Upturn: A better normal after COVID-19 1742237207, 9781742237206

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A NewSouth book Published by NewSouth Publishing University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA newsouthpublishing.com © Tanya Plibersek 2020 First published 2020 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is copyright. While copyright of the work as a whole is vested in the editor, Tanya Plibersek, copyright of individual chapters is retained by the chapter authors. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

ISBN

9781742237206 (paperback) 9781742245096 (ebook) 9781742249612 (ePDF)

Internal design Josephine Pajor-Markus Cover design Design by Committee Printer Griffin Press Author proceeds for this title go to the Rev. Bill Crews Foundation and the Wayside Chapel. All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard. This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

CONTENTS Introduction 1 Remote communities and First Nations June Oscar 8 Fossil fuel fixation Peter Garrett 19 Superpowered jobs Ross Garnaut 29 Economics for the people Sally McManus 39 A new accord Jenny Macklin 47 A society built from the bottom up, not the top down Wayne Swan 55 Full employment Stephen Koukoulas 64 Safety net Linda Burney 71 What now for young people? Lachlan Beel and Eli Scott 81 Welcome home, Dad Annabel Crabb 89 Women’s work Rae Cooper and Sarah Mosseri 98 Australian stories Cate Blanchett and Kim Williams 105 Building secure housing Adrian Pisarski 116 Healthcare lessons from COVID-19 Paul Torzillo 124 Fighting COVID-19 together Sharon Lewin 131 Saved by the science Ian Chubb 139 Lessons learned: Education in recovery Tanya Plibersek 149 Getting to know my neighbours Rebecca Huntley 159 Multiculturalism is a strength Tim Soutphommasane 165 The price of food Gabrielle Chan 174 Farming: Growing our way out of a crisis Fiona Simson 184 Entrepreneurs are everywhere Annie O’Rourke 193

Superannuation – personal and national wealth Greg Combet 200 The future is here – and it’s digital Daniel Petre

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Banking post-COVID-19 Cameron Clyne 218 Rebuilding confidence Heather Ridout 225 Prosperity, opportunity, sustainability Jim Chalmers 231 Go early, go hard, go households Andrew Charlton 240 Media – who can you trust? Lenore Taylor

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International challenges Gareth Evans 252 Notes 261

INTRODUCTION A year ago people would have told you it was impossible for school children to shift overnight to online learning; impossible for banks to offer mortgage holidays; impossible to double unemployment benefits; impossible to house rough sleepers or put a hold on evictions; impossible to offer wage subsidies, and absolutely impossible to get Australians to stay home from the beach and the pub. In February 2020, as debate emerged about a new type of coronavirus, it seemed impossible that Australia would avoid the fate of nations similar to ours, which had hospitals straining under the weight of new infections and makeshift morgues in parks and public squares. Yet many of our assumptions have been disproved. In some cases, we have done better than we could have expected. We have listened to medical experts and, for the most part, followed their advice. We have been disciplined and kind. We have risen to the challenge. We have put our lives on hold to protect the health of the majority. Of course, there have been examples of high stress and bad behaviour: of panic buying and camera phone footage of fights in the toilet paper aisle of supermarkets. A few of these scenes got pretty ugly. Some people have refused to stay home when sick or refused to be tested. Some of the worst behaviour came from people proudly filming themselves behaving badly – arguing with police or shop assistants about their ‘human right’ not to wear a mask. But for every case of selfishness, there have been ten cases of love and community spirit, of patriotism and solidarity at its practical best. We are learning a lot about ourselves, both

