Grappler Racist Filth
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Australian Politics
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Umm - at risk of dominating the conversation (nev-ah!), allo me to slang this in - got it from the head of the Republican movement:-
How Labor's policies hurt working families
From: The Australian
January 06, 2014 12:00AM
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WHEN Kevin Rudd stood on the stage of the Brisbane Convention Centre, just 10 days before ballots were cast on November 24, 2007, the centrepiece of his pitch to voters was that he would "secure the future for our families, for our future and for our nation". He urged Australians to change the government because John Howard had "lost touch with working families". He said Labor valued hard work, achievement and success. Labor would protect the vulnerable. And Labor would provide a "decent standard of living for all working families". After all, that's what Labor governments are supposed to do. Six years later, after all the policy backflips, broken promises and leadership changes, the voters again cast their verdict on who should govern Australia. Labor was routed. Now the data proves what we knew all along - Labor's heartland was hurt the most.
Former Labor senator turned demographic profiler John Black crunched the numbers to discover who were the winners and who were the losers after six years of Labor in power. His findings, published in The Weekend Australian, revealed that those who did best were not Labor's traditional blue-collar working class base or the upwardly mobile working families that Mr Rudd promised to protect. They were white-collar inner-city dwellers working in education, health and public service jobs. "The biggest winners were well-paid, public-sector Greens voters living inside the goat-cheese circle of our major cities," Mr Black said. Jobs in traditional Labor voting sectors such as construction, manufacturing and transport declined between 2007 and 2013. These voters, predominantly living in the outer suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, were worse off after six years of Labor. Almost one million jobs were created [in the private sector of the economy] while Labor was in power; virtually none were in manual labour industries. For these blue-collar workers, their share of the labour market declined.
One of the more significant voter cohorts who witnessed their standard of living decline was young mothers aged 30-34 with two children. Many women in this demographic group simply gave up searching for work when faced with spiralling childcare costs sparked by cozy wage deals and greater regulation. If mothers did find a job, they then had to arrange hours that enabled them to effectively couple work with caring responsibilities. The freezing of the childcare rebate at $7500, Mr Black suggested, hurt single mothers badly as costs continued to increase. The future for these voters was anything but secure. "The biggest political losers from six years of Labor governments were young swinging-voter families and traditional blue-collar Labor voters," Mr Black said.
Those who benefited during Labor's reign were, not surprisingly, professionals employed in the burgeoning education, health and public service sectors. New jobs grew strongly in these sectors, accounting for 60 per cent of the total 957,000 jobs created, as the government poured money into big-spending programs and signed off on generous wage deals with unions. These voters, working in highly regulated or publicly funded industries, tend to align as much with the radical Greens party as they do with Labor. Indeed, Mr Black's analysis of federal electorates shows that the seats that saw the biggest boost to work participation rates were in inner-city Sydney, such as Grayndler, and Melbourne, such as Wills, which are heavily populated with wealthy voters, many of whom opt for the Greens at the ballot box. The seats that saw the greatest decline in work participation rates were lower-income areas on the fringes of the major cities such as Rankin outside Brisbane and Bruce outside of Melbourne. In these areas, support for the Greens is well below the state or national average.
None of these results, however shocking, should come as a surprise. It is not a coincidence that the sectors where Labor funneled large amounts of money saw jobs increase. The plethora of big-spending government programs expanded an ever-growing public service. The K-Rudd and J-Gillard governments boosted spending on education and health. Meanwhile, blue-collar jobs declined as these private sector industries faced a high-cost, low-productivity economy. Re-regulating the labour market, shackling businesses with new regulations and imposing new taxes, such as the carbon tax and the mining tax, acted as a disincentive to new investment. As we have often remarked, Labor, particularly under Juliar Gillard's leadership, became a prisoner of the unions. Too often, as a result of their political influence, they were able to extract concessions from government that served their own interests rather than the national interest. The lesson for Tony Abbott, if he needed reminding, is not to cut cozy deals with unions and to reduce regulation and taxes. The priority must be to invest in the productive drivers of the economy. This will help ALL workers, not just some.
..MORE TO FOLLOW:-
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