chunk of money that I reckon will end up paying down credit card debts rather than anything else. In the teeth of an over-hyped financial crisis, who could blame people for battening down the hatches rather than spending it on eating out or lavish Christmas gifts.
While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if Rudd wanted a bit of actual stimulus in the service economy he probably would have been better off handing it out a bit more evenly rather than just to families.
It smacks a bit of farm subsidies viewed as ensuring the banking system keeps operating in those areas.
Its worth noting the unemployed are still punished for breaching their Newstart agreement, though apparently not as harshly as under Ratty. Now, according to a recent comment on LP, they only lose one day’s pay, instead of 8 weeks. That its a lesser injustice doesn’t make it any less of an injustice.
There are also a whole bunch of DSP recipients who went on DSP from 1 July last year (I think, though it may have been 2006) who receive a DSP at the same rate as the dole. Does anybody know if Rudd has changed that?
Paul @ 2,
I don’t think DSP recipients after July ’06 receive the same rate as Newstart. I believe the rates are still the same but those who became DSP recipients after that date are subject to harsher agreements. For example under the old rules people only had to be incapable of working around 30 hours per week to be eligible but now that’s around 15 hours per week. People also have to attend a JCA (Job Capacity Assessment) which is weighted heavily in finding the person able to work. They need to have an imperative score below a certain number on four specific categories.
My father had a major stroke in early-mid ’06 resulting in him being in hospital for six months leaving him a shell of the once healthy and able person he was the day before it. He only had to shuffle (with his wife holding on to his now useless left side and him using a quad stick on his better off side) into a Centrelink office for anyone with an ounce of decency to realise that not only could he never work again but he would have a miserable life ahead of him. Yet, in their wisdom at the JCA they declared that because he could move his index finger on his right hand he was able to work and refused his application for DSP.
I spoke to someone who had connections with those high up at the main office here in Adelaide and after 7-8 months of him being on the dole, needing to put in dole forms (which resulted in him being kicked off the dole as he couldn’t put them in and could no longer understand their role, she didn’t know what to do with them and her not allowing me to help in anyway) AND him getting phone calls from Job Networks about having to come in and sign up as a job seeker (even though he no longer understood what a JN was or it’s purpose) he was eventually put on DSP and she was made his carer.
Medicare surcharge levy changes have passed. YAY!
That is disgusting.
I’m utterly gobsmacked by the “stimulus package”. If there was a big chunk of spending on public infrastructure, I would cheer. (Melbourne Uni and LaTrobe Uni staff laying off staff, public schools still underfunded and will become more so if a large wedge of the middle class becomes too indebted/ laid off to pay the fees, large visionary tech projects aimed at mitigating climate change not in evidence, still miserable spending on health in remote & indigenous communities, etc etc etc etc…) Instead, we have an inflationary chucking of spending money at people at Xmas and the *extremely stupid* policy of giving more first home buyer grants, when it has been pointed out time and time again that this just gets factored in to the price of the house and goes to the RE agent’s next Beemer, as well as contributing to bubble economics.
Gah.
I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles – not just a song by Michael Jackson.
I bought in September last year. Thankfully for a range of non-financial reasons I still think it’s worth it, but cripes alive… it sure ain’t worth what we paid on paper anymore.
Yes, the White knight is something of a Hun. Not just Rudd . An (un)healthy chunk of the ALP right is comprised of similar souls; religious, anti-left grouper/DLP types who, a little paradoxically, seem to prefer the company of “developers” and the like rather than that of their own party constituency.
The attitudes towards environment, higher education, culture wars etc are all antediluvian and to this writer, the attack on the ABC can be seen as no accident.
Nor is the attitude towards other people across the public service which became established under HoWARd, described by Jacques De Molay; neither is that culture going to dismantled any time quick.
And let’s not applaud Wong, Gillard and other left faction members for their capitulations, either.
FDB wrote:
That’s exactly how I felt about my first house (back in 1996). Property cycles are only seven years though FDB, so sit tight and enjoy el-cheapo Oettinger for $10/sixpack instead of your usual tipple and you’ll be OK.
