If, rather than wading through all the things the Albanese government has decided to do, you read what its white paper on employment actually says, you realise a remarkable thing: it reveals a vision of an alternative economy the government wants to take us to.
In recent weeks we’ve seen before our eyes the worst of the economy that several decades of “neoliberalism” – the doctrine that what’s good for big business is best for the rest of us – has brought to us. The rise of the nation’s chief executives as commercial Brahman castes, taking short-cuts to higher profits by chiselling customers and mistreating employees, and seeing themselves as above the law, has left a sour taste.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers and his colleagues want to move from an economy centred on what the bosses want, to one centred on what’s best for the workers. It’s a shift from managing the economy for the few, rather than the many. The great majority of Australia’s households depend on income from wages.
The white paper spells it out from the beginning. “The government’s vision is for a dynamic and inclusive labour market in which everyone has the opportunity for secure, fairly paid work and people, businesses and communities can be beneficiaries of change and thrive. We are working to create more opportunities for more people in more places,” it says.
Our surprise return to our lowest rate of unemployment in almost 50 years – about 3.5 per cent, which we’ve maintained for more than a year – has revived the government’s ambition to pursue a goal we lost sight of in the 1970s, full employment.
The white paper says what the government takes that term to mean in our very different world, and how it will be pursued. Full employment has never meant an unemployment rate of zero. At the very least, there will always be a small proportion of workers moving between jobs or looking for their first job.
The paper announces the government’s definition of the term: it is working to create an economy where “everyone who wants a job is able to find one without having to search for too long”.
That’s a demanding specification. Sometimes unemployment will be high because the economy’s in recession. In normal times, unemployment is high precisely because too many people have gone for months without finding a job.
Some part of unemployment comes from the economy’s ever-changing industry structure, as some industries decline while others expand. This can leave some workers high and dry. They may have skills that some business wants, but that business may be many miles from where they live.
So for the government to commit to people not having to search too long to find a job imposes on it a great responsibility to help those people having problems.
But the government adds an important qualification to the requirement that no one be jobless for long: “These should be decent jobs that are secure and fairly paid.”
All this, it tells us, “is central to a strong economy and a prosperous and inclusive society”.
Just so. The only reason to want a strong economy is for prosperity that’s widely shared among the people who constitute the economy. And a simple truth that was lost in the era of neoliberalism is the value people place on having a job that’s secure.
It’s the peace of mind that comes from knowing that, if you turn up every day, do what you’re told and work hard, you can stop worrying about where your next meal’s coming from.
This can be just as important as how well the job pays, if not more so. But in recent decades we’ve seen the growth of businesses increasing their profits by using casualisation to make jobs less secure and devices such as labour hire and outsourcing to side-step existing wages and conditions.
The white paper says the government’s objective is “sustained and inclusive full employment”.
“Sustained full employment is about minimising volatility in economic cycles and keeping employment as close as possible to the current maximum level consistent with low and stable inflation.
“Inclusive full employment is about broadening opportunities, lowering barriers to work including discrimination, and reducing structural under-utilisation [part-time workers who can’t get as many hours of work as they want] over time to increase the level of employment in our economy.”
The paper says building a strong and skilled workforce “will be fundamental to achieving full employment and productivity growth”. This will require substantial growth in the high-skilled workforce.
“Australia needs an increasingly highly skilled labour force, equipped with the right tools and technology” to maximise gains from the transition to renewable energy, the increased use of artificial intelligence and the growing care economy.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. It would be a much better world to live in. But they’re just words ... just aspirations. True. But by setting it all down so formally, the Albanese government is raising our expectations.
It’s setting a standard for us to judge its performance by – a standard much higher than its predecessors ever set. We must hold Albo to it.