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good and bad: thank goodness for Medicare; essential workers aren’t always paid according to their worth; insecure work and low wages are bad for everyone if sick people keep working or consumer demand drops across the economy; if you have a complex problem, it’s worth talking to an expert and listening to the science; our public servants aren’t all useless shiny bums; and if we want to be more self-reliant, we need a nimble manufacturing sector, preferably powered by cheaper, cleaner renewable energy. Neither the health crisis nor the economic crisis caused by the virus are over, and it is still possible that things will get worse before they get better. Nevertheless, we have a responsibility to begin to consider the shape of the society and economy we want to rebuild. Australia will face massive questions over the next few years – questions as big as the ones we faced coming out of the Second World War. After the sacrifices of the Second World War, the Australian government promised our suffering population full employment and higher homeownership, and they delivered. There followed many years of unemployment rates of around 2 per cent, and homeownership climbed by 10 per cent in just seven years.1 Wars, recessions, depressions and pandemics – all of them are devastating. All change societies and economies fundamentally. Changes that would usually take years happen overnight. Things that seem impossible become commonplace and necessary. The Black Death halved the population of Britain in the 1300s,2 but it led to the liberation of the serfs and paved the way for the industrial revolution.3 We can’t always prevent disaster, but we can determine how we respond. What are today’s equivalents? People have sacrificed so much in 2020. Some have lost family members and couldn’t be at their bedside or even at their funeral. Hundreds of thousands of Australians lost their job or business. Children have fallen behind

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at school. Many of these sacrifices were because of governmentmandated shutdowns, which protected the health of our community but came with high costs. The sacrifices were necessary, but they were very painful. This discipline deserves a better future, not a ‘snap back’ to moribund growth and increasing inequality. Even before the pandemic we had almost 2 million Australians who didn’t have a job or enough hours of work, economic growth was weak, businesses weren’t investing and consumers weren’t spending. Wages growth was at record lows and our national debt had more than doubled. Some will now reflexively demand tax cuts for big business and pay cuts for low-paid workers as a way of kick-starting the economy. Some will demand immediate cuts to government spending and our public services. The Government has already forced many to withdraw their retirement savings from superannuation just to survive. These are a recipe for a slower, more painful recovery, and a much less equal country on the other side. Instead, Australia needs strong, inclusive, environmentally sustainable economic growth. Good wages support confidence and demand in our economy. A well-paid, secure middle class is not the distant end-goal of economic growth: it is the precondition for it. We should aim for full employment. That includes a strongly growing private sector driven by increased productivity and a fair, streamlined tax system. We must harness the intellect and inventiveness of our people. We need to invest in research and development, but also in commercialisation. We can be a country that makes things, powered by cleaner, cheaper renewable energy. We shouldn’t turn our back on global trade, because we are an exporting nation, but it might be that supply chains are disrupted for some time and we need to have a greater capacity for diversification and self-reliance than we imagined.

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We should invest in infrastructure that makes our cities and towns more efficient and more liveable, recognising that the way we will live and work in the future may have changed permanently as we discover we don’t have to be in the office every day or fly interstate for meetings. This infrastructure doesn’t have to be enormous in scale. Working with local government, our school system, TAFEs and hospitals, we can see the opportunities in every community for upgrading classrooms, community halls, footpaths and public toilets. It’s not glamorous – but it can deliver jobs in any community. We shouldn’t be afraid of public sector employment. It is obvious, in just one example, that we need many more people working in aged care to look after the 100 000-plus people waiting for home care.4 There are so many examples in caring professions where the work clearly needs to be done and there are unemployed people available to do it. All that’s missing is the government commitment to training the workforce and paying a share of wages. People working in aged care, child care and disability services, for example, should be well-trained, with permanent work that is properly paid. Low-paid, gig economy type jobs in these sectors aren’t just bad for the workforce, they are bad for the vulnerable clients of these important front-line services. There could not be a clearer illustration of this than the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes. We can achieve full employment without giving up on fairness and environmental sustainability. A post-pandemic growth strategy should recognise that decent pay and conditions at work support stronger demand across the economy and more jobs in the long run. Before the pandemic, business profits were strong but wages were stagnant. When we share the benefits of growth more equally, growth is stronger and longer lasting. We don’t have to trash our environment for economic growth. In fact, we