Unless, of course, you bought a “renovators delight” in which case OMG PANIC!!!!111!!11!!!!
(more seriously – it’s been Oz government policy since WWII to prop up property holders and their bankers at the expense of everybody else. That’s why all the stupid first home buyers subsidies have been expanded rather than just tossed like they should have been).
Helen @ 5 – I think the argument against the infrastructure spending (although Rudd is saying they are still doing it) is that it takes too long to take effect. They’ve declared that inflation is no longer the big problem, its people refusing to spend and the effect that will have on the economy and job losses etc.
It is a very quick change from “Save Save Save!!” to “Spend Spend Spend!!” though. Not long ago GWB was getting criticism for after 9/11 saying that people should get out and shop, but that is basically what Rudd & Swann are saying now.
“Unless, of course, you bought a “renovators delight” in which case OMG PANIC!!!!11″
Nope – double brick art deco 1940s apartment, tas oak floors, just needs a lick o’ paint really. It’s one of only 2 with my little sister buying and living upstairs. Actually, for all my gloom, if there’s a big drop in prices I’ll probably have a crack at buying the standalone rental house next door (which is on the same strata and shares the back yard). A regular Kennedy Compound it’ll be.
David: “This is a substantial chunk of money that I reckon will end up paying down credit card debts rather than anything else”
…which is a good thing, if we care about the economy lasting for more than just the next 6 months.
Further, the intention isn’t necessarily to hugely *increase* overall consumer spending, just to be certain that it consumer spending stays at a good level. If it weren’t for the hand-out, there’s a good probability many would reduce spending in order to get their cards paid off.
A sound piece. Similar sentiments about the wisdom of the Coalition abandoning its bipartisan approach are to be found in an article on The Political Sword titled To quibble or not to quibble.
Chris ADO, its the symbolism that counts.
We were discussing this at work today. The people targeted with these benefits may well need them, but they’re not especially affected by a recession. In effect, they’re recession-proof. What does a pensioner care if unemployment jumps?
As usual Kevvie’s persists in practicing good politics and ludicrous economics. Exactly what does $1000 in December mean? It means that the
Great Annual Pigoutseason of good will to all will go on. People will have money to shop – that’s it..
For the average person $1000 is something that lasts a month – maybe. But 1000 multiplied by whatever slice of the Oz populace deemed worthy is a lot of money. As a single male, Kevvie’s continuing Howard’s traditional ignorance of me. After all ‘good’ men reproduce and get mortgages don’t they?
.
Well I ain’t whinging. I don’t need it. But considering a day without beggars in my face has become a rare anomaly I reckon someone does who won’t get. And considering that the country’s grown without adequate accompanying infrastructural development I reckon this is downright irresponsible.
.
But the economy isn’t Kevvie’s responsibility is it? It’s ours. His responsibility is to get re-elected and ’cause we’re irresponsible enough not to take consideration of the consequences of our collective myopia and persist in the Australian custom of thinking of the government the way two-year olds think of their parents we’re sacrificing our much lauded financial stability for the sake of preserving the ugliest experience anyone ever had going to a mall.
.
Well done Kevvie. Hey Kevvie I hear Daihatsu could use a $35 million gift from the good people of Oz – go on Kevvie. It’s only money.
.
Get a credit card today. What? You have four already? Well you can always use another when the others are maxed out.
Kevin has been under strong pressure to deliver something to the pensioners from their pressure groups and the media. The delivery of increased benefits to some of them in the last budget was largely ignored. Now that economic circumstance has required him to bite the the bullet and they have reaped the reward.
I am inclined to believe, though, that in the longer term this grab on the surplus will actually leave them worse off, overall. Kevins inclination was to look at the issues in a more careful and considered manner and come up with a new general and ongoing package next year.
Maybe the chance of a more equitable distribution of the welfare dollar has been lost due to harsh economic circumstances as well as a degree of impatience for change.
joe2: I’m not sure the opportunity has been lost.
In fact, I wonder whether a recession might prompt people to look more favourably upon increasing unemployment benefits.
It’s easy to pooh-pooh the level of the dole when your job is secure. If you’re worried about losing it, and some of your acquaintances have, you might be a little more sympathetic…
No, Robert Merkel. Not a people as mean as this one.
