Issue 54: Raising Hell: Getting Inside, Making It Logical
"Enrich yourselves!" - slogan of Bolshevik revolutionary and theorist Nikolai Bukharin advising on how to achieve communism.
Pity Tony Bourke.
A month into the job overseeing Centrelink and the social security system in his capacity as Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and there were already plans for a protest outside his office on 1 July.
In its media release announcing the protest, the Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU) attacked the Labor government for failing to act within its first month in office.
“Despite constant pestering by us, by our comrades, and by the media, Tony Burke has so far refused to even comment on the new Workforce system, let alone make any commitment to stop or delay it,” the AUWU wrote in its media release.
These protests concerned the introduction of the “points-based activation system” on 1 July, a Coalition-era reform to the social security system now being rolled out by Labor. Think of it like a creative new way for scoring a hoop-jumping competitions. To keep their fortnightly stipend, unemployed people will have to earn “100 points” a month. To obtain these points people will be required to conduct job searches, undertake study, training or participate in work for the dole.
Of course, this new “flexible” system comes with a catch. Working full time or signing up to work for the dole will not be enough to net 100 points alone, meaning people will be required to do more. When someone does not reach the 100 points required, an automated system will start sending messages informing their payments are about to be cut off.
To ensure people being transferred onto the new system aren’t suddenly cut off from their payments over a random glitch, the Australian Union Workers Union has been asking for a three month suspension on penalties and a review into the program — both reasonable asks.
So far, there’s been no takers. When Tony Burke was asked about whether the government should half the rollout of the new system, he answered that it was “actually too late to not have a points system at all.”
"It's about getting inside it and making it logical, and making sure that when all these contracts take effect in a couple of weeks' time, we've actually got a system that helps long-term unemployed people,” he said.
Burke was also asked whether the government would lift social security payments at a time when they had been trumpeted a cost-of-living adjustment in the minimum wage, Burke balked, saying the government was “working through” whether to do so in the next budget. For context, the current JobSeeker payment is around $46 a day for a single person with no children. The Henderson Poverty line is $88 a day.
Thrilling stuff — but not so much as the spectacle of Labor constituent officers throwing shade on the people who have been working in this area for years.
Apparently the reason why the rollout of the new system can’t be stopped is that the old software has already been wiped to prepare for the new software to be installed. If true, this is not just an incredible way to handle any sort of system change, but also means the Australian government is effectively hostage to a real-life version of that Little Britain sketch:
It is also hard to accept at this point the implication Labor has been surprised by the pace of this development. During its time in opposition Labor’s approach to bad Coalition policy was summarised by one political journalist as “bitch and pass”: thunder about the injustice of this week’s cruelty but wave it through unopposed. At the election, the party ran on a small-target platform in which it sailed close to the Coalition by promising nothing to those who should be its greatest supporters. Activists working in this space have been lobbying — begging, practically — Labor to actually say something about this and other issues for years, but were told “talk to the government”. Now they’re talking to the government and the answer is the government it is simply powerless to act. Go figure.
It is wholly predictable that technocratic Labor officials would try to manage expectations of their supporters — especially after the party embraced the rhetoric of fiscal austerity to win office. The refusal to act on bread and butter issues risks the party burning through its hard-won political capital only to get nothing for it
Before the pandemic, people would have passively accepted the illusion of a pale, tepid and powerless governing apparatus — made up of many cogs and levers, requiring its operators to have advanced degrees from the best institutions. Unfortunately for the new government, the old government — made up of people who weren’t exactly intellectual titans — showed clearly how, weathered though our public institutions may be, those whose decide things can literally make change at any time.
Labor might not like this criticism, or the manner of its delivery, but they should pay attention. It’s not an original insight but one worth repeating: bad policy may not have originated with Labor but now they’re in government, it’s now their problem. When critics ask “what’s the point of Labor?”, you need to answer with them action or the next time around voters really might start looking elsewhere.
For the Fortnight: July 7 to July 21
Reporting In
Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …
I’m back to freelancing full time now and while I have a run of commissions — on some very exciting stories — none of them have made it to print in the last fortnight. I’m also hoping many of these will tie into plans for the next book, which I’m very excited to share when it’s all been locked in.
In other news: Joe Hockey apparently has a new book! If the wise readership of Raising Hell so wish, I will buy this book and review what I’m sure will an elegantly penned, non-ghostwritten account by a deft master of Australian politics. If that is the kind of content you can get into, let me know.
The SA Media Award nominees list for 2022 is in and your boy has been nominated for award in — wait for it — sports journalism. Which is hilarious.
