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.

Article first published at by Unconventional Economist in Australian Economy at 12:12 am on June 10, 2019

First, while Australia’s is said to run a ‘skilled’ migration program, the Productivity Commission’s (PC) 2016 Migrant Intake into Australia report explicitly stated that around half of the skilled steam includes the family members of skilled migrants (secondary applicants), with around 70% of Australia’s total permanent migrant intake not actually considered ‘skilled’:

…within the skill stream, about half of the visas granted were for ‘secondary applicants’ — partners (who may or may not be skilled) and dependent children… Therefore, while the skill stream has increased relative to the family stream, family immigrants from the skill and family stream still make up about 70 per cent of the Migration Programme (figure 2.8)…

Primary applicants tend to have a better fiscal outcome than secondary applicants — the current system does not consider the age or skills of secondary applicants as part of the criteria for granting permanent skill visas…

Second, the Department of Jobs & Small Business produces an annual time-series tracking skills shortages across occupations, which shows that skills shortages across managerial and professional occupations were running well below the historical average and close to recessionary levels:

This matters because out of the 111,099 permanent visas handed out under the skilled stream in 2017-18, three-quarters were for professionals and managers, where skills shortages are largely non-existent, as shown above.

To add further insult to injury, the top five occupations granted visas under the skilled stream in 2017-18 were as follows:

• Accountants (3505)
• Software Engineer (3112)
• Registered Nurses (1561)
• Developer Programmer (1487)
• Cook (1257)

According to the Department of Jobs and Small Business’ list, not one of these professions was considered to be in shortage over the four years to 2017, whereas Software Engineer has never been deemed to be in shortage over the entire 31-year history of this series.

The situation is little better for Australia’s Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa system. According to the Department of Home Affairs, there were 34,450 primary visas granted in 2017-18, of which 25,620 (74%) were for professionals and managers; again where skills shortages are largely non-existent.

The failure of Australia’s so-called skilled migration program to alleviate genuine skills shortages is hardly surprising given almost any occupation is eligible, as the below list attests:

• 216 occupations are eligible for the Employer Nomination Scheme visa (subclass 186)
• 673 occupations are eligible for the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (subclass 187)
• 212 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Independent Visa (subclass 189), the Temporary Graduate Visa (subclass 485), and the Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489)
• 427 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Nominated Visa (subclass 190)
• 504 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489)
• 508 occupations are eligible for the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (subclass 482).

The above lists do not require that these occupations are actually experiencing skills shortages, which means that these visas can be used by employers to access cheap foreign labour for an ulterior motive, including to avoid providing training and lowering wage costs.

Accordingly, the 2016 Senate Committee report, entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, found temporary skilled visas were “not sufficiently responsive either to higher levels of unemployment, or to labour market changes in specific skilled occupations”.

Adding to the mess, the salary floor for TSS visas has been frozen at the pathetically low level of $53,900 since 2013-14, which is $32,700 below the average full-time Australian salary of $86,600 (which comprises both skilled and unskilled workers).

Given the above, it is not surprising that actual pay levels of ‘skilled’ migrants in Australia are abysmally low.

According to the ABS’ most recent Personal Income of Migrants survey, the median employee income of migrants under the skilled stream was just $55,443 in 2013-14.

Separate ABS data revealed that Temporary Work (Skilled) visa holders earned a median income of only $59,436 in 2016.

And across all skilled visa categories, the median full-time salary 18 months after being granted the visa was $72,000 in 2016, which was below the population average of $72,900 (which again comprises both skilled and unskilled workers), according to the Department of Home Affairs.

The ABS’ latest Characteristics of Recent Migrants survey also showed that skilled migrants, and indeed all classifications of migrants, had experienced higher unemployment in 2016 than the Australian born population:

Several surveys have similarly shown that most recently arrived skilled migrants are working in areas well below their reported skill level.

For example, analysis by the Australian Population Research Institute (APRI), based on 2016 Census data, revealed that most recently arrived skilled migrants (i.e. arrived between 2011 and 2016) cannot find professional jobs. That is, only 24% of skilled migrants from Non-English-Speaking-Countries (who comprised 84% of the total skilled migrant intake) were employed as professionals as of 2016, compared with 50% of skilled migrants from Main English-Speaking-Countries and 58% of the same aged Australian-born graduates.

APRI’s results were supported by a 2017 survey from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, which found that 53% of skilled migrants in Western Australia said they are working in lower skilled jobs than before they migrated to Australia.

With this detailed background in mind, it is interesting to read that the Morrison Government has announced reforms to Australia’s permanent residency points system in a bid to ensure it is better targeted towards skilled migrants. From SBS News:

In April this year, the immigration department announced some changes to the point system. These changes will come in effect from 16 November 2019.

According to the new rule, applicants who do not have a spouse or de facto partner will get 10 points.

“Points are awarded for attributes that are linked with the applicant’s ability to make the greatest economic contribution, as the key purpose of the skilled migration program is to maximize the economic benefits of migration to Australia,” the legislation reads…

“The idea is to bring more skilled migrants and discourage unskilled partners who come with married skilled migrants.

“Married invitees with kids fill more places with non-skilled migrants and leave lesser places for skilled migrants,” says [[Immigration Expert Rohan] Mohan.

The reforms are in response to the PC’s findings (above) that half of the skilled stream is taken up by family members of skilled migrants, many of whom are unskilled.

While the changes announced are good in theory, members of the Indian community are already working out ways to game the system and skirt the rules:

[Immigration Expert Rohan] Mohan says many of his clients are waiting for November.

“People have put their marriage on hold to claim these extra points. Earlier people would get married before applying to claim five extra points on behalf of their partners. Now we can see the opposite trend”…

Dilip Kumar, an Australian visa-hopeful says these extra points will help him in a big way.

‘My IELTS score is not very high, so I am counting on the extra points,’ says Dilip who is an auto mechanic in Karnataka and preparing his application for an Australian visa.

Education and Migration agents are also advising clients on Facebook on how to fill in forms to avoid scrutiny by the Department of Home Affairs:

This kind of visa system gaming is common among applicants from India’s Sub-continent, as explained by Melbourne Indian community leader Jasvinder Sidhu, who also acknowledged “widespread… corruption from top to bottom”, with “thousands and thousands of people… being sponsored and they’re all fake”:

JASVINDER SIDHU: These people just get away. Even if they’re caught, media or otherwise through police and thing, they just go on bail and I think the system is very, very easy on these sort of things.

NICK MCKENZIE: It’s easy to rort?

JASVINDER SIDHU: Yes, very easy to rort. You have 10 ways to rort and then if the Government has one rule, you have actually 10 responses how to basically bypass those rules.

NICK MCKENZIE: The Australian Border Force has spent the last 12 months investigating criminal syndicates involved in visa rorting, but insiders say the problem is massive. One of the Immigration Department’s top officials until 2013 has now broken his silence. He says visa rorting was and is endemic and has largely been ignored by politicians focusing on the boat people issue.

Joseph Petyanszki managed investigations for the department for eight years. He wouldn’t be interviewed on camera, but has given 7.30 a statement about what he calls, “The shocking and largely unknown fraud within our working and student visa programs”. He describes a world of “shonky immigration agents” where, “fraudsters …. enter the community with ease”. He points to immigration law “loopholes”, “major integrity problems” and a department which has struggled to cope with such an, “attack on the integrity of our systems”. Petyanszki blames a, “lack of funding and politics”. He says, “It’s been easy to deflect the public’s attention to boat arrivals,” but this fear-mongering has totally ignored, “where the vast bulk of real fraud is most significantly undermining our immigration programs”…

JASVINDER SIDHU: Yes, there’s corruption from top to bottom. Thousands and thousands of people are being sponsored and they’re all fake. The whole system cannot work that smoothly if there’s no corruption in the system.

NICK MCKENZIE: Someone on the inside has to know?

JASVINDER SIDHU: Oh, yes, definitely. Even if you do a bit of overspeeding, you are caught, but this is a huge corruption – huge level of corruption and it is so widespread.

Clearly, Australia’s skilled migration program is a giant fraud that is failing miserably to meet its original intent, lowering wages, crush-loading Sydney and Melbourne, and wrecking overall liveability.

It needs root-and-branch reform, not token changes like those announced above by the Morrison Government.

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?)

She bases her position on migrants being younger on average than locals and better qualified than locals. See https://www.rba..gov.au/speeches/2017/sp-ag-2017-11-15.html

In recent years migrants may, overall, be more likely to hold degree-level qualifications than locals but this does not mean that they have professional qualifications that are well suited to the Australian labour market.

See Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy, "The Impact of Recent Immigration on the Australian Workforce," Centre for Population and Urban Research, Monash University, Melbourne, February 2013 (especially pp. 10-11). This is online at https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/birrell-healy-feb-2013.pdf.

They find that of Australian-born graduates aged 25-34 at the 2011 census, 11% had managerial positions, 58% had professional positions and 9% were not employed. (The remainder were spread across a number of other occupations including sales, drivers, labourers etc.)

Of English-speaking background-born (ESB) graduates aged 25-34 who had arrived between 2006 and 2011, 12% had managerial positions, 53% professional positions and 12% were not employed. So they were able to use their skills almost as readily as the Australian-born graduates.

But of non-English-speaking background-born (NESB) graduates aged 25-34 who had arrived between 2006 and 2011, only 4% had managerial positions, 26% had professional positions and 31% were not employed. The remainder were spread across a range of occupations including sales, drivers, labourers etc.

And NESB-born people dominate the migrant intake. For example, of the total of 201,926 overseas–born graduates aged 25-34 in 2011, and who had arrived between 2006 and 2011, 79% were NESB-born.

Thus bringing in people with paper qualifications does not necessarily mean that they are readily employable in highly skilled jobs. Whatever the source of their bias on the matter, perhaps the RBA should look at the data a little more closely.

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."

An appalling, if predictable, piece of propaganda from the Guardian.

Dr Jane Sullivan, of Sustainable Population Australia, writes

"The idea that immigrants actually might have a negative impact on native people is completely rejected, so that any ill-feeling is attributed to racism and far-right neo-nazi manipulation of the great unwashed (who are too lazy to do the work that the immigrants are doing).

No mention of population pressure at all - not in what is causing them to move, nor in the concerns of receiving countries. All immigrants are saints, all native people who don't welcome them with open arms are facists.

When the Guardian does actually refer to the size of the immigration flows, it is full of inconsistencies - China's welcoming attitude to immigrants is contrasted with the UK's meanness, having just said that China has only given 5,000 permanent residency visas since 1980!

Spain is claimed to have had a net exodus since 2010, but they give the figure of (positive) 600,000 as its net immigration for 2010-2014. The massive inflow to Spain, adding 10% to its population between 1999 and 2009, is not connected by the Guardian in any way with the massive unemployment now driving them away.

The Guardian makes a big thing of how silly it is for the Spanish to resist immigration when they have more people leaving than coming (if in fact they do), but completely rejects any idea that the Scandinavians or Australians might have justification given their high net inflow."

As for the piece on Australia, apart from greatly understating the size of our net immigration (it's been well over a million in the past 5 years, but they say 750,000), the author chides that the conversation is all about refugees and ignores the bulk of immigration, then proceeds to talk only about refugees and ignore the rest of our immigration.

Naomi Klein in This Changes Everything - good work but confusion persists

The same Guardian incoherence is to be found in the otherwise superb works of another Guardian writer and author, Naomi Klein. She writes in This Changes everything, Penguin, 2014, how international trade laws have effectively destroyed local employment and manufacturing initiatives, yet campaigns for open borders.

