The elephant in the room is immigration, taken to record levels by the last governmetn (despite its rhetoric suggesting otherwise) and still at high levels under our current government.

Property industry and its hangers on, as well as business, all press for higher immigration because it means more demand for what they're offering, and for business, lower inflation through lower real wages growth because it introduces extra capacity into the labor force, in all sectors from unskilled to skilled.

Racism is the red herring used to persecute anyone who criticizes the dominant agenda in immigration.

Its a fact that there's a NAIRU, non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, and that unemployment cannot fall below a certain level without likely triggering a wages explosion due to there being labor shortages. Hence immigration being kept high, and calls from its beneficiaries, such as property industyr, business and NGO employees who service recent arrivals, to keep the numbers high.

This experience mirrors my own. 30 years high level professional experience, then on the dole. Last time I signed on was 30 years ago in Cardiff, Wales. Now I sign on in Australia - absolutely nothing has changed, the procedure is exactly the same, the arrogance and rudeness of the staff equally aggressive and humiliating, the absolute uselessness of the "training programs", the fact that you - the unemployed - are a criminal for simply standing there. The fact of being a seasoned professional now makes the whole thing worse of course, because one can see the absolute inefficiencies of the system - like I receive exactly the same piece of paper three times through the post, every time, when I don't need it. And remember that even if I got a job I’d still have to attend daytime training programs in the relevant fortnight or be financially penalised if I was unlucky enough to find myself in the queue again. Oh yes...so I’d get a job and then I’d have to say to my employer “sorry not to be able to be at work and do my job at all today because I have to go to Centrelink so they can teach me how to get a job....” Does that sound like it makes sense to you? That’s “mutual obligation” for you.

You the taxpayer cops those costs..those inefficiencies I guarantee are worth far more than the so called "dole cheats". The dole cheats profile hasn't changed in the 30 years either he/she is everyone standing in the queue. Everyone who has the absolute effrontery to be a loser in a winners world.

So I have, in a very short time gone from being the “elitist chardonnay swilling latte drinking PC post-modern communist extremist undermining Australian core values and living the highlife on the iron lung of taxpayer funds" to the "lazy loser underbelly fraudulent welfare dependent spitting on Australian core values and languishing on the iron lung of taxpayer funds"..;-)

And what's more...I'm proud of being both.

I don't believe there is such a thing as the "skilled unemployed". What does exist are people with the wrong skills who don't want to be employed in other than what they see as their 'skill'.

There is absolutely no point in having a certificate in any middle management, banking or IT service area when there is an over abundance of these people, trained and being trained. Employers don't need them, they are everywhere. University degrees in 'arts' (airy fairy) is a useless degree in nothing much. They can't all go into TV, entertainment, etc. There are simply not enough positions for that type of skill in this country.

Think about what your career choice was and what it will be in the future. Labour intensive positions are the ones people want to avoid, yet, they are the ones employers are crying out for. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters, gardeners, cleaners, florists, taxi drivers, chefs, bakers, ad infinitum... You can always go back and get a nursing degree or start at med school of you want to really retrain.

People thought, up until now, they could get a uni degree in something and sit behind and desk and make the decisions. Wrong!
Don't cringe at the thought of cleaning, there are specialist cleaners in speciality areas. These are many hands on careers we need people trained for.

Immigration has not spoiled anyone's opportunities, people just chose the wrong career. Those who immigrate to Australia expect to work hard and do those jobs, so don't blame them.

My advice is, retrain if you are young enough. I think there are enough middle management positions already filled in this country now, so make another choice or take a step back if you really want a job.

It's easy to lose touch with how hard it is to be out of work and reliant on Centrelink. Too many people think it can't happen to them.

Like Beth, I'm not surprised that some people give up trying to look for work or end up applying for disability payments.

RaeBee, I'm an Arts graduate and I don't think I'm somehow superior to people who work in trades. Why would I? I've worked in unskilled jobs in the past and I don't think there's anything demeaning about it.

As the idea of 'skilled unemployed' I think the name makes sense. For example, some workers became highly skilled in the printing trades. They had years of training and experience but when the technology changed their skills lost any value in the labour market. If that happened to me, I find it difficult to deal with.

