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Despite the heavy focus on 'hard-hat' professions in our political discourse, Australia’s economy is dominated by its service sectors. If this is Australia’s first service sector recession, why is this not reflected in the focus of our recovery and job creation programs?
This Budget is a missed opportunity. It was a chance for the government to do something radical, to make real and defined impacts. Instead, we’ve increased funding for some regions, but at the cost of some of the most marginalised populations in the world, who have experienced years of discrimination, poverty and displacement.
An idea that’s gaining traction, in a pandemic where international travel has stopped and many Australians are losing their jobs, is this notion that the unemployed (aka: everyone on JobSeeker payments) should go out into the regions and help the farmers pick fruit.
The havoc COVID-19 has wreaked on our economy has been less damaging than for some other countries. While international comparisons may help us feel better about our circumstances, the reality is that Australia’s economy is in trouble and will need more than economic first aid through measures like JobKeeper to get us back on track to recovery.
A recent report from Jesuit Social Services’ Support after Suicide program reflects on the experience of people who have accompanied a friend or family member before, through and after their suicide. At the heart of the report is its insistence on the importance of the human face in health care.
The global impact of COVID-19 has further increased inequality in food security, with nations already facing widespread famine, malnutrition and food insecurity being hit the hardest.
There will be Great Reset in finance and economics. It is inevitable because the shock has been so great. The first problem is what to do with global debt, which was already at unsustainable levels before the virus hit: over 320 per cent of global GDP. The only way to prevent system-wide failure has been to lower interest rates to near zero levels.
There is a trend of liberals calling for the West to open its borders to fleeing Hongkongers for economic benefit. It is commendable that these individuals want the West to offer Hongkongers refuge. But to frame this philanthropy in such mercenary terms makes this goodwill suspect: these voices want to capitalise on a traumatic moment of displacement.
Ideology is a powerful presence in our lives. It works its way into our consciousness through the dominant discourses of government, media, institutional religion, legal frameworks, popular culture, advertising, all the means at the disposal of the powerful. Once we learn to recognise it we see it everywhere. If it feels like we were born into it, it is because we were.
It turns out that the COVID-19 economic crisis is disproportionately affecting women — so much so that some have dubbed it a ‘pink-collar recession’. Unemployment figures show that since February, 457,517 women have lost their jobs compared to 380,737 men.
For comfortable communitarians among us it is tempting to lament the loss of the solidarity displayed in the first response to coronavirus. That would be a mistake. Solidarity is not a mood to be looked back on with nostalgia, but a commitment to be built and defended.
Already the ideological die-hards of neoliberalism are working out how the pandemic might be manipulated to lower wages and to snap back to the old economic normal. So now is when collectively we need to take over the framing and the forming of the future. Not to snap back but to spring forward.