The Seven Network has this evening brought us a ReachTEL poll of federal voting intention which has Labor’s lead at 54-46. The last ReachTEL federal poll was way back on February 5, immediately before the Liberal Party leadership spill vote, at which time the Labor lead was 55-45. All we have on the primary vote, courtesy of The Guardian, is that “the Liberal party’s primary vote is up nearly a point to 35.4%, while Labor is down by the same margin to 40.5%”. The poll finds Tony Abbott’s personal standing to have improved since early February, although that’s not saying much. He ranks third as preferred Liberal leader at 24.2% behind Malcolm Turnbull (42.6%) and Julie Bishop (28.7%).
UPDATE: Full results here. Primary votes: Coalition 39.6% (up 1.2%), Labor 40.5 (down 0.9%), Greens 11.5% (up 0.3%), Palmer United 2.2% (down 0.5%). The poll was conducted last night from a sample of 2417.
[There was a time, not so long ago, when we could have led the world in solar and alternative energies. That industry fell into an unfunded hole and is now being led by Europe, and the Coalition is grinding it into the ground under their spurred heels.]
Look on the bright side lizzie. At least we still have coal! Right…?
And the Coalition has saved us from the blight of solar and wind farms besmirching our rural landscapes. But we still have the splendid vista of coal mines for us to gaze at in awe.
Zoomster
Of course we need educated people. What i am arguing about is the assumption that education is by itself sufficient to generate growth. It is cargo cult stuff.
We are already importing a lot of our “educated” people via 457 visas so to some extent you point is fading too (not something I want to see happen) but it undermines the human capital notion, when employers are happy to import “human capital” from overseas. Much as I hate it, many of the jobs in your hypothetical scenario are already now outsourced overseas. Design engineers, marketers, IT specialists, logistic experts are now often based overseas.
kakuru
😆
MTBW:
Killer quote:
Touché!
Surely our tourists bring in dollars from overseas. That is an ‘industry’ that is, arguably, doing no environmental damage and will not be aided by bigger coal ports and pollution.
dtt
[I asked you to identify the new industries that education will bring to our shores..]
I repeat, it is very hard to predict new industries.
Faxes came out of nowhere (for the ordinary person, at least) and seemed miraculous at the time…yet they were replaced by the internet, which very few people would have predicted would end up having as many applications as it has (even if they had seen it coming).
As I’ve said, any attempt to predict what we’ll be using in our everyday lives even a few years in advance seem ludicrous in retrospect (still waiting for flying cars?).
What we do know is that an educated workforce is more likely to come up with big ideas – the spark for new industries – and is better able to develop such ideas when they do come along.
And education is also beneficial to the more humble, and in your eyes less important, people in service industries. I’d trust an intelligent, well educated hairdresser more than I would an ignorant, self taught one.
dtt
[I asked you to identify the new industries that education will bring to our shores…]
And I am pointing out that this kind of prediction rarely happens. Educated, intelligent people think of things we haven’t thought of. If I was able to predict the new industries education will bring to our shores, I’d be very, very rich by now – what I can confidently predict, based on the past, is that the more educated our populace, the more likely it is that such industries will exist.
[..employers are happy to import “human capital” from overseas. Much as I hate it, many of the jobs in your hypothetical scenario are already now outsourced overseas. Design engineers, marketers, IT specialists, logistic experts are now often based overseas.]
Well, many of them aren’t — and that’s more of an argument to educate more people here, rather than less.
Of course, it’s two way street. Many educated Australians work overseas, too.
The similarity at the start of my posts is because dtt keeps repeating the same point.
Excellent statement of the problem. That should be a soundbite.
Rabbithat
Talk about one set of rules for rich and not for the peasants who are expected to just serve their masters.
[1348
daretotread
Briefly
Back in 1950 I agreed that education was one of Australia’s competitive advantages, along with political stability and low levels of corruption. I just think now that education while still essential is no longer the panacea for our economic woes.]
The point is that knowledge-based or cognitive industries – education, research, scientific exploration and discovery, speculation, experimentation and critique, publishing and info-casting, scholarship and discourse of every kind, innovation, data assembly, creative works in general – are formed advantages. They are produced. They are a consequence of our decisions, rather than of, say, our geology or climate.
We can choose to develop them…or not.
My point is – and it’s supported by the empirical evidence as well as from observation and reasoning – these pursuits represent the “future”. They “bring the future forward”. This is another way of saying they attract high rates of return, where “returns” consist of many “flows” – incomes, jobs, products, connections, networks, new learning, opportunities and ideas, fresh capital, more dynamism, added resilience and diversity.