RaeBee

Sorry to disagree with your oversimplification of skilled unemployment.
Coming from the private sector I was contracted to the government as a consultant to develop employment and training programmes. Later took a permanent position administering and monitoring industry training.
Governments have been sold the concept of "level playing fields, global economy, etc, resulting in selling our resources for peanuts and buying them value added at a much higher price.
Multi-nationals have take over Australian companies that were making good profits, asset stripped them and claim they are no longer viable. Finally moving offshore to maintain viability.
Another ploy was lobbying government to have trades and professions downgraded and broken up so they can employ people on low wages. Later complaining there was insufficient pools of experienced and skills, etc available in Australia. Having now destroyed our industries, government then allows the importation of goods and resources from third world countries.
Our R&D is almost non-existent.
Our Education, dental and public hospital and medical systems have been denied adequate funding.
We need to protect our industries and instead of selling our raw resources sell them only after value adding.
At one forum I spoke, I asked what the audience what was their background, what retraining had they undertaken.
Most were highly skilled and trained people. Most were made redundant and the companies contracting work offshore.
Speaking with some of these overseas contacts I was surprised at their poor grasp of English and the lack of skills and knowledge they demonstrated.
Those who had undertaken retraining found, in many cases at much lower levels than they already had acquired. In some instances did not need to be retrained as they were already experienced and qualified to undertake the new task/s. E.g. one case was a highly skilled telecommunication technician and computer expert. Made redundant because he was considered too old at 55.
On advice, he retrained and qualified as a teacher’s aide then sought employment. Was told by the education system they would love to employ him but it did not have the funding to employ more teachers’ aides.
professori_au

Professor, not too much wrong with your ideas mate, BUT, they just don't work, here in Oz.

The miners are still managing, but it costs them tens of millions jumping through totally unnecessary hoops for years to get things off the ground.

Hawever when someone tries to set up to make something with those resources, the green hoopla usually destroys them.

Look at the project to produce magnesium castings, for the world auto indusrty. They had the whole program, from ore to high tech product, & the markets, but government, far too mindful of the green vote destroyed the company with delays.

Look at the rusting plant, near Gladstone, that was producing oil from shale, at a profitable cost, when oil was cheeper than it is now, but another government, frightend of the greenies, let it be killed.

You've got to be mad to do anything useful in this country. Do something totally useless, the greens will love you, & you'll probably get a tax payer subsidy, but try something uesful, & you'll find yourself shat on, from a very great height

A reply to the "blame the victim" post above:

Look up Just World Syndrome. It's pretty accurate for this type of attitude.

Look, our economy has a certain level of unemployment, and MUST ALWAYS have a certain level. There are real arguments in an economy about how low the reserve banks can allow the unemployement rate to fall before taking action, "to prevent inflation". These debates are open and public.

But still we pretend our economies are free of such management.

And we still blame the people who make up whatever percentage of unemployment, even when an economy is shedding jobs by the thousands and tens of thousands.

Particularly grating to me was the comment about retraining. I have seen people in all the fields they said were so important, so safe, from finance to engineering to IT, find themselves suddenly out of work, and now they're supposed to, what, go spend another few years gearing up to be productive at something else (the value of which may have shifted by the time they get through)

As for doing something useful like nursing, that's what I do. And despite the clamour about a so-called nursing shortage, the "shortage" is only a result of an exodus from the profession. At one large clinic where I worked briefly, the entire nursing staff resigned, including the manager

Hospital directors don't mind - they get their all-expense-paid recruitment trips. And they get to keep treating nurses badly. Sometimes simple, cost-free changes to the culture would make nursing so much less onerous that so many very skilled and experienced nurses would stop deserting the profession. I keep track of them - some go on to better things, others get so burnt out that despite tremendous and much needed ability they go work as cashiers.

The point being, retraining isn't an answer - that just masks the musical-chairs nature of unemployment. I know nurses in the US who trained into with the sort of thoughts you have hear, and now there's a hiring freeze. Nurses can't change jobs, and newly trained nurses can't find them. That's the reality. I'm talking about people with four-year degrees from prestigious universities. Should they immediately retrain for something else. (Perhaps florist school has some slots.)

