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Post by pim on Oct 31, 2019 8:17:13 GMT 10
The reality: The evidence shows that the Coalition is a very poor manager. Its priority is not to resolve problems or manage them well, but to play a political game to win votes. Look at some major Coalition’s management debacles. The Coalition is determinedly rejecting any suggestion of a fiscal stimulus to stimulate our stagnant economy. Why? The Coalition wants to reiterate its claim that after all the Labor failures in getting the budget back into surplus that it is able to achieve it. For the Coalition a ‘budget surplus’ is a political slogan, not a serious policy intent. The Coalition confuses the budget with the economy. The budget, whether in surplus or deficit, is a means to an end. The important end is the state of the economy. But even if the Coalition is successful in achieving a momentary budget surplus, it will be achieved mainly through bracket creep and the good fortune of record government revenues as a result of a mining catastrophe of a competitor in Brazil. The real reason for continuing deficits over so many years is due to the ‘fiscal profligacy’ of the Howard/Costello years. Both the Parliamentary Budget Office and the IMF pointed to the way that the Howard/Costello governments locked in a whole range of government concessions in negative gearing, generous treatment of capital gains, tax-free superannuation benefits, family trust concessions and franking credit rebates. These concessions are costing the Budget about $50 billion per annum. That’s the real reason for continuing budget deficits. In any event the Coalition faces a $20b write down through its mismanagement of the NBN That will blow a massive hole in the Coalition’s surplus ambitions. By any account, including economic growth rates, the Coalition has been a poor economic manager. Only two Australian Treasurers have received the coveted Euromoney Finance Minister of the Year award, Paul Keating and Wayne Swan. That is hard to remember if you read only the Australian media. But we hear a lot about pink batts. Another Coalition/media beat up. Politics has invariably been the priority of the Coalition rather than good economic policy and management. johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-we-should-stop-pretending-that-the-coalition-is-a-good-economic-or-business-manager/
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Post by pim on Oct 31, 2019 12:43:32 GMT 10
Frydenberg brings in the cherrypicker for tepid economic assessmentGlenn Dyer and Bernard Keane Crikey October 29 (Paywall) Australia has maintained its third AAA credit rating, but an excited Josh Frydenberg skipped over some of the more damning observations of the ratings agency that granted it.Yesterday, ratings agency Fitch reaffirmed Australia’s AAA rating, and treasurer Josh Frydenberg loved it so much he rushed out a statement about how it was “a strong expression of confidence in the Morrison government’s disciplined fiscal and economic management” that will “further boost confidence in the economy.” Ten paragraphs of self-congratulation followed, including a pro forma jab at Labor, which was “focused on talking down the economy and engaging in panic and crisis, putting politics ahead of Australian jobs” (something the Coalition in opposition never did ) Fitch is the agency that gave Australia a coveted third triple-A rating back in 2011, when Wayne Swan was treasurer. That was surprisingly omitted from Frydenberg’s media release, as were some parts of Fitch’s statement — which was no doubt an oversight. Particularly: “Fitch forecasts GDP growth to slow sharply to 1.7% in 2019, from 2.7% in 2018, due to domestic factors triggered by a protracted housing-market downturn. We expect economic growth to rise to 2.3% in 2020, as the housing market stabilises and consumption is supported by recent monetary policy-rate cuts, tax cuts, and public-infrastructure spending.” That 2.3% is well below the government’s budget forecast of 2.75% for this financial year. Fitch also notes that the budget surplus is “remains sensitive to commodity-price developments. Iron ore prices have receded sharply from their mid-2019 highs, but remain above the assumptions incorporated into Fitch’s April 2019 budget outlook.” That’s bad news for another surplus, on the current account, which Fitch forecasts to be “short-lived” as iron ore prices fall back. One positive is that Fitch doesn’t see any more monetary policy easing. It “expects the RBA to remain on hold through 2021 to support economic growth and employment, and does not anticipate the use of quantitative easing.” That’s despite inflation remaining below 2% into 2021. Tomorrow we’ll get the September quarter inflation. Westpac has tipped a 0.6% rise for annual CPI of 1.8% — but that’s off the back of the drought and government excise increases. It thinks the Reserve Bank’s preferred trimmed mean reading will be just 0.3% or 1.5% annually, which will actually be a fall from the June quarter. Still, as Frydenberg says, it’s a “strong economic performance”.
