It is clear to me that the federal Liberal Party has instructed actors from the Australian Hotels Association to complain to sympathetic media to attempt to manufacture consent for a lowering of the unemployment benefit. It would be a shame if this tactic were to backfire.

It's incredibly transparent. They wish to whip up the business community into an anti-welfare fervour. They totally underestimate our ability to push back, as they always do. I vow to totally eviscerate those who were involved this week.

The reason @ScottMorrisonMP and @JoshFrydenberg are so hot on 'welfare dependency' is because it obscures the truly harmful dynamic of dependency at play: dependency on insecure, precarious and dangerous work.

This is the same power imbalance that underpins modern forms of slavery, of sex trafficking. If you must work to survive, you will comply more often than not. You will accept your dehumanisation, your deep precarity as something which cannot be changed.