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Keywords: Employment

  • AUSTRALIA

    Building constitutional bridges: In conversation with Frank Brennan

    • David Halliday
    • 28 June 2024

    It's been eight months since the Voice referendum, and people are starting to grapple with what its defeat means for Australia. There are few voices in Australia as qualified to conduct a postmortem of the outcome of the Voice referendum campaign as Frank Brennan. We examine what lessons can be learned and crucually, whether there’s reason for hope for Indigenous constitutional recognition.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sorry Days for reconciliation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 May 2024

    This Reconciliation Week and Sorry Day, we consider the defeat of the Referendum and the substantial failure to close the gap between the living conditions of Indigenous Australians and other Australians. It means that for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, this week will be less about days of celebration than of grief and of grim resolve to continue to seek justice.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope against the machine

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 May 2024

    When Pope Francis delivered a message for the World Day of Social Communications, he focused on AI. The pope posed a wide range of questions including how to regulate its development and use in order to avoid the manipulation of truth and the inevitable centralisation of wealth and power.

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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

    '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

    Remembering the people represented by a percentage point

    • Joshua Lourensz, Vin Martin
    • 15 May 2023
    2 Comments

    Budget papers reveal an expected rise in the unemployment rate from 3.5 per cent to 4.25 per cent by June 2024. While the increase is portrayed as modest, it translates to an additional 144,900 people becoming unemployed. The focus must remain on the human stories behind the numbers during this uncertain period of economic recovery.

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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

    Beyond deserving and undeserving: Shifting perspectives on welfare

    • Joe Zabar
    • 31 January 2023
    1 Comment

    A welcome development in the Albanese government's reform agenda is the newly established Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee to examine the obligation placed upon governments to provide employment. While the principle of a job guarantee is essential to any social security reform, so too is the attitude we hold towards those who access welfare. 

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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

    Civil disagreement on a hill

    • David Halliday
    • 10 October 2022

    Last week, in a pluralistic and diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-faith society, a person was considered ill-fitting for employment, not because of their track record, but because of their outward association with a mainstream religion.

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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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  • ECONOMICS

    What will rising interest rates mean for wealth inequality?

    • David James
    • 01 March 2022
    3 Comments

    Australia’s Reserve Bank mainly concentrates on keeping inflation within an acceptable range and maintaining a high level of employment. Social equity has never been considered to be part of its mandate. It should be. Interest rates have been the biggest cause of economic and social division in Australia, not just between rich and poor, but also between older and younger generations. 

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