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Post by pim on Oct 31, 2019 13:32:53 GMT 10
NBN The NBN should be the platform for our modern technological economy. But the Coalition has produced a dud NBN. In over 200 years of our history we have never wasted so much money on such a failed infrastructure program. The Coalition is responsible in two particular ways for the failed management of this project. The first is that John Howard sold off all of Telstra for reasons of ideological dogma. His government should at least have kept the wholesale business – wires and switches – in public hands. We could have then proceeded years ago, as New Zealand did, to roll out a fibre-based infrastructure. Instead the Rudd government had to create a new vehicle to roll out modern broadband services. The second management mistake was that the Coalition was determined to wreck the NBN. Tony Abbott told Malcolm Turnbull to ‘destroy the NBN’. That is just what has occurred – and continues to occur. The dud NBN will have to be fixed at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. Who said that the Coalition is a good economic manager? johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-we-should-stop-pretending-that-the-coalition-is-a-good-economic-or-business-manager/
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Post by pim on Oct 31, 2019 13:38:36 GMT 10
Cars and submarines The Coalition deliberately chose to close down our car manufacturing industry based principally in South Australia and Victoria. With an effective rate of protection of 8% our car manufacturing industry employed 200,000 people. In careless business management, the Coalition decided to spend over $50 billion with long delivery delays of French submarines. With an effective rate of protection of 300% for the French submarine build, South Australia will now secure only 2,000 new jobs. Overwhelmingly the skilled technical jobs will be in France and not in Adelaide. Compare all that with the 200,000 we have lost through Coalition mismanagement. The political rationale for this imbroglio was to assist Christopher Pyne hold his marginal seat of Sturt in Adelaide. Does this sound like good economic management? We would have been much wiser to retain our car manufacturing industry and buy submarines off the shelf from Japan or Germany. johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-we-should-stop-pretending-that-the-coalition-is-a-good-economic-or-business-manager/Who said that the Coalition are superior economic managers?
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Post by pim on Oct 31, 2019 14:02:19 GMT 10
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2019 14:57:50 GMT 10
People are confused with a budget surplus....as stated elsewhere its like a trade surplus.
Running a big, and persistent, trade surplus is actually the sign of an unbalanced economy and it can cause all sorts of problems..
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Post by pim on Nov 20, 2019 15:32:08 GMT 10
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Post by Deleted on Nov 20, 2019 17:58:05 GMT 10
The government does not know how to bring optimism about the future to the people.....now its badegring old people to work into their 70's while paying franking credits, negative gearing and low company tax...the worker has to pay for the elite largesse in a globalised market....which is a economic bubble.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 24, 2019 6:57:29 GMT 10
Australia’s unemployment ranking statistics now worst ever
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Post by pim on Dec 7, 2019 22:48:41 GMT 10
Is the government failing at managing the economy?The economy is showing growth figures on par with the global financial crisis and none of the government’s tax breaks seem to be making a difference. The Coalition is refusing to use the word stimulus to avoid admitting economic despair, but in doing so it’s failed to communicate the need for spending at a critical time. So, what should they be doing to stimulate growth next year? Katharine Murphy is joined by Greg Jericho and the Age and the SMH’s senior economics correspondent, Shane Wright How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know Listen to the podcast www.theguardian.com/australia-news/audio/2019/dec/07/is-the-government-failing-at-managing-the-economy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2019 8:00:02 GMT 10
In short the LNP are economic fuckwits...all but for the naive.
