Many People Have Nothing To Celebrate On The Economic Front In 2021

One might think animal spirits had gripped the Australian economy as a flurry of better-than-expected economic figures hit the newsstands before Christmas.

But Australians cannot let the political and bureaucratic class off scot-free for the devastation they have caused in 2020, or for their unwillingness to engage in serious reform which will underpin our future prosperity.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics' November labour force numbers showed that 90,000 Australians had secured work in the previous month, bringing the number of employed people one step closer to the pre-lockdown level Australians are desperate to return to.

And the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook brought further good news.

Australia's economic recovery is going much better than expected only two months prior when the 2020-21 budget was released, and the federal budget deficit will be around $16 billion smaller than first thought.

The MYEFO is like a mini budget, usually released halfway between the annual federal ­budget, and provides an update on government revenue and ­expenditure.

It also contained improved outlooks for the unemployment rate and economic growth going forward.

For Australia's political elites, Christmas had come early.

After plunging the country into its first recession in almost 30 years, negatively impacting six million jobs, forcing children to stay home from school and away from friends, and keeping families separated by inane hard border policies, they're hoping that mainstream Australians will be content with the good news and reward them politically for "keeping us safe".

But don't be fooled. Australia has a long and tedious path back to economic prosperity, and current policy settings and an unwillingness to ­engage in necessary reform will only hold Australians back. For the 942,100 Australians still out of work, and the additional 1.3 million who cannot get enough hours, premature financial fanfare is insensitive.

And for the business owners who have been crippled by lockdowns, there's nothing to celebrate.

Australia's premiers have engaged in a reckless and devastating act of economic, cultural, and social self-harm.

While major lockdown measures have finally been lifted for the most part, they are likely to be reimposed if a few cases of coronavirus emerge, as in South Australia last month, presenting a real threat to the economic recovery.

Quite simply, businesses can't make plans to invest in new equipment or hire and train new staff if they might be forced to close shop at any moment.

That's why new private sector business investment is now at the second lowest level ever recorded at 10.3 per cent of GDP, according to the ABS.

But to Australia's political and bureaucratic rulers, this doesn't matter.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted that we were “all in this together”, a phrase that became the unofficial slogan for those insisting that Australia should lock down. But as Institute of Public Affairs research shows, between March and September 607,000 private sector workers lost their job while almost 20,000 new bureaucrats were hired.

Politicians and bureaucrats are completely detached from the real economy which their edicts effect.

When they forced businesses to close back in March, they immediately put hundreds of thousands of Australians out of work, and forced millions more to take pay cuts.

But they refused to demonstrate any shared sacrifice, ignoring an IPA poll which showed 74 per cent of Australians wanted politicians and senior public servants earning more than $150,000 a year to take a 20 per cent pay cut.

There is little hope for an economic recovery based on structural reform that will turbocharge the economy because political and bureaucratic elites have no skin in the game.

The private business investment statistic quoted above is dire for working Australians. Business investment is the key to productivity gains, which ultimately underpin wage growth.

Without making Australia a more attractive place to do business, it will be impossible to arrest the decline in private sector business investment, which is in the longest-running structural decline on record.

Australia's corporate tax rate is the equal second highest among the 37 countries in the OECD, and the minimum wage is the highest in the world.

According to the World Economic Forum's 2019 Global Competitiveness Report, Australia ranks 80th out of 141 countries for the burden of red tape and 111th for hiring and firing practices.

These issues can only be addressed through structural reform, which was necessary before coronavirus came but is now vital considering the ­carnage lockdowns inflicted on ­Australians.

Good news found in the MYEFO and labour force numbers must not overwhelm the effort to hold politicians and bureaucrats accountable for the damage they have done.

And it should especially not let politicians off the hook for engaging in the structural reforms needed to ensure that all Australians can experience the dignity of work and the prosperity they deserve.

Wishing ''Happy Holidays'' Part Of A Weird Controlling Desire

You may have noticed in the days leading up to Christmas that many businesses are now wishing you a very politically correct "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas".

This import from the USA has become ubiquitous, and is emblazoned all over our banks, supermarkets and even our Christmas cards.

"Happy Holidays" is both meaningless and completely out of touch with what the majority of Australian want.

In a poll recently undertaken by marketing research firm Dynata, 79 per cent of Australians believe that "Merry Christmas" is an inclusive phrase which all Australian can relate to, with only 7 per cent disagreeing.

