Five things to do when you're on Work for the Dole

This week, the Federal Government released details of its expanded Work for the Dole scheme.  Under the proposal, Australians aged under 30 will be required to work 25 hours per week to receive their welfare payments. Those aged between 31 and 49 will have to work 15 hours and the over 50s can undertake an “approved activity” for 15 hours a week, which probably doesn’t include lawn bowls at the local RSL.

Employment Minister Eric Abetz has explained the policy and how a person might benefit from it in simple terms. Two job applications a day – one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Did you hear there’s a shortage of bricklayers in Melbourne? A spot of community work (averaging five hours a day) sandwiched in the middle. And voila! A young person has fulfilled their ‘mutual obligation’ for the dole cheque that they can access six months from now. In the meantime, there are a few constructive things they could be doing. Let’s walk through those options.

1. Volunteer to help small businesses sort and file rubbish job applications.

“The small business person might be having a lousy day and no customers are coming in, but she’ll be getting job-seekers,” said Peter Strong of the Council of Small Business Australia, nailing the problems confronting the SME sector. Job seeking is all about solving the employer’s problem, not yours. So forget pretending you’ve got barista skills and instead, tell the small business proprietor that you understand their frustration at having to read another bloody CV from a hopeless case while they’re standing around waiting for customers to walk in. Say you’ll take care of that for them. Then set up a booth beside the deli counter and practice saying, “Thank you. I’ll be sure to be in touch should a suitable position become available.” Make sure you have a baseball bat at the ready. Given the stampede expected by small businesses, that should take care of about four of your five daily hours of ‘work’ time.

2. Help a pollie get that book out of them. We know they’ve all got a trilogy in them (Aspiring Me, My Time As Leader, After They Ditched Me The Bastards). An unexamined life is not worth living and a career in politics is worth zip if you don’t write a book about it. But politicians are short on time, so why not offer to shadow one for a few months, take voluminous notes and show you can multitask by filing their Cabcharge receipts into neat bundles. “Wedding – Friend. Wedding – Attended only to spruik policies. Wedding – shitfaced, can’t remember whose it was.”

3. Get yourself a shovel and gardening gloves and take some Direct Action. Greg Hunt’s Direct Action climate policy involves planting 20 million trees to drink in the stinking rotten carbon coming out of the brown coal industry. So far, we haven’t seen so much as a seedling from this policy. But I think it’s fair to say, the greening of Australia will have to start soon, so watch a few episodes of Backyard Blitz and start practicing your speed-planting skills by snipping off a few Agapanthus stems from the neighbourhood and transplant them into pots. Take these into Centrelink as evidence of your transferable skills.

4. Hold up the cue cards for Bill Shorten. This isn’t as daunting as it seems. Just grab two pieces of cardboard – either side of the box you sleep in will do – and in big black texta, write “Inside voice” and on the other, “Ranty, union-days, indignant voice”.  Just make sure you hold up the right one at the right time. This will be a real confidence boost, because whoever’s doing the job now keeps stuffing them up.

5. Develop an App. Applying for jobs is so, like pre-GFC. Don’t wait for the government to create a whole new industry to replace the manufacturing, retail and green energy sectors they’ve decimated, get cracking on making your own! Start with low hanging fruit, such as an App modelled on pollie speak that will help you and your fellow job seekers respond to unwanted questions about your employment status. Pre-loaded with impenetrable scripts from expensive consultants, it could go something like this:

Q: Why have you been out of work for 4 years?

A: That’s an operational issue.

Q: Why are you interested in this position?

A: I’m not a Job Snob. 

Q: Can you describe your previous role? 

A: Yes. It was called, Operation Sovereign Bong Smoking Hour. It was necessary to protect the one hour a day I had for non-mutual-obligation activities from further incursions. 

              

There might not be any jobs, but there’s a lot of work to be done. So pull up your socks and get cracking.

Diana Elliott is a freelance writer.

