Australian Politics
Hidden jobless: Welfare payments defy record low unemployment
The low unemployment rate is a mirage. It exists only because large numbers are not seeking work. During the pandemic they got used to living on the dole. Add in the dole recipients to the official unemployed and the unemployed rate is huge
Welfare payments are stuck at levels higher than before the pandemic, driven by more older, disabled and unhealthy Australians on JobSeeker, despite record low unemployment.
Anthony Albanese’s Jobs and Skills Summit next week will focus on creating new pathways via TAFE and apprenticeships to assist people off welfare and into work, but there are concerns about how long it will take to upskill Australians for available jobs.
New Department of Social Services data reveals more than 892,000 people are receiving JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (other) payments, with the average duration of a person on income support now 293 weeks.
The Australian can reveal that the proportion of mature age JobSeeker recipients increased from 18 per cent in July 2012 to 29 per cent last month. The average duration of a mature age recipient on income support is now 344 weeks.
Another challenge for the Albanese government is how best to support 41 per cent of people on JobSeeker payments who have a partial capacity to work. About 22 per cent of unemployed Australians report average earnings of $774 a fortnight.
After the Australian Bureau of Statistics last week revealed there were more job vacancies than unemployed people, Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said she would use the summit to help “lift workplace participation and reduce barriers” for jobseekers.
“Of the roughly 890,000 currently on JobSeeker or Youth Allowance, around 80 per cent of these are classified as long-term unemployed (on payment for more than a year), around 40 per cent have a partial capacity to work (for example, because of disability or health concerns),” Ms Rishworth told The Australian.
“Around 14 per cent are Indigenous and 18 per cent are from a culturally and linguistically diverse background.
“Indications are that these cohorts face significant barriers to entering the workforce, for a variety of reasons, and my goal is to work with participants at the summit to address how we can collectively do better at finding and securing opportunities for these people to work.”
Ms Rishworth will hold a social security roundtable this week and held a disability employment roundtable on Monday with stakeholders including Australian of the Year and Get Skilled Access founder Dylan Alcott.
She said the opportunity to provide jobseekers with access to secure work at a time of severe labour shortages must be seized.
“With such low unemployment across the board right now and employers calling out for staff, business, government and industry need to work together to make sure the right support is there to help jobseekers find and stay in work,” she said.
Compared with July last year, when the Covid-19 Delta variant was peaking, JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (other) recipients have fallen by 193,000 but they remain higher than February 2020 levels when the unemployment rate was 5.1 per cent.
While lifting the migration cap and getting more foreign workers into the country has dominated debate ahead of the summit, the Albanese government is moving to address the disconnect between the unemployed and a labour market crying out for workers.
The Prime Minister on Monday flagged that his government was determined to make sure that as many unemployed Australians were given the best opportunity to participate in the hottest labour market in decades.
“We need to look at employment services and the way they have been operating,” the Prime Minister said. “We need to make sure that no-one is left behind. And that means whatever we can do to get long-term unemployed into work with training, we need to do.
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A 24-year-old man charged with murder and torture of 5-year-old in Aboriginal community
Aborigines are notoriously hard on their children
Jason Ross Allan Fourmile, the alleged offender
QUEENSLAND Police have charged a man with murder and torture after the death of a five-year-old boy following an incident in a Far North community.
Initial findings showed that the five-year-old boy was taken to the Yarrabah Hospital with life-threatening injuries and was flown to Townsville Hospital in a critical condition at 12.30pm on Tuesday August 16.
The boy then passed away on Monday August 22.
A 24-year-old man, who was known to the boy, was arrested and charged with one count each of murder, grievous bodily harm and torture.
He has been remanded in custody to also face two counts each of assault occasioning bodily harm while armed and assault occasioning bodily harm in the Cairns Magistrates Court on Wednesday, August 24.
Detectives from Cairns CPIU have established an Incident Centre in the Cairns Police Facility with assistance from Child Trauma Unit detectives from Brisbane after being alerted of the incident.