"One of the key provisions in almost all free trade agreements involves something called 'national treatment', which requires governments to make no distinction between goods produced by local companies and goods produced by foreign firms outside their borders. Indeed, favoring local industry constitutes illegal 'discrimination.' This was a flashpoint in the free trade wars back in the 1990s, precisely because these restrictions effectively prevent governments from doing what Ontario was trying to do: create jobs by requiring the sourcing of local goods as a condition of government support. This was just one of the many fateful battles that progressives lost in those years."

Naomi writes specifically about the contradictory impact of globalism on efforts to combat climate change, which she recognises as needing to be locally based. She is however unable or finds it unwise to criticise the same contradictions when it comes to citizens' rights to self-determination. It seems that where she comes from you can only tell so much of the truth - or perhaps this is mainly due to ignorance. After all, she has only just begun to realise how important our biophysical environment is. She can see how economic ideology conflicts with environmental health but she hasn't worked out how the politics of open borders conflict with democracy and citizens' rights.

On the issue of immigration, whilst she is vocal on Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, she apparently knows nothing of Australia's intake of vast numbers of planned invited economic immigrants in the context of changes to Australian industrial law, which now make immigrant workers a threat to local workers. Nor of how the issue of asylum seekers has been used as a wedge to prevent sensible discussion of population numbers.

"We drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, destroy worker protections, hollow out local economies, then wonder why people can't afford to shop as much as they used to. We offer those failed shoppers subprime mortgages instead of steady jobs and then wonder why no one foresaw that a system built on bad debts would collapse."

Whilst she talks about indigenous groups using their land-rights to fight against fracking and other carbon emitting processes, she also barracks for more open borders, which is antithetical to the survival of indigenous peoples and land, which is defined endogamously and territorially. She also uncritically endorses internationalist corporate 'environmental organisations' because they are 'large'. The ones she cites are known for their business models and to prioritise open borders over democracy, the conservation of natural ecologies and local self-determination - just like the capitalist globalist deregulators. It seems that, in this case, the author of No Logo, Picador, 1999, cannot tell the difference between brand names and actual products.

"As we will see, communities trying to stop dangerous oil pipelines or natural gas fracking are building powerful new alliances with Indigenous peoples whose territories are also at risk from these activities. And several large environmental organizations in the U.S. - including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the BlueGreen Alliance, and 350.org took stands in support of demands for comprehensive reform of the U.S. immigration system, in part because migration is increasingly linked to climate and also because members of immigrant communities are often prevented from defending thesmelves against heightened environmental risk since doing so could lead to incarceration or deportation."

Klein's work in This Changes Everything should not, of course, be dismissed for these failings. It is another great contribution to critical political literature.

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.

As park resident Kevin explains below, the Cabin Park provides its residents with a supportive, caring community, which they may not have the benefit of with other 'social housing' options.

Below is an open letter, which has been sent to Council by the Seaford Community Committee and the St Anne's Parish Social Justice Group (a Seaford based group). These groups have had meetings with Council staff, councillors and the owner of the Cabin park. The letter calls upon Council to leave the Cabin Park intact and instead accept a legal assurance by the owner that the Cabin Park will continue operating for another 10 years (at least). The Community Committee and the St Anne's Social Justice group have also organised a workshop on Homelessness in Frankston and has invited Councillors, including the Mayor, to attend. This invitation is attached below along with the joint policy on social housing for Frankston produced by the two community groups.

---

Mayor Cr Sandra Mayer and Councillors
Frankston City Council
PO Box 490
Frankston Vic 3199

Dear Mayor and Councillors,

Re: Seaford Beach Cabin Park

The St Anne’s Parish Social Justice Group and the Seaford Community
Committee have joined to consider local affordable housing and
homelessness in our area.

We are particularly concerned at what we understand to be the Council’s
position in regard to the Seaford Beach Cabin Park.

We have organised a public meeting on this issue to which we have
separately invited you, Mayor, to speak, and separately invited all
Councillors to attend. Council staff is of course also very welcome.
The meeting will be held at the Seaford Community Centre, 6.30 –
8.00 pm, on Thursday, 27 November.

We have made every effort to understand the issue, and have had the
benefit of the views of one Councillor and two Council officers who
have generously addressed our meetings.

The conclusions we have reached lead us to strongly believe that it is
time for an all-embracing review of this issue. We are appealing to
Council to take a fresh look at this matter.

The Seaford Beach Cabin Park appears to be well managed, and currently
fills an important need in Frankston for transitional low-cost
housing, especially for lone persons. It also provides emergency
crisis accommodation.

We can see no need at this time to resume the Crown land on which the
park is partly built. This course would lead to removal of 21 to 40
units (depending on present title boundary negotiations with DEPI),
and the eviction of up to 60 residents. This would affect everyone
at the park, and likely jeopardise its ongoing viability.

The Cabin Park is an asset to the community, not a liability. Rather
than taking action to close units, we submit that Council should (in
accordance with its Housing Strategy) be doing all it can to work
with the owner, especially as he states that he wishes to continue
this operation.

In our view, for Council to persist with its proposed course would be
very harmful to the cause of addressing homelessness in Frankston.
There appears to be a stark contrast between the provisions of the
Frankston Planning Scheme and the present proposals of the Council in
relation to the Seaford Beach Cabin Park.

We appreciate that Council has a desire to increase beachside car
parking, but there are other well-located potential foreshore
car-parking sites. There appears to be little (if any) demonstrated
need for a car park in this particular location and whatever need
there is, does not compare with the clear and urgent demand for
low-income accommodation. To prioritise a car park at the expense of
vulnerable peoples’ homes, in our view, would be incomprehensible
and harsh.

We want Seaford to be a diverse and inclusive community. We do not see
Seaford as a community where all property should be developed for the
top end of the real estate market. For communities to be viable they
need a diversity of housing options to suit the diversity of needs of
people and their families. We do not see gentrification as a
priority of the Seaford community. Our first priority is the
residents of the community, or in the words of the Seaford Local Area
Plan: "build community connectedness".

We respectfully submit the following recommendations for Council’s
consideration:

1. That Frankston Council recognises the valuable contribution of the Seaford
   beach Cabin Park, and support its ongoing contribution to affordable
   housing in the municipality:

1. Council should support the retention of the Cabin Park ownership and operation
   in its present form;

2. Even if the land-swap goes ahead, the arrangement in which the Frankston
   Council leases the public land to the Cabin Park should continue, so
   that the current operation is maintained;

3. Council should take up the offer by the owner to legally commit to the site
   being a cabin park for a minimum 10 years;

4. Council should not consider resuming the Crown land for any other purpose at
   least until such time as it undertakes its Lone Persons Households
   Strategy and other substantial measures to address the affordability
   and homelessness issues identified in the Frankston Planning Scheme and
   the Frankston Housing Strategy.

5. If Council determines to proceed with the land swap and build a car-park,
   it should strongly support the owner in his representations to the DEPI
   regarding use (lease or purchase) of the small slice of land that would
   be required to save approximately 20 units;

2. If the Council determines to build a car-park then it should (as it proposes)
   engage professionals to undertake a 'closure protocol' to find
   appropriate alternative local accommodation for residents, particularly
   for families with children at local schools, people who work locally,
   and long term residents who identify Seaford as their home.
   Accommodation options at caravan parks down the Peninsula should not be
   seen as an adequate solution to the housing needs of residents. It
   should also set aside any deadline for eviction to ensure that
   residents are given the best possible opportunity to find appropriate
   alternative accommodation.

We look forward to your response and to future correspondence with
Council regarding affordable housing.

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you require further information
concerning this issue.

Yours sincerely, On behalf of the joint Working Group on “Homelessness”

David Moloney, Chairman, St Anne’s Parish Social Justice Group

Noel M Tudball B.Bus, Chairman, Seaford Community Committee

(NB Image of cabin park sign derived from one taken by Derrick den Hollander. Reused without permission.

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.

What I think is this This scandal, has huge far reaching serious National consequences and implications. With perhaps more serious consequences that anything we have previously seen in the history of the Nation.

1. The nub of the matter: There has been serious corruption involving Department of Immigration and Border Protection(DIBC) employees. (Fact)

Question 1. Why were the allegedly corrupt perpetrators allowed to return to India (with the loot)?
Question 2. Why has there been no obvious DIBC or Government response to internal reports of serious mismanagement going back to 2008?

Further background details here http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/visa-fraud-suspects-fled-after-wiring-1m-overseas-20140807-3dbmu.html and below http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/journalists-uncover-rampant-visa-fraud/5657050

This corruption does not come as a total surprise to me (or to DIBC). Corrupt procedures in the immigration industry have become almost standard procedure within the industry, and an essential and an accepted component of attaining the immigration numbers required. This is compounded by the impossibility of enforcing any compliance measures. In short, there has been tacit acceptance of corruption to further immigration goals. This is the problem.

I am suggesting that DIBC and this Government wish to close down publicity and Public discussion of this issue. (The previous Labour Government was equally culpable, and therefore they can be expected to support any cover up measures). Both major Parties have had involvement in misusing and abusing the immigration system for their own narrow advantage, mainly political, and over many years (decades), in ways which they would prefer the Public not to know about. (a more serious version of the recent Labour Government approach to HSU fraud and corruption issues).
This misuse may be of the types exemplified by the Slipper/Comcar/winetour or the Labour mates/Obeid/NSW Coal mine licences, (which though serious are fairly inconsequential in the long term, however they do set the tone) . Or they may be more serious, such as those they would be individually be held to account for, if matters became public, say through a Public or Judicial inquiry. Governments will avoid this at all costs (as with the HSU and Liberal party cash donation issues).

Put simply, I believe that there has been widespread political misuse and abuse of the immigration system mainly for political ends; but possibly also for other corrupt reasons, including financial corruption.

A test of Government intentions and its integrity will be whether there is a purposful response to obvious corruption within the Public Service. Similarly, whether the current 457 visa integrity Review (http://www.immi.gov.au/pub-res/Pages/reviews-and-inquiries/skilled-visa-programme.aspx) will address the corruption issue, and Government's possible response to this.

2. How did the current situation arise?

I suggest this started in about the mid to late nineteen eighties , when population boosting by immigration was introduced by PM Hawke (in 1985, after about 2 years in office) to boost immediate economic growth, (1989 had the highest immigration number since the World War). It is possible that Hawke was unaware of the longer term implications of his actions, but I doubt that his advisors (Treasury and the Public Service) were unaware. Perhaps, he was advised to ignore the long term consequences. Similarly the case with PM Fraser and the Vietnamese Boat people issue of the 1970's. Perhaps his only thoughts were "humanitarian".

Perhaps our Leaders were like that.

But once embarked on this National growth trajectory it became self perpetuating. (see also references below.)
This informal policy was picked up and enlarged by PM Howard (assisted by the resources boom) and later by PM Rudd (Big Australia) Governments.

It was a magic pudding policy, wherby benefits could be obtained ( and prizes bestowed) at no immediate, or only minor short term, cost. The perfect political formula. Since the major fiancial and social costs would be delayed for many years eg infrastructure and health/age care. Thus all the major costs were medium to long term and would be carried by others in the future (pass the parcel), and could safely be ignored in the short term.

The "magic pudding" approach was only achieved because of a refusal to conduct essential economic analysis and risk asessment. There was no critical examination of the justifications. Successive Governments, Ministries and Departments and the Media (including our fearless ABC) have done everything possible to avoid essential analysis; in fact they have impeded and disrupted analysis, partly through using selective inquiries, with predetermined conslusions and favourable terms of reference.

This approach has been very successful, aided by energy surpluses and low energy costs at the time, (boosting productivity), and apparently cost free in the very short term.

This process was supported and promoted by the overwhelming power, dominance and influence of the combined business/media (a Business/Government/Murdoch/ ABC/media combination) gives pro growth policies an unstoppable and huge advantage. Most of these parties obviously or indirectly stood to gain from this growth.

