unemployment

Australian employer groups frequently claim that a strong ‘skilled’ migration program is required to overcome perceived labour shortages – a view that is shared by Australia’s state and federal governments. However, the available data does not support their assertions.

Luci Ellis, Assistant Governor of the Reserve Bank (Economic), is very pro immigration. Some have wondered whether she may be making the running on this question behind the scenes more than is Philip Lowe, the Governor. Recent migrants may be somewhat more likely to hold degree-level qualifications than locals but this does not mean that their professional qualifications are well suited to the Australian labour market. (We should also ask ourselves, what is it about the Australian education system that makes Australians less likely than some immigrant streams to hold degree-level qualifications?)

Migration is hardly a solution to world poverty and conflict, but the mainstream media predictably push this line. Even the Guardian, for all its purported democratic values, continuously pushes for open borders without disclosing that these also facilitate a right-wing agenda for cheap imported labour sources and the crushing of local industry and employment. Its recently issued 'special report' entitled, "Hardline Australia, confused Scandinavia and tense Russia: the global immigration picture" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/hardline-australia-confused-scandinavia-and-tense-russia-the-global-immigration-picture has been described as 'an appalling, if predictable, piece of propaganda."

Meeting 27 Nov., 2014, Seaford Community Centre, 6.30 –
8.00 pm Car parks over Community? Seaford Cabin Park houses marginalised people in around 80 units between Nepean Highway and Kananook Creek. Council plans will see people evicted from 20 of these units and possibly the closure of the entire cabin park.

The Cabin Parks sits in part on Crown land which it has leased from the Council for over 20 years. Council now wants to terminate that lease so as to create a car park. This will lead to the loss of around 20 cabins, meaning that the residents of those cabins will be displaced. The loss of the lease may even affect the viability of the entire cabin park, meaning all residents would need to find alternative accommodation.

There is very little 'social housing' available around Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula, yet Council has suggested these people could be relocated to Mornington - in an entirely different community! Assuming that such accommodation can even be found - there or anywhere else. Despite no clear justification for a car park, Council is stubbornly insisting on continuing with the eviction.

This is a huge scandal with far reaching serious National consequences and implications. The following represents my personal view on the 457 visa scandal and its ramifications. The recently exposed corruption is the last bit in the jig saw puzzle of my understanding. I cannot "prove" much of what follows, it is supposition not fact, but I believe that I am fairly close to the overall truth.

See also: Napthine complains that population growth outstrips job growth.

New Year’s Resolve from our political leaders. Are they out of touch with reality?…………See comments in Bold

Australians should enter 2014 full of optimism and willing to have a go to better their country, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says. He says the strength of the country is in its people's willingness to better their lives. 'This is the year I hope more of us than ever will have a go', he says in a new year's message.

Speaker - Bob Birrell: "'Why is immigration running at record high levels when unemployment is increasing?"

In recent months, the pathologically greedy bankers who run the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and corporations have demanded of European Governments they inflict financial misery on millions of Europeans to supposedly restore the fiscal 'health' of those economies. The measures include the reduction of government services and the sacking of public servants who provide those services.

Fed up with that austerity, dictated by bankers and other big corporations to governments that were supposedly elected to represent their best interests, people of Germany and Spain have taken to the streets in large protests and clashed with police.

In November 2012 an astonishing 47.7 million Americans were receiving taxpayer funded food stamps but the United States government still imports over 1million immigrants a year - and those are the legal ones.

The Australian Nursing Federation (Victorian Branch) called on Health Minister David Davis to urgently direct public hospitals to increase their intake of recently graduated nurses from Australian universities after it was revealed 805 nursing and midwifery graduates have missed out on a graduate year place next year. Up to 40% of local graduate nurses and midwives are excluded from employment in our hospitals. Shamefully, hospitals are importing foreign nurses and denying locally born and trained nurses an entry year as graduates (often referred to as an intern year).

There has been another sizable drop in employment. Greedy employers continue to put out claims that there is a terrible shortage of labour in Australia, because they know that the larger the pool of unemployed the less the market rate for labour will be. (Also, by pushing up immigration on the false plea that we are short of labour, they hope for more customers, more extreme house prices, and other changes by which the big fish benefit over the small.)

Australia's population is now rising by a million every three years. It used to grow by only 200,000 a year. The increase has not been driven by natural increase, refugees or family reunions. It has been driven by an increase in skilled migration from 24,000 in 1996 to over 100,000 now. (Kelvin Thomson - Member for Wills electorate, Victoria, Australia)

Back on May 17th, 2010 I wrote an article on CanDoBetter entitled 'Australia's growing underclass'. The article came out of my personal exposure to months of abject unemployment forcing me, out of respect for my family, to humbly to walk into CentreLink. To my disgust, since I was not in absolute starvation-poverty CentreLink rejected my claim for temporary unemployment benefits. Only thanks to my broader family we didn't come close to losing our house. This article also contains a very interesting response from Dr Jim Saleam of the Australia First party about accusations of a Nazi past.

To be unemployed is to not have a job.
In the traditional sense, a real job is a permanent full-time job.

But government measures of unemployment have been watered down so much so that the unemployment rate excludes so many people in order to make the statistic portray the economy better than it really is. Governments get savagely criticised in the media for high unemployment rates because government is regarded by the people as an outcome of how the government is running the economy. So if the published unemployment rate is low, government economic performance looks good.

So many of our manufacturing industries have disappeared overseas, that opportunities for training and apprenticeships are limited, despite the provisions of vocational training at TAFES.
Why should we be having an immigration program to address skill shortages when we should be developing a better educational and training framework that produces and exports our own skilled workforce?

We've been publicising political alternatives in Australia, notably parties which promise to fight population growth. Another party that wants a sustainable population is The Australia First Party (not to be confused with the New Australia Party). It also wants to abolish multiculturalism. Australia First cops a lot of flack, but it also attracts the low-income people in our society who carry the biggest loads in terms of the costs of population growth. Here is an article from a member of Australia First about fronting up to the dole office. Anyone who has had to do this in the past few years will understand the sentiments. See also other political alternatives for a small population.

Why is it that Australia's unemployed number 611,000 in March 2010 just gone, while thousands of unskilled jobs are being filled by new immigrants? Invariably, taxis in the capitals cities are driven by new migrants and how many taxis do we have?

It is an historical phenomenon, common to all Western nations, but also to any nation, which is perceived by the outsider as offering more opportunities for survival than its own. The whole world is a common, a place of free exchange for hungry and dispossessed people. Most of us are concerned with our land-base, our nation, our corner, which seemed secure and where we had the illusion of absolute control. We do not see the wood for the trees.