I have been giving the government’s package of large payments to welfare recipients to stimulate consumption as a means of averting or diminishing the effects of a possible recession a good deal of thought.
In his post Mark8 stated:
“…..It would be very hard to argue that they are the folks in the community doing it toughest, and as Steketee suggests, there’s no guarantee the money will be spent rather than saved.”
There is an acceptance here that it is consumption that will save the day and not saving. It is implied that it is important that in order to have the greatest effect that the more of the funds provided are used for consumption the bigger bang the government will get for its buck.
To give effect to this requirement maybe the government should alter its idea of bringing in 300,000 guest workers to do seasonal work and switch the emphasis from work to consumption as the solution by having a dedicated army of consumers on whom tabs can be kept would be an infinitely better proposition.
The carrot/stick would be consume the funds provided or face return home. This will provide a massive incentive to meet the government’s requirements and more quickly improve the economic situation. By the reasoning behind the package such an approach would more quickly improve the economy and increase goodwill toward Australia in the region and eliminate the downside of a sizable proportion of recipients saving their payments and aborting the recovery rather than using it for the vital increase in consumption.
It’s even easier to pooh-pooh the dole when you’re ineligible to receive it despite contributing taxes for thirty years. You’re be surprised at how easy.
paul @ 13 – well Rudd is Mr. Symbolism.
amortiser @ 19 – I’d expect the guest worker scheme to die a quiet death as the unemployment rate goes up.
joe2 @ 16 – I’d expect pension levels to be increased after the review still, although the cynical part of me is saying the govt would prefer to keep giving the one-off bonuses as they get to keep announcing it. The financial meltdown was just a handy excuse to do what they retrospectively wanted to do but not appear too much like they were caving into opposition demands.
The Bush mob were much fairer – a few months ago they handed out a big lump of cash to everyone regardless of age sex or religion.
Mind you it doesn’t seem to have done much good but at least it was fair.
The increases to the first home buyers’ grants are beyond stupid. Why not double the baby bonus while they were at it?
baby bonus? shame on you Ken Lovell – you’ll have Robert M come in here and say it’s an immediate spending stimulus that’s needed, not some long-term project requiring 9 or 10 or 11 months lead time….
Just a thought:
Our banks are much more exposed to the foreign markets than they used to be, that’s one of the reasons we’re being hurt by the “credit crunch” (as distinctive from the stock crash, being the lack of liquid funds circulating the banking system). They’re giving away heaps of free money to the people who are going to save it (or at least pay off debt) ie. those with kids (ie mortgages) and old people, not spend it ie. starving students like myself and the unemployed (also starving, but there’s still not an unemployment crisis, yet).
So perhaps this isn’t about ‘stimulating the economy’. The economy didn’t need any damn ‘stimulation’, it needed a bucket of cold water thrown on it. How long were we going to be able to keep up 4%+ growth before we over heated? Perhaps this is about putting some liquid funds into the banks to get the credit system chugging again, to reduce the dependency on the foreign banks who are all so dependent on the US that they’re rooted. Rather than “bail out” the banks, or nationalise, perhaps what’s happening is just buying off the voters with the surplus. It’ll go down well with the electorate, and won’t have any long term consequences (like nationalisation or a bail out) would other than to leave us a little strapped for cash. But if it gets things going again then it won’t really cost at all.
Just an idea, I tend to not know what I’m talking about.
My god, what a bunch of whiny spoiled brats. Pathetic, luckily you keeps yourselves holed up in this little corner of the net.
Remember this cabinet, and particularly Blewett decided to limit the number of medical school places so that we are now faced 30-35 years later with an extreme doctor shortage,
Ageing men ruminating do not good policy make
Ruminations such as described should be kept for the bbq table and not cabinet.
jack hackett
Everyone:
I’m very annoyed at the sudden stereotyping of pensioners as rich, greedy, pokies-players who are going to rush out and blow this windfall on useless luxury toys.