Australia's gone cold on climate change action

 

"Is it just me or is it getting a bit balmy in here?"

Australia’s eastern seaboard is basking in a record-breaking stretch of warm days, two weeks out from the official start of winter. Everybody’s talking about the weather, but hardly anyone's mentioning the climate. As in - change, action, what are we doing? We’re the well-fed lobsters in the slowly boiling pot – screaming at the injustices of the budget to our hip pockets, analysing the nuances of a wink and ignorant of policy that sets out how we’ll play our part in averting a looming climate crisis (not using the term loosely).  

The budget is tough. It’s about heavy lifting, doing your bit and if you don’t, they’ll be not-so-subtle pressure applied to make sure you do – earn or learn, get a job or work for the dole, type of thing. But curiously, the one policy area where sticks would work more effectively than carrots doesn’t have any. Climate change. The Artic ice cap is melting at record levels. Local councils across the country are modelling the impact on sea rises on their coastal communities. Businesses are factoring in the impact of climate change into their strategic plans. But the Government is silent. And as a society, we’re complicit.

In his 3500-word Budget speech, Joe Hockey did not mention ‘climate’ once. In fact, he neglected to allude to any policies regarding ‘Direct Action’, the Coalition’s policy on climate change. The plan is to establish the Emissions Reductions Fund to pay big emitters to build new 5-star energy rated offices, or something. Who would know? The Government will also plant 20 million trees, which will supposedly drink in all the carbon from the atmosphere. Where are these trees going and who’s planting them? The Coalition rarely talks about its Direct Action policy, because we’ve given up holding them to account on climate change.

They’ve also appointed climate skeptic, Dick Warburton, to review Australia’s previously committed to Renewable Energy Target. I don’t mean to be skeptical about a skeptic, but I doubt he’s going to recommend we stick to the current target, let alone a higher one. “China’s making more mess!” will come the inevitable argument.

Some days it’s hard not to feel sorry for Malcolm Turnbull, the man who staked his Opposition leadership on supporting the former Rudd Government’s push for an Emissions Trading Scheme, and lost, watching the whole war on climate change be abandoned shortly afterwards. In 2010, Turnbull  told Parliament, “Climate change is the ultimate long-term problem. We have to make decisions today, bear costs today so that adverse consequences are avoided, dangerous consequences are avoided many decades into the future.”

It’s laughable to think how far away Australians now are from the idealistic, passionate commitment to climate change that existed only a few short years ago. Before the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd declared, “Climate change is the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time.” And then the economic grim reaper – the GFC – killed off efforts to do anything other than focus on getting people out buying white goods again.

“Even Howard…” is a phrase used at the moment to compare Abbott’s performance against that of his self-reported political idol. Well, “even Howard” kicked off Australia’s climate change action in 2007 by laying the groundwork for an emissions trading scheme.

Meanwhile in the US, the Obama administration has just released a very slick, comprehensive study titled the National Climate Assessment. The President is on the road debating its findings with television weather forecasters, because despite their lack of scientific credentials, 62 per cent of Americans trust them on climate change far more than they do climate scientists.  

While Tony Abbott stands with smirking lips beside state Premiers, declaring himself the Infrastructure Prime Minister, President Obama is determined his legacy will be to finally do something meaningful about his country’s contribution to climate change.  The Australian Government is preparing to skittle the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, each of which was designed to promote, regulate and remove barriers to high polluters switching to clean energy and which were already contributing to a reduction in emissions.

Next month, the US Environment Protection Agency will launch the most dramatic anti-pollution regulation in a generation, with a sweeping crackdown on carbon. While our government throws our cash at dirty polluters hoping they’ll come up with something novel, Obama is forcing the behavioural change, because sometimes, tough love is what’s needed. Perhaps this is one of the advantages of knowing you can’t run for a third term in the US – short-sighted, politically motivated parochial interests give way to a desire to leave a legacy that will endure for generations beyond.

