Election 2022 (Poll added)

[tonyo]

On this, I read somewhere recently not sure if it is correct or not, that politically you are considered employed if you work 1hr or more per week!

That's not being employed, that is 95% unemployed welfare, who the feck decides that sort of threshold for reporting?

It's called making the numbers sound better.  There is a more important statistic - not the 'Unemployed' but the 'Underemployed'

Finally, given that every second cafe, restaurant and shop has signs in their windows pleading for workers, why is there even 4% without a job....?

[dodge]

On this, I read somewhere recently not sure if it is correct or not, that politically you are considered employed if you work 1hr or more per week!

That's not being employed, that is 95% unemployed welfare, who the feck decides that sort of threshold for reporting?

The one hour considered employed has been that way for a long time (not suggesting it's right).  Without international students, fruit pickers etc coming to Australia, it is not a great surprise that unemployment is so low.  It would be interesting to know the number of people employed against the population of Australia (as opposed to the participation rate).  It is an absolute nightmare trying to get staff in all sorts of industries at the moment.  It is an employee's market.

[capcom]

Finally, given that every second cafe, restaurant and shop has signs in their windows pleading for workers, why is there even 4% without a job....?

Free money ...

[dodge]

There is a figure that suggests full employment, which includes those that are between jobs, and not necessarily considered a good thing - because the businesses can't get staff to help them operate, let alone grow.  When I was at Uni, I think it was 4-5%.

Good examples are complex, but take some small country towns.  City folk like the area, so they buy another property in the town.  The house either stays as a holiday home or short stay accommodation.  It removes a permanent population from the town.  If this happens a lot, the number of people that are able to be employed by the town decreases.  As a result, when the owners/short stay people go to the town, they complain because the shops aren't open at their convenient hours, because they are small businesses with not enough staff.  So the shops that remain open become really busy, which isn't an enjoyable experience for the owner, staff or customers.  Next time, the owners/short stays bring their own food and drinks, so they don't spend in the town, reducing $$ available in that town.  Shops continue to close.  As a result, there aren't jobs in the town, so permanent residents move out to find work.  It isn't a great cycle.  There is full employment in the town, but not nearly enough available workers.

[LP]

Good examples are complex, but take some small country towns.  City folk like the area, so they buy another property in the town.  The house either stays as a holiday home or short stay accommodation.  It removes a permanent population from the town.

This reminds me, I'd heard about a scheme OS that taxed vacant properties at a higher rate as a way to overcome the housing shortage. It's happening OS already, here we have gone part way by requiring major hotels and other venues to provided unused rooms as emergency accommodation, similar to the US. But I wonder how things would go in the housing market if "property collectors" were encouraged / forced to put residents in place to save tax dollars. I'm sure there would be an outcry, but even so I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

To me it's analogous the fringe benefits tax of company vehicles, some people have a garages full of registered cars that hardly ever hit the road. Maybe the rego fees are back to front, and if you can afford to keep a garage full of unused vehicles you should pay a higher rate rather than get a discount for reduced use!

Think along the same lines for properties, particularly all these foreign owned vacant houses that seem to proliferate in certain suburbs. I never realised this was a problem until a mate got in on the gig of maintaining them, he tells me in some suburbs there are literally whole streets that are door to door immaculately maintained vacant properties. They have to go in, garden, clean gutters, clean houses, open windows, dust, vacuum and run the services like gas or water to fill traps, flush toilets, etc., etc., then send photographic reports to some agent or foreign buyer. Basically he said he making a killing flushing toilets in empty properties!

[Mav]

Will the Liberals lurch to the left or the right? It'll be an interesting watch. But it's pretty obvious which way Sky News / Murdoch wants them to go:

In shock and anger over Liberal defeat, Sky News commentators urge party to shift right, The Guardian.

“Scott Morrison’s pathetic Liberals got smashed by telling the world they were the Guilty Party,” Bolt wrote. “Guilty on the ‘climate emergency’. Guilty of being mean to women. Guilty on ‘reconciliation’.

“Who’d vote for such a mewling pack of self-haters with so little self-respect that they won’t even sack a party traitor like Malcolm Turnbull? Thank God this election wipe-out has taken out many of their worst grovellers.

“Please, Peter Dutton, take over, and make the Liberals stop apologising for not being more like Labor. Let the Liberals be Liberals again. But still I see some of the more clueless Liberal survivors crawl from the wreckage and whimper that they’ve got to swing even more to the Left.”

The other interesting thing will be how the Anti-Dan campaign will fare in November. Clearly, the Federal Liberals miscued by taking potshots at the Andrews Govt over the pandemic response:

“The Liberal party thought that they were having a potshot at the Labor party, but … they were having a go at Victorians,” Tam, a voter in Higgins, told Guardian Australia.

“I took it personally. It has definitely swayed my vote.”

Voters we spoke to in the three electorates were outraged by the constant negative comparisons between Victoria and NSW, the lack of financial support after jobkeeper wrapped up but lockdowns dragged on, and most notably, the sluggish vaccination rollout.

