Bill Shorten has joined others in demanding to see the Abbott government's ''jobs plan''. If the government has no plan to ensure there are new jobs to replace the thousands being lost, particularly in manufacturing, what hope is there?
Sorry to be snippy, but although all this may be the obvious question, it's actually a stupid question. Has everyone suddenly turned socialist? Do they imagine we live in a planned economy?
It amazes me that people who spend their entire lives living in a market economy don't have a clue about how market economies work.
I'm no libertarian and, these days, I'm a poor apology for an economic rationalist. I don't believe there's such a thing as a ''free market''. I believe market economies are the creation of government and that any government with half a brain knows its job is to provide guidelines for the market and ensure it doesn't run off the rails - as happened in the global financial crisis.
But, by the same token, it ought to be obvious that the vast majority of decisions made in a market economy are made by private sector producers and consumers, each acting in what they imagine to be their own interests.
In other words, the greatest single factor driving the economy forward is self-interest: business people trying to make a buck (and make more bucks than last year) and households spending about 90 per cent of their income, trying to get maximum satisfaction for their money.
Those silly people demanding to see the government's ''jobs plan'' and concluding that, unless it successfully pursues such a plan, few if any future jobs will be created, seem to assume the economy works like a glove puppet: unless the government sticks its hand in the puppet and moves it, nothing happens.
If you want to know in which particular industries or occupations the government plans to ensure new jobs are created - which winners the government has picked - the answer is: none. It's leaving the market to determine all that.
But it does have a ''jobs plan'' of sorts. It's a two-step plan. Step one: leave the primary responsibility for ensuring the economy keeps growing and creating jobs to the Reserve Bank. Step two: get started on ensuring we don't end up destroying jobs the way the Europeans and Americans have been by getting the budget back under control, while ensuring this ''fiscal consolidation'' doesn't weaken demand and so discourage employment in the next few years.
So what's the Reserve's ''jobs plan''? You ought to know. It's to encourage borrowing and spending on consumption and investment - and, in the process, counter the employment-dampening effect of our still-too-high exchange rate - by keeping interest rates at near-record lows. With any luck, our dollar will fall further as the US Federal Reserve phases out its policy of ''quantitative easing'' (creating money).
What makes our Reserve so confident doing this will, before too many months have passed, create lots of additional jobs and get the unemployment rate heading back down towards 5 per cent? Well, apart from orthodox economic theory, decades of experience. It's worked every other time, why won't it work now?
As for the government itself, there is more it could be doing to enhance the economy's job-generating capacity. One is to borrow as much as necessary to provide our businesses with adequate public infrastructure and ensure existing infrastructure is used efficiently through such things as appropriate pricing.
Another is to ensure our education and training system - from early childhood to postgraduate - is doing enough, and is effective enough, in raising the skills of our labour force. As part of this, the Gonski reforms are a good start towards increasing the employability of kids at the bottom end.
And, recognising the market failure that leads to inadequate private investment in research and development, making sure economy-wide government incentives are adequate and effective.
There may be a role for ''industry policy'', though I've yet to see programs that aren't just disguised protection of favoured industries, amounting to propping up losers rather than picking winners. Most ''innovation'' programs have been a sham.
I've spent my career being asked where the jobs will come from. It's something people ask after every severe recession. It's a symptom of the pessimism that grips the public mood at the bottom of the business cycle (in reaction to the equally unreal mood of optimism that drives booms).
It's a question I've never been able to answer. But having lived through three severe recessions my answer is now: ask me again in five years' time and I'll look up the figures and tell you precisely where they came from.
I'm supremely confident they'll come because we've never yet had a downturn from which we failed to recover, with total employment ending much higher than before the downturn.
Since the last recession, total employment is now 3.6 million jobs above its peak in June 1990, an increase of 45 per cent, with full-time jobs accounting for almost half the increase.
In terms of occupations, the biggest growth has been among managers, professionals and associate professionals, with the weakest growth in semi-skilled occupations.
I don't know where the jobs will come from this time, but I'll give you a hint: virtually all of them will be in the services sector.
How can I be so sure? That's where virtually all additional jobs have come from for the past 50 years.
