1. Rationalising unemployment figures, 2/2/73
2. The unknown bludgers are our problem, 9/8/74

1.
A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Rationalising unemployment figures,” The Australian Financial Review, February 2, 1973, p. 3.

There are two reasons for the unpopularity of economists; they have the nasty habit of usually being right and they are sad and arid people, not brimming over with the milk of human kindness.

But the criticism certainly could not be levelled against the economists who bring out the quarterly publication called The Australian Economic Review in Melbourne.

These are the nicest economists known and are so full of the milk of human kindness that you have to be quick to get the bucket under before a lot of milk drips on the cowshed floor.

In the last issue of the Review, they spelt out what should be done to stimulate the economy to relieve unemployment, and to dampen it down to prevent inflation.

This is clearly a complicated process and even Eccles feels himself unable to comment about the general thesis — and that is a pleasant change.

But I would like to examine one part of the thesis and ask, “How much of an unemployment problem have we really got?”

A politician soon learns that he mustn’t call a spade a spade. He learns to refer to pensioners in the most glowing terms as “pioneers who have borne the heat and burden of the day” and who possess virtues few others of the community can claim.

He knows that this is nonsense, that pensioners are the general public grown older and they do not necessarily get more virtuous as this happens.

Similarly, the wise MP soon learns to assume that all the unemployed are desperately trying to get work. But we all know that there is a proportion of the unemployed who are just about unemployable.

We also know that there are others who would work well if they could find exactly the right job in exactly the right place.

There are others again who have just left school and who are wisely looking around first before they commit themselves. And there are hippies who despise those who work, and so on.

That there are others again who are genuinely out of work I do not deny. But we know that must of what we now do to alleviate unemployment adds to the number of unemployed.

BHP recently imported, at considerable expense to themselves and the taxpayer, a number of Spaniards to work in their plant at Whyalla, while at Port Pirie, just a few miles away, there were a large number of people on unemployment relief.

Early last year I visited a native settlement in my electorate and received a gratifying welcome. When I asked the superintendent the reason for this change of attitude he said that I had received the credit for what the Government did during the last week.

“That’s very proper,” I replied, “but exactly what did the Government do last week?”

“It raised the unemployment benefit from $10 to $17 a week,” he said. “I’ve had difficulty in getting many of these men to apply for work before. It will be quite impossible now.”

Now the Melbourne economists want us to increase the unemployment benefit to $[??] a week plus $14.50 for a wife with an allowance of $3 for each child.

They recognise this will present a problem and I quote their report: “We are aware that the objection will be raised to this proposal that it will decrease the incentive to accept employment and will thus make “Living off the unemployment benefit” a more attractive proposition.

“We do not deny that there is a problem here, but the solution to it can only be in improving the tests for genuine unemployment rather than in penalising those who are genuinely unemployed.”

“Improving the tests for genuine unemployment” they say. Well, that’s easier said than done.

We all know that the system is being abused now. How much more would it be abused if the temptation is increased?

There would need to be better and tougher tests than now, and they would have to be toughly administered.

If not, we would destroy the morality of the slackers who are beating the system, and the morale of the genuine worker who sees his slacker mates getting well paid for doing nothing.

We would end up with a much bigger inspection force. Still, I guess it’s one way of solving the unemployment problem. We could employ people to watch one another!

***
2.
A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “The unknown bludgers are our problem,” The Australian Financial Review, August 9, 1974, p. 3.

One of the sacred political cows is unemployment. A member soon learns to talk about unemployment in hushed and reverent voice if his party is in Government or in ringing tones if he is in Opposition.

He soon learns to speak emotively about people being “thrown out of work” or scathingly about the wickedness of creating “a pool of unemployment.” And the unemployed are all painted as long-suffering goodies, in the same way as aged pensioners are all depicted as “pioneers who have developed this great country of ours, who have borne the heat and burden of the day.”

As I get nearer pensionable age I am becoming acutely aware that I do not become better just because I am getting older. I know some pensioners are wonderful people, but many are like me — very ordinary indeed.

So it is with the unemployed people. Some of them are genuinely unemployed but there are few of these now. If you break down the pool of male unemployed as at July, 1972, this is the position. First, 20.8 per cent were temporarily unemployed, were in the process of changing jobs or were seasonal workers. Even in times of fullest of full employment this percentage would remain.

Then there were 32 per cent of what are called the hard core unemployed made up as follows: handicapped 10.9 per cent, aged 5 per cent and personal characteristics 16.1 per cent. The latter would include the social derelicts, the alcoholics and the other flotsam of an affluent society.

This group, totally 32 per cent, would remain whatever the state of the employment demand. I don’t say that we should ignore the personal problems involved in this sector but it is certain that creating more employment wouldn’t solve them.

Of the balance (47.3 per cent) 2.3 per cent were unemployed because of inadequate command of the language. These would remain until they learned English whatever the employment position. Another 3.6 per cent were unemployed because of lack of qualifications and here again the solution is training them, not trying to create more employment.

The balance, 41.4 per cent, were classified by the department as having insufficient labour opportunity and this sector would contain the true unemployment at which any government policy would be aimed. Yet only about 17 per cent of these had been unemployed for more than three months and certainly some would have been in the country and would have been unwilling to go to the city where the work was.

So when you hear politicians emoting about the pool of unemployment we should have a clear look as to how this pool is composed.

And we know that there is a percentage (how big we can only guess) of what the Minister for Labour calls “bludgers.” These are reckoned in the Government’s figures. The minister says there are not many of these but there are more than he knows about. If he knew about them they wouldn’t be there. It is the ones he doesn’t know about that worry us all.

And we should be careful about the phrase “people being thrown out of work.” All over the country at all times people are changing jobs and at times of overfull employment large numbers of people wander round from factory to factory, from job to job, working for a few days and then moving on, knowing that they can get a job anywhere.

Yet when a factory, goaded beyond endurance by transient labour or by silly demarcation disputes or by wildcat strikes, threatens to put men off there is a cry of rage and anguish that people are to be “thrown out of work.” What really happens in times like these is that most employees will go and get another job. I understand that almost all the people stood down by Leyland recently quickly found employment elsewhere.

If the Government is not successful in slowing the present rate of inflation, export industries in particular, the service industries, and even heavily protected secondary industries, will be unable to afford to employ people. Then we will have inflation, plus real unemployment.

I hope we in the Opposition will have more sense of responsibility than the ALP had when in Opposition when they used to talk glibly about “creating a pool of unemployment” while we tried to tackle inflation. We should, instead, be asking ourselves what policies we should have been following had we won the election.