Unfortunately this developed into a ponzi immigration scheme, simply because once started the scheme had to be maintained at levels sufficient to maintain its limited benefits and avoid its disadvantages.

In the process, and as an adjunct to this, Governments have allowed, perhaps encouraged, DIBC to become an immigration factory, and not an impartial Public Service Department to safeguard the Public interest. In fact quite the opposite. This process has incidentally created the perfect conditions for official corruption.

An early example of political abuse of the system might be the actions of Liberal Politician Philip Ruddock who as a backbencher, and later as a Minister, managed to persuade immigration Authorities to boost Lebanese migration into his electorate. Possibly his main intention was for a political advantage ( 'buying' loyalty) in a marginal electorate, but allegations of financial corruption also were raised later in respect of "payments" for visas.

About 9 million people (60% increase) have been added to the population since 1980 (14.6 Million)much of this by immigration.

Thus about half the national wealth (eg Resources and existing infrastructure) has been given away in that time to overseas persons, with a further 50 % to be given away in the next 20 years or so. Incredible. So that in a period of about 50 years about 75% of the original total of National wealth (eg. resources and infrastructure) will have been distributed to overseas citizens. And for what?

Many of these new persons are now approaching retirement or old age with major cost implications for health, welfare and aged care services. This financial burden will become increasingly unaffordable in its present form. ( The Treasurer and PM are aware of this, hence the budget panic).

The Australian Public are not blameless in this, but most have been indoctrinated into new thinking; many have apparently done well from the situation, unfortunately most believe that it can go on forever and that they can hold onto their gains forever. Sadly not.

Many put too much store in the honesty of Government, and the Public Service and our Media.

Unfortunately the media, including the ABC (the last bastion), was so busy dancing to the Government tune that they forgot why they existed.

3. What are the consequences?

Well, firstly all the local benefits were for short term gains (mainly political) or to the overseas migrant beneficiaries of these actions.

However, the national consequences are long term. All Australians will be affected, not just for 10's of years, but for 100's of years and possibly for millenias ahead, by, for example, huge public expenditures as yet unacknowledged, a broken economy and intergenerational poverty and misery.

Poulation growth now appears to be uncontrollable, for political and economic reasons. Regarding the political reasons, too much power has been conceded to interest groups and marginal electorate minorities). Governments might like to do something, but the Public and interest groups, will not allow it, ( eg the current situation where even modest budget changes are impossible).

To change the current rate of population growth and immigration levels to the levels required in the shortest possible time frame, would seriously affect the whole economy and the immediate loss of some industries (eg Overseas Education, which would collapse overnight without a favourable PR Based visa system , Shopping Centres and Retail shopping, and City Unit Development). I cannot think of a single Industry that will not be impacted. I cannot see any Government choosing, or being allowed, to do this.

So they, and we, are doomed if they do, and doomed if they don't.

The best we can hope for is modest amelioration; any actions are 20 to 30 years too late for even modestly positive outcomes. The die is cast, irrevocably.

On any sensible assessment, Australia will find its current population overload impossible to manage into the future, in every way imaginable. (eg principally Food, Climate and Energy security; employment, education, health, welfare being secondary problems). Risk Factors such as cultural diversity and security will also be relatively minor issues in the overall problem, but will become totally unaffordable and unmanageable in any conventional sense.

References

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/populationpuzzle/immigration.html and book: Critical years in immigration

https://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-secure-australian-maritime-jobs

This is not a campaign based on racism or xenophobia but a campaign to ensure we have the same right as workers in every country - the right to work. Abbot has used secrecy, force and deception to stop starving refugees desperate to come to Australia for a better life but has opened the door for employers to fly in foreign workers to take our jobs.

Unless we stop these bad laws, Australian labour will be locked out of the offshore sector (both marine and construction). Tony Abbot will not stop there. He will continue to de-regulate the labour market in other sectors of the economy including stevedoring, construction, transport, manufacturing and hospitality.

The MUA are encouraging workers (regardless of what union they are in or whether they are in a union) to sign the petition. In addition, the MUA is encouraging members to get politically active to ensure we have a political voice to protect our sovereign right to work in this country. Members who want a career in the maritime industry should contact the Branch and request an ALP form so they can join the maritime branch of the Australian Labour Party. We need to ensure that we get a voice in parliament to protect our job security, pay and conditions.

It is important that you circulate this petition to workmates, friends and family. The only thing that will defeat us is complacency.

In Struggle

Chris Cain
MUA WA Branch Secretary

The move is decidedly contrary to the interests of Australia’s population, which their government is supposed to represent. Australia now has 728,600 people unemployed according to January ABS figures, a rate of 6% up from 5.8% in December. These figures do not include the underemployed who, if they work more than one hour a week are not classified as unemployed. Unemployment and underemployment are rising, but numbers of persons in employment remain steady although Australia's population rises by about 1.8% in a year. This situation hardly justifies making it easier for employers to import excess labour.

The increased population growth due to immigration to Australia, of which skilled migration is the largest category, carries many costs. It places stress on and causes inflation of prices for accommodation, infrastructure and services, including scarce power and water resources. This inflation and stress affects the supply and affordability for the incumbent population as well as for immigrants.

Australian government pouring Australia down the drain

It seems that the Australian government is simply pouring Australia as an entity down the drain. The government seem to have completely lost sight of their responsibilities in this matter.

It is in fact the responsibility of governments to provide an interface or buffer between capital and labour, in the current economic paradigm.

The profit imperative of big business in a neo-liberal world means that business pays no attention to the issues mentioned, is out for itself, and hell-bent on clawing an advantage out of the mix of public resources available to it.
It is the government’s job to temper this and to protect the Australian people. Closures of car factories in Victoria – Ford (in 2016) and Holden and Toyota (in 2017) will be very hard on the workers who lose their jobs, on their families and on the communities where they spend their money. This seems to be the proverbial 'no brainer’ that Australians need to be catered for in Australia's job market. If Australians are unsuitable for jobs here, why would people imported over 1000s of Kilometers, sight unseen, be more suitable?

It is interesting that in water-starved West Australia, the population growth rate has recently varied between a whacking 3.7% and the current huge 3.3%, thanks to Enterprise Migration Agreements with mining operators such Gina Rinehart. Workers are imported to lay pipes for gas companies, to spray water to settle dust in iron ore operations and for other laboring functions. According to the rules, these 457 workers must find more work within 4 weeks of a job ending. If they work one hour a week that enables them to stay - but how do they support themselves?

They then must rely on any charity and goodwill around them like other unemployed people. This is hardly a contribution to Australia’s economy!

The same observer, who has spoken to young people from Europe in West Australia, reports that that Australia is very attractive to European youth, as, being a commodity economy, the impact from the Global Financial Crisis has been delayed. These young Europeans come to Australia as students, and after completing or during a short course, move into the workforce – as waiters or cooks, for instance. If they are lucky enough to get sponsorship, they can then stay. This is a happy ending for the young person but what about Australia’s youth?

The other section of the workforce to be concerned about is the over 45s, many of whom find it difficult to get another job after losing one, even if extremely well qualified.

MP Kelvin Thomson wrote in Dec 2013:

“We are now being told that the jobless rate will rise within about 18 months to 6.25% from the current 5.8%, and stay there through to the end of 2016-17!"

We seem to be well on the way with the government giving the situation a big helping hand.

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.

No problem there. 1.8% more every year is what Liberal, Labor and Greens are ensuring using a policy "by stealth; without consensus". Does the additional cost of supporting those additional people exceed the ability of economic growth to pay for it? Will we "have an indebted go" while our economy tanks according to Tony Abbott? Where's the due diligence to back up the strategy of extreme population growth?

'We'll start new businesses, we'll build new houses, we'll undertake further study, make investments and plan a future.
'May we all be nearer to our best selves in 2014, government included.'

Using debt, debt, debt and more debt?

In 2014 the country will start commemorating the centenary of Anzac - which falls in 2015 - and begin a conversation about a referendum to recognise indigenous people in the constitution.

Why recognise indigenous people if we don't also recognise, and show respect for, their sustainable population management policy which lasted over 50,000 years before we dispossessed them using extreme population growth? Isn't that dispossession still evolving at maximum speed?

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said he and Labor would spend the next year fighting for Australians' jobs and making sure the government sticks to its election promises.

I note from the Vote Compass data that Bill wants population growth to exceed 2012’s 1.8% per annum. Yet the ABS reports that unemployment has been increasing by an average of 2.3% per annum for the last decade. Great idea Bill; but how does this work? To be fair, looking at the changes from one year to the next can be misleading. People reach retirement age, economic activity rises and falls, etc.... So looking at a decade gives a longer term average. In the last decade, two of the largest two-year leaps in unemployment occurred in December 2009 (165,500) and December 2013 (92,100). Over those two year periods migration was about 585,000 and 387,000 respectively. The ratios of leap in unemployment to migrant arrivals were roughly 28% and 24% respectively. They look similar don't they? This is roughly one in four, which is an average family of four with one wage earner becoming unemployed for every family of four arriving. The trend in the total number of unemployed fluctuates, but is always upwards. Stating unemployment as a percentage is political manipulation, because it doesn't quantify the magnitude of the humanitarian problem. Has the government ever evaluated the relationship between migrant arrivals prior to economic slowdowns and the step changes in unemployment that follows? Is this a new Key Performance Indicator relevant to population growth management? Don't ask me; ask Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten !!

Australia will be rewarded by its resilience, hard work and the creativity of its people in the new year, opposition leader Bill Shorten says.

Does resilience mean pumping up the economy with rapid population growth so it booms forever and never busts? Is that why we had high interest rates driven by a surge in demand while the rest of the world dropped interest rates during the GFC? Did that contribute to making our dollar high and our manufacturing industry uncompetitive? Great idea Bill; but how does this work?

He says keeping people in work will be among the biggest challenges the country faces in 2014.

OK; got that.

'For all of us, the new year presents a renewed opportunity to focus on the things that really matter - our families, our community and our nation's future,' he said in a statement.

'The kind of job losses that occurred towards the end of 2013 can't be allowed to happen again this year.'

They’ve been happening for a decade, Bill. Isn’t 2.3% the averaged increase in unemployment per annum, compounding from 2003 to 2013, a decade? We have 26% more seasonally adjusted unemployed than a decade ago. The trend is up; and the yearly fluctuations will continue.

To confront these challenges the nation's resolve must be durable and unwavering, he said.

What does that mean? Unwavering denial of the unsustainability of extreme population growth regardless of consequences? A durable, unwavering policy "by stealth; without consensus"?

'We must continue to fight for the fair go and ensure every Australian has the opportunity to reach their full potential - through education, proper health care or a hand when they need it most,' he said.

A fair go for who, exactly? How? By refusing to perform a comparative analysis of the social, environmental, economic and humanitarian consequences (both domestic and international) of a range of Australian long term population growth rates; using zero population growth as the Base Case benchmark?

'No matter what is ahead of us, I know our nation will continue to be rewarded by the resilience, hard work and creativity of its people.

……..and the short term, unsustainable policies of our pro-growth dictatorship in collaboration with the Liberals and the Greens?

Please sign and forward this petition if you think these guys have lost the plot:

http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/australia-requires-a-public-inquiry-to-determine-a-basis-for-the-optimum-rate-of-population-growth-2

If you're in the electorate of Griffith, consider voting for the Sustainable Population Party so they can "have a go" representing over 50% of the population who reckon this issue needs to be addressed.

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

Sustainable
Population Australia ,

Victorian and
Tasmanian branch

 

Annual
General Meeting and election of
office bearers

 

2.00p.m. Saturday
July 20^th  2013

 

Guest Speaker:  Dr. Bob Birrell:

Monash University Centre for Population and Urban
Research

 

'Why is immigration running at record high levels when
unemployment is increasing?

