COULD Australia get its own Donald Trump? Easily, if we’re not careful.
Trump was supported by a big swing from disaffected Americans who normally vote Democrat. They’d had enough. They feel left out. Like something was taken from them and nobody cares.
Australia has a large group of people in much the same boat. Our underemployment situation is getting serious, as the next chart shows.
Source: ABSSource:Supplied
Australia’s unemployment rate has fallen and yes, the government likes to talk about that. But unemployment is not the whole picture. More than a million Australians who get counted as employed want to work more. They are the underemployed.
They don’t just want a little more work. On average, they would like a whopping 13.5 hours extra each week. That’s adds up to almost two whole days a week people are stuck idly sitting, wishing they could do something to make money.
And this is without even mentioning the hundred thousand people who have dropped out of the labour force and count as “discouraged jobseekers”.
If Australia wants a further two million days work a week, politicians would be wise to take notice. They say the devil finds work for idle hands and Australia has already seen the rise of some extremist politicians.
EXTREME GAMES
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party got 9 per cent of the Senate vote in Queensland and has sent four senators to the nation’s capital. Hers is not the only party getting protest votes, either. There are more representatives of small parties in the Senate than ever.
We’ve already got Pauline Hanson in parliament, but we could one day have someone like her as Prime Minister. Picture: AAP Image/Mick TsikasSource:AAP
It’s not just in small parties that you can sniff out extremism. The, shall we say, Donald Trump end of the Liberal Party is also feeling cocky. Queensland’s George Christensen and South Australia’s Cory Bernardi have had significant influence over the more moderate tendencies of Malcolm Turnbull.
These politicians have been sent to break the mould. To stir things up. To represent the people who have had enough of the status quo.
In the face of this, what has the government done? Australia’s Treasurer, Scott Morrison, recently handballed housing affordability issues to the states, and was seen last week making a speech about the opportunities for the financial sector in new technology.
This comes after he travelled to New York at the start of October, where he made a speech boasting about having the fastest economic growth rate of all the richest countries. He also pointed to all the jobs that have been created.
He didn’t mention how many of them were part time. Part time work has been the fastest growing kind of work in Australia for years, as shown by the blue section in the next graph.
Full time jobs are growing, but part time jobs are growing much faster. Source: ABSSource:Supplied
Of course, part time jobs can be excellent, if people want them. But more than a quarter of people in part time work are unhappy. They want more work and cannot get it.
So the Treasurer’s claims about “the underlying strength and resilience of our economy” are true so far as they go, but tone deaf, and dangerously so.
Australia’s economy looks great on paper, as the automated mines of WA pump out vast quantities of coal and iron to prop up economic growth. But GDP doesn’t do much for someone who has had their shifts cut this week, again.
LEST WE FORGET
The lesson of the election of Donald Trump should be this — our modern economies leave a lot of people behind. They may be quiet, they may be easy to ignore, but they are powerful.
If the big parties don’t make sure to support Australia’s forgotten people, extreme parties will gladly volunteer to do it for them. And that will end unhappily for Australia.
Jason Murphy is an economist. He publishes the blog Thomas The Thinkengine. Follow Jason on Twitter @Jasemurphy