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Post by pim on Mar 9, 2020 16:53:37 GMT 10
Australia under the Coalition: Economic management at an all-time lowBy Alan Austin | 9 March 2020 www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australia-under-the-coalition-economic-management-at-an-all-time-low,13670&ved=2ahUKEwiV0PHa6YzoAhXu63MBHT-IAWsQFjAAegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw3psQg1X2reYPSoNTCDBmO2 The latest official statistics confirm Australia’s economy is being grossly mismanaged. Alan Austin unpacks the recent data dump.We now have nearly all the information on the economy’s performance in 2019 we are going to get. So we can complete the picture we began to assemble here in January when we examined 14 important outcomes – almost all of which deteriorated over the year. Living or just surviving?One neat measure economists and others use to assess progress for average families is household consumption expenditure. This is the money families or individuals get to spend on necessities and luxuries after paying all direct taxes. Obviously, the higher the better. Families in 2019 suffered the lowest increase in household spending in 28 years, at a miserable 1.43%. With inflation at 1.8% and population growth at 1.6%, this means most Australians spent less last year than the year before. Infrastructure failGovernment construction activity fell disastrously in 2019. Public sector engineering construction as measured by the Bureau of Statistics totalled $34 billion for the year. That is down 11.2% on the 2018 spend, well below investment in 2017 and even down 5.1% from the $35.8 billion the Labor Government allocated back in 2011. That is the second-lowest percentage collapse in government infrastructure spending since records began in the mid-1980s. The lowest was in 2014 when Tony Abbott was trying to be Prime Minister. The chart, below, shows investment on infrastructure per adult per year by each administration since accounts have been kept. The Abbott years were the worst, Morrison second worst. So far. Total construction tumblingAll construction activity, government and private, including houses and commercial properties plus large infrastructure projects, came to $204.9 billion for the year 2019. That was down 7% on the year before and down a staggering 15.2% from the $241.8 billion invested in Labor’s final year: 2012. Dismal economic growthGrowth in gross domestic product (GDP) for the last three months of 2019 was reported last Wednesday at 0.53% for the quarter and 2.19% for the year. This was a slight rise from 1.82% in the September quarter. It was marginally better than the December result a year earlier of 2.17%. It remains, however, well below the average of 2.89% over the last 20 years — a period which includes the global financial crisis (GFC). Australia’s current global ranking on annual GDP growth is a lowly 108th, with an outcome well below the world average of 2.95%. Interest rates slashedThrough 2019, interest rates were cut three times in efforts to boost the Coalition’s tanking economy. To no avail. The Reserve Bank cut them again last week to an all-time desperation low of 0.50%. Creeping corruptionGovernments, corporations and others follow keenly Transparency International’s annual corruption report. So they should. Corruption is highly destructive of economic and social progress. Transparency’s 2019 edition highlights on its home page “improvers”, “decliners” and “countries to watch”. It lists three decliners — Canada, Nicaragua and Australia. Australia's score is just 77 and the ranking a lowly equal 12th. That’s down from eighth position through most of the Labor years and seventh in Julia Gillard’s last. This assessment was made before the tawdry sports rorts affair and other recent thefts of public funds were exposed. The more we learn about the sports rorts controversy the more it becomes apparent how deeply embroiled in it the Prime Minister is. Australia reached a record number of underemployed workersAustralians aged 15-24 looking for work increased through 2019 by 10,100 with the jobless rate up to 11.6%; the long term unemployed – people jobless for more than a year – blew out over the year from 145,700 Australians by 24,400 up to 170,100; the average number of weeks the jobless spend looking for a job increased over the year from 49.8 weeks to 51.4 – almost a year and productivity increased marginally but remains below the 2018 peak. Overall, the outcomes confirm Australia’s economy is now more poorly managed than in any period since records have been kept, and possibly – yes, this is a big call – since Federation. Robust global economyThere is no excuse for this. External conditions are as benign as they have ever been. Demand for Australia’s resources continues to be strong. Trump’s trade wars continue to benefit Australia, Brazil, Chile, Russia and some others at the expense of the USA. Corporate profits are at all-time highs. Glaring incompetenceReaders with good memories may have noticed an intriguing pattern. It seems the greater the vehemence and outrage with which the Coalition and its spruikers in the media denounced Labor’s economic outcomes, the worse has been the deterioration under the Coalition. The debt and deficits were “a disaster”. Debt has now more than doubled. Tony Abbott wanted above all “to be an infrastructure prime minister”. He took construction to an all-time low. Interest rates clipped to 2.50% in 2013 were depicted as proving “the economy is struggling”. Now they are at 0.50%. The Coalition promised “jobs and growth”. Both have tumbled disastrously down the global rankings from near the top to among the losers. Role of the dominant mediaThis wretched regime could not continue without its enablers. According to the mainstream media, all is well. Wednesday’s bleak growth figures were greeted with these headlines: 1. GDP surprises with 0.5% December growth’ (Herald Sun) 2. ASX higher after best day in two months’ (Australian Fin Review) 3. Economy gets unexpected lift as fourth-quarter GDP rises 0.5pc’ (The Australian) 4. Australia's economy beats expectations ahead of bushfire, coronavirus impacts’ (ABC News) 5. Economic growth defies critics: Treasurer’ (The West Australian) 6. December growth has Josh Frydenberg talking resilience, not recession’ (The Australian) The media have no interest in reporting what is really happening. They serve their rich, often foreign, masters who love the current plan — to shift as much income and wealth as possible straight offshore. Why increase family incomes or spend money on roads, rail and facilities in Australia when it could be spent on yachts, private jets and Richebourg Grand Cru in the Cayman Islands? Alan Austin is an Independent Australia columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow Alan on Twitter @alanaustin001.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 8:22:44 GMT 10
Bottom line is this government has done nothing....except sport rorts and other billion dollar rorts.