In his Budget speech, Hockey finished by saying, “As Australians, we must not leave our children worse off. That’s not fair. That is not our way.” He could have been talking about climate action.

But he wasn’t.

Diana Elliott.

Climate change: the disastrous consequences of political short-sightedness

This piece originally appeared online at SMH on 6 November 2013. 

Like John Howard, Liberty was frozen in time

On Tuesday, John Howard addressed a gathering of British climate change sceptics. He accused the United Nations' climate panel, the IPCC, of including “nakedly political agendas” in its advice and then explained his government proposed an emissions trading scheme in 2006 in the face of a political perfect storm on the issue. He also said “…the high tide of public support for over-zealous action on global warming has passed.” And on that score, he's right.

Lately, when I hear our politicians discussing the climate, I can't get the images from the otherwise largely forgettable The Day After Tomorrow out of my head. It's a movie that takes a few creative liberties in showing the devastation that happens when polar ice melts due to global warming. 

The unsalted water from the glacier dilutes the ocean, causing the climate to change rapidly. Weird stuff starts to happen, like helicopters freezing solid in mid-flight and a massive flood in New York where Jake Gyllehaal huddles in the library with his friends. And then Jake's dad (Dennis Quaid) – one of the scientists who is not being heard – rescues him and their estranged relationship and the storm passes and the world thaws and, we're like, phew, glad that's over. And we don't just mean the storm.

But the point of the movie was politicians put their shortsighted economic and political interests first, with disastrous consequences.

Howard's is just the latest example in a long list. Watching Tony Abbott bat away suggestions that climate change is contributing to the frequency and ferocity of bushfires with suggestions that the UN Climate Change Chief is “talking out of her hat” and it's all “complete hogwash” fills me with the same sense of foreboding I get watching those disaster movies. He merrily goes on, posing for a pic opp with a fire hose and razing the carbon price, the Climate Change Authority and the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).

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Interviewed recently on ABC's 7.30 program, Al Gore diplomatically avoided scoffing at the Coalition's plan, but reinforced the view that an emissions trading scheme, which drives change towards cleaner, more efficient energy sources is the preferred route. Gore, the mastermind of the most compelling PowerPoint presentation of all time in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, believes people power is the only way to combat the obvious conflicts that exist between political and business interests and the climate. He likened it to the pressure brought upon politicians by cigarette companies trying to sully the link between smoking and lung cancer.

“I think the public has a role in this and has a voice to be heard,” said Gore. “In the US, we had Hurricane Sandy, which was devastating - US$60 billion in damages and it caused a dramatic change in the message the public was sending to politicians in both parties.” Is it going to take a disaster of that magnitude for Australians to stand up and be heard? I hope not.

A short four years ago, Australia was reeling from the Black Saturday bushfires, in which a record number of people lost their lives in a raging inferno that followed a two-month, unprecedented heat wave. In 2011, Queensland and Victoria were inundated with floods. Climate change seemed palpable. It was happening all around us and even as skeptics brushed them off as cyclical events, we shifted uneasily in our seats and wanted something to be done.

Now, Abbott, with his trademark appeal to our hip pockets and self-interest (“Electricity Bill” – haw haw haw! Good one Tones!) is trying to have us believe that as long as our light bills go down, the world will be a better place.

Abbott's Direct Action policy means he'll dish out a confusing goodie-bag of treats to polluters to help them change their dirty habits.That's like handing an alcoholic $50 and asking him to spend it on green leafy vegetables.

Hollywood end-of-days disaster movies often depict bureaucrats or other people with power making self-centred decisions, usually to further their own interests, throwing the lives of others into peril.