Why do you think that Goldman Sachs spend so much money trying to link with the best ideas and the smartest innovations? Because it was a good thing to do in the 1950s? Or because it’s the best place in which to form new capital right now?
[1357
zoomster
And I am pointing out that this kind of prediction rarely happens. Educated, intelligent people think of things we haven’t thought of.]
For example, I “imagined” the internet before it existed and before I had heard any such thing as a URL. I was sitting in my office one afternoon. The same office in which I still work. A new phone had been installed along with a new lino floor and a new computer. I had a new chair too. I was sitting at my desk, picked up the phone and looked at the computer and formed a distinct thought: “It would probably be really good if I could get my computer to talk to other computers using the telephone system. All kinds of things would be possible. I could send pictures instead of using speech to communicate.”
About five years later, a friend called in to the office and downloaded the very first browser screen (maybe it was a Yahoo browser) and showed me how to “connect” my computer to others.
All the education in the job will not get a you a job that doesn’t exist. And remember that much of the education that people do in their lifetime is done on the job. So education is not entirely or even chiefly something which precedes getting a job. A lot of the education you would need to reach your highest level of professional skill and productivity can only happen if you get more junior jobs first.
We can fart and chew gum at the same time. Our sovereign currency issuing government can and should spend heavily on education so that skill and productivity levels are as high as possible, and because of the great intrinsic value of education. But the government also needs to spend directly on creating enough jobs to ensure that everyone who wants a job gets a job.
I believe there is an experimental program in NSW (some of you may know of it) that is going to provide pre-school education to 2-3 yr-olds upwards. Based on recent research, the theory is that such early stimulation by professionals will lead to advanced educational outcomes that lead to better-paid jobs and less social disadvantage. This apparently holds true whatever the soc-econ level of the parents.
I heard it discussed on RN a few nights ago, but cannot trace the program.
So would the Coalition be wise to put more money into pre-school (NOT child care) ?
briefly
I am not mistsken. Education is a goal in itself.
Employers want well educated people then they should accept a system that encourages free thinkers not systems designed to get people to jump through hoops to tick boxes for the right qualification..
As I said the link between education and jobs can be overstated.
eg. Stephen Fry is overqualified as a quizmaster. Most employers would think so. Yet look how much we enjoy QI.
So would the Coalition be wise to put more money into pre-school (NOT child care) ?
Is it too late for Abbott and Hockey?
Perhaps Bolt could attend, he has the mental age to fit in. The kids could teach him all sorts of interesting stuff
AA
He’d be OK at getting down and dirty in the sandpit!
Nicholas
Obvious bollocks. Someone with all the education in the world would write their own cheque. They’d probably, like Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, create their own jobs.
[1364
lizzie]
Considering the absolutely incredible facility we have for learning when we’re very young, this make a great deal of sense.
Hmmmm… the Russians have declared, wtte, that they are not insane and that they will not be chucking any roubles down the Greek Bad Faith pit.
This from minor functionaries. If so, there goes the Putin card.
Instead they will ease import restrictions on Greek food.
A souvlaki-led recovery waits in the wings.
[1365
guytaur
briefly
I am not mistsken. Education is a goal in itself.]
You most certainly are mistaken. Education – or, more generally, the knowledge economy – is the frontier for us all. It will generate ever-expanding new productions, incomes, jobs, capitals.
Comrades, Tikrit has fallen to our forces.
Early reports were that there were no reprisals, wtte, because there was nobody alive in Tikrit on whom to exact reprisals.
Our wonderful allies contented themselves with looting the joint, including the offices of the Government which we support.
13 years after Bush, Blair and Howard set the ball rolling Tikrit, once a thriving city of 30,000 is a smoking ruin, empty of human beings.
Well done, Little Johnny!
lizzie
I’ve been arguing that for some time.
The focus on childcare isn’t about the children. It’s driven by the idea that productivity is more important than society – that parents are widgets, who must be put back in their place in the economy. It’s the same thinking that has Hockey banging on about how more women in the workforce will raise productivity.
I hasten to add I’m not against supporting childcare, for parents who genuinely want to/need to access it. But it seems to take up the whole of the conversation, and swamps what I see as more important issues to do with child raising.
Professor James Heckman (who has a Nobel Laureate in Economics) has done some very interesting work on the value of investing in early education, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
He argues that the earlier the child is given extra support and resources (before birth, if possible), the less has to be spent in later years. Having looked at numerous studies, he finds that children who have this investment are more likely to perform well at school, to be employed, and less likely to commit crimes, then their peers.
http://heckmanequation.org/heckman-equation
briefly
It is you that is mistaken. I specifically stated I am not arguing against education.
