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Keywords: Precarity

  • AUSTRALIA

    From public good to private gain: The failure of employment services

    • John Falzon
    • 14 December 2023
    4 Comments

    No doubt there were some who genuinely believed that privatising  employment services would result in better services at a lower cost to the public purse. But the engineers of the socially destructive projects of the neoliberal era knew very well that they were more likely to result in the enrichment of some to the detriment of many.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Changing the housing story

    • John Falzon
    • 21 September 2023
    3 Comments

    In the face of Australia's pressing housing crisis, is the solution merely a question of funds, or does it demand a deeper overhaul? Many are calling for a transformed government role, one that abandons the shackles of neoliberalism, prioritises social infrastructure, and champions the collective good over select interests.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bricks n' Oughta

    • John Falzon
    • 18 July 2023
    5 Comments

    Amid Australia's unprecedented housing crisis, there's an urgent need for  increases in social housing. However, political wrangling hampers the progress of crucial legislation. With 640,000+ Australians facing housing stress, advocates stress the need for immediate action as a starting point towards comprehensive reform that treats housing as a basic human right.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'They think we're rubbish': Life on welfare in Australia

    • John Falzon
    • 06 July 2023
    9 Comments

    Dr. Eve Vincent's book, 'Who Cares? Life on Welfare in Australia', provides an in-depth exploration of the intricate dance between power, control, and social policy, unearthing unsettling truths about our society's inherent power structures. This discourse further underscores the urgent need for a radical reimagining of our socio-economic systems.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's time we ended politically induced poverty

    • John Falzon
    • 23 March 2023
    11 Comments

    As jobseeker payments are indexed for inflation, increased payments are still well below the minimum wage and age pension. With successive neoliberal governments dismantling social infrastructure, people living in poverty have little means of escape. Poverty is not a personal choice but a political one.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Laying the foundations for an economy that works for people: the Jobs Summit challenge

    • John Falzon
    • 29 August 2022
    2 Comments

    While the Jobs Summit does not signal the end of neoliberalism, it does signal a political willingness by the Albanese government to begin an inclusive, deliberative process for healing some of the wounds that have been inflicted on ordinary people through the accumulation of superprofits on the one hand and cuts to real wages and the dismantling of social infrastructure on the other.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    All that is solid melts into air

    • John Falzon
    • 20 January 2022
    5 Comments

    Social security payments were once seen as a means of preventing poverty, not prescribing it. A job was once seen, at least for some, as being not only the best guarantee against poverty but the path to economic security. Now it seems, however, multiple jobs are required to stave off poverty.

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  • ECONOMICS

    We need to rebuild our social foundations

    • John Falzon
    • 15 June 2021
    4 Comments

    Our economy is 1.1 per cent larger than a year ago. Yet, as the situation in Victoria reminded us, none of us are safe unless all of us are safe. And we cannot be safe while work remains increasingly insecure, while social security payments are inadequate and while our public infrastructure is found wanting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The transformative potential of a universal basic income

    • Tim Dunlop
    • 04 May 2021
    8 Comments

    The debate about the future of work, and therefore UBI, was hijacked by a reductive media narrative around ‘the robot question’ and this has made it hard to recognise the complex nature of the changes underway.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Borders we can traverse

    • Bree Alexander
    • 16 June 2020
    5 Comments

    I am now more than ever re-thinking borders and my relationship to them. The word seema in Hindi means border or limit. I learnt this as I often ask the meaning of someone’s name when I meet them. It is a way to start a perhaps unlikely conversation and learn language simultaneously; a way of challenging personal borders.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Re-imagining a better kind of society

    • Cristy Clark
    • 12 May 2020
    12 Comments

    But just as the frighteningly precarious nature of our lives has been thoroughly exposed, so too has the inequality of it all. Even in a pandemic, we aren't all suffering equally. Even in a pandemic, structures of privilege continue to operate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Politics of shame

    • John Falzon
    • 16 May 2019
    8 Comments

    I do not believe that most people do accept these violations of dignity, these instigations of shame. But the fact that we as a nation have tolerated these settings for so long makes it look like neoliberalism has crept into our souls, that we accept the institutionalisation of fear and shame.

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