 

 

Venue
details: 336
Whitehorse Rd

Balwyn VIC 3103, Australia

Tram number:109

Melway ref: 46E8

 

Contact: Jill Quirk
– 95097429   [email protected]

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.

This was reported on the 7.00PM ABC news bulletin of 2 June 2013 (emphasis added):

The report went on to put the justification given by the European Governments:

Ordinary Germans and Spaniards have not accepted this excuse by greedy bankers and their government glove puppets to impose an economic recession and destroy their livelihoods and have taken to the streets in protest.

According to on ABC report, Is microeconomic reform on its way back? of 29 May 2013 Australia Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is hinting that he may well also find excuses to slash and burn government services should he be elected to Government on 14 September. He will consider reviving the Hilmer report of 1992-94 which made it obligatory for state and federal governments to privatise assets and services.

Below are reports from Russia Today of the protests of 2 June 2013 in Germany and, before that, of 31 May.

Frankfurt riot police charge into marching Blockupy activists, scuffle with protesters

Activists of the anti-globalist Blockupy movement scuffled with dozens of riot police who charged into a marching crowd to disperse protesters, reports RT's Peter Oliver. The march has been reportedly stopped.

What was supposed to be a march through the middle of German's financial capital by anti-austerity demonstrators really lasted only about 500 meters, when several hundred riot police in full kit came among the crowd.

The protesters started throwing paint-filled objects at the police so puddles of paint are here and there, RT's Peter Oliver reported. Later the paint filled bags were confiscated by police.

The organizers maintain there are tens of thousands of protesters and Peter Oliver witnesses a whole column of protesters going around the ECB headquarters.

The police force has split into two groups now. They do not let anybody through so the demonstration is not moving anywhere, as police and protesters are locked in a stand-off.

Water cannons arrived at the scene of a peaceful protest, Oliver reports.

Riot police officers have already used pepper spray several times and some people have been taken away, but it is not clear if they have been arrested.

RT's crew working at the scene has been separated by the riot police dividing demonstrators. The crew reports the use of fences and barbed wire by police.

Protests in Frankfurt-am-Main started on Friday when some 3,000 'Blockupy' protesters, clutching signs demanding "humanity before profit", blocked the main entrance of the ECB, the organizers announced that the coalition has "reached its first goal" of the day.

The anti-globalism march was called to celebrate the anniversary of the 'Occupy' rallies by blocking the European Central Bank.

The protesters moved to city's downtown from activists' camp in the Frankfurt suburbs, set up earlier.

Police reported that though some protesters thrown stones and there were some clashes at the barricades, several people were detained on Friday.

The ECB, which has headquarters at Kaiserstrasse 29, in Frankfurt-am-Main, has promised to remain operational during the planned demonstrations.

Blockupy activists lay blame for the debt crisis in Europe with the banks and in particular the ECB for its role in imposing austerity measures on EU citizens.

The austerity measures proposed by the so-called troika, consisting of the ECB, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission have not reduced the national debts of the European countries. An increase of taxes and cuts of governmental social programs they promote have actually worsened the situation, deepening recession and increasing unemployment in the EU dramatically.

Hanno Bruchmann, an anti-austerity activist, believes that "There have been many capitalist crises before, but now it is happening in the US and Europe, the financial crisis has transformed into a debt crisis, and now is the moment in which this has become a permanent capitalist crisis on a big scale."

"The fact that the protest is taking place in what's supposed to be the most advanced country does show the level of the problem" Antonis Vradis, of the Occupy London movement told RT.

A demonstration in German's Frankfurt-am-Main is expected to gather up to 20,000 protesters. Several European capitals are set to see large rallies later in the day.

In a separate rally in Berlin people are protesting in solidarity with the Taksim square demonstration in Turkey now into its second day of violence with tear gas and water cannon being used

Appendix: Thousands blockade European Central Bank in Frankfurt

From Russia Today, of 31 May 2013, 3 days ago

The entrance of the ECB is blocked by over 3,000 'Blockupy' protesters in a march against austerity. 'Blockupy' has announced the coalition has "reached its first goal" of the day.

Anti-capitalist protesters have taken to the streets of the financial heart of Frankfurt a day ahead of Europe-wide gatherings planned for June 1 to protest leaders handling of the three-year euro debt crisis.

"We call up everyone to join our protests."

The ECB spokesman told The Guardian that the Blockupy protests have not disturbed day to day operations at the bank, but would not specify how many bankers managed to come to work.

Apart from those who amassed outside the ECB, a smaller demonstration took place at the nearby Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) headquarters, where around 50 police vehicles had been deployed. The protesters set off by midday.

The crowd, estimated at 2,500 by local authorities, clutched signs demanding 'humanity before profit'.

Rain-soaked and dressed in ponchos, the crowd is equipped with a wide array of protest props- vuvuzelas, yellow wigs, pots and pans, and mattresses with the spray-painted slogan 'War Starts Here'.

'Blockupy' has become a top-ten Twitter trend in Frankfurt, and at 10:09am (08:09 GMT), user Enough14 tweeted, "Strong Powerful blockade at Kaiserstr. Not one banker will come through here," in reference to the ECB headquarters.

Police reported some protesters had thrown stones and there were some clashes at the barricades, but so far the protests are being conducted peacefully.

The mass of protesters first gathered early Friday morning in the rainy financial center of Frankfurt, in an effort to block roads leading to the ECB and Deutsche Bank headquarters.

The crowd was met by police decked out in riot gear accompanied by large Alsatian dogs. Helicopters hovered above and water cannon trucks were on standby.

Many of Frankfurt's banks have urged staff to take Friday as a holiday, following a state holiday on Thursday.

Spokesman Martin Sommer said Frankfurt's financial district could be occupied by as many as 20,000 who believe the Troika -- the ECB, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund -- is imposing an "austerity dictate" on financially troubled countries they have bailed out.

Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, have received bailout loans and Spain has received loans for its banks.

Blockupy spokeswoman Frauke Distelrath said the protest was not aimed at bank employees, but at its role "as an important participant in the policies that are impoverishing people in Europe, in the cutbacks that are costing people their ability to make a living."

The protesters have been granted permission to demonstrate at the airport by a court on Thursday, even after the airport operator requested the group be kept outside of the terminal.

Blockupy assembled outside of the airport at 1 p.m. local time local time to protest against German immigration policies and what activists have decried as an "inhumane deportation system." Fraport, the airport operator, has advised passengers to arrive early for their flights.

The court said if the number of protestors in the terminal exceeds 200, police can break up the gathering. Felix Gottwald, a pilot, tweeted that security had been stepped up at Frankfurt airport in anticipation of the arrival of Blockupy protesters. Passengers at the airport have noted the heavy security presence, saying that only those who show a valid boarding pass can enter the building.

Activists are tweeting that anywhere between 200-800 protesters are currently blocking Frankfurt Airport Terminal 1, although those number remain unconfirmed.

In last year's protests police shut down Frankfurt's city center in anticipation of the demonstration.

Eurozone employment hits record high to 12.2 percent in April.

The demonstration is taking place almost exactly a year after police detained hundreds in a four-day march against a temporary ban on protests in Frankfurt last June.

Blockupy protesters are also protesting against other issues, including food price.

US Fiscal Cliff
Friday 4th January 2012/ac
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.

Comments can be made on the original blog which was republished here from http://kelvinthomson.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/us-fiscal-cliff.html

The US fiscal cliff has been avoided, but the fundamental problems are alive and well. The US Budget continues to go deeper and deeper into unsustainable debt, and US society has a depressing level of real poverty and inequality.

As of November 2012 an astonishing 47.7 million Americans were receiving taxpayer funded food stamps. One in four American children is on food stamps, and it is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18.

The US Census Bureau says the number of Americans living in poverty increased to a record high of 49.7 million last year- an increase of about 6 million in just the past 4 years.

Remarkably, instead of prioritising finding jobs and opportunities for Americans of all backgrounds who are living in poverty, the US Congress imports 100,000 migrants into the US every 30 days- over 1 million a year. It is a recipe for ongoing misery, poverty, and a massive infrastructure- driven national debt which continues to be a burden to both the US and the global economy.

Kelvin Thomson MP
Federal Labor Member for Wills

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).

This terrible situation in Victoria, created by its former Labor Government and perpetuated by the current Liberal Government in Victoria but replicated Australia-wide, means that local nurses pay dearly for three year courses at universities and then find that hospitals have offered these traditional placements to foreign nurses. Yet hospitals and the government are constantly shrieking about a nursing shortage. Furthermore Australia is importing nurses from countries like India and China where they are in desperately short supply. Stealing nurses from poor countries is especially obscene and unfair in the light of Australia having so many of her own new graduates unemployed.

"Although there is a worldwide shortage of nurses manipulating nurse migration is a poor solution to that problem because it causes complex issues within health and social systems in recipient and source countries."[1]

It is also true unfortunately that reentry into the workforce by nurses with experience who have taken a break is unaccountably difficult and expensive, often requiring nurses with young families to spend tens of thousands of dollars repeating their entire nursing degree. An online discussion site called "Nurse Uncut" contains very revealing opinions on these matters.

New state-sanctioned form of slavery in Australia

Nursing degrees themselves are of very varied quality across the spectrum of universities, with students often paying fees to do their own on-line study, with little real assistance. The students are also expected to work for hundreds of hours unpaid in places like nursing homes, as part of their study and training - none of which means they will find paid employment in our system. This way of 'gaining practical experience' seems to amount to a form of state-sanctioned slavery. In contrast, student nurses received payment in the old hospital training systems, albeit low payment, and the hospitals often provided free or very low cost accommodation to any nurse that needed it.[2]

The severity of these counterproductive hiring and retraining practices in Victoria (and elsewhere in Australia) calls into question our educational institutions and our hospitals where it looks as if some kind of synergy is operating in kickbacks for employing foreign nurses on the condition they undertake further study in Australia. These kickbacks must be big enough to make it worthwhile to individual hospitals to risk scandal by knocking back hundreds of local applications, with over 448 rejected in the metropolitan area and, astoundingly, over 200 in country regions.

The ANF in Victoria is able to point to 1142 recent graduates of Victorian universities who could not find a hospital to start work in.

Below we reproduce a press release from the Australian Nursing Federation on the failure of Australian hospitals to employ Australian recent graduates.

ANF tells Dave Davis to tell hospitals to employ local grads

Victoria abandons 805 nursing and midwifery graduates despite authorities predicting shortages

The Australian Nursing Federation (Victorian Branch) is calling on the Health Minister David Davis to urgently direct public hospitals to increase their intake of the class of 2012 after it was revealed 805 nursing and midwifery graduates have missed out on a graduate year place next year.

ANF understands up to 40 per cent of all graduate nurses and midwives have missed out on a graduate year place across the Victorian hospital system despite authorities warning of a looming nurse shortage.

The document used as the basis of the Victorian Government's health services planning, the 10-year Health Priorities Framework 2012-22: Metropolitan Health Plan, claims that between 2011 and 2022 the Victorian system will lose 72,000 nurses, with about 6000 nurses leaving per year and about 4500 graduates starting each year.

The Commonwealth statutory authority established to advise the federal, state and territory health ministers, Health Workforce Australia, predicted that Australia would have a shortage of 110,000 nurses in its Health Workforce 2025 Report released last April. The report says Victoria will have a shortage of 19,615 registered nurses and 7,183 enrolled nurses by 2025.

Despite the predictions Victorian budget papers show no change in the number of public hospital funded graduate places, while in reality Computer Match data indicates each service has reduced the number of positions by about 10 per cent between 2011 and 2012. The evidence suggests the 2013 graduate year positions have been reduced further. Computer Match is the organisation responsible for matching graduates to graduate year positions.

