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| Numbers indicate size of two-party preferred booth majority for Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
The electorate of Port Adelaide includes Port Adelaide itself and the adjacent Le Fevre Peninsula, including the suburbs around Sempahore and Largs Bay, along with Woodville and its surrounds to the north of the city and, some distance to the north-east, a stretch of suburbs from Parfield Gardens north to Salisbury North, which are separated from the rest of the electorate by the Dry Creek industrial area. A very safe seat for Labor, its margin after the 2013 election was 14.0%, pared back from a redistribution-adjusted 20.9% by a 6.9% swing to the Liberals.
Port Adelaide was created with the expansion of parliament in 1949 from an area that had previously made Hindmarsh a safe seat for Labor. Such was Labor’s strength that the Liberals did not field candidates in 1954 and 1955, when the only competition for Labor came from the Communist Party. Rod Sawford assumed the seat at a by-election in 1988 upon the resignation of the rather more high-profile Mick Young, who had been the member since 1974. With Sawford’s retirement at the 2007 election the seat passed on to Mark Butler, the state secretary of the Left faction Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union and a descendant of two conservative state premiers: his great- and great-great-grandfathers, both of whom were called Sir Richard Butler.
Butler quietly established himself as a rising star over Labor’s two terms in government, winning promotion to parliamentary secretary in June 2009 and then to the junior ministry portfolios of mental health and ageing after the 2010 election. The latter promotion came despite his noted hesitancy in jumping aboard the Julia Gillard bandwagon during the June 2010 leadership coup. Butler was elevated to cabinet in December 2011 when social inclusion was added to his existing responsibilities, and he further gained housing and homeless in the February 2013 reshuffle which followed the departure of Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans. He remained solidly behind Gillard when Kevin Rudd challenged her for the leadership in February 2012, but emerged among the decisive defectors to the Rudd camp ahead of his successful leadership bid in June 2013. The subsequent reshuffle saw him promoted to environment and climate change, which he retained in the shadow ministry following the election defeat.
There may only be 5.8% unemployed. True. But don’t forget, 20% of that remaining 94.2% are mostly goofing off.
Even years ago there was always at least 10% goofing off. Now that we have smartphones and twitter goofing off has reached serious epidemic proportions.
They don’t goof off in China nearly as much. The govt is on to it over there.
This goofing off phenom explains the falling productivity phenom. I could go into this, but space doesn’t permit.
dedalus@401
Well that would be interesting but is complicated by the fact that productivity of labour has not been falling.
Prof. Quiggin has written extensively on this.
Hmmm, isn’t it the job of the employer to monitor goofing off?
An employee is usually assigned certain tasks. Those tasks may require a full-time job to complete.
bemused 402
Yeah, but Professor Quiggins talks to the animals.
Jobs are usually always created with new technology.
I think it’s pretty premature to assume that advancing technology will rersult in mass unemployment.
I don’t think it will be happening anytime soon.
dedalus@404
I’ll take his opinion over yours thanks.
394
Unemployment was much lower in the post war period. Around 1%.
The unemployment rate, as it is currently calculated, gives an unrealistic picture because it counts people who are employed for at least 1 hour per fortnight but still looking for work as employed. There is another chunk of the workforce who cannot find more than an insufficient amount of part time and/or casual work. Underemployment is a significant problem that is about the same size as unemployment.
Centre
I did say we are in transition. I did not say that due to lack of work available we should tax companies 90% of the profit to make sure people have an income.
The now part is increase wages for less time worked. Instead its less pay for more hours worked.
This saves companies money by putting people on Newstart as people work way longer to hold onto their jobs than they should.
[384
zoidlord
hahah, watch the age care facilities suing Centerlink, for accidents in WTFD program.
They really have no idea.
Also, jobs that continue to not exist, be continuing to be non-existent.
What this government is trying to do, is minimize the amount of money being spent trying to create “mythical jobs” that don’t even exist, and hide the unemployment data that way as well.]
The main purpose of this is to characterise the unemployed as indolent shirkers and to make them the focus of blame for unemployment, which is certainly going to rise in coming years. Unemployment cannot be blamed on the laissez faire policies of the Government: it is always to be seen as the fault of unions, workers and the unemployed themselves.
