New Australia

Creating Australian Jobs

Solar panel manufacture - in China. (Image: Solarfun)

The Lib/Labs have sat on their hands as the global credit bubble has burst and unemployment has skyrocketed.

Putting Australia To Work

NewAustralia offers the following solutions:

• Cutting Payroll Tax: This is a key part of our proposed Green Tax Shift.
• The Employment Bonus: Paid to employers exceeding the average Australian employee to profit ratio. This would be funded by a fine paid by employers with below the average Australian employee to profit ratio.
• Linking Executive Pay to Jobs: The more employees you have, the more you get paid. See below.
• Cutting Hours, Not Jobs: Encouraging employers to cut employee hours, not jobs. See below.
• Increasing Jobs, Not Hours: Encouraging employers to increase the number of employees, not the hours worked by each employee. See below.
• Flexiweek: ~30% of days are Saturdays, Sundays or public holiday. Letting workers choose their days off can dramatically lift productivity and improve quality of life. See below.
• Ending the Current Account Deficit: For decades Australia has exported jobs and imported debt from the rest of the world. The Optimum Exchange Rate mechanism would quickly control the Current Account Deficit and increase employment in Australia.
• The Green Tax Shift: This will make Australia a major center for renewable energy manufacture. See Green Tax Shift.
• No Emissions Trading: NewAustralia proposes a Green Tax Shift instead of the costly, ineffectual & job destroying ETS.
• Scrapping the FTAs: The Free Trade Agreements have made Australia's trade deficit worse and should be scrapped.

Less Hours, More Jobs

In response to the current down turn many employers are choosing to 'slash and burn' their workforce, allegedly to cut costs. This doesn't make much sense now, and would make less sense if employers had to pay for the unemployment they created.

Another approach would be to cut salaries & working hours. In this scenario an employer might cut hours and wages by 10% to create a nine-day fortnight.

Benefits for the Employer:

• No redundancy payout.
• Immediate cost saving.
• No skill or knowledge loss.
• Increased staff loyalty & morale.
• No re-hire costs.
• Can bring business back to capacity without delay.

Benefits for the Employees:

• About 95% of after tax income is retained for a 10% cut in gross salary.
• No loss of skills or knowledge.

Benefits for Society:

• No Unemployment Benefits required.
• No need to fund re-training.
• No social problems resulting from unemployment are created.

Employers need to be pushed in the direction of cutting hours with a new Industrial Relations regime that discourages job shedding but facilitates trimming hours.

This is backed up by the No Fault Termination Package policy that would act to discourage mass sackings.

Flexiweek

Flexiweek allows workers to choose what days they have for weekends and public holidays. By law all employees retain have the same total number of days off and the right to choose when they work. All employees would be have two days off per week.

This improves workplace flexibility benefiting the employer, employee, society and the environment:

• Allows workers greater control on how they arrange their lives.
• Reduces the number of 'shut down days'. (~30% of days are Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays)
• Spreads the peak loading of road, rail and other infrastructure over a greater number of days.
• Leads to greater efficiency in the use of infrastructure.
• Leads to improved service delivery throughout society.
• Greater equity between Christian and non-Christian workers without disadvantaging Christian worship.

Note that if all workers choose to keep the existing public holidays and Saturday and Sunday as their weekends then this initiative would fail. However, we believe sufficient people would trade their days off to make this worth while.

Public Holiday Swapping

This provides the ability to swap public holidays for recreational leave, subject to employer approval. An example would be non-Christian workers deciding to swap Good Friday for some other day.

Weekend Swapping

Ability to swap Saturday or Sunday for a different weekend day, subject to employer approval.

Executive Pay

Australian company executives should have their pay set according to a formula including employee numbers. This would still provide for very large salaries for well performing companies. However, the current practice of providing packages for failed CEO's would cease.

The formula should include measures such as:

• Australian Employee numbers.
• Workplace accidents.
• Company misdemeanour's - e.g. convictions for breaking environmental, workplace or other laws.
• Company performance.

Scrapping the FTAs

The Free Trade Agreements have made Australia's trade deficit worse and should be scrapped.

Worse still they significantly erode Australia's sovereignty and threaten valued programs such as the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme and local content rules.

Here is what the Parliamentary Library says about the FTAs:

• Thailand-Australia FTA (TAFTA): "Since the TAFTA came into effect, bilateral trade has nearly doubled and Australia's trade deficit has risen from $711 million to $3.5 billion."
• Singapore-Australia FTA (SAFTA): "Australia's trade deficit has more than doubled in the same period, rising from $3 billion in 2004 to $6.4 billion in 2007. The higher trade deficit is due mainly to the increase in refined petroleum imports which account for 55 per cent of total imports from Singapore."
• Australia-US FTA (AUSFTA): "NIEIR found that the AUSFTA could cost the Australian economy up to $50 billion and 200,000 jobs...The IMF found that a free trade agreement with the US would shrink the Australian economy by 0.03 per cent per year with US$5.26 billion of extra US imports...Australia's $13.6 billion trade deficit with the US in 2007 is the highest trade deficit Australia has recorded with any trading partner. Along with the widening trade deficit, two-way trade with the US has fallen to a record low, now accounting for only 9.5 per cent of total trade. Just five years ago the US share of Australia's trade was 14 per cent."
• Australia-Chile FTA: "The conclusion of the FTA was at a time when Australia's trade deficit with Chile was $141 million in 2007. Since the beginning of 2008, the trade deficit has risen to $239 million."

For the full report see the Parliamentary Library background note: Australia's Free Trade Agreements.

CLSA Staff Take Cut Pay

27^th Oct 2008: "Hundreds of top staff at CLSA, the Asia-focused brokerage arm of Credit Agricole, have agreed to a take a voluntary pay cut of up to 25 per cent to stave off the threat of redundancy." more...

ASEAN FTA Farce

11^th Sept 2008: "What it means is we haven't got anything to bargain with. We go to the table and say we are thinking of cutting tariffs from 10% to 5% and the other side looks good when it says, "We will cut by the same, from 35% to 30%." more...

FTA Failure

DFAT: '...positive and negative effects of the free trade agreements will take many years to fully materialise." more...