"it would seem that self interest policies have not delivered for the social interest."

On the contrary, self-interest policies have delivered enormous wealth and increasing amounts of freedom and choice. During the last eight years alone, adjusted per capita GDP in Australia has risen by around $400 per annum.

There is nothing sacred about employment. Most of us already work a good deal less hard than our parents of grandparents did, and although time at work is increasing, the circumstances under which we work are generally far more pleasant than they were in the past. Part-time and casual work is much more common, and plenty of Australians have discovered they don't need full time employment to secure the kinds of lives they want to lead. The average number of years in healthy retirement is increasing and the number of years spent in school before starting employment is also rising.

The main reason people are unemployed is because manual labour is no longer widely used, and many of them don't have the skills to do anything else. We can retrain some of them, but others will never be able to do a job which will earn them the minimum wage. If it's important for these people to work, then their work will have to be subsidised by the taxpayer; we will, in effect, be paying people to waste their time doing useless things.

The main reason that unemployment has slipped as an issue is that until fairly recent months the unemployment rate in this country was barely above 5 per cent. In public policy terms, shortages of labour, particularly skilled workers became a bigger issue.

I think the author's chronicle of unemployment as an issue over time is also a bit narrow. Increasing welfare and income tax rates since the 1970s have been a big influence. Effectively work incentives have been reduced, and many (particularly married women) prefer to work part time.

The abolition of the CES and expensive labour market programmes (which don't seem to have been missed) would also have been worth a mention.

of course the system has 120,000 jobs available with 700,000 looking for them, the system is failing to provide sufficient employment, its simple....the system has failed over time, and there is no point punishing the unemployed, for being unemployed!

It is recorded that youth unemployment is at 15% today, by anyones measure this is failure. I get it that change is constant, and some is for the better, but still if we assume income derived by employment is the altimeter income distributer then we are failing.

If you think that 5 or 6 % is full employment then those who occupy the ranks of that % should not be beaten up for entrenched policy failure.

Its the policy that needs to change.

Its time for change, as one other polly may have said when he changed direction

Anyone who alleges a dislocation between the supply and demand for anything, without a consideration of the price, seems to be talking economic incoherence. Unless you can explain, Ben? Either there’s something super-basic I’ve missed, or you have?

Also you don’t explain anything about the issue of morality you allege. But perhaps you could explain:
1. If the problem is poverty, or relative poverty, why should the state be the decision-making collective?
2. How can the state be more moral than an employer? The relation of employment is consensual, whereas the state is a monopoly of aggression and this is the basis of all its inputs and outputs.
3. Would your proposal be voluntary? Or backed by aggression?
4. What if people don’t agree to sacrifice their values to pay for your scheme considering that
a. you yourself aren’t willing to fund it voluntarily what you want to force on others, and
b. it’s economically incoherent?

I immediately become suspicious whenever I hear a politician or an industrialist say the word “jobs”.

“Jobs” is now used as a bait, to con people into doing what the politician or industrialist wants.

Do what I want, or agree with what I want, and I will give you a "job”.

But what type of “jobs” are being created?

I recently came across a group of workers who are working 11 to 12 hours a day 7 days a week.

They have no day off at all, week after week.

The “job” is often physically demanding, and requires them to lift heavy slabs of concrete and do a lot of jack hammering and shovelling.

I asked if the company had a Safety Committee, or a Work Place Health and Safety Officer or a Fatigue Management Policy.

Their answer was “NO”.

The company was operating illegally, but the workers could not do anything about it or they would lose their “job”.

They said they could not afford to lose their “job”, because employment was so hard to find.

The group of workers were being contracted by a government department, and members of this government department were quite aware that the men were never being given any day off, and were working 7 days a week for months at a time.

So next time a politician uses a communication cable or a fibre optic cable, they can feel relieved that laying the cable had given people a “job”.

Although the “job” involved working about 80 hours a week for many weeks at a time with no day off at all.

For a farmer's writing, this piece sounds very much aimed for academic consumption. Not a practical word in it, & too many references indicating the author is well read.

I was recently following an internet discussion between a couple of potential Pommy migrants, & expat Poms working in Perth, in the mining & mining support industries. These were all office staff, none ever got dirty producing anything.

The consensus among them was that you needed at least $140,000 a year to live in Perth. It appeared that there were still a large number of these jobs looking for staff.

This indicates to me that it is not a lack of employment opportunity, but a surfeit of people who could not be bothered to get an education sufficient to gain much of the employment available. Hell in Perth these days you're more likely to hear a Pommy accent than an Ozzie one.

As unemployment & parenting handouts became more generous we developed an increasing population whom not even the man from Snowy river, his hardy mountain pony, or his stock whip, could drive to do an honest day's work.

I wonder if he has thought the answer may be to make unemployment, parenting & academia somewhat less comfortable?