The sick will be responsible for their infirmity; the homeless for their indigence and the jobless for their shiftless penury; even the aged will be accountable for the passage of the years. The Tories are reaching back to the 1920’s and for their ethical, political and economic models.
“@PaulBongiorno: The return of Work For the Dole sparks new discussion, one authoritative study found the Howard Govt scheme added to the problem.”
Re paying for fox or anyhing else. Why bother?
It’s all available for free if you look.
I have a 500 gigabyte service from O…S , plus phone calls etc. $105/month.
It’s all available on youtube or veetle & elsewhere. Movies tv whatever.
I have two teenagers & even they can’t use up 500gig.
Never ever ever will I pay Rupe a penny.
When they put the foxtel cable in the pit in my street they offered 3 months free plus free installation up to the house so I accepted & cancelled after the 3 months. Paid not a penny. All chargs to Rupe. That got me the connection for free if I ever need it. So far I don’t.
Up yours buddy!
Zoomster,
[Alas, I’m in a true black spot area. My last aerial was about ten metres high. So we can’t get Telstra broadband — everything is satellite.]
When we were in the Valley it was the same. Because satellite installation was subsidised they tried quite hard to get us to have wireless (?), but in order to get that the aerial would have to be over 10m above the house. I think the ADSL cable ran 2-3km west of where we were. Though later, when in High School then Uni we noticed much more the price discrepancy for ADSL vs Satellite, you’d be paying more for less than a 10th of the data.
guytaur
Slaughtering an employee to do more and more and certainly paying them less, will ultimately be counter-productive.
Our unemployment rate is less than 6%. I’d have to disagree that we are in a transition stage of technology diminishing jobs, although who knows, one day maybe but it’s something not worth worrying about yet.
bemused
and this is also measured by and reported on, not only by the ABS but other analysts.
Of course, you also can’t say ‘someone is working one hour a week, therefore they are unemployed’. It depends on the individual – there will be (admittedly rare) cases where one hour a week is all someone wants, and also (rare) cases where that’s what they need.
There’s also ‘overemployment’ figures to muddy the scene as well – many, many people work longer hours than they actually want to.
Another factor overlooked (particularly by those who pretend we had ‘full employment’ in the past) is that we have a larger proportion of the population now wanting work outside the home — in the post War period, married women weren’t expected to work, and that took a lot of heat off the job market.
My point is that employment in Australia at this moment is quite healthy, and has been for about a decade (which is no reason for complacency, of course).
dedalus
what productivity problem? (Remember to use evidence).
Can somebody just tell me why the unemployment rate is not calculated by simply adding all the people on unemployment benefits?
silentmajority
I’ve looked, it isn’t, if it’s not available via satellite I can’t get it, end of story.
Centre
I am talking structures. I am saying Kabor and yes the Greens have it right and that the LNP have it wrong.
They are doing the structure that leads to slaughtering an employee.
Work for Dole classic example
Paul Bongiorno is referring to the only independent study ever done on theHoward Government’s work for the dole scheme. That study found the scheme was a failure. Those participating spent less time looking for work and as a result spent longer on Newstart. This study was funded by the Department of Family and Community Services in the early 2000s and dealt with the first stage of the scheme between November 1997 and June 1998.
http://theconversation.com/work-for-the-dole-doesnt-work-so-why-is-it-coalition-policy-784
The study findings, for those who want to wade through it.
http://cf.fbe.unimelb.edu.au/staff/jib/documents/wfdwp.pdf
Abbott, as Minister for Employment Services from 1998 to 2001 oversaw the implementation of the full scheme and its expansion. He was gone from that portfolio by the time the study results were released. He’s probably never bothered to read it. So now he’s resurrecting the rotting corpse of a failed program and he’s telling us this time it will work. It’s just more recycled Howard-era garbage that should stay buried. When is this woeful excuse for a government going to come up with a new idea?
… and to follow on from psyclaw, I think the studies also say that the length of time spent in prison doesn’t affect the likelihood to re-offend after a certain point and has a negative impact soon after that (There’s a hard copy lying around here somewhere, I believe). There also is a bit of a push in America and here to lower conditions in prison, basically leaving little incentive and resources for the convicted to mend their ways. Some of them just don’t know what the right thing is, and prison is hardly the place to learn it.
