Peter Hannam
It’s a fair bet that after 11.30am AEST today, Anthony Albanese is going to be briefed on what the March jobless rate comes in at, if he’s not watching the ABS website too.
Of course, probably every politician and pundit in the country will be taking a peek.
As we previewed yesterday, ‘the market consensus’ is expecting a 3.x% number for the unemployment, with 3.9% the likely figure.
But a jump or drop in the participation rate may nudge things either way.
For what it’s worth, the February jobless rate was 4.042%, so the ABS told us when we asked nicely, which made that reading the lowest since August 2008 (4.016%), while there was technically a ‘3’ reading in February of that year at 3.981% for stat nerds.
Anyway, a clean 3.9% will have the ABS dusting off quarterly readings from the mid-70s.
Mind you, the RBA will be watching closely too, given its board also has a meeting on May 3 to consider what to do with the cash rate.
Meanwhile, as RateCity.com has noted today, two more of the big four banks, Westpac and ANZ, have lifted their fixed rates again today.
For Westpac, it’s the second increase in a week, after increasing fixed rates on 7 April. (Not all of its rates have gone up, though, with the 1-year fixed rate cut.)
ANZ has lifted its 1- to 5-year fixed rates by as much as 0.60 percentage points.
Fair to say those moves fit in the “more to come” category.
If you are overseas and want to vote, the AEC has a message for you:
If you’re not enrolled you can’t vote, and people only have a few days left until the enrolment deadline on Monday 18 April,” electoral commissioner, Tom Rogers, said.
Once enrolled, it is then critical that overseas voters check what voting services are available as it’s a little different for this federal election due to the pandemic.
Thanks Tom.
Fwiw – you can get postal votes direct from the AEC. You do not have to use one of the postal votes the political parties are sending out, which often is a data harvesting exercise dressed up as a public service.
The view from Murph
Katharine Murphy
Last night, I reported the news that Scott Morrison had basically buried the integrity commission proposal he promised voters three years ago.
He said he would not bring the legislation forward unless Labor supported it in its current form. Labor proposes a stronger model. Why? Because pretty much every integrity expert in the country has rubbished Morrison’s model.
Morrison is trying to decouple from his promise and blame Labor. This is complete nonsense.
Fact is the government hasn’t even introduced its own bill to parliament. One of the reasons for the delay has been concern that some Liberals might cross the floor to support amendments to strengthen it.
There is always a risk during campaigns that the news cycle whizzes right past important things. But this morning, Morrison faced a barrage of questions about his position on the integrity commission. The sustained questioning exposed the absolute nonsense of Morrison’s position.
The prime minister again blamed Labor for failing to introduce his own bill to the parliament. Then he blamed the Senate. Then he said it was in the national interest to have a model that experts have panned. Then he declared no one wanted kangaroo courts. Then he said his priorities were jobs, jobs and jobs.
The facts of this are simple: Morrison promised three years ago there would be a federal body and he has broken that promise. Now he won’t even guarantee to reboot efforts if he wins the election on 21 May.
Morrison was flanked at his campaign event this morning by Bridget Archer, the Liberal backbencher who grew tired of the government’s stalling on the issue. Archer crossed the floor to support bringing on parliamentary debate about the integrity commission last year.
Archer, who holds the most marginal Coalition-held seat in the country, navigated a potential media minefield this morning with considerable dexterity. She was asked for her view on the circus playing out before her. Archer was very careful not to smack her leader, but she noted nothing would happen with this important body until the politics was taken out of the debate.
I strongly suspect this was a message to her own side as well as other actors in the parliament. The message was how about we just do our bloody jobs? All power to Archer’s arm.
Australia applies new sanctions on Russia
Ben Butler
Australia has slapped another set of sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, this time targeting the country’s oil and gas sector.
In regulations published yesterday, the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, added 13 companies to Australia’s sanctions list.
They include Russia’s biggest oil and gas company, Gazprom, which supplies much of western Europe with its gas via the Nord Stream pipeline.
Other companies on the new list include Russia’s biggest electricity producer, RusHydro, and the world’s largest oil pipeline company, Transneft.
Outside the oil and gas sector, Australia has also sanctioned Russia’s biggest telco, Rostelcom, shipping companies and ports and diamond miner Alrosa.
The sanctions are likely to have little impact on trade between Australia and Russia, which is limited – Russia is Australia’s 37th biggest export destination and the 57th biggest source of imports, with total trade in both directions totalling not much more than $1bn a year.
The jobs data Anthony Albanese was talking about in his press conference – how the number of people working three jobs has increased by 50% since the Coalition came to office, comes from the ABS jobs in Australia data report.
The ABS takes data from the Linked Employer-Employee Dataset (Leed), which is built using Australian Tax Office (ATO) administrative data linked to ABS Business Longitudinal Analytical Data Environment (BLADE)
It shows what’s happened between 2014-15 and 2018-19. The latest data, for 2018-19, was released by the ABS in October last year. The “Jobs in Australia” dataset is the only source that gives the number of people who are working 3 or 4+ jobs concurrently.
Albanese’s 3+ jobs claim also matches what is observed in the recent ABS Multiple Jobs data set. Here are some findings worth noting:
- The number of people working 4+ jobs concurrently has more than doubled (120%) – men by 127% and women by 102%.
- Half a million people (458,000) working three jobs concurrently, up 53%.
- The industry with the most multiple job holders was healthcare and social assistance – which has grown by 26%, and with women in the sector overwhelmingly the biggest group with multiple jobs in one industry (143,400).
Almost one million Australians are working two jobs.