What is more, 69 per cent of Australians feel that Australia has become too politically correct, with just 11 peer cent believing that it is not.

Yet, every year, like clockwork, a noisy minority of Australian tells us that we are no longer able to wish each other "Merry Christmas".  Instead, we must use a non-specific "Happy Holidays" which could, quite frankly, refer to any period where people are taking a break from work.

This ongoing war on Christmas is being waged on the majority of Australians by a radical minority who promote the false idea that saying "Merry Christmas" causes offence to non-Christians.

Last year, the Diversity Council of Australia told workplaces that when December rolls around, bosses should refrain from mentioning Christmas and use the flaccid "holiday greetings" instead.

The problem the Diversity Council has with Christmas is clearly the "Christ" part.  Those who enforce the use of the term "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" seek to censor a Christian holiday in a way that they would not attempt with any other religious holiday.

This is not the first time in the history of the West that a group of elites have waged war on Christmas.

When England was in the middle of tearing itself apart during the English Civil War in the 17th Century, Oliver Cromwell and his fellow puritans who were running England, were so offended by people daring to sing Christmas carols that they passed an act of Parliament to ban the practice.

Three years later, they decided to abolish Christmas altogether.

But despite Cromwell's best efforts, the people ignored him, and continued to hold clandestine religious services, as well as to sing their favourite Christmas carols.

So it was earlier this year when a Twitter activist tried to close down the family-owned Colonial Brewing Co, claiming that the name caused harm to Indigenous Australians because of its associations with colonisation.

A liquor chain, Blackhearts & Sparrows, jumped on the bandwagon and boycotted the produce.

The truth is that the colonisation part of the name refers to the colonisation of the wine region of Margaret River with the first craft breweries, not the colonisation of Australia by the British in 1788.

This is exactly the kind of nonsense which mainstream Australians thoroughly reject.  While corporate affairs teams and the media like to wallow around in Twitter, thousands of mainstream Australians posted photographs of themselves on Facebook with bottles of Colonial Brewing Co. beer and completely rubbished Blackhearts & Sparrows.

Political correctness is being foisted on mainstream Australians against their will, whether it be from governments, councils or sporting codes.  In the middle of the pandemic, staff working at the NSW Treasury were told that they were to avoid using words like "wife" and "husband" so that non-heterosexual people were not offended

Instead of using "ladies and gentlemen" they were to greet everyone in the room with "welcome folks".

Another poll undertaken by marketing research firm Dynata earlier this year found that the majority of Australians believe that the sporting codes of AFL and NRL have become too politically correct.  They don't want every round to be devoted to a particular level of the identity politics pyramid each time they sit down to watch a match.

When the outrage mob came after Israel Folau for expressing his religious beliefs, he received broad support from Australians who donated towards his legal fees to a GoFundMe fundraiser.

The website, however, buckled to the outcry of activists in media outlets and on Twitter, and it shut down the account.

Australians are sick and tired of being told what they can and can't say by a noisy elite.  In a poll conducted by social demographer Mark McCrindle and Mainstreet Insights, 65 per cent of Australians said they believe that cancel culture has affected when and with whom they can share honest opinions.

Australians no longer think that they have the freedom to say what they truly think.  This is a sad state of affairs.

If you really want to wish someone Merry Christmas in 2020, don't let the politically correct Christmas Grinches stop you.

Time To Tell The Truth About 2020

In his book The Fear and the Freedom ― Why the Second World War Still Matters, the historian Keith Lowe writes about how the nations and individuals who survived through war coped with the emotional consequences of their trauma.

They did two things.  First, they tried to forget what had happened.  Then, what they couldn't forget they created myths about.  The myths and stories they told themselves might have an element of truth, but they were just as likely to be a consequence of individuals wishing for something to have occurred, when in fact it didn't.

The "Spirit of the Blitz" is one such myth.  As is now well-known, in 1940 there was no coming together in the face of shared hardship, rich and poor alike, of the British people in the face of the Luftwaffe's bombs.  The wealthy fled to the countryside or sought refuge in their private bomb shelters while vast sections of the population, particularly in London, were left unprotected.

When King George VI visited the East End in September 1940 he was booed.  An intelligence report of the time from the Ministry of Information recounted the widespread sentiment of East End residents ― "it is always the poor that gets it".

