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If you walked into a public service office in the early 1980s, you'd see typing pools, mailrooms and whole floors full of people doing routine clerical work. People with disabilities were disproportionately employed in low level positions. Today, most of those positions have gone.
Recently I received an email from a young man in Queensland. He was writing to thank the St Vincent de Paul Society for the stance it takes on the side of people who are demonised for being unemployed. He told me his story. Here are some bits of it.
The Government has crafted a historic package of reforms: driving long-run reductions in carbon pollution, simplifying personal tax and making it fairer, and reducing poverty traps and barriers to work. It's exactly the kind of smart and gutsy approach we want to see from this Government.
The 2011 wage review occurred 120 years after the release of the papal document Rerum Novarum, which had a significant impact on the development of Australian minimum wage-setting. The minimum wage provisions of the current Fair Work Act cannot be regarded as a success.
The Budget contains a number of positive measures to promote mental health, employment and training. But without greater investment in individualised support for job seekers and those on disability support pensions to assist their transition to work, we are not likely to see major change.
The current kind of content-free campaigning, appealing to popular biases and stereotypes, has real consequences for the social services sector and the people they serve.
If a 'fiscally responsible Budget' can increase spending on Australia's representatives in elite sports by $237 million, it is hard to imagine that there is not room somewhere for our unemployed to eat a little better.
'Poverty alleviation is a national goal that should be financed by the national government,' argues the Henry report. This sentence cuts through years of evasion and obfuscation. Poverty is back on the agenda, and it's the Federal Government's responsibility.
Rudd Labor's first Budget last year seemed to indicate a turn towards a fairer Australia. After the scripted theatre of pre-budget leaks, secure lock-ups and dazzling announcements are stripped away, the 2009–10 Budget indicates we may be waiting for a long time yet.
The transition from school to work or study is harder now than it has been since the recession "we had to have" in 1990.
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