The unemployment figures are a global standard, it is that way so when figures are stated every one knows any where in the world what the situation is. If we had a different system as before, we will be one out. Howard changed it to conform to world standard.
Borowing money is very complex, it's a matter of who wants the money, with our top rating it is cheaper for business to borrow through the govt; than borrow them self. With big projects going on the deficit is going to be there for many years to come.
The govt actually gets income from the deficit, by selling it off.

But that's entirely the problem 579. The figures are not representative of the true picture of unemployment/under employment in OZ.

They are the product of a statistical methodology used to satisfy an international standard. If the media got wind that this is not a real reflection of the state of affairs, then the Government would be more 'motivated' to do something about it. Most of use think 'wow, 5.4%, that's low - but the real measure is closer to 10-12 percent.

The measure of one working hour per week to satisfy being 'employed' is ridiculous. I'm not against having an international measure but we need a real domestic measure to set domestic employment policy. Anything else is a form of political deception.

Cheryl Read the rules of unemployment again + the public opinion of how the rules are justified.
Some want more hours and some don't.
Which way would you sort it out.
What ever the figure, remember it has to be done every month.
It's no good us going one way and the rest going the other.
We have to have a world wide way of calculation. It is only a figure.

It is a matter of continual amazement that the work presented in my book Your Future in Your Hands (1998) about taxation, employment and the economy in general has never been challenged nor disproved. The concept of a simple and fair tax inspired the Small Business Association of NSW to fund an exhaustive analysis of the tax system in Australia. Unisearch operating out of QUT in Brisbane produced an economic model of the Australian economy broken out State by State, Industry by Industry, Tax by Tax over two, three year periods. It proved a simple 2% spending tax on every exchange of ownership of goods, services, property and labour would not only be enough to fund good government, but would stimulate the motivation to produce and exchange by eliminating the dead hand of bureaucracy and churning taxes, by eliminating the farce of accounting for 'profits' earned in an artificial tax year, by encouraging the secret ingredient called MOTIVATION to grow the economic cake. If the buyer pays the seller the asking price plus a 2% tax for the use of a stable currency, and the seller remits this to the government in the simplest of BAS forms, what a country we could have - freed of the nonsense of accounting for the unaccountable - a continent-sized tax haven. Treasury deliberately obfuscated this proposal by confusing it with a Bank Transactions Tax, with which it has nothing in common. How long can we endure a 20,000 page tax act regime? Time to clean out the Augean Stables. Is there a politician named Hercules?

John mcrobert. Start a new thread about your ideas.

Australia’s labour market continues to perform well in comparison with other major developed countries. The unemployment rate, at 5.1% in May 2012, is among the lowest in the OECD. By contrast, nine OECD countries had double-digit unemployment rates, including Greece and Spain where more than one in five of the labour force are unemployed. Structural unemployment, as measured by the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment or NAIRU, is largely unchanged in Australia, whereas for the OECD as a whole it has started to edge up. There is also little evidence of growing mismatch between available job vacancies and the number of unemployed looking for work. These are promising signs that Australia seems to have weathered the global financial crisis without significant long-term labour market consequences.
Nevertheless, underemployment continues to be a significant problem, particularly for women. More than 12% of the labour force are now either unemployed or working part-time and would like to work longer hours, an increase of two percentage points since 2007. At 7.2% in the fourth quarter of 2011, Australia’s rate of underemployment is much higher than the OECD average of 5.0%, so that total labour underutilisation in Australia is close to the OECD average, despite much lower unemployment. While underemployment is not as potentially damaging to workers as unemployment, it can have long-term consequences for career progression, earnings potential and retirement income. This is of particular concern as the majority of Australia’s underemployed workers are women, who already suffer from lower earnings and retirement income than men.