As 2020 draws to a close, many Australians have indulged in their own forgetting and myth-making about how the nation responded to the crisis of COVID-19.

To begin with, the claim "we're all in this together" is not true ― and never was.  The loudest supporters of community lockdowns and business closures weren't affected by any of the policies they were demanding be implemented.  At the same time as Australians working in the private sector were losing their jobs at the rate of 3500 positions a day, the government was employing the equivalent of an additional 100 public servants daily, while ABC employees were voting themselves a pay rise.

During 2020 there wasn't much notion of equality of sacrifice.  The soon-to-be $1 trillion of federal government debt, most of it incurred to pay for the costs of shutting down the economy, won't be paid for by the current generation of taxpayers.

In 2020 many Australians revealed themselves to be willingly obedient to the arbitrary and draconian actions and decisions of politicians and public servants.

In Victoria, Parliament was suspended, basic democratic rights such as freedom of speech were abolished, and the police force was politicised.

The suggestion from much of the Melbourne media that what occurred in the state is somehow a triumph of the collective spirit of Victorians is laughable.  The Victorian government presided over the biggest public policy failure in peacetime in Australian history and then required Melburnians to be locked in their homes for 23 hours a day.  The mental health toll of what happened in the state will not be known for a decade.

This week the Victorian Ombudsman came to the blindingly obvious conclusion that at 4pm on July 4, when 3000 Victorians living in public housing towers were told without any notice or warning whatsoever that from that moment they were forbidden to leave their apartment, that those residents' human rights were violated.  Some of those residents were confined to their apartment for two weeks.

The cruelty of the border closures imposed by the Queensland and West Australian governments was a price voters in those states have seemingly been willing to pay.

When Queensland's Chief Health Officer, who after all is nothing more than a public servant, admitted she ordered schools to be closed to make a political point, even though as she said "evidence showed schools were not a high-risk environment for the spread of the virus", her remark passed largely unnoticed.

In 2020 Australians discovered that when governments sacrifice children's education for the sake of "messaging", to use the term the Chief Health Officer used herself, they will be rewarded with electoral success.

Not everything governments did in 2020 to manage the COVID-19 crisis was wrong and unnecessary ― but the reality is that there is a lot more to regret, if not to be ashamed of, than to be proud of.  When the story of 2020 is told Australians deserve the truth ― not myths.

Who Is Compulsory Super Benefitting: Ordinary Australians Or The Top End Of Town?

Mainstream Australians are being failed by the political class as the gap between two Australias continues to widen.  This failure is exemplified by a superannuation system that siphons money to the financial sector and political class and actively prevents mainstream Australians from achieving the Australian way of life.

The legislated increase of forced super contributions from the current rate of 9.5% to 12% of wages will in many cases work against the financial interests of Australians, both now and in retirement.  Forced super contributions come directly at the expense of savings outside of super that can be put towards a house deposit or used to reduce debt.  Increasing the compulsory rate will only put the aspiration of homeownership and financial security further out of reach of an increasing proportion of the population.

Homeownership fell from 71% to 66% of households between 1995 and 2018, and is set to get worse if trends among younger generations continue.  In the 1980s, 68% of Australians owned their own home in their early 30s.  Of those currently in their early 30s, the rate is just 50%.

A 2019 survey by Core Data found that nearly 70% of first home buyers did not fund 100% of their deposit from their personal savings, with a majority relying on family assistance in the form of gifts, guarantees, and loans.  Further diminishing the ability to save outside of super will remove the aspiration of homeownership from those unable to rely on family wealth.

As made clear by the recently released Retirement Income Review, those retiring without owning their own home are significantly disadvantaged with retirement income having to cover rental housing and without the option of drawing additional income from their home asset.

Not only is the current system damaging mainstream Australians, but it also fails to make sense from a public finance perspective.  According to the review, by 2047 the revenue forgone through superannuation tax concessions will exceed the total cost of the age pension.

Despite the significant failures of superannuation, the current system along with the legislated increase of compulsory contributions to 12% of workers' wages continues to be pushed by special interests.  An artificially inflated financial sector and the political class benefit from the gravy train created by $30 billion of annual superannuation fees.  As my research released last week shows, the financial sector's share of national income has continued to grow following a rapid expansion that coincided with the introduction of superannuation in 1992.  Before superannuation the financial sector was 2.4% of national income and has since increased to 6.5%.