We can have a kinder, more tolerant culture, that accepts that many (most) of us will go through transitions, and not batter us for doing so.

Or we could just become a nation of taxi drivers. One ex-nurse I know does that now, and struggles to make minimum wage.

But comments like that one above just come from people who, as far as I can tell, aren't interested in the realities. We could also all move to the Outback, reclaim the land and live as subsistence farmers. That's about as realistic.

Replying to Hasbeen's comment:...Professor, not too much……

At this moment, I would have to agree with you to some extent.

Why does it have to be?

I am 76 years young and I grew up in an orphanage, a victim of brutality that existed against children at that time. Luckily, for me the headmaster saw I had potential and persuaded my father to let me go on to higher education. My first year of technical study was done whilst in the orphanage. I then went to live with my father.
My father said he had not needed a higher education; if I wanted one then I had better earn myself.
With a Scottish/Irish ancestry I accepted the challenge . Working at night to become educated. Later I was able to buy some land on the Murray Valley irrigation. While building a farm I also studied to become an engineer, later went into manufacturing, business consultancy, (both private and government). Retiring December 1994 I continued to work as a community advocate.
THE POINT. If I could achieve that, there is no reason why we citizens of Australia cannot force governments to change policies and culture. Making Australia, not only the clever country, but also a proud one. We can be proud of what we achieved. Proud we are capable of standing up to the dictatorial governments, greedy companies and their greedy shareholders.

We achieved this after WW2, inviting migrants to help with our development of a sound manufacturing base and successful farming operations that were best practice. Those migrants are now part of our country. We led the world in what was best practice. Unfortunately our governments and their departments appear to have become "captive" of international combines and the interests of other countries, especially American interests, not our own. Politicians seem to consider, one elected that they know better than its citizens what Australia. Have we become so apathetic or perhaps self centred, thinking only of ourselves rather than the good of the country? Where is the pioneering spirit that motivated our ancestors.
We can do it again.
Regards
professori_au

I read this post and almost cry. There are so many capable and willing people who would gladly take on work, in law enforcement if the union that rules the roost in that department, would simply abide the law as made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth. For generations going way back to 1342, English society did not need a Police force. Law enforcement was not left to ASIC, or the Federal Police, or State Police, it was done by what were known as common informers.

The biggest cartel in Australia is run by lawyers. Just going to university will not get you into the club. Once in you must do two years on menial pay, learning the dirty tricks, before you will get an unrestricted practicing certificate: The first step on the ladder to earning $350 an hour.

But you and I are both already qualified. S 13 and 15F Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth) are Commonwealth Laws, supposed to be binding on the courts judges and people of every State notwithstanding anything in the laws of any State. You are defined in the CCAC which came into force on the 20th October 2001, and in its dictionary you are defined as a Commonwealth public official if you take up the offer to act on behalf of the Crown.

Every law needed to allow you to make enough money is a very short time and retire, is in place, but there is one block. It is the Union: The Liberal Party Union of Lawyers. There are enough fifth columnists in the Labor Party whose first loyalty is to the Law Societies, and Bar Associations, to make the Union a sacred cow. The Union has made law courts a closed shop from top to bottom, since 1953. The Justices of the High Court would have been leaned on from the Law Societies. Hawke was leaned on in 1983, by the lawyers in the Labor Party to protect the sacred cows drawn from the ranks of lawyers. The victims are the homeless and unemployed. Rudd should fix it