EVERY pensioner around me intends spending that money – if it does come through in the current turbulent situation – on long-foregone essentials, such as getting the car repaired, going to a private health professional because of the long waiting times in the public system, getting broken things on the house fixed, etc. Oh yes, a couple did admit they would spend a further hundred dollars or so on Christmas presents for the grandkids.
And not a plasma TV or night on the pokies in sight …. and none of it going into investment accounts either.
Jacques De Molnay,@3
What a horrible, horrible story. Glad it worked out okay in the end, but the emotional/financial turmoil beforehand must have been shocking.
Centrelink are utterly heartless that way. Ratty’s Australia, and it hasn’t gone yet.
I wonder how many other disabled people have been so shamefully treated?
I wonder how many other disabled people have been so shamefully treated?
THere’s the legions and legions of profoundly disabled people – Acquired brain injury, severe autism, Angelman syndrome etc – whose parents are ageing and exhausted and worried because there never seems to be a residential place for them.
Oh there is a way out. My SIL had a brain aneurysm probably partly due to the continuous stress and lack of self care contingent on looking after a profoundly disabled young adult day in, day out (an extremely mobile and mischievous one who’s able wreak havoc – see the film The Black Balloon for an idea of him). So she ended up disabled herself and he went to the top of the queue for community residential placement. it’s not a solution I highly recommend though
“I’m very annoyed at the sudden stereotyping of pensioners as rich, greedy, pokies-players who are going to rush out and blow this windfall on useless luxury toys.”
I do not believe this is the case Graham.
On the contrary many express deep concern for those on pensions. Thus the priority they have recently been given is generally quite popular. It is just that some are receiving benefits that they do not need. My parents in law, for instance, while not very well off, readily acknowledge that the grant will end up in the bank.
If a stricter means test were introduced money could be redirected towards those in most in difficulty like folks without capital, renting and living by themselves.
Graham: I’m not begrudging pensioners receiving more.
It’s just that the unemployed have also been doing it tough, have been hit by the same cost of living increases as age pensioners, could really use some assistance, and got nothing.
Robert Merkel [31] and Joe2 [30]:
No. I wasn’t having a go at anyone here [if I ever do, it would be unmistakable]. I was having a go at all the negative and hostile comments in the mainstream media. It is almost as though pensioners have become the latest “Dole Bludger” hate-figures.
Don’t know why the Rudd govt. didn’t give a bundle of cash or other substantial encouragement to poorer students and to the unemployed and to that forgotten group, the marginally employed.
For instance: what would have been so wrong with offering a straight swap of high-fuel-consumption, high-emissions old rust-buckets for brand-new fuel-efficient, low-emmissions, small, bare-bones vehicles so that these people could get to work or to classes. Naturally, have very strict conditions on ownership and on disposal after x years, maintenance responsibilities, etc. It would have been a bold move that solved several problems in one go: got unroadworthy, polluting bombs off the road …. unclogged and stimulated trade with countries also suffering the effects of the Meltdown/Depression …. given students and the unemployed an incredibly more reliable and wonderfully low-cost means of getting around safely.
Yes, that would be a whopping big cost but look at all the bigger benefits.
Cool Graham.
I nearly choked on my chop, at lunchtime, when I heard Jeff Kennett weighing in on the subject today. Apparently, according to Jeff…
“The trend line is getting to the stage where more and more people are receiving rather than contributing. We’ve just come to the end of the best 14 years of economic output in one sense … (yet) what have we done with the billions of dollars of surplus?”
http://www.theage.com.au/national/handout-mentality-growing-says-kennett-20081016-52eh.html
Well may we ask what Sweetie did with the 10 years of opportunity. Still, what depressingly sticks in the throat, from Mr Beyond Blue, is a lecture from someone so firmly stuck on the taxpayer teat, themselves. He is pulling in a huge pension and has the cheek to warn of growing dependence. The man has no shame.
joe2 @ 30 – as soon as you start introducing strict means testing, people complain about high EMTRs (and there are a few retirees out there doing a little bit of part time work).
Graham @ 32 – wouldn’t it be much cheaper and environmentally friendly to spend the money on public transport instead of giving cars to people? The way to get the rust buckets off the road is to increase registration fees on fuel inefficient cars (which don’t necessarily have to be old anyway).