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Unbelievable: Application to develop gas field rejected as "not in the national interest"
The new federal Environment Minister has rejected a partially Rinehart-owned company’s bid to fast-track Queensland gas fields.
A company part-owned by mining magnate Gina Reinhart has been denied a request to fast-track federal environment approvals so it can tap into undeveloped Queensland gas fields it bought at the end of 2021.
Senex, a joint venture between South Korean steel giant Posco and Reinhart’s Hancock Energy, asked the federal environment minister in March 2022 to let it develop two Queensland gas fields without going through the usual environmental approvals process.
Senex argued an exemption would be in the national interest because it would allow Senex to develop the acreage quickly, and aid Australia’s domestic gas supply and energy security issues.
An exemption request is meant to be dealt with within 20 days, but the minister at the time — Sussan Ley — did not make a decision by the deadline of April 21.
New federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, in a decision published late on Monday, said granting the exemption was not in the national interest.
“Having considered all the available information, I have decided not to grant Senex Energy’s requested exemption under the EPBC Act. I was not satisfied that such an exemption was in the national interest,” she said.
“Exempting this proposal from the requirements of the EPBC Act would not provide short-term relief to east-coast gas customers, given that gas supply from this project is at least 15 months away.
“I also understand that given the scale of the project and what is already known about the site, any assessment process under the EPBC Act is likely to be relatively straightforward.”
Senex announced last November it had entered into a binding agreement with Australia Pacific LNG to acquire two undeveloped gas fields in the Surat Basin, right next to its existing holdings.
The tenements, PL209 and PL445, were meant to have an estimated 184PJ of gas and an additional 600PJ though this needed “future appraisal”.
“Initial acquisition cost of $50 million, with a further $30 million payment upon receipt of satisfactory Commonwealth environmental approvals, funded from an acquisition bridge facility and existing cash and debt facilities,” the company stated at the time.
Senex, on August 11, announced a major $1bn expansion of its Queensland gas field, noting it would pump enough resources into the domestic market to cover 40 per cent of the state’s needs.
Chief executive Ian Davies on the day said the project had approvals for two of the three areas which required it and was working on securing the green light for the final acreage.
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Christian schools fear closure if WA discrimination laws strengthened
The peak body representing Christian schools has “grave concerns” schools will close if new laws dramatically reducing their ability to preference staff and students of faith go ahead.
Last week, Attorney-General John Quigley announced broad support for 163 recommendations to improve the state’s anti-discrimination laws following a Law Reform Commission of WA review of the outdated Equal Opportunity Act.
One of the key reforms is an “inherent requirement test” that will force religious schools to prove religious belief or activity is an essential requirement of the job.
Australian Association of Christian Schools executive officer Vanessa Cheng said that change would make it difficult for religious schools to employ staff and preference families in enrolment who shared the beliefs of the school.
“The Christian school model requires that all staff, from the principal to the music teacher, share and practice the faith of the school community,” she said. “We believe this provides the best, holistic learning environment for our students.
“Parents who choose to enrol their children in our schools want an education based on Christian values, which the state school system can no longer provide, and these changes are trying to squeeze faith out of our schools too.
“Surely it is not for the government to determine how a Christian school should be a Christian school?”
Under existing legislation it is lawful for private religious schools in WA, including those receiving taxpayer funding, to sack lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer staff, expel LGBTIQ students, and refuse to enrol children of same-sex parents.
The current law also means religious schools can discriminate against staff who are unmarried parents or living together out of wedlock.
Quigley said the new Act would bring WA into line with other jurisdictions, including Victoria, which introduced changes to its Equal Opportunity Act in June in a bid to ensure a fairer balance between the right to religious freedom and the right to be free from discrimination.
One of the key reforms in both states is strengthening equal opportunity protections for LGBTIQ staff and students in religious schools.
“Since WA’s nation-leading anti-discrimination laws were first introduced, community expectations regarding discrimination have progressed and WA now lags behind most other jurisdictions,” Quigley said.