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can invest and create jobs in protecting our environment. We should work collaboratively with other nations for the common good – because good foreign policy doesn’t just protect our security, it supports our prosperity. A peaceful and prosperous region means a peaceful and prosperous Australia. We can’t fight a global pandemic without global co-operation. Australia’s response to HIV led the world. We can play a similarly positive role today. Australians have had time to think about what matters to them: a secure job and a roof over their heads, but also connection with family, friends and community. COVID-19 is frightening and job-destroying and is hitting people unequally. But those of us who have stayed healthy (so far), who have a stable home and a job, may find ourselves quietly admitting the guilty pleasure of enjoying some elements of lockdown. People whisper to each other, ‘It’s actually good working from home. I don’t miss being stuck in traffic for hours every day’, ‘I love having dinner with the kids every night’, ‘It’s great to cook at home more, and not have the pressure of running from one appointment to the next’, ‘I love not having to travel interstate for work, being away from the kids’, and ‘Have you seen the night sky? Less pollution means you can see the stars’. People who aren’t so worried about their health or their jobs confess to each other that there is good stuff that comes from slowing down. How can we capture the benefits of a less pressured life, while still having high consumer confidence, greater business investment, improved productivity and the strong economic growth that supports jobs? Of course, it is a complex formula to get right – but think of what we have already achieved. As we begin to rebuild, spending hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars, we need to think of the society and economy we are bequeathing our children and grandchildren. After all, they

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will be the ones paying for it. We need ‘all in this together’ to last longer than the lockdown. What’s at stake here is not just economic growth, and a cohesive community. We are fighting a battle for democracy. Research into the effects of previous pandemics across 142 countries shows young people can lose trust in political processes for decades after exposure to the crisis.5 The effects of pandemics linger, and not just in the scarring of long-term unemployment. In a democracy, government is a vehicle for collective problem solving. If we can’t solve the social and economic problems that face us today, we will see a continuing decline in people’s faith in our democracy itself. Research organisation Freedom House, established by Eleanor Roosevelt and others in 1941, has found that the world is in the 14th year of a democratic recession.6 We have seen the rise of divisive and autocratic populists who have an answer to every complex problem that is ‘neat, plausible and wrong’. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama and others argue the key to success in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic is ‘whether citizens trust their leaders, and whether those leaders preside over a competent and effective state’.7 Unless we can provide economic growth that is sustainable and inclusive, and the jobs that come with it, we are neither competent nor effective and we will be breaking faith with citizens who have sacrificed so much. Australians have been relieved as their politicians have put conflict to one side and focused on the national interest, taking the advice of experts when dealing with the health crisis. We can’t let that go. We need to bring a spirit of open-minded thoughtfulness and co-operative problem solving to the other big issues that face us, like full employment and climate change. Former prime minister John Howard talked about being relaxed and comfortable. There’s something in that. Most of us

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Introduction

long for a time when we aren’t looking suspiciously at every door handle as a source of potential deadly infection, when we aren’t worried about how to pay the rent or the mortgage. But we should aim a bit higher, because ‘relaxed and comfortable’ sounds like we are being encouraged to avert our gaze from the complex or difficult. We should aim for relaxed and confident. We want people to have the confidence to spend and invest, knowing they will have a job next week and next year. People should be confident that if they work hard and do the right thing they will get ahead. They should be confident their children will have a better life than they had. We should be confident that our bush and reef will be there for future generations. We should be confident of our values as a nation and our place in the world. We should be confident that we can withstand the next shock and, if we fall on hard times, that we’ll get the help we need to get back on our feet. In a thought-provoking piece for the Financial Times, Indian author Arundhati Roy said, ‘the pandemic is a portal’: Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, and data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.8

On the following pages you will read the work of some of Australia’s most interesting thinkers, who are ready to imagine a better Australia, and to fight for it.