Chris – a different one [34]:
What you say about public transport is true enough in affluent middle and inner suburbs …. but out in The Other Australia, things are very different indeed. In most places, there has never been any public transport or, if there ever was, it ceased operating ages ago thanks to one ratbag economics cult or another. Even in those places lucky enough to have some sort of public transport, it is usually inadequate and inappropriate for getting to and from work – let alone for finding a job in the first place.
Penalizing the poor for being poor? That’s not really an optimal solution. Just this week, in this area, a unemployed man was fined $750 and an unemployed woman was fined nearly $600 for driving unapproved vehicles …. as though they had any real choice at all!!! If it takes an hour to drive the kids to be seen by the doctor, work out how long it would take them to walk there ….
I agree, in part, with increasing registration fees …. but not against the most vulnerable and most disadvantaged in the community, thank you. Instead, let’s have a registration surcharge – a bludger tax, if you like – of from two thousand to eight thousand dollars a year for those who can afford to drive themselves around in the latest fashionable expression of their own vanity.
Helen @ 29. My heart goes out to your SIL. Disability services is such an underfunded area that unless you are failing conspicuously there is little support. It is a horrible situation. The first day of the holidays my little son had a major meltdown on the beach to which ambulance and then police were called (not by me). Luckily I managed to get him calm and in the car before the police reached us as they would not have been able to do anything and the situation would have escalated. I kept thinking of Roni Levi. Three days later I was in hospital in agony with a kidney problem. I am receiving support but there are still times when one senses disaster snapping at our heels. I’m hoping that scientists make some rapid progress on extending life because I don’t want to think of how his life will be without me.
My portion of the stimulus package will be used to catch up on unpaid utilities bills.
The Government is a joke when it comes to getting people on Unemployment and DSP into employment.
If you are on normal Unemployment you can only have one Job Network provider and if your on DSP you can only have one Disabled Employment provider, interestingly if the Government wants staff it chooses from three different Employment agencies, guess what not one of these has a Job network or Disability contract.
What does that tell you!!
MB @ 37,
Here’s a tip for ya, the Job Network system is a complete joke. Utterly useless. It’s a rort for organisations that purport to be religious. They pocket shit loads of money from DEWR that is required to be spent on the job seeker (on top of the outrageous kick backs) with almost zero accountability. Those good ol’ boys the Salvos even got busted cooking the books to the tune of a few million dollars. The system is basically a licence to print money and they were pulling dodgy stuff on top of it, that’s absolute greed for you.
Don’t even get me started on the Gloria Jeans backed Mercy Ministries. Performing exorcisms on young girls with drup problems and body image issues while taking control of their Centrelink payments and pocketing the vast majority of it and in some cases the lot.
How all these crooks are not in jail is beyond me yet this backward country likes to stick the boot into the poor and the unemployed.
Jacques de Molay [38]:
The Commonwealth Employment Service used to be a reasonably efficient organization that got job-seekers and potential employers together …. okay, it did need a bit of streamlining but that’s all.
Problem was that whilst C.E.S. still existed as an effective Australia-wide job-finder, the thieving Employment Prevention companies couldn’t get their greedy hands into a bottomless pit of public money. Now, it’s open slather for the job market gatekeepers … and to hell with the needs of both employers and the unemployed alike. What a racket! If that wasn’r bad enough, these firms are also a contributing factor in the thoroughly artificial so-called “skills shortage” that is supposed to be happening in Australia.
Don’t expect either side of politics to crack down on the looters or to resurrect the C.E.S. as a real competitor to the shysters any time soon. Still, it would have been nice if the Rudd government had decided to give half of the ten thousand million dollars to pensioners …. and the other half to setting up a new C.E.S. .
Graham! I find it Interesting that the Gvernment when looking for staff use Agencies that don’t have job network or Disabled contracts.
I wouldn’t expect the PM to crack down on the Job Network for his Wife has a long involvement with running these services but in saying that overlooking the Unemployed seems strange when I suspect they would be more likey to spend it than aged pensioners who may be more inclinde to save it or spend it on the pokies.