Here are the stories I was nominated for:
Fossil fuel advertising in sport ‘the new cigarette sponsorship’, ex-Wallabies captain David Pocock says (The Guardian Australia, 9 November 2021).
WA Nippers parents speak out against Woodside Energy sponsorship deal (The Guardian Australia, 22 November 2021).
Projects
Cracking COVIDSafe - An examination of the machine that made the COVIDSafe app, a piece of software made by people who wanted to hack the pandemic (complete).
Laramba’s Water - Laramba is a remote Indigenous Community in the Northern Territory which has been drinking uranium-contaminated water since 2008. We tried to find out what why (on-going).
‘High levels of uranium in drinking water of NT community’ (NITV, 31 July 2020).
‘Company remains shtum on plans to filter Laramba's contaminated water supply’ (NITV, 21 October 2020).
‘‘It makes us sick’: remote NT community wants answers about uranium in its water supply’ (The Guardian, 18 October 2021).
You Hate To See It
A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…
Making A Monkey Out Of Me
For nearly half a decade now good, honest people have been forced to listen to a gaggle of crypto bros hawking digital technology as the biggest thing since sliced bread. Bitcoin, or its derivatives, were supposed to offer the liberal fantasy of a currency without institutions, a perfect permanent record and an untraceable means of exchange. El Salvador went so far as to elect a Redditor President and adopt bitcoin as the national currency; the Central African Republic did likewise even though the majority of the population doesn’t have access to the electronics needed to obtain Bitcoin. Where are these illustrious financial titans of the internet now? With a classic bank run tanking one crypto currency after another, the limits of a finite digital asset that is not tied to anything in the real world are perhaps becoming more obvious. The sad part is a generation of working class kids who had no other path to upward social mobility will be contemplating windowing themselves after losing whatever meagre amount of wealth they had.
The Price Is The Price
Inflation may be the name of the game right now and every second member of the chattering classes has an idea what may be causing it: uppity workers demanding higher raises, esoteric Central Bank wizardry, marauding Russians tearing through Ukraine. The real answer, it turns out, is a cabal of shipping magnates who have worked out they can hold the world to ransom by charging outrageous prices to take a shipping container from Point A to Point B. Oh, and climate change which is gradually ratcheting up the cost of everything good.
Over A Barrell
Speaking of holding people to ransom, Australian power companies were locked in a showdown with government officials this last fortnight because a price cap imposed to contain the rising cost of gas made it unprofitable for them to switch on their generators. Were anyone else in the general population to simply decide that they couldn’t be arsed going into the work that day, the Sydney Morning Herald would report it as a strike and the riot cops would be dispatched to put down some labour unrest the good, ol’ fashioned way.
Thoughts And Prayers
A new Australian study — a world first — has surveyed former pollies to ask how they have coped after losing their ability to shape the fate of millions and concluded that no longer being allowed to decide things kinda sucks. Those surveyed described the “shock” and “horror” of losing “your reason to get up in the morning” while another described feeling like their “arms had been chopped off”. Yet those who have lost their seats may in the recent election may take some comfort in the sage wisdom offered by Tony Abbott to the Holden workers who lost their jobs:
"Some of them will find it difficult, but many of them will probably be liberated to pursue new opportunities and to get on with their lives.”
BYO Porta-Potty
Vladimir Putin is reportedly so concerned about the world learning about his illnesses he has enlisted a special detachment within the FSO to bag, secure and transit his poop back to Russia when away on diplomatic trips.
Failing Upward
Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…
By now the faithful readership of Raising Hell will know the story about the Sydney Morning Herald’s gossip columnist Andrew Hornery and his attempt at outing Rebel Wilson. I mean, at this point, who hasn’t? It’s been well reported. But we are here to celebrate the work of Bevan Shields who, in attempting to cover for his reporter, published a brief note on the decision to pursue the story. Of course, the situation continued to escalate in what The Monthly described as one of those “quickly cascading clusterfucks” as the story went global. It is worth noting that this is not the first incident, but Shields keeps powering on, and we have to respect the hustle.
Good Reads, Good Times
To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…
This run-down by Giles Parkinson at Renew Economy is a good, basic explainer for the nonsense that has gone on with the national electricity this last fortnight.
The ABC’s Matt Garrick published this great feature on rehabilitation efforts at the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory — which is a good resource to point to those who say nuclear is the only way to seriously deal with climate change.
Here’s the memo sent to Jimmy Carter in 1977 that told the US President we should probably do something then before climate change became, you know, a thing.
Before You Go (Go)…
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal or through encrypted message Wickr Me on my account: rorok1990. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!