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The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has been like the aerosol used in those heist movies, where the cat burglar breaks into the museum and sprays the air to reveal the invisible lines of power that criss-cross the space between the door and cabinet where the treasure is kept.
When you put rising housing costs alongside stagnating wages, an alarming trend in normalising insecure work, persistent unemployment and underemployment, and statutory incomes that are going backwards in real terms, there’s good reason to be deeply worried about an increase in homelessness.
Although there has been a reasonable level of attention paid to governance issues — such as the incredibly slow vaccine roll out, the ongoing problems with hotel quarantine, and the timing of the lockdown itself — Sydney’s current lockdown has also been marked by an unhelpful focus on individual actions.
Amid the disruption of predictable life wrought by the coronavirus, governments have focused on jobs. Jobs lost in the response to the virus, and jobs created as we emerge from the crisis. The focus is worthy — behind each job lost is a person whose life has become anxious and uncertain. The language, however, is concerning. Defining the challenge as one of creating jobs expresses an understanding of work, the inadequacy of which the coronavirus has laid bare.
Calling healthcare a business was always logically flawed. Money is involved, but it is unlike any consumer product businesses. For one thing, the ‘customer’ in health does not decide what represents value, the provider (the doctor or equivalent) does. Patients may have a say, but usually only on the margin.
This behaviour did not come out of nowhere. It has been carefully cultivated through over 40 years of neoliberal economic policies that have made it blatantly clear to people that they are on their own and will absolutely be left to fall if they don’t scramble their way to the top of the heap — supported, if necessary, by their own accumulated rolls of toilet paper.
Ecuadoreans have a popular expression, hacer la casita — roughly, 'they deceived us by promising something that was not going to be fulfilled'. This is what most Ecuadoreans are feeling now about president Lenín Moreno following his economic shift to the right, and the withdrawal of the asylum granted to Julian Assange by his predecessor.
Just in time to arrest ponderous musings about Western Civilisation, up jumps Denniss' cheeky funeral oration for the neoliberal settlement. His target is the assumption that an economy based on unregulated competition between individuals will benefit society. He does not spend time arguing with the theory, but points to the results.
There is political hay to be made in convincing the right that the ABC has a leftward bias. The strategy counts on short memories. When Labor was in power, it would routinely complain that, in being too stringent with government, the ABC was aiding the Coalition. This only suggests that the ABC does its job, no matter who is in charge.
Every year around the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, politicians with white ribbons pinned to their suits deliver passionate speeches about protecting women from domestic violence. But when it comes to implementing life saving measures, their lack of action speaks louder than words.
The struggle of workers has changed a lot since the 1850s, when stonemasons won the right to an eight-hour day. With the rise of contract work and the hustle of the gig economy, a lot of the fights won by workers don't even make much sense. Consider the following Facebook ad an outer Melbourne resident: FREE ROOM IN EXCHANGE FOR HELP.
'Francis' statement is not one merely for theological or academic contemplation. It is in effect Francis' call to establish a new benchmark for our economy, one where exclusion and inequality are no longer a natural and accepted consequence of its operation.' Director of Economic Policy for Catholic Social Services Australia addresses the CSSA annual conference in Melbourne, February 2018.