Cutting interest rates has done nothing to stimulate the economy as banks are not loaning to small business who do not have products to sell, so giving money to small business where people are not buying, (and the track record for this government is they say they give but nothing happens they just take), business not selling doesn't equate to keeping employees for any length of time...the government polices of wage restraint and punishment for unemployed people is a failure in the elite are getting rich and tghe people remain in struggle street, poverty has increased in their so called strong economy.
Casualisation of the work force will mean as time goes on with the economy going down the plug hole the government will have to start providing food for those out of work unable to buy food....the trickle down economy is failing, recession days ahead...and possibly worse.
Also spare some thoughts and prayers for Capt NoNoNoMo as his stocks also going down the plug hole and where companies are now cutting franking credits by 50%...gamblin' on greed doesn't pay.
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Post by pim on Jun 17, 2020 14:28:45 GMT 10
Australia’s contraction won’t be as bad as feared — but then we’ll return to stagnationThe prime minister says we need economic growth at 3.75% in coming years. How will he manage that when the economy has never got above 3% under the Coalition?Bernard Keane and Glenn Dyer June 16, 2020 Crikey Please don't wipe the smirk from my face. I'm Scotty from Marketing and I try hardAfter an extended period of optimism about an imminent recovery from pandemic lockdown, sharemarkets in the United States and Australia finally succumbed last week to the realisation that any recovery will be slow and grinding. In the US, community cases of COVID-19 are trending upwards again, especially across southern states, in what could be the beginning of a second wave engendered by the overly rapid reopening of a number of states. If that happens while the Chinese regime struggles with a new cluster in Beijing (guess that victory lap by a maskless Xi Jinping was a tad premature?), the outlook for global growth for the rest of the year is bleak. Markets in Asia (including Australia with a 2%-plus slide) continued to be sold off on Monday and were heading lower on Wall Street overnight until the US Federal Reserve revealed the details of its corporate bond buying policy, first announced more than a month ago. The central bank had been having problems making it work but finally clarified its structure and will start indirectly purchasing corporate bonds, including bonds classified as junk, as long as they were previously investment-grade. That boosted Wall Street, with many confusing the Fed’s announcement for new buying (don’t laugh — it will drag the ASX, and your super investments, up today) but illustrating how, without the astonishing (in kind and quantity) levels of support from the Fed, markets would be a lot lower and struggling. At least investors here can reflect on how Australia has managed to almost completely shut down infection. Accordingly there’s much talk about the economic impact being significantly less than feared earlier, especially around unemployment, which with the help of JobKeeper might not even reach 9%. An unemployment rate peaking around 8% would be a considerable achievement and a testament to governments’ handling of the crisis — especially the Morrison government — and the advice they received from their health and economic departments. What will drive the economy?The problem will remain, however: what will drive the recovery? How will we get unemployment down to 7%, then 6%, and then to its pre-COVID-19 level, let alone the Reserve Bank’s 2019 fantasy of getting unemployment down low enough to lift interest rates? The issue we need to keep coming back to — especially because of the media’s reluctance to acknowledge it — is how weak the economy was before the pandemic when it was characterised by low GDP growth, low wages growth, low investment, low jobs growth and falling productivity. Scott Morrison, with a straight face, said yesterday: “We need to lift our economic growth rate by more than 1 percentage point above trend to beat the expected pre-COVID-19 GDP by 2025.” Is that now the government’s economic target, the benchmark it should be judged by? If so, good luck. That means ~3.75% a year, every year, for five years beyond this one.With any luck 2021 will see some quarters of strong growth as the economy returns to something like normal. But what about after that, after we’re back at “normal”, when the borders are reopened and immigrants, students and visitors begin coming again? In calendar 2019, the economy grew at 2.2%, despite those magical tax cuts the press gallery thought were going to turbocharge the economy. It grew at 2.2% in 2018 as well. In 2017, under Malcolm Turnbull, it managed 2.5%. In 2016, 2.7%; 2015, 2.6%; 2014, 2.1%. Australia hasn’t cracked 3% growth in a calendar year since Wayne Swan was treasurer in 2011 and we managed 