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REMOTE COMMUNITIES AND FIRST NATIONS Being on Country is freedom. It’s not camping out, it’s about being totally alive. When we are surrounded by all human and non-human relations we are embraced by everything that makes existence possible. Together, we sit around the fire listening to the chatter and song of the animals and insects, we watch the sun and moon rise and set, and under the blanket of the Milky Way we are rejuvenated and safe, happy and at peace. – June Oscar, reflecting on conversations with family while living on Country

JUNE OSCAR

In late March 2020, overnight it seemed, the world changed in ways previously unimaginable. The rapid pace of life as we knew it came to an abrupt stop. I received a phone call telling me that the Western Australian Government was about to close the Kimberley region to the rest of Australia. If I wanted to get back to my hometown of Fitzroy Crossing to be with my community and my family, I needed to leave Sydney, now. And Fitzroy Crossing is where I am writing from. Thanks to modern technology and the freedom it brings, I

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can work from here, surrounded by my family and my country and culture in all its magnificence – the creeks and rocky ranges, the expansive savannah grasslands, the stories of our ancestors, our medicines, nutritious food, sacred sites and much more. Nations everywhere went into lockdown and told their citizens to go home. So many people across the Earth have experienced this seismic jolt to life from home – being home-bound, a global phenomenon itself. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were facing the very real possibility that, if COVID-19 were to spread out of control within Australian borders, it could devastate us and our entire social and cultural fabric. We still live with that possibility. The deadly impact of disease on Indigenous communities is both a historical truth, and today’s reality. Globally, First Nations are living with extreme vulnerabilities. Inadequate and overcrowded housing, limited access to health services and preexisting health issues are a toxic combination that heightens our risk, which we bear more than others, to infection and death. I’ve watched the confirmation of this truth with great distress in places like the Navajo Nation in the United States, where people are dying far too young and Elders are passing away before their time, taking with them a vast wealth of knowledge. At the time of writing, the Navajo Nation has the highest coronavirus death rate of any group in the United States at 177 per 100 000.1 At the beginning of this pandemic, we were told this virus was the ‘great equaliser’, that it does not discriminate. We now know that is simply not true. As I write, we are seeing that Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples, and many of the most marginalised groups, are dying at a far greater rate than others across the world. In the UK, official figures have shown that Black people are more than four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than others.2 There is clear

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evidence that racism is the deadly force behind this inequality. The cumulative impact of discrimination over generations always makes culturally diverse peoples more socially and economically vulnerable, particularly in times of crisis. This is further compounded by racist acts in the present. In the United Kingdom, for instance, research shows that Black frontline health workers feel more pressure to work in conditions without appropriate protective equipment compared to other colleagues.3 Living in unacceptable conditions and working with unacceptable pressures is causing people to die, right now. At the time of writing, we are already seeing that the resurgence of COVID-19 in Melbourne is having an impact on Australia’s most vulnerable, particularly those living in the city’s public housing tower blocks in Flemington and North Melbourne. Beyond this immediate impact, culturally diverse and marginalised groups will most likely feel the economic shockwaves – as we are often the first to be unemployed and the last to find work when recession hits. This virus has unveiled globally endemic inequalities etched along the deep fault lines of systemic racism and all other forms of discrimination. As the pandemic laid bare a modern history of racialised inequality, the murder of George Floyd in the United States represented centuries of racial oppression, Black deaths and a seething collective pain. This time, the world has not turned away in denial. Instead, people in all their diversity – Black, white, Indigenous and non-Indigenous – are rising in solidarity, staring directly at injustice, and saying enough is enough. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is far from spontaneous outrage. It has been building for years. We are living within a global movement of racial reckoning determined to profoundly restructure the world around anti-racism, truth and justice, the embrace of diversity and a fierce commitment to equality.

