When John was growing up, the unemployment rate was in the order of one per cent, it was usually of short duration, the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES), was available to assist people find jobs and to pay unemployment benefit. The CES would only refer people to jobs paying the award wage.
Now the CES has been abolished and replaced by a motley collection of privatised job agencies that only continue if they can make a profit out of the unemployed people they process. John has been writing about unemployment for many years and has been active in various unemployed workers unions.
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Friday, 20 February 2004 The Howard government purports to be a pragmatic government interested in achieving practical outcomes. It claims the imposition of its “mutual obligation” regime upon social security recipients is designed to sort out the “needy from the greedy” and to […]
Written in 2002 The announcement by Mr. Larry Anthony Minister for Community Services that the unemployed are to have the number of jobs for which they must apply each fortnight doubled, coupled with the extension of the dole diary requirements makes little sense in the context of the Australian labour market. There are 8 to […]
Paper given at the NSW ASSID Conference at the University of Wollongong 5-6/7/2002 The themes of the Howard Government: ‘social capital, social conservatism, social coalition, mutual obligation and participation income’ all undermine the concept of rights and more worryingly erode previously established social security entitlements. McClure (2000[a], [b]) heralded the extension of the breaching of […]
Paper given at the 5th National conference on Unemployment, RMIT, Melbourne 1-2 Oct. 1998 The failure of the state to create enough jobs for all who want them or to share all the available jobs amongst the entire labour force has come to be defined as the ‘unemployment problem’. Various ‘solutions’ have been proffered by […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Thursday, 26 May 2005 The 2005-6 Australian Budget pronouncements about disability support pensions and parenting payments are flawed. From July 2006 Australians applying for either of these payments will be drawn into the Howard Government’s mutual obligation quagmire. Presently, someone applying for a […]
Paper given at the Young People and Poverty Seminar, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 23 May, 2002. Australian society is structured in terms of age, gender, race, locality, class and by the way we treat people with a disability. Each of these structural features is underpinned by an ideology: ageism, sexism, racism, […]
Published in Green Left 28/3/2001 p.10 Some people in Australia are concerned about dependency. Dependency is a particular painful brain condition that can only be contracted by those who believe in targeting welfare benefits. The usual justification for targeting is that it directs the greatest assistance to those in greatest need. Claims are then made […]
In Carlson, E (Ed.) The Full Employment Imperative. 5th Path to Full Employment Conference and 10th National Conference on Unemployment Proceedings: Refereed Papers, 10-12 December 2003, The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales During the first couple of decades of the 20th Century, European visitors to this country described the combination of the Arbitration […]
During the latter part of the Second World War, once the tide had turned had turned against Japan, the Chifley Labor Government became concerned that Australian troops might return home not to a hero’s welcome but to unemployment. There was wide spread concern that the very people the Australian Government had trained to kill might, […]
Published in: Carlson, Ellen (Editor). Path to Full Employment, The. Callaghan, NSW: University of Newcastle, Centre of Full Employment and Equity, 2002: 227-236. Abstract Australia has experienced almost continuous economic growth throughout the three terms of the Howard Government, yet it has only succeeded in decreasing the officially recognised unemployment level by two percentage points. […]
The preoccupation with the fecklessness of those who find themselves excluded from paid employment has been a consistent feature of the Australian income support system. This preoccupation has given birth to a number of myths such as: they’d find a job if they really looked Abbot’s job snobs – they are too fussy they should shift to where […]
Published in Journal of Economic and Social Policy, Vol 6, Issue 2, 1.1.2002 Abstract This paper considers the treatment of unemployed people’s rights and entitlements, focussing particularly on the last decade and a half. It places the debate about entitlements within the context of the historical development of the entire Australian social security income support […]
Written in 2003 It’s somewhere between the obscene and unclean but John Howard is my inspiration. You work for the dole. You mortgage your soul, and he calls that liberation. Get off your fat arse, do a job that’s first class. Yes, work is your obligation. A hand-up it seems is just far away dreams […]
Published in Courier-Mail, Ed.2, 1 April 1997, p.19 THE Howard Government’s scheme to compel the jobless to work for their benefits has generated widespread public support. People in comfortable jobs, driven by a concern that unemployed people are getting something for nothing, expect those without work to make a contribution. As unemployment levels remain above […]
Paper given at the Third National Unemployment Conference, QUT, Brisbane 13-15/6/96. Abstract The advent of a new right government in Canberra signals a massive challenge for unemployed people throughout Australia. This is particularly so given the size of the majority of the Howard Coalition Government because it means the possibility of returning to a revisionist […]
Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 36, No.3, pp.237-248. 2001 Abstract A country’s system of income support determines the impact unemployment has on low income earners. Governments throughout the English speaking western world have imposed means testing, targeted benefits, activity testing and ‘mutual obligation’ regimes to discourage those without paid work from becoming ‘dependent’ on […]
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Tuesday, 11 October 2016 Professor Guy Standing from The School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London was a founding member of the Basic Income European Network (in recent years renamed the Basic Income Earth Network). Standing, for many years […]
The government tells those aged between 17 and 25 they’ve got to be either learning or earning or their social security will be withheld. Young unemployed don’t need to be compelled; they need to be provided with opportunities to learn and helped to build careers so they can earn. When I was that age I […]
Paper given at the 6th National Conference on Unemployment, University of Newcastle, 23-24 September 1999. Abstract The major problem facing Australian people without paid employment (or sufficient paid work) is not the absence of work but the absence of a decent income support mechanism. There are many way of providing sufficient paid employment to all […]
Chapter in Hicks, R., Creed, P., Patton, W. and Tomlinson, J. eds. (1995) Unemployment Developments and Transitions, Australian Academic, Brisbane. pp.353 – The economic fundamentalists tell us the cost of solving unemployment is too high, attempts to lower the rate of unemployment would result in a distortion of the market, and amount to an interference with liberty. […]
Written circa 2003 Economic fundamentalists claim: the market should find its own level. They campaign against: minimum wage legislation – suggesting that it inhibits employment because it puts too high a price on labour, and decent income support payments – suggesting they inhibit the desire to accept work. Economic fundamentalists oppose tariffs on the grounds […]
Green left Weekly 11/2/1998 p.12 Prime Ministers Howard in Australia, Shipley in New Zealand and Blair in Britain all utilise the dependency rhetoric when it falls to them to describe the behaviour of lone parents and the unemployed. They claim the central issue in relation to welfare policies is the need to move people away […]
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