This article and comments are all symptoms of a larger problem, which is decades in the making, and will take decades to fix, if at all; if and when those with the ability to do so, get aware and get started. We are swapping our standard of living, and quality of life; with that of the emerging economies: BRIC: Brazil, Russia, China and India. Oh, I know Russia seems to be going backwards at the moment, but that is beside the point. Look around the globe. Some go up, while others go down. The downward spiral is punctuated by 'rich get richer, and number a smaller amount, poor get poorer and number a larger amount'. Quality of life is like money: There is only a certain amount to go around. With money, some are crowing about how it has been 'lost', with the global financial meltdown. Not 'lost', are you nuts? It has been transferred to others, who took it from you, as surely as the man in the bank wearing the balaclava takes it from the teller. Just in a smarter manner, tricking you with AAA ratings which were smoke and mirrors, or is that thimbles and peas? We can all see what is happening here. When are those with the influence going to do something about it? That's what I want to know. I work 20hrs/wk, on award pay, changing prices in a Dept store. Recently when still employed full-time, finished with a mortgage on a small, unrenovated 50yr old home. So I get by. For now. Tried the Centrelink thing, but they won't help unless I do the training, and the only course available is operation of phones, faxes and photocopiers. Guess what I have been doing for the past 30yrs full-time? Working in an office. So - (and they have my resume, so they know) - I might know how to use this equipment.
But - what is more important than getting our standard of living back? Whether a politician treated a car dealer favourably! What a waste of our resources.

The sworn enemy of skilled unemployed are the Liberal Party. It is the Liberal Party who because they have totally destroyed Australia’s legal system, introduced civil conscription as a qualification for Newstart allowance. When the Australian people made provision for the payment of unemployment benefit, in 1946, a move sponsored by the Labor Party, the provision contains these words. ( but so as not to authorize any form of civil conscription). The work for the dole, mutual obligation, harassment of unemployed people to attend useless courses, by the private employment agencies are all examples of civil conscription.

It is time to form a union to compete with the Liberal Party Union of Lawyers. Get together with some other unemployed people and form a local unemployed union. We the skilled unemployed are in a position to do so, and form a not for profit local association, to push our local member for reform of the legal system so we can, as a committee of skilled unemployed, use our talents to bring some very large corporate offenders to justice. The laws are all there but there is a road block standing in the way of prosperity, and it is called the Liberal Party. It includes members of a liberal party as well, who claim to be Labor, but in reality are part and parcel of the problem. These liberal party members are in power in State governments, and are just as bad as the Liberal Party when it comes to oppression and serious harassment of unemployed people and the homeless.

Most of us can use computers now, some of us are over the retirement age, and would welcome the freedom that limitless earning capacity will bring. There are laws, like the Statute of Westminster the First, that say a person MUST have a choice, of jail, or a fine. Every time a member of the lawyers union sends a person to jail, for the State to support, he or she is breaking that law, but cannot at present be fined for doing so. Kevin Rudd should be asked to help us.

In order to put what is being done to us into perspective, it is important to understand the background: Imposing The New World Order.

From "A Century of War" by William Engdahl:

WELL BEFORE KARL MARX ever conceived of his notion of class warfare, British Liberalism had evolved a concept of a society polarised between what was termed the "upper classes"; and the "lower classes." The essence of the 19th century liberal free trade policies of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, which led to the abolition of the protective Corn Laws in England after 1846 and which opened the flood gates to ruinous cheap grain imports, led as noted earlier, to the predictable impoverishment of the greater majority of British citizens, and to the concentration of the wealth of the society into the hands of a small minority, the so-called "upper classes." The political philosophy of what was called British Liberalism was the justification for this economically inequitable process.

As the most influential American publicist of 19th century British Liberalism, the aristocratic Walter Lippmann defined this class society in a modern framework for an American audience. Society should, Lippmann argued, be divided into the great vulgar masses of a largely ignorant "public," which is then steered by an elite or a "special class," which Lippmann termed the "responsible men," who would decide the terms of what would be called "the national interest." This elite would become the dedicated bureaucracy, to serve the interests of private power and private wealth, but the truth of their relationship to the power of private wealth should never be revealed to the broader ignorant public. "They wouldn't understand."

More later ...

Continuing Engdahl -

The general population must have the illusion, Lippmann argued, that it is actually exerting "democratic" power. This illusion must be shaped by the elite body of "responsible men" in what was termed the "manufacture of consent." This was described by Lippmann several decades before Paul Volcker ever set foot in Washington, as the "political philosophy for liberal democracy." In its concept of an elite specialized few, ruling on behalf of the greater masses, modern Anglo-American liberalism bore a curious similarity to the Leninist concept of "vanguard party," which imposed a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the name of some future ideal of society. Both models were based on deception of the broader populace.

