Make no mistake, while this announcement sounds like the kind of skills targeting labour market programs I’ve been calling for, this package, much like the “stimulus”, is all about giving more money to private capital (1) https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/coronavirus-in-australia-whats-in-the-pms-new-jobmaker-plan/news-story/974ee0d2d42ebbd797721ed28479d343

Tellingly, included within the PM’s speech is this little nugget:

“supporting small, medium and large businesses through skills, affordable and reliable energy, research, access to finance, more efficient taxes, less regulation and workplace relations reform” (2)

There will be some overhaul to the way we track skill shortages and more money for skills & training for the states, which is good, but paperclipped to these ideas are a suite of business friendly reforms that big business lobbyists have been calling for for decades. (3)

It’s straight out of the Howard playbook, the kind of political jiu-jitsu that his government specialised - give a little and pull back a hell of a lot. (4)

Most concerningly, while there is an additional $1.5bn being made available for “skills and training” there are no compliance measures for how that should be spent. In Vic it will help fund the Free TAFE scheme, but in other states it could go straight to private providers (5)

While skills and training is in desperate need of an overhaul, rather than moving to the tripartite coordination that make industrial powerhouses like Germany so good, the govt is handing full control to employer groups with no space for union and worker input (6)

Finally, as an added measure they’re using this crisis to rush through the changes they have always wanted: lower taxes on firms, reducing health and environmental regulation and further weakening union power by reducing workplace rights (7)

Not only will this deepen the economic crisis, it will give them a reason to cut even more services in a few months time. They‘ll have less revenue, less control of the market, & will privatise essential services they will claim are inefficient after cutting them to the bone (8)

Important institutions like Auspost, SBS, the CSIRO and maybe even the ABC will be offered up to the jackals of international capital, all justified by saying we need to pay back the debt that they borrowed to pay businesses during the crisis (9)

That is of course unless we come together and stop them. Make their tactics visible, journos need to write these articles, campaigners need to call these tactics out, unions need to fight them tooth and nail - and the rest of us on the left need to stop bickering (10)

While we’re all busy calling each other out for not being the right kind of leftist, the right are seizing their moment. (11)

We only win by working together, we don’t win by fighting amongst ourselves, by alienating each other, or by shutting each other out. (12)

I will work with any individual, group or organisation to stop these kinds of changes from becoming permanent features of our political economy, so please feel free to DM or email me. (13)

I urge anyone else who reads this to do the same - put aside our own differences, because we are all united by how these changes will crush and punish us. Maybe I’m idealistic, but I am sure that we can win.

But we can only do it together. (14)