“Still, it would have been nice if the Rudd government had decided to give half of the ten thousand million dollars to pensioners …. and the other half to setting up a new C.E.S. .”
Graham, the money wasted on these crazy so called “Job Network Services” is already so substantial that a new government agency could be set up for a quarter of what they are paying out on them presently. They should be just abandoned as a failed idea. All they presently provide is job creation for those employed by them and, as you say, an unnecessary competitive barrier for jobs.
Incidentally, I wholeheartedly agree with you on the skills shortage baloney that ranks highly with the official unemployment figures amongst other great modern day fantasies foisted on the general public.
M.B. @40 I think your point about government non use of Jobs Network is telling but I doubt much if many pensioners will piss their cash up on the pokey wall or on a plasma tele, as Barnaby Joyce seems to think. I hope the retired and disabled constituency remember his words when next they vote.
Graham,
Yes, from memory I thought the CES worked quite well. They didn’t turn the unemployed into cattle to be thrown around and spat on like Howard’s Job Network system does. If possible I urge everyone to avoid JN’s like the plague if you want to retain any sense of dignity and self-respect. It doesn’t matter what qualifications you have or how many years of experience, you are trash and will be treated accordingly until you get another job.
If you have to go through them (almost impossible not to) and find a job off your own back don’t let them know either (no matter how much they try and drill that into you) as they claim they found it for you and get the tens of thousands from the government in kick backs for getting you into a job (they had nothing to do with) and will not spend a cent of the $1,000+ they are required to spend on you to help with uniforms, transport etc. as you now already have a job. What thousand dollars? yoink.
Licence to print money.
Graham @ 35 – with the amount of money equivalent to buying a new car for disadvantaged people (and administering the system) you could provide a pretty good public transport system for those in the outer suburbs. Re: the bludger tax – we already have a luxury car tax.
Chris [a different one]:
Nice thought. Long-term planning and commitment has to go into public transport for outer suburban and rural areas – to services run at times and to places where they are actually needed, especially for going to and from work. Fat chance of that ever happening when all economics policy on transport in Australia made by irrational, ignorant train-haters who tell one another scary stories about railways in the United States and are too thick to look at what happens elsewhere in the wide world.
Incidently, ABC TV’s “New Inventors” featured a 2-seater 3-wheeled inexpensive electric car and ABC Radio National’s “Science Show” featured a compressed-air powered car in similar configuration [No. not with a compressed-air starter motor out of a Wilga aircraft either]. Neither look or cost the same as a Holden or a Ford – they wouldn’t want to – but they would fulfil the need to get two people from one place to the other at minimal cost to the environment or to the users’ pockets.
Intelligent policy would minimize the cost of distributing these vehicles. Though going by the comments of Mexican Beember, Joe2 and Jacques de Molay on the Employment Prevention rackets, contacting-out the administration of that to “human resource management” and “employment”[wtfh??] firms might not be the cheapest nor optimally efficient way to go ….
Graham – I think electric cars show a lot of promise, especially for families who want to replace their second car – a range of 100km is fine for most who just use their car to commute.
Though at the moment I think more can be gained through helping setup (and perhaps encouraging) car pooling and sharing schemes. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t need a car (especially a second one in the family) all the time.
Chris [a different one[ [46]:
Yep. Car pooling and other forms of shared journeys are the way to go until something better comes along …. good luck with changing ingrained public attitudes against car-pooling though.
The issue of failing to encourage students, the unemployed and marginally-employed whilst helping pensioners and carers alone is, IMHO, a self-correcting policy blunder: I’m sure there are plenty of very nasty opportunists around who would love to get their hands on crowds of students, the unemployed and the marginally-employed so that they can manipulate them for their own evil purposes. That would turn the issue from one of Welfare to one of National Security.
The C.E.S. used to produce candidates of .. er… mixed quality, however I always found the staff to be very helpful & trying hard to do a good job.
The job network is a joke, I haven’t been near it in years. The reason… I want vacancies filled.
Steve at the Pub [47]:
It must be an evil Communist or Illuminati or Papist conspiracy by small business operators …. almost every potential employer sings much the same song about Job Prevention firms these days …. don’t they realize how much easier, cheaper and more efficient private/privatized firms are at finding good staff for them? Oh, the ingratitude of it all ….