“This is not about granting additional rights to any one group of people, but ensuring all Western Australians are free from discrimination, harassment, vilification and victimisation.
“Whilst still subject to drafting and further consideration, it is our ambition that the new Bill will achieve a balance between the rights and interests of a wide variety of Western Australians and ensure that employers are not unnecessarily burdened with complex legislation.”
But Cheng has called on the state government to push back against some recommendations. “Unless the government pushes back, it will be very difficult to operate a Christian school according to Christian principles and beliefs once they become law,” she said.
“The sign of a mature and tolerant society is allowing challenging and thought-provoking ideas in the areas of religion, science and the arts to thrive; suppressing religious expression only robs society of its diversity and richness.”
Equality Australia legal director Ghassan Kassisieh said every teacher or staff member should be confident that they are treated fairly by their employer, and judged only by their capacity to fulfil their role.
“The Law Reform Commission recommended reforms would ensure religious schools and organisations play by the same rules as others,” he said.
“By narrowing the carve-outs which currently allow discrimination against LGBTIQA+ staff, students and service users, the laws would bring the practice of religious schools and organisations in line with 21st century community expectations.”
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Fighting back against bureaucratic oppression of men and boys
Bettina Arndt
Every day, men are mown down by petty bureaucrats revelling in their feminist-bestowed power to crush ordinary blokes. With my correspondence bearing witness to the ongoing massacre, it’s a thrill to occasionally see someone take them on and win.
This week I have two stories, both of people facing injustice, who reached out to me recently for help.
One is a senior medico, working in the health bureaucracy in Queensland, who suddenly found our draconian Child Support Agency (CSA) had overnight taken half his wages to pay for a child who didn’t exist. Child support officials simply refused to believe it was a mistake, and piled on the torture, rendering him technically insolvent, potentially wrecking his credit rating and his marriage. When he first wrote to me, he was sleeping in the spare bedroom – his wife found it hard to believe that he’d never fathered this mythical son.
The other case involved a 15-year-old boy who’d been suspended from his school after a girl in his class made a bizarre allegation that, three years earlier, in the middle of a crowded classroom, he’d suddenly reached under the desk and thrust his fingers in and out of her vagina. She also claimed he repeated the process two days later.
Four months after the suspension his distressed mother wrote to me, describing the family’s fear that the school’s investigation was going nowhere, critical evidence was being ignored and their son seemed set up as the sacrificial lamb to be summarily tossed out of school to appease the alleged ‘victim’ and her followers.
After long conversations with both these troubled people, my advice was similar. Take them on. Go in all guns blazing, right to the top of the food chain, armed with substantial threats about guaranteed severe consequences if they failed to address the issue properly.
It worked. Both issues have been resolved. It took three days for the medico to have his income restored, his confiscated money paid back, and the garnishee notice removed. He even received a groveling email from a very senior bureaucrat who wrote: ‘I would like to unreservedly apologise for the Agency’s errors and the frustration you experienced in having the errors corrected.’ That’s worth framing, isn’t it? The perfect badge of honour to hang on a toilet door.
Amazingly, the teenage boy has been welcomed back to school. His accuser is now being home-schooled, claiming she doesn’t feel safe back in class. We suspect she’s simply embarrassed that her allegations failed to stack up. The boy’s parents are relieved but still contemplating whether they will take further action.
So, the lesson is to fight back – hard. So many institutions be they government departments, bureaucracies, or schools – appear to be run by petty, anti-male bullies who can’t be bothered to ensure proper rules are being fairly applied. They prefer to target men and boys, winning brownie points from their feminist colleagues in the process. Usually, they get away with it – because we let them.
Let me tell you more about the doctor’s story – I’ll call him ‘Alan’. It came as a huge shock when this mild-mannered man checked his bank account and discovered half his salary had been held back. He quickly learned the culprit was the CSA which has the power to garnish wages.
