Binge drinking and street fighting are baffling authorities, but should we really be so surprised? Two generations of disadvantaged males have failed to fit orthodox economic rationalist theory, with no Plan B in sight. They have become outsiders in their own country, while experts' early warnings of a social tinderbox went unheeded.
Sue Richardson, Professor of Economics at Flinders University, has charted labour market trends for men throughout the present lopsided boom. In 1978, only about 20 per cent of single Australian males aged 35-44 lacked secure full-time employment. By 2003, this had blown out to 35 per cent. Richardson has long predicted grave social consequences, as did Tony Nicholson, Executive Director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, in 2004.
While the Howard Government boasted of record employment growth, data from the Workplace Research Centre tells a fuller story: 87 per cent of new jobs created in the 1990s boom paid under $26,000; around half paid under $15,600.
Australia's battlers were further assailed as a social security tradition unbroken from Menzies to Keating was radically commandeered for the Howard Government's tilt at the 2001 and 2004 elections. Families with dependent children received the most welfare support (35 per cent in 2005), although their numbers had been declining for a decade.
Conversely, age pensioners' share fell 4.6 per cent to 31 per cent, despite their swelling ranks. Unemployment and disability support accounted for only 25.4 per cent, up from 24.8 per cent, although the numbers locked out of the boom were soaring.
Criticism of middle-class welfare and pork-barrelling, at the expense of the disadvantaged, flowed like water off a duck's back. The poor became outsiders even in the welfare system, and were heavily policed for fraud.
In zealous, ideological pursuit of a 'level playing field', working class jobs were abolished, exported to cheap labour countries, or reinvented on pitifully low pay. Safety nets were snipped. A swathe of marginalised, unemployed and low paid men was created, even as John Howard claimed Australians had never been better off.
These men were locked out of the marriage market by their unattractive socio-economic status; or, if partnered, were statistically more likely to divorce or separate, creating a 'failed family'.
Should we expect second-generation, disenfranchised young people from ruptured and distressed homes to be quietly prospering? 'Losers' in a world where 'winners' take all, these youths have little hope of a job, or even a rented home. Conventional 'success'