The wealth transfer from hard-working Australians to the financial sector and political class generated by the superannuation system is part of a broader divide across Australian society.  Australia is increasingly being divided into two Australias.

One Australia tends to be employed in the public sector or in white-collar jobs offered by big corporations that find fertile soil in a bloated financial sector.  The other Australia is made up of mainstream Australians who own their own businesses or are employed in the private productive economy by small and medium-sized businesses.

It is mainstream Australians that are under stress due to a plethora of failed public policy that undermines the businesses they own and work in and creates barriers to obtaining key parts of the Australian way of life such as homeownership.

Public sector wages continue to rise, funded by taxes from workers with stagnating real wages.  Big business continues its takeover of the Australian economy, while small businesses are strangled by red tape, onerous labour laws, and now lockdown and social distancing restrictions that disproportionately harm small business.  And those who own their home enjoy increased equity with rising house prices, while an increasing proportion of Australians are priced out of the market due to a failure of public policy on development, taxation, superannuation, and immigration.

If trends continue, the gap between the two Australias will only widened.  Public policy must be made to benefit the broader country and not become a tool of the political class that is tightly organised to promote their special interests at the expense of mainstream Australia.

Reforming superannuation towards a system of voluntary contributions would return control to Australians to make financial decisions in their own best interest given their individual circumstances and block off the siphoning that is enriching the political class at the expense of mainstream Australia.

Hurry Up And Then Stop

Australia is not following the science.  The decision to dither on the Covid-19 vaccines will not delay the economic recovery but could risk lives and undermine faith in immunisation.

Last week the United Kingdom became the first country on the planet to approve the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine.  This week rollout began.  The United States is expected to do the same in the coming days.

This is a momentous occasion for humanity ― from new disease to safe and effective vaccine in less than a year.  Millions of lives will be saved.

The Australian government has responded by painting our friends in Old Blighty as reckless.  Australia's Therapeutic Goods Agency (TGA) will wait until at least late January, if not February, for approval.

Distribution will begin in March.  "Well, I wouldn't want to use the word guinea pigs with the UK," John Skerritt, the head of the TGA said last week.

Skerritt did, nevertheless, talk up waiting for "the real world experience of several hundred thousand people having had the vaccine".

Australia's vaccine urgency is obviously not the same as elsewhere.  The border-first strategy and effective testing and tracing has kept cases extremely low.

Nevertheless, a slow vaccination rollout has real consequences.

On the health front, the government announced in September that Australia would have early access to 3.8 million doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine available in January and February.

This would have allowed for the potentially life-saving immunisation of aged care residents and healthcare workers before the risk of spread grows again in winter.  These doses now appear to have fallen out of the equation.

On the economic front, Australia is a small, outward-looking trading nation that depends on people.  University and tourism sectors are already on their knees.

Australia's unemployment rate is now higher than many countries hit harder by the virus, including the US and the UK.  Meanwhile, as relations with China sour, building new links is paramount — and it takes face-to-face meetings to build trust for those multi-billion dollar deals.

The sooner we begin vaccinating, the sooner the risk to human life decreases, borders can reopen and the economy can fully recover.  Manufacturing, distributing and vaccinating millions of people, across two appointments, will take many, many months.  The quicker Australia begins this process the faster it will be over.

Trust must also be built.  The government has rightly said the vaccine will be voluntary.  People will therefore have to be persuaded it is safe and effective.

The insinuation that the UK has rushed approval risks sowing the seeds of doubt.  But Britain's regulators have not cut corners.

Their speed is explained by undertaking the usual rigorous steps in parallel, as new information was received, rather than at the end.

The vaccine itself was developed so quickly because scientists adapted existing technologies, designed to tackle other diseases, including coronaviruses like SARS and MERS.

Sarah Gilbert from Oxford has explained that "it's not breakthroughs.  We know what to do and we do it, and everything has worked out as expected."

There was also a singular global focus on developing a vaccine and big investments in trials, manufacturing, and distribution.  Never in human history have so many scientists, companies and governments been so focused on a single goal.

Also, the pharmaceutical multinationals, many of which are household names, have an extraordinary incentive to provide a safe vaccine.

The vaccines did not cause any serious side effects in tens of thousands of people after many months.  This is very reassuring.  Side effects typically appear straight away.