“Here in Australia, Kevin Rudd said only last week a $10 a week rise in the single pension would wipe $2 billion dollars a year off the Government’s surplus.
By spending less on pensions and social security payments while slowly eroding funding for social services at the same time, successive governments could pass on tax cuts.
Lower taxes, it is argued, provide a direct fiscal stimulus and significantly increase the capacity of young families to afford more debt. They can gear up and buy a house.
”In effect, says Beavan. ”It allows future economic growth to be bought forward to cover the costs of health and unfunded government pensions.
”And this also provides the illusion of economic stability allowing the Government to reduce labor market controls (a.k.a. Work Choices), which keep wage-driven inflation in check – again at the expense of the most vulnerable and the most lowly paid.”
.
http://business.smh.com.au/business/pensioners-ripped-off-20081020-54d5.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
.
This article by Micheal West is another cracker.
.
He explains the manipulation of the CPI figures under pressure from the IMF has lead to most ( if not all ) G20 countries sytematically shortchanging their least financially resilient members . Great work by the journo – and it accords with so many welfare recipient’s opinions about this misleading situation .
Graham Bell #48:
The private/privatised firms of the job network do not get paid by satisfied employers for whom they find staff. The job network is a way to make job network firms rich (example: Rudd family).
If the job network firms were paid by results, instead of by right, the “job” network would, from necessity, change into something not only unrecognisable (to those who know it today) but into something which actually works.
After all, the actual employment market is working totally & completely privately. There are private firms who actually find staff for businesses (known as “recruiting firms”) and they do it well (or sink).
JdM@42: No kidding. When I finished my degree, I transferred over the Newstart briefly whilst I figured out what I wanted to do, and within about a month and a half I’d gotten myself a job down here in Canberra; I just needed 3 weeks to move myself down here from Brisbane. Just after I got here, I had a JN provider contact me for an appointment two days after I advised Centrelink I had a job. I called and politely told them I had a job thanks and no it’s none of your business where it is. A week later, I get a letter from them, call them again, and am slightly less polite (but still generally so). Two weeks later, I realise Centrelink have paid me for some ungodly-known reason, so I call to find out why, exactly, they’re paying me money when I told them I had a job, get bounced through to about 5 people because none of them will give me a straight answer on whether I need to give this money back, until I reach some higher-up type who tells me I can keep the money because it was their mistake (that freaked me out, I must admit), and not to worry about the JN people, they’re just trying to get me in so they can claim they found me my job. I was too gobsmacked at her extreme level of service and competence to think of asking why they were still a JN member if it was so well-known that they’re a rort you mention it to the people they’re using to try and rort the govt.
“After all, the actual employment market is working totally & completely privately. There are private firms who actually find staff for businesses (known as “recruiting firms”) and they do it well (or sink).”
So true SATP. The other successful non-taxpayer funded network is word of mouth. More people are placed in jobs by this method than any other, I suspect. Job Networks then come in to try and claim the credit and the dosh.
Graham Bell @ 46,
Graham asd somebody whois quite politically active and many years ago was a member of the Unemployed Workers’s Union, I can tell you it is extremely difficult, if not almost impossible to organise the unemployed politically nowadays. They are too dispersed and uncontactable.
The only reason the Unemployed Workers’ Movement was so successful in the 1930s was because the CPA found the unemployed easily accessible in shanty towns, town ovals etc., and in regard to evictions knew about them in advance and were very organised locally. Of course they were helped by the fact that back then the working class really did believe the bosses were bastards and workers weren’t aspiring to the middle class, were strongly unionised, had a strong sense of local community, etc. And they knew instinctively what many people the world over are just finding out – that Capitalism really is a very stuffed ideology and economic system.
Joe2 makes a great point and that is why I critise the Disabled Employment agencies whom on behalf of the client send off a resume to a job ad which is normally a recruitment firm acting on behalf of the Employer.
The Recruitment agency will naturally put one of their own candidates forward or someone who comes from a more normal employment background.
