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Author: John Falzon

  • AUSTRALIA

    Imagine what you could be legislating instead

    • John Falzon
    • 19 September 2024

    We should not be surprised at the persistence of gambling advertising. We are confronted by a federal government that appears to be stubbornly protective of certain private interests while wanting to appear to also be concerned about the harm to the community that is caused by the promotion of those interests.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Neither seen nor heard

    • John Falzon
    • 30 May 2024

    In a signature essay published last year in The Monthly, Treasurer Chalmers staked out an ideological terrain he described as ‘values-based capitalism.’ The Budget 2024 is quite the big reveal on what those values include and who they exclude. In it, the people who have borne the brunt of inequality and precarity are neither seen nor heard. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    From public good to private gain: The failure of employment services

    • John Falzon
    • 14 December 2023
    4 Comments

    No doubt there were some who genuinely believed that privatising  employment services would result in better services at a lower cost to the public purse. But the engineers of the socially destructive projects of the neoliberal era knew very well that they were more likely to result in the enrichment of some to the detriment of many.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Changing the housing story

    • John Falzon
    • 21 September 2023
    3 Comments

    In the face of Australia's pressing housing crisis, is the solution merely a question of funds, or does it demand a deeper overhaul? Many are calling for a transformed government role, one that abandons the shackles of neoliberalism, prioritises social infrastructure, and champions the collective good over select interests.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bricks n' Oughta

    • John Falzon
    • 18 July 2023
    5 Comments

    Amid Australia's unprecedented housing crisis, there's an urgent need for  increases in social housing. However, political wrangling hampers the progress of crucial legislation. With 640,000+ Australians facing housing stress, advocates stress the need for immediate action as a starting point towards comprehensive reform that treats housing as a basic human right.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'They think we're rubbish': Life on welfare in Australia

    • John Falzon
    • 06 July 2023
    9 Comments

    Dr. Eve Vincent's book, 'Who Cares? Life on Welfare in Australia', provides an in-depth exploration of the intricate dance between power, control, and social policy, unearthing unsettling truths about our society's inherent power structures. This discourse further underscores the urgent need for a radical reimagining of our socio-economic systems.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's time we ended politically induced poverty

    • John Falzon
    • 23 March 2023
    11 Comments

    As jobseeker payments are indexed for inflation, increased payments are still well below the minimum wage and age pension. With successive neoliberal governments dismantling social infrastructure, people living in poverty have little means of escape. Poverty is not a personal choice but a political one.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Australian housing crisis: A Roundtable

    • David Halliday, Peter Mares, John Falzon, Nicola Nemaric, Rae Dufty-Jones
    • 18 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Despite rising interest rates and the recent dip in property values, Australia’s housing situation places it among the least affordable property market in the world. With a rise in homelessness and younger Australians locked out of an inflated housing market, what is the way forward for Australia? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Those with the least are still expected to do the most in the face of inflation

    • John Falzon
    • 31 October 2022
    3 Comments

    In the first Chalmers budget we see a firm, albeit modest, assertion of the role of government in the long-term project of exiting the dismal and destructive era of neoliberalism and incrementally creating, in its place, a society where we have the collective resources to care for eachother, our planet and ourselves.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Laying the foundations for an economy that works for people: the Jobs Summit challenge

    • John Falzon
    • 29 August 2022
    2 Comments

    While the Jobs Summit does not signal the end of neoliberalism, it does signal a political willingness by the Albanese government to begin an inclusive, deliberative process for healing some of the wounds that have been inflicted on ordinary people through the accumulation of superprofits on the one hand and cuts to real wages and the dismantling of social infrastructure on the other.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    All that is solid melts into air

    • John Falzon
    • 20 January 2022
    7 Comments

    Social security payments were once seen as a means of preventing poverty, not prescribing it. A job was once seen, at least for some, as being not only the best guarantee against poverty but the path to economic security. Now it seems, however, multiple jobs are required to stave off poverty.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Best of 2021: Homelessness is caused not by poverty but by wealth

    • John Falzon
    • 04 January 2022
    7 Comments

    When you put rising housing costs alongside stagnating wages, an alarming trend in normalising insecure work, persistent unemployment and underemployment, and statutory incomes that are going backwards in real terms, there’s good reason to be deeply worried about an increase in homelessness.

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