I am all for a measured opening up of our country to the global marketplace. Comparative advantage does lead to an increase in our standard of living and trade with third world countries is the best way for us to help them advance their standard of living which, by any measure of humanity, we must do.

In this I am probably in the same paddock as Mirko but what irks me about Mirko’s article is his choice of bananas to illustrate his ‘unfairness of global trade’.

There are two economies in Australia.
A domestic economy exists where workers are protected from overseas competition, where industries are protected by distance, where ‘bananas’ are protected by barriers, where industries benefit from Government procurement and all manner of means.
Then there is the economy, import competing/exporting industries, trading subject to the vagaries of the global marketplace, currency fluctuations, low labour costs and foreign Government subsidies.
It is this economy that is bearing the costs of delivering our higher standard of living and the feel good factor of helping the third world countries.

Mirko, to satisfy his demand for a higher standard of living and to help him sleep at night knowing that we are helping a third world country, has selected the banana industry to be moved from the domestic economy to the harsher global economy.
It was an easy decision for him as it comes at no cost to himself as he is firmly entrenched in the domestic economy and after all, they are only farmers.
Surely, Mirko, as a beneficiary should be happy for his taxes to be used to compensate the bananas growers and underwrite the risk of disease to the Australian crop.

Bloody likely.

Billie, you are wrong about the ABS changing its definitions of unemployed from benefit claimants to survey respondents. This website lists all the changes to the ABS labour force methodology since 1960. Benefits claimants were never the key unemployment measure, and none of the changes are significant enough to make a time series comparison invalid.

http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DOSSbyTopic/139689E1A84FE4F0CA256BD00028B0E5?OpenDocument

Wendy, you are right to say that more people work part time. This is because more people want to work part time, especially women with children, and students. Only about one in ten part-timers would prefer full-time work. Are you saying the other 88% should be prevented working their preferred hours? Again, the facts are easily checked at the ABS:

http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/3FA9F970FD304C87CA257139000E3CB5/$File/62650_sep 2005.pdf [998 kb]

Wendy, would you prefer to back to the 1960s and 1970s, when women were routinely required to leave work when they got married, and part-time employment was rarely available for those who wanted it? When apprenticeships were the standard route for kids leaving school, because less than 1 in 20 went to Uni? When overseas travel was a luxury only the rich afforded, and resources were a much higher percentage of exports than they are today? If so, I bet the new family first Christian group that you so dislike is far closer to your socially conservative and economically protectionist views on this issue than to mine.

Goeff, your point about some of us being more exposed to globalised reality than others is well-made. I for one am happy for compensation and adjustment assistance to go to potential losers from reductions in trade barriers and similar reforms, and for us to share in underwriting the risks, as we will all undoubtably share in the benefits.

Rhian I can remember the ABS and Centrelink being embarassed in Federal Parliament when it was reported that the ABS had reported less people as unemployed than Centrelink was paying benefits to. Now I don't think this was due to widespread rorting of our social welfare, I think it was due to the manner in which unemployment is calculated. And from memory I think that people in full time employment was calculated and part time was a seperate figure

There is a real problem when unemployment is defined as 1 hour paid or unpaid in the survey period. Someone who is doing voluntary work to gain enough experience to get a paid job is really UNEMPLOYED. When I was a volunteer driver I still thought of myself as unemployed although the ABS considered me employed.

There are a lot of people in part time work who want more work.
The women at Spotlight who used to work 40 hours per week and were forced to sign AWAs now get 3 hours work per week, Thats a hell of a drop in income, I do hope Newstart is understanding about their predicament.

In the same region where the Spotlight campaign started there is a nursing home that hires satff for 3 shifts a fortnight assuming that a person can pay rent, keep car on the road, put food on table and support children for about $450. Newsflash: welfare payments to same household are more than that. Methinks that employers have an obligation to ensure their employees can live in a standard of frugal comfort.

"I like bananas because they have no bones".
Neither do they, the cultivated varieties, have seeds.
That makes the world banana industry a very shaky one: all are clones, and do not have the diversity needed to provide survivors in the face of a virulent disease outbreak. And reports do exist of banana-diseases on the march across the planet.
Australia does have two species of native banana, in the North Queensland rainforests, and they do have seeds. Although I have wandered across them, I have not tried the fruit. From what I have read, they are horribly crunchy and unappealing due to a heavy cargo of seeds.
If Mirko Bagarac wants cheap bananas in his time and to the devil with tomorrow, yes, import bananas. But if he would rather that the world industry maintains a secure foothold from which his desired edible bananas might persist and in future make a comeback on the world stage - the best prospects lie in Australia's continuance of tight quarantine and exclusion of banana imports.
As was noted in the article, Australia already has had one fright. It was an outbreak of Black Sigatoga disease at Tully. That seems, to date, to have been brought under control. It has been a matter of good fortune as well as good management.
There are better ways of assisting developing countries than by lowering even further our already devalued safeguards against exotic diseases.

Billie

It is not surprising that there are differences between the benefit claimant count and the number of unemployed as defined by the ABS, as they are measuring different things. But you argued that a change in the definition of unemployment from claimants to survey respondents means that comparisons over time are not valid, and this is plainly wrong.

I have not argued that the labour market is ideal – I agree that some people struggle to find work, some want longer (or shorter) hours, wages in some sectors are low, and some suffer job insecurity.

However, these problems are not new. Most objective measures of labour market performance – real wages growth, unemployment and under-employment rates, employment levels – are better now than they have been in a generation. I believe that the reason they have improved is because the economy has become more flexible and efficient. I support tariff reductions and other economic reforms because they are good for workers and consumers, whereas many protectionist arguments boil down to business welfare.

There is one positive result of the wrath of Cyclone Larry, i.e. if Kim Beazley becomes Prime Minister we cannot become a "Banana Republic".

The scary thing is that if the Coalition don't iron out the unfair anomolies in their IR reforms,we could be addressing Prime Minister Beazley in the not too distant future.