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For Australia, this moment has the potential to be one of historic reckoning too. In confronting our own history of entrenched racial injustices, Australia is being forced into truth-telling, long advocated by First Nations peoples as the only way to heal and move forward. Like most modern nation states formed during European colonialism, Australia emerged out of racist ideologies and the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The founding document of this nation, the Australian Constitution, enshrines these origins. Today it allows for the Commonwealth Government to make discriminatory decisions on the basis of race. From such sacrosanct legal texts, racism is normalised within the customs and practices of our society, and plays an insidious part in the decision-making of State institutions and authorities. We must change the Constitution to reflect our rejection of racial inequality. Coming so soon after the bushfires of December 2019 and January 2020, COVID-19 and BLM have caused, I believe, a mass re-evaluation of Australian identity, our history and the type of nation we want Australia to be. This virus may not be the great equaliser for now. But like the bushfires, it’s made Australians vulnerable, and in doing so exposed our humanity and the values we hold in common. We value the health, safety and welfare of our people, communities and the places we live, and our environments, from our homes to our surrounding ecology, in all reaches of this land. At the same time, many are questioning whether our current systems are up to the task of protecting these things that matter most to us all. What are the alternatives that allow us to invest in these values and steer our nation toward equality? There is no doubt in my mind that the combination of these events and feelings have resulted in tens of thousands of Australians taking to the streets to condemn Indigenous deaths in

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custody and racism in all its forms. Right now, fierce activism is focused on a major re-structuring of the so-called justice system. The disproportionate rate of First Nations peoples incarcerated is both a representation and outcome of racial inequalities in Australia. But the reform agenda needed to achieve this, advocated by First Nations, runs deep, aimed at whole-of-societal reconstruction. Ultimately, divestment from the current justice system is about serious re-investment in the health, wellbeing and safety of our communities: the first 2000 days of a child’s life, housing accessibility and affordability, access to good health services and education, and meaningful economic opportunities. Fundamentally, divestment is grounded in our self-determination. Although it is difficult to quantify the total expenditure on punitive interventions versus community-based work, in 2016 PwC Indigenous Consulting estimated that the total cost of Indigenous incarceration would be 9.7 billion per year in 2020, far outweighing investments in prevention initiatives.4 We are well overdue for a new way of working, a new way that both transfers resources and re-balances power, giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander control over all decisions affecting our lives. It is reforms grounded in such an approach that will help Australia build a stronger and more resilient nation as it recovers beyond COVID-19. I believe that the response to COVID-19 by all Australian governments, alongside community activism, is forming the conditions needed for this broader reform agenda. As sweeping measures have been introduced across our welfare, health and economic systems to save and protect lives, a space of possibility is emerging. Like many other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in remote Australia, my family and I have chosen to see this period out on our homelands away from regional towns and

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larger communities. It is from here, my Bunuba country in the far north of Western Australia, that I have watched these events and measures take effect. From here, we’ve gained vital lessons that must be carried and applied beyond COVID-19. Firstly, this unprecedented period finally caused Australian governments to respond to people who live on the margins, those whose lives are far too often overlooked. As part of this, governments recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were and remain at huge risk of an outbreak. In particular, they recognised the acute vulnerability of our remote communities. At the brink of crisis, the prevailing policy doctrine that our remote communities were unsafe and unviable was discarded. It was our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, communities and organisations that took immediate action. They knew remote regions and communities had to be protected. Organisations like Congress in Alice Springs, Danila Dilba in Darwin and the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service rapidly disseminated culturally appropriate health information and then located and assisted our peoples back to communities, from the city streets, park ovals and the long grasses. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been supported back are those who are predominately homeless, but their families and sense of home remain in remote regions. Their marginalisation is largely an outcome of decades of systematic underinvestment in remote community infrastructure – housing, roads, telecommunications, services and economies.  This huge logistical effort, which could not have been achieved by mainstream organisations, has triggered the largest homelands movement seen since the establishment of remote communities and outstations. In Western Australia alone, 1000 people were supported back to communities, and a thousand more, like

