By Steve Painter
With official unemployment nudging 10% of the workforce and a lot of people suffering, Bob Hawke and his stable of head-kicking "winners" are looking more and more like candidates for the glue factory.
Is this really the recession we had to have? Surveying a range of community groups last week, Green Left Weekly found many proposals for economic alternatives, some of them partial and some more comprehensive, such as the Melbourne Economics Group's 1989 proposal for a new economic direction.
While few wanted to put specific figures to their suggestions, a picture emerged of the essentials of an economic policy for full employment, or a million new jobs.
Most groups had very clear ideas on what could be done in their field to create jobs while at the same time addressing other serious social problems, ranging from environmental clean-up to a large-scale program of public housing.
Irrationalism
Of course, all of these proposals would involve increased government spending, and few would meet with the approval of the "experts" who landed us in our present fix. Hawke-Keating style economic "rationalists" become very irrational when it comes to dealing with fundamental problems such as the enormous social cost of having a million people unemployed — not to mention the additional three-quarter million who don't show up in the figures but who would take jobs if they were available.
To the economic irrationalists whose first question might be, "Where will the money come from?", the obvious answer is, "Where did the money go to?" What has happened to the millions of dollars slashed from the public sector in the past 15 years? Where did the money come from for the WA Inc fiasco and for the Victorian and South Australian financial disasters? Where did the money come from for the Queensland corruption scandal? Much of it came from government funds. In the '80s, money that previously funded schools and universities, railways and hospitals, ended up on the stock market.
Where did the money come from for Australia's wasteful and unjustifiable participation in the Gulf War? Of the $8-9 billion allocated yearly for so-called defence, how much is really necessary for defence and how much is for equipment needed for dangerous, aggressive military adventures?
The funds already exist for an extensive and systematic program of public sector spending to create jobs and provide essential services. The problem is those funds are still being drained into subsidies for big business, in many forms.
It can take the form of pricing. For example, the price at which the Queensland government sells electricity to some big companies is can take the form of research carried out by various government departments, such as the CSIRO, and then handed over gratis, or for a fraction of its real value, to business for exploitation. It can take the form of tax breaks and direct subsidies. In the 1990-91 federal budget, around $2.6 billion was allocated for official "industry assistance", but there's plenty of unofficial assistance as well. The Fremantle Gas and Coke swindle is just one example.
Competition
It should also be remembered that this economic irrationalism was not designed for Australian conditions (and certainly not by the world's greatest treasurer). It was imported complete from geographically and socially remote think-tanks in New York, London and elsewhere. Even in Europe and North America, the think-tankers' formulas have led up blind alleys. The monetarist-"rationalist" school had free rein for a decade or more, and most of the advanced capitalist economies are in, or entering, recession.
The Hawke-Keating economic strategy is in tatters. After eight years of channelling billions towards a handful of big companies in the hope that this would make them internationally competitive, most of these companies are bankrupt. The brave new economic order consists of little more than the old-style boom-slump cycle and a steadily accumulating mound of deep social, environmental and other problems.
When we're urged to sacrifice in the interests of international competitiveness, it's worth considering what we're supposed to compete with.
Should it be the North American trading bloc with its 280 million people just in the USA and Canada, with its steadily growing black and Latino ghettos and its addiction to bleeding a huge neo-colonial hinterland to the south? Or perhaps Western Europe, with its 350 million population and the accumulation of hundreds of years of direct plunder and economic ties from eight or nine world empires? Maybe Japan with its own 120 million people and just off the coast of the biggest population centre in the world, and with its sterile officially promoted live-and-die-for-the-company ethos? Or how about South Korea, with 40 million people and its regular outbursts of desperate protest, the latest of which has resulted in three weeks of street fighting so far?
Australia, with 17 million people and geographically isolated from large markets, will never be competitive with any of the major capitalist economic powers, even if that were desirable from environmental and international political viewpoints. That's not to say we should reinforce our isolation with economic and political barriers, but we do need an economic system that will work in this country, here and now. We don't need ever greater sacrifice in pursuit of an economic fantasy.
Change direction
Harry van Moorst of the Melbourne-based Coalition Against Poverty and Unemployment says a change of direction is necessary. Public spending, and even deficit budgets, can work against even within the capitalist system, though sustainable and genuinely useful job creation requires more fundamental change.
"The result of using government spending to try to boost the profits of big business was seen with the Cain Labor government. We can't afford to go down that path again.
"We need an Australia run in the community interest, and public works projects that go beyond filling the gaps in the existing system of social services. We need to extend public transport and public housing and create a public system based on satisfying real community needs. Dental care should be brought into public health; provisions for home care, mobile health units, care for the elderly, should all be on the agenda."
Van Moorst says much of the funding for such projects could come from a fairer tax system, less military spending (which, according to United Nations figures, creates half as many jobs as other forms of government spending) and reduced subsidies to big business.
Some proposals
While the information and proposals gathered by Green Left Weekly aren't an economic blueprint, there are some obvious measures that would dramatically improve the present situation and set Australia on the road to full employment. The two most important job-creating measures would be shortening the work week and a systematic program to restore and develop public services.
- Shorter working hours. In recent years, many jobs have disappeared due to technological development. Higher productivity means that people are producing more with less work. Shorter working hours are inevitable and necessary if we are to have a just society in which there are jobs for all.
In its monograph New economic directions for Australia, the Melbourne Economics Group suggests a phased reduction of the paid work week to 25 hours within 25 years, though it notes that this timetable might be "too conservative and too slow". The group also says that care should be taken to maintain wage levels, safety standards and working conditions while reducing working time.
- Restoring and developing public services. Over the past 15 years, public hospitals, housing services, educational institutions and transport services have suffered severe cutbacks, which limit their ability to provide necessary services. Private business has not satisfactorily filled the gaps left by these cutbacks.
There are huge waiting lists for public and welfare housing and for health services, every years thousands of students are forced prematurely out of the education system, and public transport has become increasingly expensive and crowded. Huge numbers of jobs would be created by a program initially to restore the lost public services and to ensure the highest possible quality of service and a rate of growth to keep pace with demand.
- Democratic control of the public sector. To overcome the tendency for public services to become corrupt and inefficient under the control of professional politicians and managers, public enterprises should be subject to the control of democratically elected committees of workers in the industry and consumers of the enterprises' goods and services.
- Public scrutiny of government dealings with business. Rigorous and systematic public disclosure of government deals with the private sector is necessary if the corruption of the past 10 years is to be rooted out, and private business is to be made to justify subsidies from public funds.
More on creating jobs: next page.