I have just said the link to employment is overstated.
If I was mistaken there would be no unemployed people with a university degree.
Here’s Heckman’s outline of what should happen —
[
Invest
Invest in educational and developmental resources for disadvantaged families to provide equal access to successful early human development.
+
Develop
Nurture early development of cognitive and social skills in children from birth to age five.
+
Sustain
Sustain early development with effective education through to adulthood.
=
Gain
Gain a more capable, productive and valuable workforce that pays dividends to America for generations to come. ]
Dare to tread is right that talking exuberantly about education while neglecting the macroeconomic measures that deliver full employment is a favoured tactic of neoliberals. If education is all it takes to get a job then the unemployed must be deficient as individuals. If they had worked harder they would be employed, right? It isn’t the responsibility of the government to ensure enough jobs for all. It is the responsibility of the individual to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to get a job which doesn’t exist. That is the neoliberal take on unemployment.
We have a very large number of scientists who cannot get permanent jobs in Australia. They are either overseas or struggling from one short term contract to another. These are the cream of our educational crop and they can’t get jobs here.
It is a pipe dream to think that education alone will achieve full employment. Every time a Labor or Green person portrays education as the silver bullet to our unemployment crisis somewhere a neoliberal has an orgasm.
[Based on recent research, the theory is that such early stimulation by professionals will lead to advanced educational outcomes that lead to better-paid jobs and less social disadvantage. ]
The most rapid neural development occurs before we are 5 years old. It makes sense to focus greater effort on this age cohort, esp when it comes to better preparing kids for school and learning.
guytaur
[If I was mistaken there would be no unemployed people with a university degree.]
There’s a whole heap of reasons why a university degree isn’t a guarantee of employment – most of them to do with the person with the degree (lifestyle choices, mental or physical illness, personality) than the value of the degree.
Having the degree, however, makes it more likely that a person will be employed, and that they make good use of their time if they’re not.
J.K. Rowling was someone with a university degree who was unemployed. I doubt she’d regard her education as a waste.
guytaur 1374
To support your theory I recall some time in the dim past (less grey hair and wrinkles and less old timers haha) reading that people with Graduate Degree or higher made up a large proportion of people unemployed for 12-24 months
Nicholas
The government has already helped that person to get a job by providing them with an education.
Australians – especially those in specialist fields – will always have to go overseas to get jobs. That’s because we have too small a population to support everyone who we train in certain fields. That doesn’t mean it was a waste training them in the first place.
(I have a very good friend who is currently working at Brown University. Of course I’d rather she was in Australia, but she’s making far more money than she ever could here, with better resources and opportunities).
Australian actors go overseas to work. That doesn’t mean Australia failed them – quite the opposite.
AA
Yes, new graduates can find it hard to get work. However, the same stats show that, once they’re over that initial hurdle, they experience lower unemployment rates over their lifetime and earn more money than their peers who don’t have degrees.
1363
Nicholas
The position you’re articulating is known as “The Screening Model” of education. It is discussed and critiqued in short by John Quiggin, here:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/JournalArticles99/HumanCapitalAustER99.html
The model is contrasted with a couple of others, in particular with elements of the Human Capital theory, which offers a better explanation of the returns and other benefits that flow from investment in education.
My proposition is that learning and all its many siblings constitute a domain within which new capital can and should be formed. This capital will generate new incomes, jobs, productions…and further capital/s as well.
We also need to recognise that learning occurs at work, as you say. Increasingly, the most competitive and highest-paying firms will only employ workers who demonstrate an aptitude for learning and for creating new knowledge. That is to say, creativity itself is capitalised and monetised by the most successful businesses.
It follows that we should find ways to democratise creative capital/s. This makes it absolutely essential that we invest in education – that creativity is available to us as social capital. Needless to say, the Tories oppose this at every turn. Creativity is something to be rewarded, turned into property and retained only within the market sector.
zoomster
Thank you! I think it must have been Heckman whom I heard discussing the subject. I think he said the theory has been tested in Europe?? Unfortunately the program would require courage, money and creative thinking, all of which appear to be in short supply.
zoomster
The education should be free and available to all and have zero bearing on the requirements of employers and everything to do with encouraging the free thinking of innovators and scientist types.
The expectation fostered in our society that a piece of paper is required to get a job is ridiculous.
Journalism is a good example. It used to be you started being the coffee boy (in those days it was boy) and working your way up to column or presenter.