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myself, made their own way back. Thousands of students also returned from boarding schools. Returning to homelands may not be for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, most of whom live in cities and towns, but it is significant to us all. Like the BLM activism on city streets, this homelands movement is challenging Australia’s racist myths and persisting structural colonialism. In this case, the myth is that it’s unfeasible for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to live on Country and that our peoples and the services we rely on – from housing to aged care and health – are better off in the mainstream.   Wherever Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples live in urban, regional or remote Australia, it is our right to be able to access and occupy our traditional lands. And wherever we live, we have a right to access our own properly funded communitycontrolled services. Throughout this period, being on homelands has proven what we have always known: that our homelands nourish us, keeping us safe and healthy, and in turn we care for the country, as has been the case for tens of thousands of years. Just a few years ago, the previous Western Australian Government was considering shutting many of these remote communities down!  At the beginning of this return, governments stripped back punitive compliance measures over our lives. I have watched how people have been afforded the space and time to make decisions on their own terms for the benefit of their families. With the suspension across the nation of restrictive obligations and financial penalties under the Community Development Program and, in parallel, the doubling of social welfare payments, many of our people were finally living above the poverty line and were far freer of unwanted government intervention. Families chose, and most importantly, were able to, move to

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outstations and bush camps. Surrounded by the wealth of our Country, culture and our ancestors, people have had the time to reconnect, tell stories, hunt, and practise and transfer our knowledge between young and old. This engagement has reinvigorated discussions about Country- and culture-based ways of living. People are talking about the establishment of education and training facilities on Country, forming conservation estates and delivering cultural tourism, and how our knowledge can address climate change, develop healthy land management practices and enable all of Australia to live and work far more sustainably on this continent. All of these initiatives, which are grounded in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge, could contribute to the growth of viable and productive regional homeland economies. These are by no means far-fetched ideas. Many of them are already taking effect on a small scale. As we have engaged in this way of life, I have felt a renewed sense of control and empowerment sweep across our communities. There is also anecdotal evidence that, while families have been on homelands, life has been calmer. There has been less fighting and drinking, and a reported drop in incidences of family violence.  Unexpectedly, COVID-19 restrictions have been a circuitbreaker for our remote communities. We have had a real opportunity to re-think what we deserve, by quite literally living the self-determining lives that we want and have a right to. If governments continue to invest in remote regions and what we are proving works, they can stimulate economies, creating real jobs for our peoples in emerging industries and essential services. The return on investment can improve housing and infrastructure, forming viable and sustainable existences.  The greatest fear among our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community leadership right now is that governments will walk away from an emerging relationship of trust and

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collaboration that has begun to take shape over this period. This landscape is rapidly shifting as I write. Governments have already re-imposed aspects of the punitive welfare system without engaging with our communities, and without, it seems, any consideration that these are the discriminatory systems that we are advocating against.  We should not, under any circumstances, be returning to these unacceptable conditions and structures. As governments deal with this global crisis, they have to heed the current activism and realise that there are no viable social, economic and justice systems for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to ‘snap back’ into. The systemic issues of poverty, severe overcrowding, low employment, poor health and education still exist; they haven’t gone away. Our lives remain on the knife-edge of crisis, perilously close to the disastrous outcomes of countries like America if a second wave of COVID-19 were to spread across this nation. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, for Black and Brown people, and for all marginalised groups, whose lives matter, we cannot afford to let this period of large-scale societal and political change pass us by. From what I have seen and heard of the activism on the streets and in conversations within families and social media platforms, I know Australians are ready for structural and social change. It is clear to me that Australia needs a post-COVID-19 recovery and reconstruction plan. If we are to progress toward a healthy, resilient, economically and environmentally sustainable society, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples need to be equal participants in Australian nation building. The building blocks are in place to do this. The work of Closing the Gap and the Uluru Statement should be elevated to formalise dialogue aimed at reaching agreement between First Nations peoples and