Unless Australians stand up and demand a real solution (not the Coalition's Real Solution) to climate change, we could all be archival fodder for future generations. In a world ravaged irrevocably by warming, they may watch a darkly comic moment in a movie where an Environment Minister trusts Wikipedia over scientists, and leave shaking their heads. “What idiots they were to not act when they had the chance…”

The Great Undebated: Rudd and Abbott on climate change

"You call that a slogan? I'll show you a &^%ing slogan."

Kevin Rudd was disappointed when Tony Abbott failed to show up for the debate he’d unilaterally called for at the Press Club recently. But fear not. The Observerant has managed to get its hands on the lost transcript of what would have been said, had it happened.

Moderator: Let’s start with each of you explaining your respective climate change policies.

Tony Abbott (TA): Yes, let’s talk about the Big Fat Carbon Tax™, Mr Rudd.

Kevin Rudd (KR): Gladly. And please, call me Kevin. The Royal Baby does, so too the President of-
TA: Just get on with it.
KR: Fine. I’ve made a decision to terminate the carbon tax and bring forward the move to an Emissions Trading Scheme.

TA: Why?

KR: Because I’m acting decisively. I'm consulting myself before I make any decisions and this is one of them. The Australian People deserve that.

TA: But what’s the point of ending the fixed price period, I mean - the Big Fat Carbon Tax™ - a year early?

KR: So I can relieve industry of some of the cost pressures, and deliver real outcomes for Working Families™ who are doing it tough.

TA: [shuffles papers]. You…just…stole my lines!

KR: Now that you raise your lines/slogans/empty words Tony, tell us, what’s your policy on the climate issue?

TA: The Coalition has a Real Solution. It’s outlined in my Real Solutions Plan.

KR: So what is it then?

TA: It’s a Direct Action Policy.

KR: [flicks through Real Solutions]. I can’t seem to find that in your Real Solutions Plan Tony.

TA: No, it’s not detailed there. You’ll have to Google it and find it on Greg Hunt’s website.

KR: So what is the plan then? 

TA: The Coalition is going to do the things that really work to reduce carbon emissions, so we can protect our planet for our children and our children’s children-

TA’s media advisor: Sorry Mr Abbott, I think I accidently got President Obama’s speech notes mingled with yours…

TA: Christ. Ok. Where was I? [Looks down at newly arrived pages]. Aaahh yes. I was talking about a so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one.

KR: What does that even mean Tony?

TA: It’s a sentence filled with double-negatives, with no mention of ‘no’.

KR: So what’s your PLAN?

TA: The carbon tax – the Big Fat Carbon Tax- will be gone under the Coalition.

KR: It’s gone now, Tony. I’ve already terminated it. [Gestures to young woman in audience] Oh, is that a smart phone in your pocket? 
Girl in audience: Ummm...
KR: Selllfiiiie time folks! Excuse us Tony...

TA: We don’t believe in an Emissions Trading Scheme either. THAT won’t happen under a Coalition government that I lead.

CROWD: [Chants]:  TURNBULL!  TURNBULL! TURNBULL! 

TA: We’re also going to plant trees – 20 million of them in fact – to soak up all the carbon being emitted by the dirty polluters. And we’ll establish an Emissions Reduction Fund to pay for farmers to store carbon in soil.

KR: How does that work?

TA: Look, I’m not…heh heh heh….purporting to be the world’s most informed person on this stuff – but look, it’s like the soil is a sink, and we can tip the carbon in there…

KR: So you’re not doing anything punitive to the big polluters? No need for them to buy permits to emit CO2? No cost pressure to change their dirty, stinking habits?

TA: That’s right. Industry needs incentives, not sticks. We’ve got to remember that there’s no climate without an economy. And looking around the world, our Direct Action Policy is consistent with what the other big Western economies are doing…

KR: Yes, well. Why wouldn’t Australia follow America and Europe? I mean, they did so well comparative to Australia in keeping their economies afloat during the GFC. Ha ha ha. I’d just like to remind the Australian People that when I was the PM – the first time-

AUDIENCE: [Groaning]. NOOOO! Don’t mention how you saved us from the bloody GFC again!