This was on top of several other issues such as climate change, integrity, the treatment of women in parliament and other workplaces, and growing inequality.

But Liberal strategists were confident there was another story playing out in the outer suburbs of Melbourne.

They believed there was an “anti-Dan” sentiment and attempted to capitalise on it, issuing how-to-vote cards urging voters to “send Daniel Andrews a message”. An ad campaign, targeting voters in Corangamite and McEwen, attempted to paint Albanese as Andrews’s puppet.

The result? The seats of Corangamite and Dunkley are marginal no more, with a 7.7% and 4.2% swing to Labor MPs Libby Coker and Peta Murphy respectively at the time of writing.

In McEwen, there was a small swing towards the Liberal party but Labor’s Rob Mitchell retained the seat comfortably. Strategists were predicting Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and One Nation could secure up to 20% of the vote, but instead it was the Greens that came in third, with more than 14% of first preference votes – a 4.6% swing in a seat the party put little resources into.

In nearby Hawke, a new seat, there was a 2.8% swing to the Liberal party but Labor’s Sam Rae will retain it with more than 57% of the two-party preferred vote. Again, it was the Greens, not UAP or One Nation, that came in third.

In Melbourne’s east, the state’s most marginal electorate was easily won off Liberal MP Gladys Liu by Labor’s Carina Garland, while in neighbouring Deakin, Michael Sukkar remains in danger of losing his seat.

In the previously safe Liberal seat of Aston, embattled cabinet minister Alan Tudge suffered a 7.4% swing against him, and in Menzies, another heartland electorate named after the party’s founder, candidate Keith Wolahan had a narrow lead on his Labor opponent.

Asked to explain the party’s drubbing in a state once described as the jewel in the Liberal crown, Senator Jane Hume conceded: “We thought there would be a bigger Dan Andrews effect in Victoria and there hasn’t [been], which I find disappointing.”
“We have had such negative feedback about those harsh lockdowns in Victoria, and we thought that may play out in those outer suburban areas. Clearly, they haven’t,” she told Nine.

Former Labor campaign strategist turned pollster Kos Samaras said the research his firm RedBridge conducted ahead of the election found “no evidence” to suggest a dislike of Andrews would translate to votes for the Liberals.

“The Libs drove their buses out to safe Labor seats hunting for votes and left their homes burning. They’ve been absolutely decimated,” he says.

“It’s a complete repeat of the 2018 state election.”

‘They were having a go at Victorians’: how the Liberals miscalculated the ‘anti-Dan’ election strategy, The Guardian.

The article notes Victorian State Liberals are still convinced there's an anti-Dan factor out there, but if they're wrong then they'll waste a lot of their efforts.

If we look at the results in Victoria and WA, states in which Labor Premiers implemented harsh restrictions with a view to keeping Covid at bay, Labor was rewarded. Maybe that means that the overwhelming majority of voters respect governments which make hard decisions: the opposite of do-nothing governments. Listening to an obnoxiously loud minority which prefers that Govts do nothing is like listening to the Siren song and crashing one's ship into the rocks.

The Victorian opposition would do better to forget about running a review of pandemic management. It's not as though they have to harp on about it anyway as those who were outraged by it will remain so and presumably they'll vote against Dan. Instead, they should focus on issues such as Ambulance response time and the like. But Labor has a pretty decent argument there. The ALP can argue that Morrison's Liberal Govt had starved Victoria of resources in the hope it could foment an uprising against the ALP. Albo doesn't need to replicate Morrison's obvious shift of resources to his own party's States: all he has to do is get rid of Morrison's rorting and Victoria will benefit greatly from increases in funding. Maybe Victorian voters won't be quite as optimistic that balance will be restored if it elects right-wing wingnuts led by Guy, conditioned as they are by Morrison to expect political reprisals. 

[madbluboy]

When do we all get our 5% pay increase?

[Mav]

That's the funny thing: the government of the day doesn't set minimum wage rises. Just as the Governor of the Reserve Bank determines interest rises independently of the Government, the Fair Work Commission determines what rise, if any, there should be in the minimum wage. The Federal Govt presumably makes its views known but others express their views as well. And the determination of the Fair Work Commission doesn't bind employers who are paying over the minimum wage although there's an expectation there'll be a flow on.

When I heard Albo's comments and Morrison teeing off on them, I initially feared it was a gaffe but then I felt it would rebound on Morrison because essentially he was saying it should be up to workers to fight inflation by accepting a real wage cut. It was pretty clear Morrison realised he'd fallen into a trap as he quickly tried to backtrack on his attack, saying he supported a rise in wages.

[Gointocarlton]

When do we all get our 5% pay increase?

Lets go MBB, Ill make the placards
"Whata we want? 5%. When do wannit? Now!!!!"

[DJC]

When do we all get our 5% pay increase?

It’s up to the Fair Work Commission and then only for folk on the minimum wage.