Alan then suffered through a two-hour phone call with someone we will call Owen, a smug child support officer who assured him that it simply wasn’t true that they had the wrong man. ‘No, no, we have the right person,’ Owen assured him, giving ‘Robert’ as the name of his alleged son, explaining they proposed to garnish Alan’s wages until he’d paid off the money they claimed he owed, and adding cheerfully that they were imposing an order prohibiting international travel.
‘I can understand why men commit suicide under such circumstances,’ wrote Alan, appalled and humiliated by his treatment from this despot who simply refused to believe that he had no such child.
I consulted various knowledgeable people and was told by a child support expert that he should send a legal letter to the big boss, the Secretary of Services Australia, threatening action under CDDA (a body that compensates people for defective administration by Commonwealth agencies). She also suggested Alan should follow up with complaints to the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner over the alleged lack of procedural fairness and breach of privacy.
The letter to the Secretary was sent and within two days he learned he officially no longer had a child called ‘Robert’, nor a child support debt, his legal expenses would be reimbursed, and a full investigation was being made into CSA’s handling of the matter. Owen’s career advancement is not looking too healthy.
Yes, we realise this all happened because Alan was enough of a big shot to look as if he could cause real trouble, and he still could hock himself to the hilt to pay the bills for his lawyer to handle the whole thing. I have many hundreds of letters from ordinary blokes who shouted from the rooftops over the way they were treated by the CSA and similar bodies, all to no avail. Men who spent their last dollar and then some on lawyers and got nowhere. Many are now totally destitute. I talked recently to a disabled man living in a rotting boat on the Queensland coastline, who has just such a dreadful story.
But the fact remains that many people don’t seize the reins when they find themselves being terrorised by these bureaucrats. And if they do employ a lawyer, they often end up with pen-pushers who are lazy, inept, or afraid of rocking the boat.
When the mother of the suspended 15-year-old boy first contacted me, the family had employed a lawyer who was supposed to find a way of stopping their son from being thrown under the bus. But the school was stalling and the boy’s prospects didn’t look good.
The school claimed to be conducting an investigation into the girl’s allegations but hadn’t interviewed the two teachers present in the classroom when the girl was apparently being fingered. There was a critical sexy Snapchat conversation allegedly written by the boy which featured perfect grammar and spelling – unlikely from this kid who had known learning difficulties. The accuser had another Snapchat account where she attempted to solicit dick pics from boys, including their son, in order to blackmail them but that never seems to have been investigated by the school. So much potential evidence is being ignored. It did, however, provide good reason for the parents to fear their son was being framed.
It wasn’t hard to find a way of forcing a resolution. Luckily the boy was in a private school, with a school board full of fat cats who wouldn’t be at all keen on their fancy school attracting adverse publicity over a sordid lawsuit about an alleged sexual assault in one of their classrooms.
We arranged for the parents to instruct their lawyer to approach the school board, informing them they were planning legal action over the case. When members of the board learned where this was all heading, suddenly the parents were summoned to the school and told their son was welcome to return. They were informed there was insufficient evidence to determine the truth of the allegations. ‘We are angry, damaged, and exhausted,’ wrote the mother, explaining to me how relieved she was to have her son back in the classroom, a clear signal that the girl’s presumed lies had gone nowhere.
And perhaps also a message to the school that they can’t always assume they can just ride roughshod over the rights of boys, responding to dubious claims from girls who may not be nearly as innocent as they make out.
That’s what we need. More people refusing to sit back and take it. Parents to start yelling loudly about the presumption that girls don’t lie and boys are expendable.
More committed, activist lawyers are willing to go that extra mile to ensure fair treatment for male clients.
It would be great to have more support networks to guide people through these battles, planning strategies, finding the right contacts, helping them pick the right lawyers, and ensure they do their jobs. Please get in touch if you have the time and skills to be an occasional cheer squad for men and boys who are being kicked to the kerb.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/fighting-back-4/ ?
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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