That said, there should always be something like prison to hold people not fit for society, as they are dangers to themselves or others. The law, in this respect, is a bit of a blunt instrument (IMO) in sorting who can and cannot be rehabilitated and who should be held, basically, indefinitely. However, again, NSW really needs to get out of the habit of creating a new law for every crime that gets media attention, when the crime itself may be relatively isolated.
Centre
Probably because if you are working an hour or two a week you can still get Newstart.
And as others have said, if you are working an hour a week you are not unemployed.
How can someone work for the dole?
To work requires a job.
If a job is available then someone should be employed to do it.
Again, Liberal Party mindless ideological stupidity.
Give people training – if they’re not working, they should be learning.
*knockout the Greens 🙂
silentmajority@411
Same plan as I am on.
Phone calls to any landline or mobile in Australia included.
And for me, 500GB is just insane. (At present anyway.)
Tom
I wasn’t going to go there, because we’ve looked at this before, but here are the ABS stats on underemployment —
[In May 2013, about 900,000 employed people were underemployed (trend); which was around 30% higher than the number of unemployed people. The underemployment rate (that is underemployed as a proportion of the labour force) was 7.3%. Combined with unemployment at that time, 12.8% of the labour force was underutilised.]
However, that isn’t important in itself. As I’ve said, we had hidden underemployment in the post-War era, when women had to leave their jobs when they got married.
Underemployment is on a downward trend —
[There has been a general downward trend since 1993, with notable increases reflecting economic cycles.]
Of course, underemployment isn’t really a huge problem (particularly as I doubt there really are many people out there on one hour a week). The Centrelink figures (as provided by KB) tell the real story – the numbers on welfare have been low for the last five years or so.
If you’re undermployed to the point where this causes financial hardship, you’re probably still receiving Centrelink benefits – indeed, you’re probably still on Newstart. (The only exception being where your partner earns enough to cancel you out).
Overemployment isn’t measured as often, but it should be, as it would provide a valuable insight into an easy way of ‘fixing’ unemployment.
This ABS article, for example, suggests that more people are overemployed than underemployed —
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features10Jun+2011
Now, if we could even that out, we’d get a dramatic reduction in unemployment/underemployment.
zoomster@414
And I disagree.
I do so based on personal experience, experience of colleagues,numerous media reports, work by people like Bill Mitchell etc.
Abbott & his cronies dismiss global warming as a fantasy. Not so big industries like Coca Cola.
[Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.
Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.
“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”
Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change.
“The bottom line is that the policies will increase the cost of carbon and electricity,” said Roger Bezdek, an economist who produced a report for the coal lobby that was released this week. “Even the most conservative estimates peg the social benefit of carbon-based fuels as 50 times greater than its supposed social cost.”
Some tycoons are no longer listening.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/science/earth/threat-to-bottom-line-spurs-action-on-climate.html?src=rechp
briefly@409
This seems like a good time to prod you for your view on MMT and some of the related ideas – Bill Mitchell’s job guarantee, for example.
himi
Centre
At one stage I was working two full days a week and was still registered with Centrelink as unemployed. They go by earnings, not hours.
bemused
you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. If you have facts to back up your assertions, I’ll take you a bit more seriously.
We use peer reviewed scientific papers when it comes to judging whether climate change is real or not, and should use the same standards (i.e. tested evidence) in other fields as well.
Otherwise we might as well judge these matters by getting the latest astrology reading – it would have as much value.
zoomster@428
But not for statistical purposes. You would not have counted as unemployed.
…satellite broadband limits how much you can download dramatically. We have the maximum plan available – if we’re lucky, we might have enough left at the end of the month to download a couple of movies. More often, the last couple of days we’re on dial up speed.
I’d rather not use Foxtel, but I don’t have much option….and I get brilliant ABC and SBS reception!
There have been a couple of links posted here in recent days where US economists were looking at what was needed to reduce the jobless rate in the US.