Up to 40% of nurses and midwives excluded from our hospitals

Australian Nursing Federation (Victorian Branch) Acting Secretary Paul Gilbert said: "It defies logic to exclude up to 40 per cent of nurses and midwives successfully graduating from their courses when both the Baillieu Government and Health Workforce Australia are forecasting serious nurse shortages. Health Minister David Davis cannot afford to get this wrong now or we will lose hundreds of potential nurses and midwives.

"Graduates who have dedicated three or more years to their studies and successfully passed their courses should be looking forward to their first day on the ward and excited about starting their nursing careers especially when the authorities keep warning that we will need more nurses," he said.

"Instead hundreds of graduates are calling us devastated that they have no future as a nurse or a midwife before they've even started because they've missed out on a graduate year and are being told by hospitals that they won't get a job if they haven't completed a graduate year place," Mr Gilbert said.

"The Baillieu Government has a responsibility to the people of Victoria to invest in building our future nursing and midwifery workforce, but is instead undermining it by an almost across the board reduction in the number of graduate positions and allowing the introduction of catch-22 employment conditions that exclude nurses and midwives who have not undertaken a graduate year."

Victorian nursing and midwifery graduates who missed out by region

ANF has data indicating 746 Victorian nursing and midwifery graduates have missed out on a graduate year place next year. Another 59 Victorian graduates who studied interstate also missed out. The total number of unmatched candidates, who applied under the Victorian scheme, including some from New Zealand, is 1142. The following is a list of graduates who studied in Victoria and missed out on a graduate year place:

Western Victoria - 155 graduates

Northern and North East Victoria - 59 graduates

South East Victoria - 84 graduates

Metro - 448 graduates
ANF media release Source: http://www.anfvic.asn.au/news/43104.html 27 October 2012, 9:38am

Editorial Comment

This article, in case it needs explaining, falls under the candobetter.net rubrics of population (immigration, local citizens) and democracy. It also comes under land-use planning in the sense that how you direct population impacts on local empowerment and workforces, as well as on housing demand and prices and wages and conditions, as these are affected by high immigration in the context of very weak Australian worker protection. On 10 November some minor changes were made in response to comments about clarity. - Ed

NOTES

[1] BEVERLY J. MCELMURRY Mcelmurry, Beverly J. et al, 2006, "Ethical Concerns in Nurse Migration," http://www.uvm.edu/~bwilcke/mcelmurry.pdf

[2] As an added financial injury and insult, in today's hospitals nurses are actually made to pay back a portion of their salary in order to use the hospital parking, with parking fines for failing to keep up with hourly meters where the all day parking spots are filled. Can you imagine, on top of all the other stresses and responsibilities, having to leave the ward where you are working, to go down to the public parking area and feed a meter?

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.)

We have 885,000 unemployed! -- Roy Morgan

Big business has long abused its influence with the media, and has also taken advantage of various well-funded lobbies,fronts, and think-tanks (Committee for Melbourne, Urban Task force, Australian industries group, and other names for disguised lobbies) as well as the pro-business stance of the Murdoch Press and other media, to spread this disinformation.

Yet ordinary Australians know this is untrue, particularly if they have a teenager in the family trying to get his or her first job, or an older person who is been retrenched. (Employment agencies say it's hard even to get a job interview for anyone over 35, and if approaching retirement almost impossible, because employers are so spoilt for choice.)

According to Roy Morgan:

Australian Employment drops by record number in July to 10,802,000 (DOWN 418,000) as Australian workforce shrinks, and unemployment rate is up 0.6% TO 7.6%

* In July 2011 Australia’s total unemployment as measured by Roy Morgan was 885,000 (7.6%), up 40,000 (0.6%) from June 2011, and up 148,000 (up 1.3%) since July 2010.
* The Roy Morgan July 2011 ‘underemployed’* estimate was virtually unchanged at 859,000 (7.3%), down 3,000 (but up 0.2% as the workforce shrunk) from June 2011 and down 81,000 (0.8%) since July 2010.
* In total in July 2011 an estimated 1,743,000 (14.9%) of Australians were unemployed or ‘underemployed,’ up 36,000 (up 0.8%) on June 2011 and up 66,000 (0.5%) since July 2010.
* As stated, there was a large drop in the Australian workforce in July, down 378,000 to 11,687,000 which is virtually unchanged from a year ago (up 42,000) and slightly higher than in March 2011 (up 23,000).
* Overall full-time employment in Australia for July is 7,421,000 (down 219,000 since June 2011 but up 30,000 since July 2010) and part-time employment is 3,381,000 (down 199,000 since June 2011 and down 136,000 since July 2010).

Gary Morgan says:

“The July 2011Roy Morgan employment estimates was down 418,000 in a month to 10,802,000 with the falls consistent across both full-time employed — 7,421,000 (down 219,000) and part-time employed — 3,381,000 (199,000).

“This month’s fall in employment followed four straight months of rises and takes Australian employment back to the levels of February (10,770,000) and March (10,800,000) as school-leavers began to join the workforce after Summer holidays at the beginning of the new financial year.

“This is the biggest monthly fall in Australian employment ever recorded by the Roy Morgan employment measure and shows that the RBA’s decision to ignore commentators calling for an interest rate rise this week was the correct one.

Unemployment now stands at 7.6% (885,000, up 40,000) while underemployment is virtually unchanged at 7.3% (859,000, down 3,000).

This is an overall level of unemployment and underemployment of 14.9% (1,743,000, up 36,000).

“In addition employment in July is now down 106,000 on a year ago in July 2010. This is the first time employment has fallen year-over-year since October 2009 (10,385,000) which fell compared to October 2008 (10,400,000) — when the Global Financial Crisis began and dropped employment.”

For Full Tables & Release: http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2011/4692

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)

The source of this article is a Speech by Kelvin Thomson, delivered to the House of Representatives on 24 May, 2011, in response to the Government's Budget. You may find the original source here: House of Representatives Bills, Appropriation Bill 2011-2012, Second Reading, Speech, Tuesday, 24 May 2011, House of Representatives Chamber Speech, Mr KELVIN THOMSON (Wills) (19:48): Note that we have included several paragraphs which time constraints engineered by the [Liberal] opposition caused to be cut off the end of the speech.

"I do not agree with raising the skilled migration target to a record level"

I do not [...][2] agree with raising the skilled migration target for the 2011-12 financial year to 125,850-a record level.

I have seven objections to increasing skilled migration.

First objection: Immigration drives rapid population growth

The first is that it is the principal driver of Australia's rapid population growth. Only recently our population used to grow by 200,000 a year; now it is rising by a million every three years. 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. This is the main reason net overseas migration is now 180,000 per annum and the main reason Treasury is using net overseas migration of 180,000 per annum to project that Australia's population will rise to 36 million by 2050. That is, it is giving us big Australia.

I have set out in numerous speeches in the parliament and at public meetings my objections to big Australia: cost of living pressures and pressures on food,water,land and energy supplies, carbon emissions, housing affordability, traffic congestion, species extinction, loss of open space et cetera.

Second objection: Australian unemployed should have priority

My second objection to increasing labour force migration is that there are people in Australia who want work and we should be getting them jobs. There are 500,000 people on Newstart allowance and 800,000 on disability support pension. These people should be our first priority. In the last decade the numberofpeople receiving disability support pension grew around six per cent per annum in real terms.

As Budget Paper No.1 outlines: Past growth … reflects increases in the number of beneficiaries arising from population growth and changing composition of the population … Population growth will continue to contribute to sustained real growth in the cost of this program.

As I mentioned earlier, I support the steps that seek to move people from these benefits to employment, but there needs to be jobs for them to go to. Cutting back workforce migration numbers will ensure there are jobs for them to go to.

Third Objection: Many skilled immigrants unemployed or working as unskilled labour

Included among the people who are out of work and are deserving of our attention are quite a few skilled migrants already in Australia who are either not working at all or not employed in areas for which they are qualified. As reported by Michael Quin in the Melbourne Times Weekly, a local newspaper which circulates in my electorate, four out of five skilled migrants in Melbourne are unemployed or underemployed, according to a recent survey. The article outlined the case of Preston skilled migrant Natalia Garcia, who has applied for 17 engineering jobs in the past four months without getting an interview or feedback, despite speaking advanced English and holding an engineering degree and seven years industry experience in Colombia.

Ms Garcia said: We were told Australia was desperate for engineers and that we would find a job in a maximum of two months, Ms Garcia is working as an office cleaner, and said most skilled migrants she knew were doing the same.

It is highly revealing that a qualified engineer with seven years industry experience should be working in Australia as a cleaner. I suspect that quite a few of the business leaders who bang the drum incessantly about skilled migration know about this kind of outcome perfectly well. They are not so much interested in the skills of migrants as their potential to provide cheap labour in occupations such as cleaners and taxi drivers and in providing personal services like house cleaning and chauffeuring at cut price rates. So my third objection to the skilled migration increase is the treatment of, and outcomes for, many skilled migrants.

Fourth Objection: Skills shortage overstated and abused to undermine wages and conditions

My fourth objection is that the skills shortage is overstated and is abused in ways which undermine the wages and conditions of Australian workers. National Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Dave Oliver, believes the skills shortage issue is overstated and that successive federal governments have failed to deliver an adequate labour market testing system, which means employers can exploit the system. The AMWU has launched a skills register to give skilled workers and young people seeking apprenticeships the opportunity to register for work before employers are allowed tobring inworkers on 457 visas.

As Dave Oliver has said: "We do not deny that skills shortages exist in some areas, but they are being exaggerated by employers seeking to use 457 visas to undermine local wages and conditions and avoid the cost of investing in apprenticeships."

With apprenticeship completion rates below 50%, the long term answer to our skills problems cannot be importing workers from other countries on a temporarybasis. Employers can't complain about skills shortages while they are dropping their investment in training.

I encourage people who have skills which are not being made use of to make contact with the AMWU to get their details put on the skills register.

Fifth Objection: Australian economy overdependent on immigration

The fifth objection I have to increasing skilled migration is that we have become addicted to it.

We need to do more to educate and train our own young people. Going back two or three decades, governments and employers dropped the ball on training.Governments closed technical schools and cut back on technical education. Private employers lost interest in taking on apprentices. We started outsourcing our requirement for training. This has been an addictive, self-fulfilling circle and we need to break the habit. Those countries which do not run a big migration program put more effort into educating and training their young people, and they have better participation rates as a consequence.

The Sixth Objection: High immigration feeds vulnerable overstoked commodity economy

The sixth objection I have to increasing skilled migration goes to the claim that this is necessary to avoid capacity constraints and bottlenecks in the resources industry.

The truth is that running the resources boom as fast as possible has a number of economic consequences, not all of which are positive. Using the resources boom as a reason to ramp up skilled migration and staking a lot of our economic prosperity on Australia's high terms of trade overlooks some of the negative ramifications of the two-speed or multispeed economy. For example, as reported in the Australian in early May, hundreds of fruit processing workers face the sack if Coca-Cola Amatil goes ahead with plans to close parts of its SPC Ardmona division and capitalise on the strong Australian dollar by importing food from Indonesia.

CCA chief executive Terry Davis has said one or two of SPC's three plants in central Victoria could be closed due to the strong Australian dollar putting pressure on the business. He said that the current strength of the dollar severely limits the potential for SPC Ardmona's export business, which produces some of the country's best-known canned fruit brands.

The strong dollar has been cited by the Reserve Bank as impacting adversely on manufacturing and tourism.

A report in 2006 by the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance on the previous mining boom used modelling to determine its impact on non-mining states and found that there were adverse consequences for Victorian exporting and import-competing firms.