We won't know anything about longer term effects before Australian regulators look next month.  If we are waiting for that unknowable and unlikely long term side effect to suddenly materialise the vaccine will never be approved.

The clearest excuse for Australia's tardiness is the lack of emergency approval mechanism like the US and the UK.  This is worrying.

If Australia did have a large outbreak there would be no legal way to immediately start providing vaccination.  The same applies to other breakthrough medicines.

The Covid-19 vaccines represent a revolutionary shift in medicine.  The mRNA technology behind the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can also be used to beat cancer, influenza, malaria, HIV, and much more.  There are also many other medical innovations on the horizon.

If Australians are to benefit sooner rather than later, it will take a new patient-centric approach to medicines regulation.

Australia should recognise approvals by the European Union, United Kingdom and United States.  Their regulators are robust and are stuffed full of the top global experts.

Australia's forthcoming trade deal with the United Kingdom should also use the idea of mutual recognition of product standards to facilitate much easier trade.

Australia also needs Right to Try legislation:  those with terminal diseases should be free to use any experimental drug from anywhere in the world.  There will be immense risks, but between death and potential survival the choice is obvious.

Approval delays are a deadly business.  Australia can do better.

Warts And All Memorial

As its name makes clear, the Australian War Memorial exists to memorialise the service and sacrifice of Australians in war, as a reflection of our shared commitment to our country and each other.  It does not exist to denigrate our national character nor to pander to the worst kinds of elite self-hatred so lamentably prominent across our national institutions.  Yet there is a danger now that this place of honour might be turned to these subversive ends.

In the wake of the Brereton report on alleged war crimes committed by Australian SAS troops in Afghanistan, there have been calls for the War Memorial to immediately reflect the allegations in its exhibitions.  Memorial director Matt Anderson has suggested that curators will indeed do just that.  Similarly, former Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie has suggested that the SAS exhibit be removed altogether.  The prime minister has responded meekly, saying only that all such changes will need to be approved by the War Memorial's board.

But it should be clear that it would not fit the purpose of the War Memorial to foreground the bad acts of a few soldiers.  Of course, wherever criminality is proved, it should be punished to the fullest extent, and if this comes to pass, no one would suggest that it be whitewashed from the history of Australia's war in Afghanistan.  Yet it would not be, and should not be presented as, the sum total, or even the most important part, of that history.  Nor should the war in Afghanistan, despite its unprecedented length, be allowed to overshadow Australia's larger military history.

The War Memorial's curators are charged with telling the full story of Australians at war.  That story is overwhelmingly a story of courage, discipline, loyalty and other virtues, demonstrated in defence of our home, our values and our traditional liberties.  Australians have fought honourably from the Sommes to Kokoda to Long Tan and beyond, including in Afghanistan.

This is the truth to which the War Memorial is dedicated.  Undue emphasis on the bad acts of a few at the expense of this larger story would not be truthful.  It would, in fact, be deeply misleading.

Getting this larger story wrong is unfair to service members and veterans and their families.  Tens of thousands of Australians have served in Afghanistan.  Hundreds of thousands have served our country.  They should not be tarred with guilt by association.

Moreover, allowing these allegations to overshadow the true story of Australia's military history is unfair to civilians as well.  The story that the War Memorial and its curators exist to tell, they hold in trust for the Australian people, as a source of strength and meaning for all of us.  The pride and fellow feeling engendered by contemplating the sacrifices of men and women down the generations is integral to our identity and democracy.

It has been claimed that notice can be given to these allegations in a way that avoids denigrating the longer tradition.  Perhaps.  But Admiral Barrie's suggestion that a significant piece of Australia's military history simply be erased does not inspire confidence.  More broadly, we should be suspicious given the turn taken by so many of our other cultural bodies.  Because just as the War Memorial is now implying that in the telling of our military history, "warts and all" means mostly warts, the truth about our country is now regularly and widely misrepresented

Australia's cultural bodies now routinely see it as their mission to subject our nation, history and traditions to relentless critique.  The ABC, the universities and the bureaucracy all now insist that Australia must atone for its various sins, which together constitute, we are told, historic and systemic injustice.  The institutions of Australia, and the customs that support them, are held in contempt and this contempt has been forcefully injected into mainstream culture.