Low interest rates and stimulus just isn’t doing the job and both came down in favour of direct spending on infrastructure by the Govt as a means of creating jobs. A very Keynesian solution.
I believe the same is true here.
bemused
[But not for statistical purposes. You would not have counted as unemployed.]
Which is not the point Centre was discussing.
IF I had been unhappy with that situation, I would have been counted as ‘underemployed’.
bemused
and of course, spending on infrastructure (and Australia was number one in the world for this when Labor lost office) is why unemployment has been low for the last decade.
zoomster 415
Flippant comments like my 401 and puns on Higgins like in my 404 really shouldn’t need explanations .. but to join the dots: excessive smartphone usage .. social media addiction .. propensity of people for time wasting = loss of productivity.
RD @ 371….
You haven’t discovered torrents yet, then?
Centre asked
Can somebody just tell me why the unemployment rate is not calculated by simply adding all the people on unemployment benefits?
So that international comparisons are valid, other countries use the same statistical survey to calculate unemployment. The published unemployment numbers are calculated by the Aust bureau of Statistics via survey. I think Fraser changed it in 1978 from the Centrelink source to the ABS survey.
Like everything with statistics it doesn’t really matter how you count it, as long as it is consistent. This never ending argument (since 1978!) over the person working one hour a week is pointless .
zoomster@431
Point to point wireless would have been a better choice if available. I think don has it so see what he thinks.
There is only so much bandwidth for each satellite transponder and it is expensive and has to be shared. There can also be problems caused by latency as the signal has to travel a long distance and it takes time.
Point to point wireless is a dedicated radio channel to you with little or any sharing with other users.
bemused
to spell it out — Centre was asking why Centrelink figures weren’t used to calculate unemployment. I was explaining that people who were employed can still receive Centrelink benefits.
So if we used Centrelink figures, the unemployment figure would be different to the present one (some unemployed aren’t on Centrelink, so it’s hard to work out which way they would go).
More importantly, however, unemployment figures (to be meaningful) have to be able to be compared across countries, all of which have different welfare arrangements.
What’s more, every time we changed our welfare arrangements, our unemployment stats would also change – which would mean we couldn’t meaningfully compare stats from 1978 with the present day.
The ABS figures are calculated using an international standard.
…a good example of that being the jump in Newstart figures recorded last year (seriously, go read Kevin Bonham’s piece, it’s very good) which didn’t represent a jump in unemployment, but the shifting of single parents on to Newstart.
bemused
if I could get wireless, I wouldn’t be on satellite.
Centre
BBL is the Big Bash League. It’s the 20-20 cricket matches between Adelaide, Sydney, etc etc.
$600M bet on Betfair just for that league is amazing.
dedalus
‘joining dots’ doesn’t mean anything. We have stats on productivity. That you (like bemused) would rather rely on intuition than data suggests you have a weak case to begin with.
Presumably people on the DSP don’t count as unemployed.
Monarchists are such idiots. This country would be heavan without them.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-27/monarchists-warn-of-violence-if-recognition-referendum-goes-ahe/5220624
Sounds like the BBL is ripe for bribery, corruption, fixing, etc. I’m sure it won’t be long before organised crime starts making the ‘cricketers’ offers they can’t refuse.
424
While there would be few people actually employed for 1 hour a week, most of them would be looking for significant amounts of work (days per week).
If you look at the trend in people on the DSP over the last 20 years, the number of females has gone up more than treble while the number of males has gone up about 50%.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-08/graph-shows-disability-pension-statistics/4615418
Off Topic
Big thanks to DFAT in Nairobi, Kenya. My father had a heart attack flying from Dubai to Rio.
Emirates did an emergency landing in Kenya, but my father died yesterday.
Dfat have arranged for my mothers accommodation and have a staff member staying with mum, they have helped with repatriating my dads body.
Wonderful consular assistance, thanks.
I will be back on PB when I am up to it.
zoomster@439
There are techniques for linking indices as any statistician would know. The basket of goods on which the CPI is based changes from time to time and the indexes are linked.
ABS Stats are what they are and the fact they are to an internationally agreed standard is helpful for inter-country comparisons – of that statistic.
They are not a true measure of unemployment as it affects real people.