Now you cannot get in the door without doing a journalism course and we all seen how that has worked out.
Education should not be linked so much to jobs and people should have more freedom to go to Tafe University apprentice or on the job training of life experience alone.
Nicholas
[We have a very large number of scientists who cannot get permanent jobs in Australia. They are either overseas or struggling from one short term contract to another. These are the cream of our educational crop and they can’t get jobs here.]
That’s because successive governments have cut back on funding and/or stimulating research. Their education, per se, is not the problem.
[Andrew Greene @AndrewBGreene · 3h 3 hours ago
Labor frontbencher @JanMcLucas has lost Queensland senate preselection and announced she won’t contest next federal election]
Sorry. I know there is no such thing as a free education. Shows how much hearing the phrase gets in your brain.
confessions
Heard that about an hour ago is there any idea who will replace her?
gt
[I have just said the link to employment is overstated. ]
Maybe for people not prepared to go on the move.
Piers thanks god we have Tony Abbott to save us this easter.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/thank_god_we_have_pm_tony_abbott_to_save_us_by_streng/
I thought it may have been a parody piece, but no.
Boerwar@1370
Germany offers to ‘help’ with the tax thingy –
[ Dow Jones reports –
Germany would be willing to freeze the bank accounts of wealthy Greeks suspected of tax fraud, Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a newspaper interview on Saturday.
“We have offered to freeze the bank accounts of wealthy Greek citizens that owe taxes to their homeland. The offer stands, but for that {to happen} the Greek financial authorities need to get active,” Mr. Gabriel told the German daily Rheinische Post.
Europe is willing to help Greece, but the Greek government’s acceptance of previously agreed upon reforms is a prerequisite, he reiterated. Greece’s problems aren’t a result of Troika initiatives, referring to the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank, he added.
“Greece is a victim of its own economic and political elite,” Mr. Gabriel said. ]
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-04/germany-generously-offers-freeze-bank-accounts-wealthy-greeks
MTBW:
No clue, but:
[Andrew Greene @AndrewBGreene · 2h 2 hours ago
Strictly speaking @JanMcLucas actually lost Queensland Labor’s internal left ballot so she’d have been relegated to unwinnable 3rd spot]
Danielle Edwards is a scientist who is doing a postdoc at Yale University. Listen to why she left Australia.
https://theconversation.com/why-i-turned-down-a-decra-to-work-in-the-united-states-37264
1374
guytaur
Your error is in understanding where income originates. Income originates with capital. It is from capital/s that incomes and in turn jobs are derived. We can very easily create more income and more jobs by forming capital/s of the right kind and in the right place.
It is absolutely essential to understand that capital is more than finance. Much more. Income is also more than dollars. As well, it is important to understand that a lot of the “income” workers receive is not simply “consumed”. Much of it is reserved as capital of various kinds. So there is a lot of capital available in the economy and it can be readily expanded.
If we want to achieve full employment we should optimise our capital formation. We know from several hundred years of observation that this cannot be (and never has been) left to the market alone. We must understand that capital/s have social, human, cultural, intellectual, technical, biological and other abstract and supra-human dimensions, as well as the more familiar expressions as fixed and financial capital.
We have the ability to create new capital/s. They are produced resources. They are not “saved up” from the ages long past. They can be generated from scratch and are continuously undergoing such a process.
Thanks confessions – she has had a good run and maybe time for her to go.
ctar
Can having a university degree mean that train driver is not disappearing as a job.
It has for WA mining company trains. So there will be less over time.
Is education going to bring those jobs back? Nope redundant again. No matter how educated you are the job is gone.
Moving around will not help much either.
However an educated person with well rounded knowledge and ability to be a free thinker will make their own job.
I am not saying there is no link. I am not saying education is necessary. I am just stating the link between the two is overstated in our society.
This is of course to the advantage of business as it gets a say then in how courses are constructed to suit them rather than educational institutions doing courses they think are best for education.
1393
Nicholas
What are you arguing? That Dr Edwards’ difficulties arise from too much investment (that her scholarly work was a waste)? Or that there is not enough investment in science?
The fact that she has been able to find work in another place, where there is additional investment (capital formation) in science occurring, suggests we should invest more, not less in the knowledge economy.
briefy
I am not talking capital flows creating business or industries. I am talking about overstating the link between education and employment only.
briefly
Alos you seem to miss the initial point. I am not arguing against education at all.
gt
[Can having a university degree mean that train driver is not disappearing as a job.]
Is this a statement or a question?
Can having a degree mean that a horse cab driver is not disappearing as a job?
The times they are a changing.