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Working families need a break
Greg Byrne
The term “working families” is common today especially from the Labour side of politics. It was used extensively in the Victorian state election and has been used by Kevin Rudd in relation to “Work Choices”. I suppose by “working families” they mean families with two pay packets. However, what about families with one pay packet? Are they especially privileged and to be envied or especially deprived and to be pitied? Of course, motherhood is all fun and games and not to be considered work as in work done in the paid workforce. Motherhood is the greatest racket of all time enabling some women to “boondoggle” while others are hard at work in the industrial coalface.
One-income families used to be the norm once with Dad out at work and Mum home with the kids. Two income families became common during the Whitlam regime when house prices exploded as did taxes. This has happened despite per capita incomes never being higher in history. If Labour were to do the right thing and propose policies leading to smaller government and lower taxes the Liberals would do likewise and Australians might get a taste of what life was like in the 1960s when Mum didn’t need to go to work. Labour’s answer to the financial problems of families is to provide education and jobs for mothers.
Labour doesn’t have any problems with this approach even if some economists and more traditional families find it unacceptable. Moreover, we live in an era in which the media is the primary authority on all such matters. If the media finds this approach acceptable then it is acceptable. So there are two issues here. One is the financial plight of families and the other is the ability of the media to determine what policies are appropriate for dealing with financial plight of families. The media has become the arbiter of what is right or wrong.
One could say that there is a need to reform the labour market so that fewer people were unemployed and drawing welfare and that maybe governments should sack some teachers and give tax cuts to families so that fewer mums needed to work. But that would be attacked ferociously in the media so it cannot be done so the mums need to keep working. So maybe democracy is a farce and the real rulers are the political journalists who decide what policies are appropriate.
I can still remember the early 1970s when Labour made a shift from blue-collar workers towards the new graduates in the public service and education. The conservative side of politics was saying that these people were most able to help themselves and did not need help from governments, which was true. However, that didn’t worry Labour and the media didn’t run with it. The media could have crucified Labour over that but Labour and the media were hand in hand.
Labour’s tactic worked brilliantly and it had a growing constituency that would help it greatly during the following decades. ‘Education’ became a major “growth industry” while real industries got into difficulties. The only trouble was that educational establishments produce graduates not economic outputs that satisfy the needs of consumers. However, maybe graduates themselves are seen as economic outputs? The only trouble is who is going to hire them other than taxpayers? It seems that the ridiculous idea that ‘education’ (meaning more and more paper credentials) can drive an economy, rather than investment and entrepreneurship, has been swallowed wholesale by many politicians.
There are reports of graduates doing low jobs in restaurants and similar establishments. Maybe these are only temporary jobs but many will find temporary means years rather than months. Anyway maybe becoming a manager of McDonald’s isn’t such a bad outcome for an Arts graduate or even an engineering graduate. (It never occurred to our brilliant politicians that paper credentials could be used as a means to discriminate against those who did not receive a ‘higher education’.)
So that is where it is today with neither party concerned about the blue collar families in the western suburbs. The Liberals don’t want to know them because they vote Labour. Labour really doesn’t want to know them because they are “in the bag” so Labour throws them a few crumbs and tells them to get the mother into work. This has produced a serious social crisis in terms of the ageing of the population. If you’re a low-income worker you don’t take on family life if it means working your tail off for 30 years and retiring stone broke if you live that long.
There are economists and journalists who could rip Labour to shreds over “working families” and its callous treatment of its own constituency. As part of the solution to the financial hardship that many families endure a labor politician could always suggest income splitting. Furthermore, they could come down on state governments — all of which are labor — and demand that they stop artificially raising the price of land and housing. Some hope.
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 28 May 2007