Their modelling results showed that the Victorian and New South Wales gross state products were about half a per cent lower. Most industries in these states contracted, apart from the mining industries.

Australia needs to ensure it doesn't become a 'one trick' economy

I believe the relentless rise of the Australian dollar as a result of the resources boom presents a real challenge to the Australian economy. The current mining boom mark 2 represents the highest terms of trade in 140 years, so the pressure on manufacturing and other trade exposed industries not directly benefiting from higher commodity prices is severe. Retail, manufacturing, building and tourism are labouring under the weight of subdued sales, weak profits and low orders. We need to ensure that we do not become a one-trick economy and that the structural changes that occur as a result of this boom do not leave ordinary people behind.

If the resources boom generates growth levels that cause the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates, then many Australian households and small businesses will suffer.

As a nation, we need to be more sophisticated than simply trying to run the resources boom full throttle.

The Seventh Objection: Immorality of Skilled immigration

The seventh and final objection I have goes to the question of the morality of skilled migration. Last week I participated in a debate[3] on Sky News TV Channel on the program known as The Nation, with the Member for Mayo, the former Member for Cook, and Geoff Gallop, the former Western Australian Premier. We were talking about migration, and Geoff said he thought it was a moral issue, that Australia had a moral obligation to take large numbers of migrants from poor countries. Now Geoff is a great guy, a fine Australian who has made a very valuable contribution to this country. But skilled migration is not a moral duty.

It is not about Australia being unselfish. It is about us being utterly selfish, taking the best and brightest from poor countries and denuding them of the people most likely to lift them from conditions of poverty. When we take a poor country's doctors or nurses, we damage their health system. When we take a poor country's engineers, we damage their capacity to build infrastructure. It is a moral question alright, but there is nothing moral about what we are doing.

In closing I welcome the measures in the budget on improving workplace participation but I am concerned that the government has bowed to industry calls for higher migration.

We need to ensure that the right policy settings are in place that will not leave behind those industries, individuals and households who are not benefiting from the mining boom mark II, and avoid short-term policy 'fixes' that cater to the vested interests who shout the loudest.

Kelvin Thomson MP Federal Member for Wills

NOTES

[1] In order to focus quickly on Kelvin's incisive contribution to critical analysis of Australian economic policy, this article has left out the beginning of the speech as delivered to the House of Representatives. Here is the text we left out:

"I wish to commend the Australian government on this budget, which continues our tradition of sound economic management. It stands in stark contrast to the opposition's troubling lack of insight on this core issue.

Peter Costello is on the record as saying that an opposition leader's responsibility consists of going through the budget saying what the opposition agrees with and what it does not agree with; putting forward alternative tax proposals and saying when they would start and how they would be paid for; and saying what the opposition would do if it were bringing down a budget. Peter Costello was scathing of any budget reply speech that was short on detail or full of motherhood statements and cliches, which he believed let the Australian public down. What, then, are we to make of the opposition's budget reply?

The opposition say they would bring the budget to surplus sooner than Labor, yet they oppose and run interference on all of our savings measures, they produce no savings measures of their own and they even come up with more spending measures. They are not serious. Family payments is a classic example. The government will maintain higher income thresholds for certain family payments at their current levels. When the government announced similar measures two years ago, the opposition leader said they were soft and wanted the government to go harder. Now he wants to talk about the 'forgotten families' on $150,000 or more!

Analysis by Commonwealth Securities suggests that, on an Australia-wide basis, families with incomes above $150,000 are among the better-off families in the country. The average male income is currently around $57,500, with the average female income just over $38,000. Only three per cent of all taxpayers have an income above $150,000. In 2012-13, the number of people who will cease to be eligible for family payments will be less than two per cent. You would think, based on the scare campaign of the Leader of the Opposition and shadow Treasurer, that the government is running an assault on all families' standard of living.
As Tom Dusevic identified in his article of 14 May in the Weekend Australian on the coalition's position:

Abbott and Hockey have lost the plot on the basic tenet of Liberalism. Unlike Menzies, who saw government handouts as helping hands to the destitute, the Liberals became the chief advocates for unsustainable middleclass welfare, which grew out of the revenue boost from the first phase of the mining boom.

Absolutely right.

I would like to acknowledge the measures in the budget to boost workplace participation and expand the economy's productive capacity. I agree with the Prime Minister that we do not want to see a situation where the economy is booming but where we still have long-term unemployed people who do not have a job and people on the disability support pension who want to work, who do not have the opportunity of a job.

And the Treasurer is right when he says, 'Our economy can't afford to waste a single pair of capable hands.'

In my electorate of Wills there are at present 1,397 very long-term unemployed people who have been without work for two years or more.

To help them prepare for and find work, the Labor government has provided in the budget an additional $2.7 million over the period 2012 to 2015 to support local employment services in Wills. This will provide them with training and work experience. Additional funds have also been provided for a wage subsidy to support employers who give the very-long-term unemployed a job.

An investment of over $1.6 million for Australian Disability Enterprises in Wills is also welcome. It will support the work of the Brunswick Industries Association, North West Employment Group, the Trustee for The Salvation Army Victoria Property Trust, and Yooralla.

The budget initiative establishing the $558 million National Workforce Development Fund will assist in responding to the most critical emerging skills needs facing Australian industry. This will deliver 130,000 new training places over four years. The fund will be supported by the establishment of a new National Workforce and Productivity Agency, from 1 July next year, which will work closely with industry to identify critical skill needs and build a more skilled and capable workforce. The Labor government is improving support for Australians with a disability to help them into work where possible. I support these significant reforms to address the issue of workplace participation and skills shortages."

[2] The very first line of this paragraph as delivered in the House of Representatives ran, "I do not, however, agree with raising the skilled migration target for the 2011-12 financial year to 125,850-a record level."

[3] - The rest of this speech is the text which Kelvin intended to deliver, but which was abuptly cut off in the House of Representatives because the Opposition called a quorum and time ran out.

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 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.

That article read as follows:

Australia's Growing Underclass

I can attest to the inadequacy of the Australian Government's treatment of unemployed people via Centrelink. The forms are longer and more invasive than a tax return. The processing took eight weeks after which I was rejected because my partner was working part-time.

Eventually I got back into work off my own bat, but the experience was humiliating, a waste of time, and has turned me vehemently against government.

So many Australians are vulnerable to losing their job and don't have sufficient financial reserves to get back on their feet, let alone meet bill payments when there is no income. When this happens it comes as a shock to find that the safety net one assumed existed, does not in fact exist. One must be in abject poverty to be eligible for government support. For men in particular, the loss of esteem as a failed breadwinner can tip many to depression and worse. A substantial number in rural Australia and on the land are isolated and particularly vulnerable.

Both Labor and Liberal argue that important numbers of people rort the system and so each of these political parties have respectively made the claim hurdles so high that the majority of applicants' claims are eliminated as they go through the Centrelink system. The unemployment benefit of $220 a week, if it is paid, is so low as to be less than most weekly rents. People with a mortgage are forced down a path of bank repossession. It is a steep, slippery slope for many families.

A large proportion of workers now work on contract terms, like me, without leave entitlements, without unions, without rights. When the contract ends there is nothing and sometimes those contracts end at a whim with a tap on the shoulder at 5pm on a Friday.

And it is not just unemployment that has many Australians placed in dire circumstances. People with a disability, widows, veterans, and older people, have been thrown on the scrap heap. So have people with mental health issues, the homeless and those who simply find themselves in poverty and in broken homes.

Many Australians do not realise how close they are to joining the growing underclass.

Labor and Liberal have lost touch with those ordinary Australians who fall from the position of being able to fend for themselves. The Greens as the main alternative seem to be stuck in some ideological utopia pressing for 'green' issues that prioritise environment and climate change over basic human needs.

Meanwhile Australia's growing underclass is undermining the health and cohesiveness of our society. It wouldn't take much for a new alternative party focusing on life's fundamentals to get up.

==================================================

Later that day I added a further comment:

'I have decided to join Australia First'
I shall give them a go since I have read and support their values.
I see no reason to support Labor, Liberals, Greens or Nationals, based on their lack of performance. Over the years, I have voted for all of them at one time or another, kidding myself they will bring change. I have had a gut full.
If another party presents itself with fresh ideas I will consider that too.
JM

===================================================

Since my post, slur and innuendo followed and then CanDoBetter went off air for about two months (Nov-Dec 2010). But it was only yesterday I learned that I had been granted release from purgatory and that I now have access to CanDoBetter (hence why I have not contributed since).

And so, now at the first opportunity I herein post the reply offered by chairman of the Australia First Party, Dr Jim Saleam, to the accusations raised against him all those months ago that were denied a free hearing. I have since started my own website against injustice entitled malleebull.org, although I shall continue to support CanDoBetter since they gave me an opportunity to speak freely.

===================================================

Reply by #JimSaleam" id="JimSaleam">Dr Jim Saleam, Australia First Party, 25th Nov 2010:

[This is a reply to "Can the Australia First Party help fix the plight of ordinary Australians" and other comments on candobetter - which I have not yet been able to locate. Ed.]

======================================================

Freedom of speech is vital in Australia and I am pleased that this website respects this right.
JM

To be unemployed is to not have a job.
In the traditionally accepted 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.

Unemployment Rate a misleading statistic designed to pacify.

Australia's June 2010 unemployment rate was officially 5.2%. What does that number mean?

It is calculated by dividing the number of CentreLink registered unemployed into the total labour workforce. So 5.2% is 603,400 registered unemployed divided by estimated labour workforce of 11,661,538. But the 603,400 is only those registered with CentreLink.

Australia's 'estimated resident population' (ERP) at 31 December 2009 was 22,155,000 persons. Since there was a 432,600 increase over the previous 12 months, then from December 2009 to June 2010 (half a year) would mean about another 200,000, so by June 2010 Australia's total population would have been about 22,355,000 people.

If the government's 'labour force' is 11,661,538, then the remaining 10,693,462 of Australians are not in the labour force. That means not 603,400, but over 10 million, or nearly half of the Australian population is not working, for what ever reason - age, disability, choice, not registered, whatever!

Let's look at the official government employment statistics for June 2010:

'Employment' totalled 11,077,600 people, of that 'Full-time employment' totalled 7,794,700 people. This means 3.3 million Australians (some 30%) of those working, do not have a full time job.

But just like people have learnt from experience to distrust government on most matters, government statistics like 'unemployment rate' are also not to be trusted.

Australia's true unemployment is the number of people of working aged not in full time employment. The government defines the people of working age to be between age 15 and age 64 (retirement age).

On this basis, let's do the sums.

'Full-time employment' totalled 7,794,700 people.

Australia's adult population aged 15-64 can be extrapolated from 2009 ABS 'WORKING AGE POPULATION (AGED 15-64 YEARS)' data.

'During the 20 years between 30 June 1989 and 30 June 2009, the proportion of population aged 15-64 years increased from 66.9% to 67.5%.'

So if the June 2010 total Australian population was 22,355,000, then 67.5% of that would mean that Australia's working age population was 15,089,625, or say 15 million to be conservative.

So 'Full-time employment' of 7,794,700 people divided into 15 million makes true unemployment 52%. That is ten times the government's official rate!

In the traditionally accepted sense, where a real job is a permanent full-time job, Australia's true unemployment rate is 52%!

That is bloody disgusting government performance.

After Julia Gillard declared, soon after she was promoted as Prime Minister, that she did not want a "Big Australia" the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry all warned that growth was needed to support the economy and offset the “ageing of the population”. The enormous pressure to surrender to the financial interests of big business groups is at odds with the interests of the people of Australia, and overlook the real causes of our “skills shortages”.

Skills Shortages crisis

According to a survey of 400 companies by the Australian Industry Group, skills shortages in key professions and vocations have escalated so that they now present a high to extreme risk of impeding business operations this year.