It is also worth pointing out that anti-corruption campaigners have judged the government’s federal integrity commission to be all but useless:
Here is the message Scott Morrison wants spread:
What Anthony Albanese will believe on something is an open proposition because he has stood for everything he’s opposed and he’s opposed everything he’s stood for. No wonder people don’t know who he is – this election is a choice between what you do know and what they have done and what our plans are and someone you just don’t know.
But one of the issues is that people do know who Scott Morrison is now.
As he ends the press conference he dons a baseball cap for a photo op and then quickly takes it off and leaves.
Labor does have an economic plan this time round, but Scott Morrison is really pushing the line that it doesn’t. He just says it over and over and over again, hoping that will be the message that comes through.
But it is an interesting pitch he has just made there – even though we haven’t met all the commitments we said we would, you can only trust us to meet the commitments we are making now.
Scott Morrison is again asked how people can trust him and his government, given the broken promises in his last term. (Car parks which haven’t been built, federal integrity commission are the examples given.)
Q: “Are you committing to an integrity commission?”
Morrison:
You asked me about priorities and I will talk about what my priorities are: Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs.
Q: “Is that a no to the integrity commission?”
Morrison:
That is what my priorities are. I haven’t finished my answer.
I uttered five words and that was “Jobs”. That is our priority. National security is our priority. The world we are facing at the moment means my government will first and foremost be focused on ensuring that we sure our economic recovery with the economic plan that is creating the jobs and the forestry announcement today is important to that and secondly, ensuring that in an uncertain world that we have in place the strong national defences and national security.
On other matters that are important, such as the ones you raise in terms of integrity commission. Our proposal is there, it is clear, it is detailed. It has been well thought through and it is there to be supported. It is our policy. The Labor party’s policy on this issue is two pages. I would invite the Labor party, as Bridget has said, to come together in a bipartisan spirit and support our bill and that is our policy.
Q: “The car parks?”
Morrison:
On the commuter car parks. This is a program and many of those car parks are underway and some of them are not. Their partnership is done with state governments and they require us to work together on securing land and putting projects in place. As you know, the federal government does not have a department of building, that is done through state governments. They let the contracts, on occasions when we have been able to do it with local councils, we have done that directly and we have been able to get those in place.
There have been some projects, as we have gone through the planning phases, as you do, do them properly, that some of those projects have changed. You asked me in particular, is how people can have confidence about our ability to follow through on the plans …
Q: “How can they trust that you will follow through with your election commitments this time around, given we don’t have the car parks?”
Morrison:
Only the Liberals and Nationals have an economic plan to back up the promises and commitments we are making at this election. You can say a lot of things in an election campaign, you can say all the things you like but if you don’t have an economic plan and if you don’t know how to manage money, and if you don’t even know what is going on in the economy – and I am not talking about the fact that he couldn’t remember a number, I am talking about the fact that he didn’t even know what the number was. I am talking about that he didn’t know what was going on in the economy in one of the most fundamental issues.
For those who may not be thinking what does that really matter? If you don’t know what is going on in the economy, then you can’t put together plans that grow jobs. He talks about job security, he talks about wages, if you don’t understand what is going on in the economy, if you don’t understand how important the resources industry is, the forestry industry is and all of those to regional economies, then you can’t look regional people in the eye and say that you have got their backs. The premier and I can say that here in Tasmania when it comes to the forestry industry, I have got the economic plan and the economic record and the economic wherewithal to deliver on what we are saying.
Q: “Bridget Archer, do you agree that the New South Wales Icac is a kangaroo court?”
Archer:
What I have said, and I have said it a number of times now, is that there needs to be a bipartisan commitment to an integrity commission.
Q: “The prime minister just said that the NSW Icac is a kangaroo court …”
Archer:
I am from Tasmania and I don’t have much exposure to the New South Wales Icac.
Q: “Do you agree with the prime minister that the NSW Icac is a kangaroo court?”
Archer:
I am from Tasmania and I am not that familiar with the New South Wales Icac. What I have said and what I will continue to say is that I would like to see the positive promotion of integrity in public life. There are a lot of ways to achieve that, one of those may be through integrity commission legislation but there are other ways to achieve that. I will continue to talk within the government …
One of the main criticisms of the government’s federal integrity commission legislation is that it wouldn’t allow for the investigation of the issues we saw crop up over the last parliament. It wouldn’t allow for the investigation of federal MPs.
And just on Icac, it is not a kangaroo court. It does have private hearings. It does not find anyone guilty or innocent. It investigates, then hands what it finds during that investigation to the director of public prosecutions, which then decides whether or not to pursue charges. If it does, then that goes to a court, where the issue is judged as it would be in any other court case.
Scott Morrison says a federal Icac would be a ‘circus’
Asked whether he would look at amending the national integrity commission legislation, Scott Morrison says:
What I am concerned about is the circus that Labor would want to put in place with an integrity commission.
I have lived with that in New South Wales. I have seen the lives destroyed by a commission such as that which becomes a kangaroo court and goes around and seems to operate through politics and shaming people and the proper process that should go to those important issues being properly considered.
I have seen the damage that that causes. I don’t want to see something of that nature. That is why we carefully designed and we have already taken steps by increasing our funding and increasing the powers to ACLEI [Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity]. Those who aren’t familiar with that organisation, that is the organisation that polices law enforcement in this country.
We have extended its mandate to many more arms of the government’s law enforcement operations and to ensure because, at a federal level as you know, we don’t deal with things like planning and development controls. We don’t deal with things like racing and gaming and liquor licensing and all of those sorts of issues.
At a federal level, there are major contracts and that is done at arm’s length and the decisions are made away from ministers and made by public servants …
Our model has been well thought through and we have considered the sorts of protections that need to be around something like this to make it work effectively and not see it descend into the sort of farce that we have seen in New South Wales, where it is just weaponised politically to try and destroy people who have been cleared time and time again.
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