Mucking in the social swamp

Yesterday it was - You don’t have to be nuts, but…. I did more research and became more depressed. The facts, the researched facts, are more horrid than I could have imagined. But then today, courtesy of the Melbourne Age I was set on yet another path: 'Razor gang' calls for ideas

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner is inviting ideas from the public, saying yesterday that the Government's "razor gang" had started looking for a second round of cuts, targeting the processes and programs of government. He said there were always pressures for new spending, and "we would welcome any suggestions or savings proposals from anybody in the general community".

Oh I had an idea, something that has been annoying me and others for years, so I started on another research trip. Even though unemployment is an economic tool, expanded and contracted according to need, governments still make victims of the unemployed.

Australia has a very low ‘official’ unemployment rate at the moment, approaching the historically acceptable historic unemployable figure of 2%. But at the same time we are paying somewhere around $1 billion to a group of commercial job placement facilitators.

First up it’s worth looking at what unemployment really means:

“Australia adopts the standard international definition of unemployment: people are unemployed if they did not work for at least one (paid) hour in the previous week, were actively seeking work and were able to accept a job in the next week if it were available.” Professor Sue Richardson

But then when we get the billion dollar spent on this ‘problem’:

Research Paper no. 15 2007–08 A review of developments in the Job Network

“Australia has enjoyed strong economic growth for over 16 years and the nation’s unemployment rate is at its lowest level in around 30 years. In this context of strong labour market conditions and a buoyant economy, job seekers with minimal barriers to employment tend to find work readily, with little or no assistance from Australia’s main employment service provider, the Job Network. Increasingly, then, the Job Network is being asked to meet the needs of difficult-to-place job seekers and the long-term unemployed. “

Talk about smoke and bloody mirrors! I am working on a submission to the Razor Gang, and even without access to the actual costing of the dubious Job Network program I’m suspecting there is more than just a half billion saving, there is a very real potential for social benefits.

Governments become so tied up in justifying their own agendas they rarely see the problems or the potential remedies for many issues. John Howard, cynically, drove a volunteer program. He called it ‘work for the dole’ (unemployment benefit). Accidentally he created a social program with some real benefits. Between volunteers and the non-profit sector in Australia there is an exciting prospect of actually focusing on the real problems.