More and more, following the turning point of the 1957 U.S. economic recession, the enormous power of a small number of international banks and related petroleum multinationals concentrated in New York defined the contents of an American "liberalism" based on adaptation of the 19th Century British Imperial model. The American version of this enlightened liberal model would be shaped by an aristocracy of money, rather than blue-blood aristocracy of birth. But increasingly, as a consequence of the economic policy decisions of the American East Coast liberal establishment - so called because its center of power was built around the New York finance and oil conglomerates - the United States became transformed.

America, once the ideal of freedom for much of the world, was transformed, step-by-step, into the opposite, and at a quickening pace during the 1970s and 1980s, while she retained a rhetorical facade of "freedom and liberty." The combined impact of the two staggering oil shocks of the 1970s and the resulting hyperinflation this set into motion, created, in effect, a new American "landed aristocracy" in which those who owned property suddenly saw themselves become millionaires overnight.

We need to organise: go to www.omnipotentia.com/40bus/

It is probably time that the skilled unemployed or skilled underemployed people formed a union to lobby for the application of laws that lead to the ability to give back to society, some of the benefits drawn from it, by the older generation. Many skilled unemployed are over fifty years old, and prematurely consigned to the scrap heap, or reduced to doing menial jobs at call centers and the like, in order to supplement the benefits drawn from the Social safety net. Others are retired and doing it tough without adequate super, and still others are the victims of crime, dodgy lending practices, and even dodgier finance brokers, ponzi schemes and such like.

The proposal that I would like to put into the forum, is that an online community be formed, with online recruitment and membership, throughout Australia, using a website, so that anyone who has a computer, free time, some sort of online skill, an email address and an Australia wide love of justice and honesty, may join together with other online like minded individuals, to form a strong and influential political movement. Names should be suggested, like the Skilled Unemployed Union, or such like, so that the membership is readily identified and identifiable. There are probably a million of us out there.

It is not envisaged that the movement be associated with either of the big political parties, but that it present views to the government of the day, wherever it is situated, with a view to making Australia a fairer and more just society.

We currently have in Australia a written Constitution but no way of ensuring its provisions are equally beneficial to all concerned. If you are at all interested, why don’t you email us at marygee78@yahoo.com.

The tools are all in the tool shed, but the online community needs to be mobilized to know where the tools are situated and how to use them. As Atlas said, give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world. We should have a way of harnessing grey power, and our grey matter

If we see merit in the suggestion that we forms a Skilled Unemployed Union, the first thing we ought to organize is a letter writing campaign to Kevin Rudd. This can be done by snail mail, or by electronic communication on the Prime Ministers website.

We should say,

Dear Prime Minister,

I am skilled currently unemployed, and would like to pursue a career in law enforcement enforcing the laws made by the Labor Party while in government, but totally ignored by the last Liberal Government, and by the renegade State Labor Governments which exhibit all the characteristics of elements of the Liberal Party.

I would like to request that you abolish the exclusive elements of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 namely S 39 which allows a Judge to exclude ordinary people from the democratic process as members of a jury, a Liberal party enactment, and Order 46 Rule 7A Federal Court Rules which allows a Registrar and Judge to conspire to exclude people from participation in a Ch III court completely, on their own whimsy or fancy.

These parts of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 and Federal Court Rules are completely at odds with s 45 Trade Practices Act 1974, which bans exclusive dealing, but currently this quasi Liberal Party Corporation, will not abide the laws made by the Labor Party, or let them be enforced by people like myself.

The latest financial meltdown has exposed the folly of exclusive dealing, and when the Labor Party enacted the Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth) and Criminal Code Act 1995 ( Cth), they did not expect the Liberal Party even out of government to be able to frustrate the will of Parliament.

Please advise when we may expect some action on this very sensible request.

Yours faithfully.

Underemployed Joan or Jack.

There is a saying that originates in Scotland. God helps those who help themselves. Wags say God help them that gets caught. Skilled unemployed should take a leaf out of the book of Job. Write to the Prime Minister and help yourself. He can answer your prayer