3.4%, including a negative quarter from Cyclone Yasi. We know there’s a lobby group in business and The Australian Financial Review who think we just need some hardline neoliberalism to pep things up: wage cuts, deregulation, lower company tax. Except this would simply entrench low growth and low productivity. Wage stagnation has been the key curb on Australian growth in recent years via its effect on household spending. A return to a WorkChoices industrial relations system will have the same negative productivity impact that the Howard-era version did. The government has had an awful lot to say about the need for economic reform but so far has done little beyond set up some talk shops on industrial relations, an area for which — despite incessant commentary from business and commentators — there’s little evidence of major productivity potential. And it is signalling it is committed to pulling JobKeeper and JobSeeker as quickly as it can in September, likely leaving hundreds of thousands of unemployed people, and thousands of businesses, in deep trouble. It will still run a stimulatory fiscal policy — large deficits this year, next and, courtesy of much lower company tax revenue, deficits for some years beyond that. But additional fiscal stimulus — not even stimulus designed to put a rocket under the economy, just enough to keep growth going — seems unlikely. Eventually investors will work that out. Australia won’t suffer as deep a contraction as feared but it will return to the stagnation that marked this country before the crisis.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2020 18:01:53 GMT 10
To summarise: economic chaos and the rich cop it sweet. And in case you haven't seen....Priest in the Catholic Church are getting job keeper payments.... .... and have en asked or more told by the church to cough up 50% of it to the church. No doubt other religions are collecting as well, which is just corrupt and makes one think what other organisations, or indeed what other people are collecting job keeper as a rort gift from ScoMo. Creepy evil churchie people. Quick look over there...Labor branch stacking....wahoo.
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Post by pim on Jun 17, 2020 23:23:20 GMT 10
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Post by pim on Jun 17, 2020 23:47:59 GMT 10
Scott Morrison’s new housing stimulus package is straight-out retail politics. In other words it’s classic Scotty from Marketing spin. And these are the people who claim without blushing to be superior economic managers ...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2020 2:33:50 GMT 10
To be sure greed is good in the Catholic church that is a heavily subsidised organisation that is also sucking money out of public education.... Priests eligible for JobKeeper asked to donate the extra allowance to their Catholic diocese ABC Investigations / By Pat McGrath and Alison McClymont Posted Yesterday, updated YesterdayThe Catholic Church has asked some priests receiving JobKeeper to donate almost half of the payment back to the organisation. Key points: The Diocese of Parramatta has 41 priests receiving the Government's JobKeeper supplement The $3,000 payment almost doubles their usual monthly stipend of $1,590 Priests and other religious practitioners became eligible for JobKeeper following an amendment to the scheme's rules in May ABC Investigations has obtained letters sent to priests about the taxpayer-funded payment which ask them to hand back some of the money to help make up for a plunge in donations from parishioners. The letters, sent to clergy in the Diocese of Parramatta in Western Sydney, say an "amount between $500 and $700 per fortnight is recommended" to "assist with future payments and the balance sheet". "The closure of churches and the stopping of public masses has had a drastic effect on not only our parish communities, but also the pastoral revenue collection," another letter reads. It is unclear whether the letters were sent to all clergy in the diocese, or only those receiving JobKeeper payments. One senior Catholic Church employee, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, described the church's request to the clergy as "immoral". "One of the fundamental principles of the church, and the priests who commit to joining it, is to help the poor," the employee said. "For the church to use these funds in this way, while so many others in their community are excluded from JobKeeper or are seriously struggling financially at the moment, is simply shocking." Dioceses are using JobKeeper differently The Diocese of Paramatta has declined to comment and did not respond to questions. The Australian Catholics Bishops Conference — which represents the heads of Australia's Catholic dioceses — did not respond to questions about how many priests and other clergy are currently receiving JobKeeper. The Archdiocese of Sydney confirmed it had signed up for JobKeeper, but did not say how many of its 516 priests were receiving the payment. It did not say whether any had been asked to donate any of