This is why every national event, from Australia Day to sporting matches, is accompanied by some attempt to demoralise us.  Not even the national anthem is safe.  The point is to wear us down and prepare us for revolution.

Meanwhile, the real story of Australia is left untold or is actively suppressed.

The truth is this:  Australia is a great democracy that has provided peace and prosperity for people from all over the world.  More so than perhaps any other nation, Australia was founded on the idea that our rules and institutions should be dedicated to improving the lives of the common people, not to shoring up the fortunes of a few or implementing some grand ideological project.  In this task, we have been astonishingly successful and Australians have generally enjoyed a standard of living unimaginable to our various ancestors.  Our history is not, of course, an unbroken string of successes.  But our failures are recognisable only as exceptions, and the proper way to think about resolving them is by drawing on our past, not by abandoning it.

Instead of celebrating our way of life, a small, self-appointed, unaccountable and heavily-subsidised cultural elite is making a concerted effort to disestablish Australian values ― to separate our every institution, ranging from the smallest custom to the apparatus of state itself, from our traditional notions of the good, the true and the right and to rebuild them in the image of an ideology that is foreign to our nation and its history.  The central question is which values should rule;  those of this social justice ideology or those of mainstream Australians?  The values that make us weak or those that have made us strong?

For a long time, the Australian military has managed to avoid being dragged into this culture war.  Given the importance of Anzac and our military history to the nation, it would be an unthinkable loss were the War Memorial to become just another Australian institution alienated from mainstream values and undermining its own mission.  To put it bluntly, it must not be allowed to happen.

Modern Labor's Forgotten Workers

What ACTU boss Sally McManus said about blue-collar workers at the National Press Club a few days ago doesn't quite compare with Hillary Clinton describing Donald Trump's supporters as a "basket of deplorables".

But the comments from McManus, nonetheless, provide an insight into the priorities of the ACTU and show how far removed from the opinion of mainstream Australians the union movement has become.

The ACTU used to help Labor get elected to government.  In 2007 the ACTU's campaign against WorkChoices was pivotal to Kevin Rudd's electoral success.  Today unions might still provide Labor with the money and the arms and legs for election campaigns, but the policy preoccupations of the unions' leadership increasingly reflect the concerns of a far-from-representative cohort of the Australian population.

To be fair, McManus was not talking about blue-collar workers as such, for in the context of the debate about the Labor Party's policy on climate change, McManus described the focus of the as-yet-undeclared Labor leadership aspirant, Joel Fitzgibbon on the employment of blue-collar workers as "narrow" and "old-fashioned".

McManus said "Climate change is not an issue that affects just one group of workers ... In many different ways, a whole lot of industries like our tourism industry and others, are going to be affected by climate change.  So whenever we narrow our thinking and we have some idea, old-fashioned idea actually, of blue-collar workers, we are really narrowing who are talking about because climate change affects everyone."

McManus might think the idea of "blue-collar workers" is old-fashioned, but there's at least one million Australians employed in blue-collar jobs.

It's difficult to imagine Scott Morrison talking of blue-collar work as "old-fashioned", which goes some way to explaining the extraordinary result of an opinion survey reported in these pages on Monday.

In a poll in eight Labor-held seats in suburban and inner-regional areas in Queensland, NSW, Tasmania and Western Australia when voters were asked which party was represents "working Australians" 46 per cent of voters said the ALP and 38 per cent the Liberal Party.  That's not an overwhelming outcome for Labor, given it regards itself as the party of the workers.

There was another interesting survey reported this week.  A poll of 1000 Australians conducted by JWS Research showed that Labor's climate change wars are fascinating to party insiders but not very relevant to anyone else.

When people were asked to name three issues that personally interested them and that the Australian government should focus on only 19 per cent of those surveyed replied "the environment-climate change".  Or put another way, climate change is not one of the three most important issues to 81 per cent of Australians.  That is hardly the sort of finding one would expect given the media attention devoted to the topic.

Hospitals, health care and ageing, the economy and finances, and employment and wages are the issues Australians are focused on and will be for sometime yet.

The Morrison government is not one for enacting sweeping philosophical ambitions or developing grand narratives of political economy.  However survey results such as these demonstrate the scope for the Coalition next year and beyond to reshape the country's political and policy landscape.

The development of an agenda for industrial relations reform that's presented, not as a productivity-enhancing measure as was WorkChoices, but as a way to get more Australians into work should not be beyond the capacity of the Coalition.

