I have resisted writing about the so-called National Broadband Plan (NBP) up until now because the level of debate is quite frustrating. Once again, on a crucial issue that goes to the heart of national development, we are all being hoodwinked by spurious neo-liberal logic. Like all these debates, once it is constructed along an inapplicable macroeconomics, then all sorts of nonsensical points are raised that sound reasonable but are not. For example, the current debate appears centred on how the Government will ever be able to pay back the debt that will be incurred to build the network if consumers find it too expensive to use? On the face of it, the question is seductively sensible. But if you understand the choices open to the Australian government as the sovereign issuer of the currency then you will immediately recognise that the question and related concerns are fundamentally flawed.

Yesterday’s labour force data which showed how quickly the labour market is deteriorating, brought some extraordinary reactions from the Federal government. So far their response suggests to me that they have no coherent plan to meet the crisis and are trying to operate within the same labour market policy framework that the previous government installed. That framework failed to achieve full employment when the economy was growing and will do nothing at all for a labour market that is now in freefall. A major shift in policy is needed. More worrying is that the labour force data shows that the teenage segment is in terrible shape. That requires immediate policy action. But the responses I have heard overnight suggest very little will be done because the Employment Minister seems to want us to believe that “there is no quick fix”. That claim is of-course nonsense. The costs of the downturn could be considerably lessened if the Government abandoned neo-liberalism and demonstrated some leadership through direct job creation.

Despite all of us commentators clutching at straws in recent weeks looking for good messages in each new data release (for example, yesterday’s consumer sentiment data), today’s ABS Labour Force data confirms the worst. The Australian labour market is contracting fast and is now outstripping the rate at which the US labour market is deteriorating. The overall unemployment rate rose a further 0.5 per cent in March to 5.7 per cent, meaning it has risen 1.2 per cent in the first three months of this year. The dream states of Western Australia and Queensland, which had enjoyed the commodities boom bounty while the rest of us slowed, are now looking significantly sick. The speed of this decline is now faster than the early stages of the 1982 and 1991 recessions. It is time the Government ramped up its new Jobs Plan to really stop this before it escalates further.

I was asked by a journalist today to comment on employment trends in the public sector. I was also thinking about the statement made at the G20 meeting which has been reiterated by our Prime Minister – we will do whatever is necessary! Well what is necessary is a massive upscaling of public sector employment. The best place to start would be to offer employment at the minimum wage to anyone who wants a job and cannot find one. However, this week’s news about the revamped job-seeking program, Job Services Australia which appears to be the Australian government’s centrepiece employment strategy tells me that our Government, at least, is lying about being prepared to do what is necessary.

I received a call from a journalist at the Financial Review today asking how the Federal government could afford to run labour market programs given that it might suffer a substantial revenue loss if it cuts back net migration. I told him that irrespective of what happens to net migration and any losses to tax revenue that that might bring (should they cut it back), the Government will always be able to fund any labour market program if it thought that was the best use of its funds. It brings to mind a new theme in this period of turmoil – how can the government keep its programs going while at the same time bailing out all and sundry? Answer: easy, just keep funding them. The national government is not financially constrained and the size of its budget is nothing that can be determined independent of the shortfall of aggregate demand.