Chronic shortages in skilled occupations are of particular concern because of the time required to develop the necessary skills – sometimes years – and their central importance to business operations.

The skilled vacancies employers are struggling to fill include professional engineers, business administration managers and accountants, metal fitters and machinists and metal casting, forging and finishing tradespeople. However, there are extremely limited opportunities to actually find apprenticeships for these positions, especially in metal fitters and turners and machine operators, and flexible and compliant foreign students are all too easily allowed to undercut pay rates and take jobs away from locals.

Insufficient training opportunities

Our manufacturing industries, despite being pivotal to our economy, have diminished, along with apprenticeships and traineeships.  We don't need more people! There just aren't enough opportunities to obtain skills!

Vocational education turned out almost 7000 fabrication engineering and mechanical engineering trades workers last year, including sheetmetal workers and machinists, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research said. However, despite these healthy numbers, the AIG said it stood by its claims, saying a qualification did not necessarily equate to a job. They then claim the graduates were not employable due to lack of literacy and numeracy skills!

This inadequacy is a reflection on the educational institutions themselves. Courses are being “dumbed down” for international students and new arrivals!

Privatisation

Australia has traditionally had high levels of protection, since the 1950’s in areas like textiles, clothing and footwear and motor vehicles. Cutting protection reduced employment and demolished much of our own production. Most industries that were heavily protected during the 1970’s and 1980’s still suffered losses of employment and were not efficient enough to compete in export markets.

Before privatisation of Victorian public services, such as the SEC, Railways and transport, Gas and Fuel, MMBW trained thousands of apprentices, who were then taken up by the industries or ran private businesses. This no longer happens, thanks to Premier Kennett!

Employers continually seek “experienced” employees, and this prohibits opportunities for traineeships and better utilisation and development of employee skills.

We need employees to take on their fair share of employee training and skills development instead of turning on the immigration tap.

Australia's Largest Export industry – education!

Ironically, education has become Australia's largest service export, worth about $16 billion a year.  TAFES and universities should be funded sufficiently to address our need for skilled graduates rather then be used to generate profits.  We head-hunt the skilled from developing countries where they are needed rather than exporting skilled professionals and trades people, as we should be doing!

Skills shortages hype and immigration

The "skills shortages" hype is being generated by business and pro-growth groups for their own self-serving interests to bring more people to Australia, and thus more customers! The people flooding into Australia are primarily foreign workers, being recruited here to fill skills shortages. Why? Because it's cheaper to bring in foreign workers who already have skills than to train our own.

Last year 508,000 people arrived to live in Australia as permanent residents, temporary workers or students.

This is happening despite the 5.2 general level of unemployment in Australia.  There are those who are categorised as being over the assets limit, either themselves or their parents, but may have no or little cash flow.  Others are under-employed,but these groups do not need to register at Centerlink.  They hide the real levels of unemployment.

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?

TAFES and universities should be properly funded instead of being a profit-making global resource.

Our reliance on foreign skilled workers is a risk to something even more important: our social fabric, a duty of care to our own citizens first and foremost and our sense of national unity against the forces of globalisation.

The “skills shortages” is one that is manufactured, and is another population growth myth being propagated to justify further immigration.

We've been publicising political alternatives in Australia, notably parties which promise to fight population growth, because we don't believe that the mainstream political parties are taking the adverse impacts of population growth seriously. 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 people in our society who carry the biggest loads and cop the worst treatment. Here is an article about fronting up to the dole office. Anyone who has had to do this in the past few years will understand the sentiments.

Aussie Senior Citizens

Aussie Senior Citizens are now experiencing the effects of the collapsing Globalist economic system, which has been imposed upon Australians over recent decades by Liberal and Labor politicians dutifully implementing the Big Business agenda.

Seniors who have worked productively over a life time, have contributed to society with family and community activity, put some money aside, have paid taxation of 1/3 plus of income, and were duped into superannuation schemes, are now seeing their savings evaporate as this Globalist ideology crashes.

The wholesale sell out of our Australian manufacturing and productive capacity to foreign interests, and the deregulation of our financial sector, to create a subservient cog in the Global economic order as a “trinket” type raw materials supplier, and an immigrant dumping ground - is the root cause of the crisis likely to now descend upon Australians. [Members of the 3000 Club excepted].

Compulsory superannuation monies, instead of being allocated for Australian owned productive development, have been used to stoke the Stock Exchanges, and for other usage in speculative exploitation. It was all inherently prone to collapse as per the contradictions of capitalism.

A rude awakening is now descending on increasing numbers of Seniors as they are forced to undertake the “Centrelink Run” - coming to grips with a pension system programmed to comply with the IMF/ Internationalist/ Globalist agenda to minimise Social Security payments.

The Centrelink Run

Step I: You front to the local office, and can experience first hand the Liberal/Labor/Green politicians’
immigration/ guest workers/ refugee rackets, but you fall into the queue for you still believe you count for something as a productive citizen, and your years of paying taxation had a purpose. You have your turn for the bureaucrat - and the near 100 question application form to see if the paltry $230 a week is to come your way. A number is allotted to you for the “system”. [No Members of the 3000 Club sighted].

Step 2: You bare your soul in the multitude of questions - any thought of the Aussie tradition that your
affairs are your business soon dissipates. Who are you? Prove it! How much cash have you under the bed? Have you been overseas and how much money did you take? Did you give any money away? What are your bank accounts? Any rooms rented out? Who has your super fund and how much is it? Prove it! What property do you own/got a beach shack/what’s it worth? How much for your house contents? What jewellery have you got? Can you cash in any life assurance?

It starts to dawn on you that this might all be about ensuring you get as little pension entitlement as possible.

But you are enticed by the idea that you might qualify for a health card for medical benefits, and reduced rates and government charges. How good is that!

When finished, you look at your arm to see if by chance a tattoo of the allotted system number has appeared, as you are starting to think that as an Aussie you no longer rate for much.

Step 3: You front before the bureaucrat, forms [and cap] in hand to be scrutinised. You are reminded
again about the Pension Bonus of $30k, available to you if you will slave on in full time work for another five years. [3000 Club Members get that in 10 weeks].

Your getting a bit edgy, aware that all your personal information is now going onto Big Brother’s database and available virtually to any Government department, and who knows who else.

You are informed that on your details, that after 45 years of work and paying taxes, your in for a part pension - $85 a week, as is your spouse - yes, a pension of $170 a week between you for the good life. And, you must also report in each month on any extra income you may generate so your pension would be reduced. [Still no 3000 Club Members sighted].

The penny finally drops that in the Australia of today Aussie seniors count for nothing!

What can be done.

As a group of citizens, the reality is that Seniors are past “use by date” to the Liberal/Labor politicians who have inflicted the Globalist agenda upon Australia.

Protesting Pensioners can “bare their bras” for the systems’ media, or petition these same politicians, but it is pointless. Genuine Seniors may find this difficult to accept, but it is this very same political ilk down the decades who have restricted, and devalued pension entitlements to the current poverty line level, and who continue to parrot that a liveable pension cannot be afforded. [But not for 3000 Club Members].

Petitioning Globalist politicians that have overseen our productive enterprises and natural wealth taken by foreigners, connived for near zero tax for multinational corporations, and other schemes of tax avoidance, squandered untold $billions on alien immigration and anti Australian multiculturalism, AND, stealing the 7% taxation surcharge [passed by referendum in 1947] to fund all Aussies a pension, is a total waste of Seniors time.

The facts are that “Regime Change” - a change of attitude, psychology, economic and cultural direction through the complete and utter rejection of the present traitor political caste and their Big Business masters, is essential to now attain social justice for Aussie Seniors.

The Australia First Core Policy of Citizens Initiated Referenda [CIR] and Parliamentary Recall can ensure this change - CIR remakes the political landscape - no ifs - no buts, for the citizen is again in charge of our society and values, not vested interest politicians.

The Australia First Party program is for all Aussie seniors at retirement age to have a liveable pension, related to the average wage, and secured on supply of appropriate identity to the relevant government administration. Nothing else is needed!

Australia First will take back our productive and natural wealth; we want Aussie control, direction, and ownership of our Australian economy, free of all Globalist dictates, and with equitable payment of taxation to provide pension funding. And, no Globalist political parrots like the 3000 Club Members.

If you don't fight, you lose. Join the Australia First Party for the change for a livable pension.

The 3000 Club

Members on this easy street ride include Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Meg Lees, Jeff Kennett, John Howard, Gareth Evans, Tim Fisher, Joan Kirner, John Cain, Alexander Downer, Steve Bracks, Paul Keating, Nick Greiner, etc, etc, all feeding off the taxpayer with their $3000 a week pensions. You won’t see this lot on the Centrelink run!

Australia First Policy Page
Australia First has some good policies for those who wish to stop population growth and globalisation. It was founded by West Australian, Graeme Campbell, years ago, after he was drummed out of the ALP for speaking out against high immigration (at a time when immigration was perhaps less than one quarter of what it is now).

Membership Application for Australia First

I wish to become a member of the Australia First Party and the Australia First Party [NSW] Incorporated, and agree to abide by the Constitution and Rules. Seniors Membership $10. Donations gratefully accepted.

Name: Phone:
Address: DOB:
Signed Date Email
Reply post to Australia First Party P O Box 223 Croydon 3136. Telephone: 0408 554542

Voting for other than Australia First is now largely just a waste of time

Why is it that Australia's unemployed in March 2010 just gone number 611,000, while thousands of unskilled jobs are being filled by new immigrants?

Walk around the centres of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney and get into a taxi and find invariably a new migrant at the wheel, born overseas, whose first language is not English, who has had to learn the city streets after driving the taxi. Meanwhile how many of our unemployed, Australian born living in cities, who grew up in the city and could drive a taxi if the opportrunity presented? Why does not Centrelink link up with the taxi industry and put priority on Australia's unemployed, before the jobs go to foreigners? When tourist want to get directions from a taxi driver in a city, someone who is born in the city will have more local knowledge than someone who has not.

Same goes for unskilled and semi-skilled government workers such as those employed by the railways, selling tickets, directing passengers, as guards, as linesmen. Why are these jobs dominated 100% by new migrants?

Is it because Federal and State governments in Australia have prejudiced rules to employ migrants first, because if they don't, they can be branded as discrminatory. That Australian-borns and Indigenous Australians are poorly represented in government unskilled and semi-skilled jobs is REVERSE DISCRIMINATION.

In NSW, government policy requires people who work for the NSW Government need to adhere to its principle of
Cultural Diversity, celebrating not Australian values, but different linguistic, religious, racial and ethnic backgrounds under the Principles of Multiculturalism Act 2000. Such diversity recognises linguistic and cultural assets as a 'valuable resource'.

English language, assimilation and cultural fit is out the door.
Employmers, vocational training institutions like TAFE and Centrelink seem to be poles apart not talking to each other. Australians can't find work, yet employers can't find workers. Liberal and Labor simpletons just take the easy quick fix solution - more migrants!.

Tony Abbott's kneejerk solution

Catholic Liberal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's latest kneejerk solution is to ban Australia's unemployed under the age of 30 access to welfare. Abbots wants under-30s to leave the community they grew up in and relocate to areas where employers need unskilled labour. Forget that the migrants have taken the local unskilled jobs.
Tony Abbott calls for debate on banning dole for under-30s

Abbott other kneejerk solution is to send Australia's youth to West Australian and Queensland mining and resources sector. This is the same industry sector that failed to train its workforce before the last resources boom and so had to go offshore for more migrants. Then when the boom ended, corporations like BHP Billiton sacked thousands and abandonned local communities dependent on it.

Remember the 6000 sacked by BHP Billiton a year ago at Ravesthorpe!