Similarly, if the Coalition does decide, as it should, to try to repeal the legislated increases in the superannuation guarantee, it will face a ferocious onslaught from the Labor Party, the ACTU and the superannuation industry ― but it's a fight the Coalition can win if it is presented as a necessary response in a post-COVID world.

While Labor spends its time talking to itself about climate change and to the 19 per cent of Australians concerned about the issue, the Coalition is talking about jobs.

In all likelihood if Australians were surveyed and asked to name one economic policy of the ALP they would say opposition to tax cuts.  The reality is that at the moment, as Labor MPs such as Fitzgibbon, and Chris Bowen have basically acknowledged, Labor has nothing much to say to the workers of Australia, whether they're blue collar or not.

Why Is The Coalition Planning To Give More Money To The ABC?

Given the spite and the scorn with which many at the national broadcaster view the Coalition and mainstream Australians, one would think that the last thing that a Coalition government worth its salt would want to do is give more money to the ABC.

But this is exactly what they've done.  Last week the Guardian ran an exclusive that Treasurer Josh Frydenberg plans to add public broadcasters the ABC and SBS to the revenue sharing arrangements as part of the proposed mandatory news code, which means they will receive payments from Google and Facebook for using their content.

It is frankly bizarre that a Coalition government is considering a new financial windfall for the ABC, on top of its annual $1.2 billion in public funding.

While the commercial media has been smashed as a result of the COVID pandemic, the ABC has remained untouched.

Last month, ABC staff rejected a plea from the Federal Government to freeze their pay for six months, to show some shared sacrifice with their colleagues in the commercial media.  Instead, they voted overwhelmingly to give themselves a pay rise.

In doing so, the employees of our national broadcaster considered themselves morally superior and more worthy of a 2% pay rise than staff at Services Australia, Centrelink, the Department of Health and the Department of Social Services, who have all been on the front line of the response to this pandemic and have all taken a six-month pay freeze. 

The ABC has continued to show its hostility towards the Coalition throughout the pandemic and its distain for commercial media.

The ABC has been a loud cheerleader for former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's petition for a "Murdoch Royal Commission".

In just over one month since the petition was launched, the ABC across all its platforms has mentioned "Murdoch" and the petition over 3,000 times, highlighting its ideological obsession with its perceived enemies.

Defenders of the ABC constantly gloat that the ABC is "free from commercial influence or interests", making its news editorial stances fiercely independent.

They will not be able to use that defence anymore now that a key revenue stream for the ABC will be dependent on the commercial success of Google and Facebook.

Indeed one of the ABC's key editorial standards is to "Ensure that editorial decisions are not improperly influenced by political, sectional, commercial or personal interests".  The ABC grovelling for this new source of funding puts it at conflict with its own editorial standards.

The idea that the ABC, which is entirely funded by the government, would be a beneficiary of this scheme puts a lie to the idea that the mandatory media code is about levelling the playing field between news media businesses and digital platforms due to a loss in advertising revenue.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was correct in pointing this out only a few months ago in the Australian:

Importantly, the bargaining arrangements relating to the payment of remuneration will not be available to public broadcasters as they are principally funded by the government and not through advertising revenue.  Public broadcasters will, however, benefit for the minimum standards for non-remuneration matters set out in the draft mandatory code.

The ABC is a taxpayer-funded behemoth with guaranteed funding of over $1.1 billion per year.  Therefore, it has not lost any money through the existence of Google or Facebook eating up advertising revenue.

Indeed, it is the other way around.  The ABC's 2019-2020 annual report reveals an advertising spend of $5.5 million, which is a significant increase from a $2.7 million advertising spend reported from 2018-19.

Much of this is buying up Google advertising to increase ABC websites' positions in news searches.

So, the ABC will be giving money to Google with your tax dollars, only to receive it in return.  The relationship between big tech and big public broadcaster will inch that bit closer in a cosy deal that puts mainstream Australians last.

Surely a better outcome both for the ABC, and taxpayers, would be to reform the ABC into a subscription service like is being proposed for the BBC in the UK, privatise it completely, or at the very least, allow the ABC to air commercials since they are so keen on a slice of advertising revenue in the first place.

The ABC wants the perception of being independent from commercial interests while cashing in on revenue from commercial organisations like a seagull to a chip.