Moderator: So Kevin, you’re bringing forward the ETS, which means less cost to energy companies, which should reduce the price of electricity for households. So you’ll scrap the ‘carbon compensation’ package, right?

KR: Wrong.

TA: How do you justify compensating households when the carbon tax no longer exists?

KR: The same way you do, Tony. Suicide. Political. Get it? The folks at home, doing it tough, they need the Household Assistance Package to buy that extra plasma TV.

TA:  How will Labor pay for this?

KR: By terminating the automatic 20 per cent perk for FBT car use.

TA: You're making people fill out logbooks to count kms? 
KR: Yes, but-
Joe Hockey [interjecting]: 1998 called and wants its red tape dispenser back!

KR: Aaaah heeellloooo?? It’s 2013 Tony. They can download an App!

TA: You’ll devastate the car industry!

KR: It’s already devastated! [Clears throat]. Excuse me folks. Labor believes Australia is good at making things. We believe in our manufacturing sector. How are YOU going to pay for the carbon compo package?

TA: We’ll let the Australian People know that prior to the election.

KR: That’s now, Tony.  

TA: For f&^%s sake, just call the election date!

KR: Calm down you boxing Blue!

TA: Call the election date before I wring your Ruddy neck!

Rudd and Abbott descend into a wrestling match on the floor, pummelling each other with indistinguishable sound bites. 

Moderator: And that concludes the Climate Change debate. We hope you’ve gathered insights into the political and philosophical viewpoints of the major parties to help you make an informed decision at the election.

Global climate change politics: an inconvenient truth

Polar bears. Bloody whingers.

On Sunday, Greens Leader Christine Milne called it on the ABC’s Insiders program: “In all this discussion about changing to a flexible price, no-one is talking about the impacts on the climate.” And she’s right.

Barely a month ago, President Obama gave a speech about climate change that reframed the challenge as a global, imminent concern that threatens not only our livelihood, but our life. 
It was the sort of impassioned plea that Malcolm Turnbull made in Parliament in 2010 – about preserving the planet for future generations. 

Turnbull said, “Climate change is the ultimate long-term problem. We have to make decisions today, bear costs today so that adverse consequences are avoided, dangerous consequences are avoided many decades into the future…”

That was three years ago. Australia was still reeling from the Black Saturday bushfires, where a record number of people lost their lives in a raging inferno that followed a two-month, unprecedented heatwave. In 2011, Japan shuddered from the fifth most powerful earthquake in Earth’s history, Christchurch also crumbled, and Queensland and Victoria were inundated with floods. Climate change seemed palpable. It was happening all around us and even as skeptics brushed them off as cyclical events, we shifted uneasily in our seats and wanted something to be done.

Now, America is feeling that same sense of urgency. As Obama said in his speech, the country has had its hottest year on record, the artic ice cap is melting to record levels and extreme weather events have cost the country millions.

But in Australia, we’ve become complacent. Victoria has a desalination plant that the Naphine Government has said we won’t need to draw from until at least 2016, because our dams are up to 74 per cent capacity. We whinge about the plant’s cost, forgetting how recently we would anxiously eye the ‘water storage’ calculator on billboards, watching levels plummet to below 35 per cent.

Do we even remember why we have a carbon tax/price in the first place?

Let’s recap. In 2006, Al Gore presented one of the most powerful PowerPoint presentations of all time in the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Suddenly, work that scientists had been quietly toiling away at for years became of interest to the mainstream. It was compelling stuff. We watched as the graphs soared into unchartered territory and we emerged alarmed and afraid of what we were doing to the Earth.

“DO SOMETHING!” the masses screamed. And governments did. Well, they started to. The British government released the Stern Review in October 2006, outlining the effect of climate change on the world’s economy. In Australia, John Howard kicked things off in 2007 by laying the groundwork needed to set up an emissions trading scheme, as recommended by the Shergold emissions trading task group.