Some would call this discrimination but in reality is commonsense so what should happen is the Government should go to the three Recruitment firms it uses and inter into some sort of arrangment.
Another problem in this country is our Educational facilities expect you too be employed before allowing you to enroll into most courses.
This whole system has helped create a skill shortage which really should not exist but this is something both sides of Politics should hang their heads for.
SteveAtThePub, you said at [50] ….
Really? There are the two problems: They screen out far too many excellent candidates on airy-fairy “criteria” and give the poor employer Hobson’s Choice of employing only their selected dills, drongos and duds …. and …. having failed to deliver really good employees, they DON”T sink!! The private employment firms, the international accountancy firms and every other pack of bludgers who have hopped on the “employment” gravy train are efficient at only two things: keeping potential employees away from potential employers – and – grabbing as much loot as they can.
They are unnecessary. They are expensive. They are horribly inefficient – despite all their gloss-&-glamour. They have hijacked most of the staffing aspect of running a business. We would be better off without these failed gatekeepers.
Without them, more workers would find jobs they want to do and more vacancies would be filled quickly by excellent workers. Without them, the overall cost to the taxpayers of unemployment benefits would drop like a stone. Without them, the fake “skills shortage” would vanish overnight. So let’s stop handing out corporate charity to these firms and let’s start putting vacancies and workers together for a change.
.
Paul Burns [53]:
Times really have changed
Graham! I think you’ll find the comments you were resonding to were agencies that actually have Job Network or Disabled Employment contracts with the Government.
Jennifer @ 51,
They always try little tricks like that, thankfully you didn’t give them the name of the joint you work for. I’m surprised they didn’t threaten you with a breach, as pointless as it would’ve been. That’s standard procedure for anyone that knows some of their tactics or displays an ounce of free thought. At least you got some money from the experience.
Lionel Elmore (I think) had a piece in yesterday’s Crikey about the unemployed missing out on the goodies and some of the things they have to go through like ‘Workplace Providers’ and Work For The Dole.
It’s when you get to WFTD you realise they’re taking the piss. WFTD is considered employment in that you are then removed from the jobless figures yet are only paid the dole plus a small extra payment. I can remember when we used to have a minimum wage in this country.
In my previous post I ment to write “Don’t have Job network or Disabled contracts”
Graham Bell #55.
What you describe is more like the job network.
The recruiting industry has many problems, is full of sharks, & so on, but it does not operate like that, or it would not exist.
Only the job network firms could even afford to operate as you describe.
The recruiting industry recieves 100% of their income from satisfied employers.
This discussion leads me to think of the short lived Working Nation program under Keating which was shafted by Howard. Just went online and found some papers that suggest that there were better outcomes for the long term unemployed and all sorts of other outcomes even though the economic period was not as ideal as the following period under Howard and it was a very short lived program.
“Working Nation was implemented through a series of employment assistance programs. They were of three types:
paid employment experience programs;
training and personal support programs;
programs that combined employment experience and training.”
I remember at the time some dodgy businesses absolutely rorted the system – taking on trainees then ditching them and signing up new ones – basically subsidising their labour costs – but many more didn’t and this could have been fixed with proper oversight.
The first paper looks at the programs from an overall program design/ social/employment perspective and the second attempts to
“evaluate its success using simple econometric methods on macroeconomic data” from the ANU Public Policy Program, for those who are interested in this topic.
http://209.85.173.104/searchq=cache:AsiokB79q6gJ:www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/nspc2001/papers/Paper108.doc+%22working+nation%22+data+AUSTRALIA&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=20
http://dspace.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/41755/2/RajaDP54_PPP.pdf
You would hope that with every other review going on in Canberra, that a proper review of Labor’s last great employment and training initiative is being undertaken. The program wasn’t coercive IIRC.
SATP [59] you said ….
That’s an understatement, if ever there was one! Unfortunately, they do exist and will continue to flourish so long as suckers will be happy with what they are given and not with what they actually want.
One way of driving a few of the sharks, shonks and posers out of the industry would be to say to them “I want to see EVERY candidate, not just the ones you want to dump on me”. It’s your money; you’re entitled to get value for it.