Criticism over Abbott's kneejerk solution by Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes, is justified. “If (Abbott) genuinely thinks you are going to solve an economically crippling skills shortage by taking punitive measures against welfare recipients, he has clearly never lived in the real world,” Mr Howes said. “You can't just get any old Joe off the street and plonk them into a mine, and think that's going to mean they can work.”

The skills shortage in WA's resources sector is a direct result of short term profit taking by the mining companies failing to re-invest in skilling. It is a failure by both the companies and the WA and Queensland governments to adequately skills train between the resources booms.

Migration needs to be tied to Australia's carrying capacity. Part of that capacity is utilising our home grown unemployed first. I wager that of our current 611,000 unemployed, 300,000 could take on unskilled jobs while they seek the sought of work they want. That would be 300,000 less people on welfare, 300,000 less migrants, 300,000 more Australian happily contributing to the economy and to Australian society and 300,000 families of one sort or another not under stress. Consequential Australian social problems of homelessness, family breakdown, decline in physical and mental health, substance abuse, etc. would be in part addressed.

Migrants coming to Australia taking Australian jobs are at the same time abandoning their countries of origin and depriving their home countries of a workforce.

Should I feel humiliated by being outdone by the excellent reportage of James Sinnamon on All Things Italian?

I've neglected to report much news concerning the current situation, but when I had a look at foreign papers (English, American, French, Italian, Swiss) that I often read, I found out that was plenty of news about Italian immigration policies.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your outlook, the era of globalisation has opened up the gates of information and everything is dashing forward into the open, mud, dirt and all.

So this is the news.

I have to make some considerations.

In spite of growing popular support for more rigorous measures to face the irresistible immigrant wave, the Italian Government has not succeeded in stemming the tide. It has tried half-hearted measures to grapple with difficulties from left-wing protests and business sector’s pressure, for fear of being labelled "racist"- the ultimate insult for any democratic government.

But there’s a basic hypocrisy, underneath all this tarantella of reciprocal buck-passing .

First of all, it is almost impossible to halt the phenomenon: it is a flood to which we weren't prepared and have no coherent response. 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.

We have entered a new Middle Ages, when marauding armies were razing and plundering our civilisation. Today we have to thank the gods because the invasions are, on the whole, pacific, if not orderly.

With eyes wide shut, Italians are torn asunder among hard choices, ignoring the global context.

The whole nation is guilty of two basic defects:

Ignorance and complacency.

Days ago, a popular demonstration took place in Lampedusa, the well-known Italian island symbol of lawless immigration. Loads of immigrants arrive there to be housed in special structures (Centri di accoglienza) before the authorities decide what to do with them. The demonstrators, lead by the Mayor, protested against the Minister Maroni's decision to build another similar structure in another part of the island, because the first one is not sufficiently capacious for the ever-growing number of invaders… sorry, immigrants.

Ahem! In case you didn't grasp the irony of it, the locals were chanting together with the immigrants escaped from the Centre "Freedom! Freedom!" Yes, free the immigrants, as long as they can leave the island and go to other parts of Italy ( and thus the whole of Europe), I suppose.

This is an intractable problem, full of paradoxes. The puzzling allegiances, the partisanship, shift from day one to day two without warning, according to changes in the weather, gossip, or the muddled self deception of a highly suggestible and politically exploited population.

In such a disoriented cultural climate, once the immigrants have reached our soil, no government action is possible without political upheaval , or the menace of economic collapse, which may strike one way or another .

But wait! Recently the Italian Parliament, among bi-partisan jubilation, has passed some laws against illegal immigration! One of the most astute and realistic of them, that will represent the strongest deterrent to anybody determined to set foot on Italian soil, is the threat to fine from 5.000 to 10.000 € when caught in such criminal activity….Really? Do politicians get paid to deliver such ludicrous crap?

Talking about ignorance, things are not so simple and I must explain a few sobering facts.
Historically , the waves of immigration fluctuate depending on outside factors, not just local economic demands. We must distinguish the Lampedusa's problem (people coming from African countries torn by wars and religious madness) and the people coming from other parts of the world and from East Europe, who have practically being invited by complacent government of any colour, to help our "economic miracle" (read: doing the jobs that locals won't do and to pay our pensions).

People who arrive by sea are most of the time coming from war zones and are therefore protected by laws and the Geneva Convention. We cannot , I emphasise cannot, legally send them back without first checking their status. Therefore, the demonstrators cannot aim at the Italian Government, except in the case of suspicion of conniving with the refugees, for local gain. (see note :

"It appears that the immigration issue can also be a source of business. In some very poor realities, like Crotone, in the Southern areas of Calabria, 40 jobs have been created to serve the local Immigration Centre and a navette service brings the illegal immigrants to the near town of St. Anna, where they tour the place and beg from the passers-by. It is a rather bizarre way to create employment in an area afflicted by poverty . " )

I give you an example: during the war in Kosovo, 33.000 people left the Balkans for Italy, creating an emergency.

Ten years after, no more Kosovars. By the end of 2008, 31.097 people have requested political asylum , mostly from war areas, like Somalia. 75% of the immigrants that reach Lampedusa are political refugees.

Looking at the statistics, Italy last year had 38.000 immigrants, one for every 1.500 residents, which I consider an enormous sum, but then Norway, Germany and Sweden have 7 refugees for every 1.000 locals.

(Corriere della Sera, Saturday 31st January 2009)
To be accepted as a refugee there are in theory stringent rules that include: identity and passport check, plus convincing proofs that the person has escaped from a dangerous zone and is persecuted . A lot depends from his/hers credibility . The police require long procedures, which may last months. The long delays open the opportunity’s door for people who otherwise couldn't prove their refugees status, and will escape the bureaucratic system to enter an underground system of criminality.

The story of immigration shows the misery of Africa, where young people cannot hope for a future, nor can they rebel without incurring imprisonment or death. Their dangerous voyage lasts sometimes more than a year of suffering, hunger and beating. Bands sell them to other bands always exploited for occasional work. The puny amount of money they earn is regularly stolen and they may end up in prison if they cannot pay the ransom required to continue the journey. Corrupt police sell them to other traffickers. Finally they depart from Libya on a last horror journey, and when finally – if ever ! – they reach port, find themselves in a Limbo, the prize of a residence permit in their pocket, but victims of the Mafia, vagrancy and poverty.

Gone is the better alternative of working - even at lower wages - for some industry of the North : in the current economic decline, there’s no more work, for newly arrived immigrants who cannot speak the language. The mixture of prolonged misfortune, bureaucratic indifference, criminal exploitation and impossibility of integration are dangerous ingredients leading to social unrest and augment proportionally the danger of the current economic collapse.

One strategy consists in avoiding their arrival. We have to start at the origin of the Exodus. It is no good to try and get rid of crows if we keep on throwing our rubbish in the garden. The crows will come again and again, because they know that, in spite of our shouts, we need them to clear out the rubbish.

And here we have complacency.

I speak mainly against the hypocrisy of Western societies. The only society which I know that is still able to control its borders, through strict policies and a strong sense of identity cultivated by centuries of isolationism and self-sufficiency, is Japan. Japan, in contrast to all the advanced industrial democracies of the world, restricts severely immigration (including refugees and unskilled foreign workers). Personally, I can observe that this is the main the reason why Japanese society maitains its uniqueness as a homogeneous nation, in the face of other industrial nation’s loss of cultural identity and any vestige of decent civil behaviour. It is all written in Japan's immigration laws and policies .
(see: Japanese Laws and Policies Concerning Immigration(Including Refugees and Foreign Workers))

(See Note:
"One famous pro-immigration economist, Julian Simon, in his book The Economic Consequences of Immigration, promotes the idea that immigration contributes significantly to economic growth. Noticeably absent from the analysis in his book is the case of Japan, a country that has had virtually no permanent immigration since WWII, yet whose economy grew remarkably faster than the United States', even granting that it started from a lower GDP base, become the world's second-largest economy.")

The Exodus towards Europe had starter long ago, when this continent – and England- earned the title of the Affluent Society. The asylum-seekers were normally fake refugees, more attracted by our standard of living then fleeing from political oppression, and were called “economic migrants”. Our cities have grown accordingly together with a surplus of people, slums have grown with them and so has waste, a conspicuous consequence of wealth. We have become accustomed to servants: even our low classes have benefited, so to speak, from a surplus of attendants to their basic needs. During economic and population growth we were already addicted and doomed to explosion. We have started to forget what is like to work, there have been too many underlings, maids, domestics, subordinates, wage-slaves, to sustain the pleasures and the exuberance of our civilisation.

Moreover, there’s never been a neat solution to the dilemma of new workforce for the jobs that Italians didn' want to do . The Italian demographer De la Zuanna has observed that the arrival of immigrants which constitute the working force needed for the European economic miracle, create a new influx of immigrants, because of their aspirations for their sons: to climb the social ladder, go to University, do office jobs, whatever, but never oh never follow in the steps of their parents. We will need yet more immigrants to :

a) do the dirty low-status work they will refuse to do
b) pay for their pensions

The cycle will have no end.

I wonder: if this capitalist era founded on continuous growth should vanish, and we will inherit the collapse of our mode of existence, predicted by gloomers and doomers, how can we continue to support/being supported by more outsiders?

Italy has no more means to assist its own poor: notwithstanding the mass unemployment, it continues to import people who cannot anymore employ and that are destined to live and die at the margins of society.

So far we have lived without reflecting on the capacity of this Earth to sustain us all and our descendants in a state of bliss.

So many people have moved in the past, from time immemorial, looking for a mythical Eldorado, to look for better pastures, to escape persecution, or simply to dream of adventure, that it seems to represent a fundamental trait of human nature.

In our times, pulled by images that our culture is broadcasting like a tantalising siren, young men and women escape dire conditions of poverty and fear, to risk sinking in the Mediterranean sea, convinced that it is sufficient to touch the magical land and be saved, delivered from all ills.

And now, in view of an economic downturn, the stupidity of such open-border policies is revealed: we are all getting poorer, and our cities cannot provide anymore the mythical lure of before . From long years of intemperance we are all waking up with a hang-over.

The fault is with us, with our throw-away societies, with our need for somebody that clears up the mess we make, for someone that will do the work that our spoiled children won’t do. Parents gave their children what they never had in their lives, small and big luxuries according to their status and possibilities, which are always above the previous standards. Even affluent families, in the past, exercised some constrain over the more superfluous requirements of their children from whom it was expected to be judicious and maybe a bit too parsimonious: that was how most family wealth was protected and augmented for a posterity which has squandered it.

We have refused to look after our old parents, which we secured inside Old People Homes cared for by African nurses or at home served by Philippino maids, we have refused to dirty our hands on a building site, we have even eliminated from our schools the old style teaching of manual skills, convinced that our children will never need touch an implement, we employ gardeners, rubbish collectors, fruit pickers. Even more scandalous is the fact that some of these ex-servants are better at earning a living than our home-grown quality. New enterprises manned by ambitious Moroccans, Albanians, Vietnamese, are have sprouted all over our cities. And then we are hypocritically indignant that part of the world that we employ to clean our bottoms or offer a service that we are unable to do, should be thrown back into the sea? But are we serious? What effort at social engineering can stop the coming population tsunami, if we are unable to survive standing on our own feet?

At the moment, the people of England, France, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, (and we expect more in the coming days) are all out on strike, demonstrating against… the bad weather. They might as well address God asking for miracles. They are not in the mood to accept just one more foreigner to take just one more job. Nationalism is rampant , the ugly sort, because it is not the fruit of concern for one's country, beauty , biodiversity, culture . It is the selfish expression of a people who has forgotten what it means to be masters of one's own destiny , to pull up one’s socks and learn to live again, frugally and responsibly.