Before the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd declared, “Climate change is the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time.” He was voted in, and then no sooner was the ink dry on his signature to the Kyoto Protocol; he suddenly lost his mojo for the environment that had been so convincing earlier. A new kid had come on stage – the GFC. The message shifted to bugger the planet; we need to get people out buying plasmas again.  So the planned Emissions Trading Scheme that had been worked on for years, and which Malcolm Turnbull had fallen on his sword for in lending bipartisan support to get through, was suddenly off the table in 2010. The greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time could wait another few years (until 2013) said Rudd.

Back then, Rudd’s capitulation on climate change marked a turning point for him in the polls, and soon, the faceless men came for him, quickly installing Gillard, who went into the 2010 election declaring a carbon tax a “never-ever” under her Government. But we know how that turned out, and in fairness, a hung parliament wasn’t on the radar when she said it.

Gillard created a Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, comprising members of the rag-tag Parliament to prepare a report on ways to introduce a carbon price. The result was the Carbon Pricing Scheme introduced on 1 July 2012, which required big emitters to purchase carbon emissions permits at a fixed price for the first two years, after which time the number of available permits would be capped and the price floated in line with an emissions trading scheme. As Milne told Barrie Cassidy on Insiders, the current scheme has been vilified as a ‘tax’, “…when in fact what we legislated was an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price period.” But don't let that get in the way of a good Coalition slogan eh? #bigfatcarbontax

It was part of the Clean Energy Future Plan, which provides investment in clean technologies, support for manufacturers and farmers to reduce their environmental impact, and help for households and businesses to reduce energy consumption and switch to cleaner sources. And it’s working. Just one year in, the Clean Energy Future Report notes that carbon pollution from electricity is down 7.4%, primarily because we’re switching to cleaner sources. The report states: “…renewable energy output increased by almost 30% and the output from the seven most highly-polluting coal generators was down 14% from the same period in 2011-12.” 

That’s a pretty good result, huh? So why aren’t we hearing more about this? Rudd has announced he’ll scrap the second fixed-price year and move straight to the floating price. This means it will cost a lot less for big emitters to pollute, just as their emitting behavior was starting to change.

Tony Abbott’s been imploring me to read his Real Solutions Plan, so I had a flick through to find out what his vision is for the climate. In 50 pages, ‘climate’ is mentioned once. The ‘Real Solution’ outlined is to shut down the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), established by the Gillard Government to invest in businesses trying to get innovative clean energy proposals off the ground.  He’ll also suspend the operations of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (no need for a regulator if you’re not collecting the carbon tax anymore).

The (other) Real Solution is to implement the Direct Action Plan on climate change and carbon emissions. But there’s no detail about that whatsoever in the Real Solutions Plan, so I Googled and eventually found it on Greg Hunt’s website. Not the Coalition’s website mind you, but I digress. The plan has slightly curled leaves on the front page, which seems like a good omen, but in actual fact, the leaves represent the entire plan. 

Yes, that’s right! The Direct Action Plan is to plant 20 million trees to suck up all the extra carbon being emitted into the atmosphere! Well, that, a few incentives for old and dirty businesses to clean up their act. No sticks here, just leaves and carrots.  Oh, and here’s the kicker. Abbott will scrap the carbon tax but keep the compensation to households (so will Rudd). Bills will go down. Power usage will go up and the compo cheque’s in the mail so you can go ahead and buy that third plasma TV. Direct Action to not change behaviour. Brilliant work, Tones! No wonder Turnbull said the policy was bullshit. 

We’ve lost sense of what action on climate change is all about. As Obama repositions the debate from parochial concerns about jobs and rallies Americans to lead the world on creating a greener planet and industries, the political leaders of Australia appeal to our hip pockets, and back away from the hard decisions that are needed to transition industry and attitudes, work once deemed so important.

Fair-weather politics at its worst.