that payment back, stating instead that the diocese had not received any "increased monetary payment". "The difference between the allowance and stipend goes towards covering the costs of their housing and living expenses during this period of no revenue given no collections are taking place and continue not to take place," it said in a statement. RMIT University employment law specialist Anthony Forsyth said the JobKeeper rules made it illegal for employers to skim money off staff payments to boost revenue, however a request for voluntary donation was not explicitly prohibited. "It's clearly totally contrary to the spirit of the scheme," Professor Forsyth said. "A tightening of the rules, not just these priests, but for employees generally, would be very welcome." The Fair Work Ombudsman, which administers the JobKeeper rules, said in a statement that it was only illegal for employers to force employees to pay money back to their employer — a practice sometimes known as a "cashback". There is no sign in the letters that the church explicitly sought to force priests to make the donations. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg declined to do an interview but in a statement said: "It is not the Government's place to dictate or direct Australians on how to spend their own wage." Some priests get 'windfall' during JobKeeper scheme The ABC has confirmed that 41 priests in the Diocese of Parramatta are currently receiving JobKeeper. They saw their income almost double to $3,000 a month from their regular monthly stipend of $1,590. "Some priests have described this as a windfall," the anonymous Catholic Church employee said. "They already get the housing, food and utilities paid for by the church. This is $3,000 per month of pure pocket money." The diocese has also recognised the huge income increase, telling priests the scheme would create a big disparity in payments between those getting JobKeeper and those who are ineligible.It is unclear why some priests in the diocese are ineligible for JobKeeper, but it could be because the scheme excludes many workers who are not Australian citizens or permanent residents. "This creates a two-tier remuneration system which has always been anathema to the spirit of cooperation in the diocese," one of the letters sent to the priests in the Diocese of Parramatta said. "This seems unfair and inequitable, especially in light of the principle of equal remuneration established."Diocese backtracked on plan to cut stipend after JobKeeper schemeThe diocese initially tried to resolve the disparity by asking priests on JobKeeper to "save" half of their payment as "an advance of the "remuneration you would receive once the JobKeeper payment is concluded".
"Clergy eligible for the JobKeeper payment … will then forgo remuneration for the period from October 2020 to March 2021, having saved from the remuneration 'overpay' received over the previous period."
"This will also enable to [sic] clergy remuneration and retirement plan to build up its cash reserves, which will have been severely depleted by the end of September."
However, the diocese later backed down on the request, saying it was "not in the spirit" of the JobKeeper scheme.
"JobKeeper was established by the Government to enable the link between employer and employee to be retained … a program which had no strings attached, and employers were to acknowledge the integrity and the aim of the program," the follow-up letter reads.
"Reflecting on the intention of the JobKeeper payment," the letter says, the diocese "has reconsidered its position [regarding] remuneration".
In the same letter, the diocese asks priests to instead donate part of the payment back to the church.
Church lobbied for Catholic staff inclusion in JobKeeper scheme
Catholic priests, as well as other religious practitioners, only became eligible for JobKeeper following an amendment to the scheme's rules in early May.
In a letter to clergy and parishioners published in the Catholic Weekly last month, the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, made clear that his archdiocese was involved with lobbying the Government to make the change.
"We are grateful that through the hard work of our Chancery staff, the Federal Government was persuaded to extend the JobKeeper allowance to clergy and employees in parishes and the archdiocese," Archbishop Fisher wrote in a letter to clergy and parishioners published in Catholic Weekly last month.
In a separate statement the ABC, the Archdiocese of Sydney wrote: "Along with a number of other religious groups, the church made representations to the Government to address this, and the program was extended to cover religious ministers."
Professor Forsyth said without the amendment, priests and other ministers of religion would be excluded from JobKeeper because they were not technically employees.
So far, more than a million short-term casual workers, university employees and migrant workers have been excluded from JobKeeper. Professor Forsyth said they had a right to be upset about the Government's decision.
"I think it's quite unfair. We're talking about a very rich organisation, in the case of the Catholic Church, that could probably afford in other ways to look after its people."
The Diocese of Parramatta said it declined to comment because it had "serious concerns about the ABC's ability to cover this issue fairly".
"As has been pointed out by many commentators, the ABC has a clear record of instrumentalising stories about the Catholic Church and construing them in the most critical and negative way possible."
Posted Yesterday, updated Yesterday
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Post by pim on Jun 18, 2020 7:58:55 GMT 10
To channel Paul Keating (admittedly he was talking about state premiers and their addiction to shoving their snouts into a bucket of money), never get between the Catholic Church and a bucket of money
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2020 8:31:08 GMT 10
Priest are not employed...the Church doesn't pay tax...paying priest well call that blatant branch stacking in buying the religious votes, Labor by comparison to the coalition rort's are small fry...(fish)...and the meaning of priest is a tool to kill fish.
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Post by Gort on Jun 19, 2020 12:59:37 GMT 10
Good news everyone:Minimum wage up $13 a week despite coronavirus recessionBy Nick Bonyhady and Jennifer Duke June 19, 2020 — 10.14am The minimum wage will rise this year by $13 a week despite calls from employer groups and the federal government to prioritise jobs and freeze the minimum wage. Workers on the minimum wage will earn $753.80 a week, or $19.84 an hour, but increases will be delayed for workers in industries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic like the tourism and entertainment sectors. About a quarter of the Australian workforce are either on the minimum wage or have their pay set relative to it. Announcing the decision to increase the minimum wage by 1.75 per cent, Fair Work Commission President Iain Ross said if wages were frozen it would "result in a real wage cut" that would hurt poor families and risk pushing some into poverty. The rise will be staggered for different industries depending on how well they have endured the coronavirus-driven recession. Pay for those on minimum-wage linked awards and agreements in education and health will go up on July 1, those in construction, manufacturing and other industries on November 1, and the hard-hit arts, entertainment and accommodation sectors will rise on February 1 next year. Minimum wage increases by industry From July 1 — frontline worker: Frontline health care and social assistance Teaching and child care Other essential services From November 1 — most industries: Construction Manufacturing Most other industries From February 1, 2021 — hardest-hit industries: Accommodation Arts and recreation Aviation Retail Tourism The Australian Council of Trade Unions had called for a four per cent rise, which would have amounted to a $30 weekly increase. ACTU secretary Sally McManus said she was disappointed the increase had been delayed for some workers. "However, it is clear in the decision that this panel of experts recognise that cutting wages in the middle of this crisis would be a disaster for working people and the economy and they have rejected the arguments put by some employers to effectively cut wages by freezing the minimum wage," Ms McManus said. She called on the Morrison government to spend more money to give workers more money and jobs. Sofia Floros, a cleaner paid the minimum wage who accompanied Ms McManus, said she could not "even get a bag of dog food" with the increase she would receive. "It's nothing for us," said Mrs Floros. Professor Mark Wooden, one of three government appointees to the independent panel that sets the minimum wage, dissented on the decision. Professor Wooden, a labour economics expert, said bleak economic circumstances should "lead the panel to prioritise growth in jobs and hours over a wage increase". Peter Strong, chief executive of the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia said the rise was not "incredibly high" but it would hurt industry. He said businesses would now be getting out their calculators to work out how many people they could afford to employ, and whether they can afford to keep their current staff on. "One part of me says it's clever, I understand what they're doing [by staggering the increases], but even those businesses they still have to make a decision come end of September [when the JobKeeper wage subsidy ends]," Mr Strong said. ... www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/minimum-wage-up-13-a-week-despite-coronavirus-recession-20200619-p55471.html
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Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2020 13:12:58 GMT 10
$13 bucks a week....well whoop de doo...some kid working at Macdonald's will be overjoyed with that.
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Post by Gort on Jun 19, 2020 13:21:51 GMT 10
Reminds me of that deal Shorty did for his union workers ... more money for the union, but less for the workers.
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Post by pim on Jun 19, 2020 16:54:22 GMT 10
Bill Shorten?? Is Trickles still not over Bill Shorten?
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Post by pim on Jun 22, 2020 10:06:31 GMT 10
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