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the Australian nation state on constitutional recognition, inclusion and required structural change. I believe this work must be driven by a new body – a national First Nations agreement making body. It is not for me to prescribe how this body would operate. But its aim would be national settlement for First Nations and Australia, and the process toward settlement would commence now with recovery from COVID-19. It is only through resetting this relationship that we can respond to the grave injustices of the past and begin to rectify the persisting legacy of structural racism that has caused such severe damage in the present. A significant part of this relationship resetting should involve federal fiscal reconstruction, so that public and private investment can be directed at transformational change for our communities across Australia with the goal of overcoming structural inequalities. This reconstruction must embrace the vibrancy and potential of our homelands. It must start with the development of our social and community infrastructure by rapidly upgrading and building houses and increasing the capacity of our health, education, training and employment support sectors. Alongside this must be substantial financing of culture-based economies and other forms of Indigenous enterprise to secure and improve our livelihoods on our traditional lands. Instead of being seen as remote and distant, our homelands and the wealth of our culture, country and knowledge systems need to be understood as a central component of Australia’s recovery. There are precedents in history for uniting nations – both within and beyond borders – through post-war or crisis reconstruction agendas. Australia has engaged in serious reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of the Second World War, improving welfare measures alongside expanding employment opportunities.  It is time to do it again. In acting swiftly and following expert

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advice, Australia suppressed the curve of COVID-19 transmission and averted the immediate crisis that has hit so many other nations. Unlike others, Australia has been able to buy itself some time, but it should not rest easy. The urgency of the moment calls for political courage, foresight and imagination to pave the way in global leadership and set the standard for national reconstruction.  It is time to reconstruct a nation that reflects the humanity and diversity of its citizens and embraces First Nations societies and culture as foundational to Australian identity. This would be an Australia that does not deny the past but actively learns and incorporates our Indigenous knowledges into systemic change as the nation becomes just, equitable and fair. This would be an Australia that every one of us can proudly say we belong to.

JUNE OSCAR AO is a proud Bunuba woman from the remote town of Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. She is currently Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. June has been Deputy Director of the Kimberley Land Council, chair of the Kimberley Language Resource Centre and the Kimberley Interpreting Service, and Chief Investigator with WA’s Lililwan Project addressing Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. June was awarded an honorary doctorate by Edith Cowan University.

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FOSSIL FUEL FIXATION ‘The balance sheet is breaking up the sky.’ – ‘Blue Sky Mine’, Midnight Oil

PETER GARRETT

When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Australian shores, we were on the cusp of a new age. Turbo-charged by a hotter climate, massive bushfires had just scoured the land, confirming what scientists have long maintained, namely, that this continent is especially vulnerable to global heating. Countless Australians were touched by the catastrophe, directly or indirectly. Homes, farms and livelihoods were destroyed in a season of hell. Some tragically lost their lives, and the toll would have been higher were it not for the monumental effort from firefighters and government agencies. Over a billion native species perished, billions more were displaced, some teetering towards extinction. As palls of smoke, like scenes from a disaster movie, draped cities already running short of drinking water, the climate crisis was literally in our backyard. The speed, reach and intensity of the fires happened on the back of a one-degree rise in average temperatures. We are

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currently on track for a rise of three degrees or more by the end of the century.1 For many of us, it is unthinkable that parts of the country could be unliveable in the future, but Aboriginal people in Central Australia, who have occupied the land for longer than can be imagined, are already contemplating that prospect. If we fail to act decisively, a three- to four-degree increase will accelerate environmental decline and push our political, security and social systems to breaking point. So can we make the change? The discovery during the COVID-19 pandemic that we could see vast reaches of stars in less polluted skies, hear the sweet sound of birdsong and see more clearly the immediate natural environment, were some reminders of what we are losing. That is, the healthy waterways, oceans and forests, fertile landscapes, all the plant and animal species, and our thoughtful relationship with these that underpin life on earth. The mantra that any pro-environment decision is a dangerous trade-off between the economy and nature, between ‘jobs and trees’, is still taken on face value in the halls of power and in many newsrooms. Yet there is no economic evidence for this view, and plenty of evidence against it. What the evidence tells us is this: 1 With imagination, good policies, competent planning and strong laws, we can have plentiful jobs and a healthy environment. There is no better example than renewable energy, the use of which is now accelerating at a rapid rate worldwide. 2 With the increasing severity of human-induced climate change, it is the pursuit of profits and maintenance of employment in fossil fuel–intensive industries that now directly threatens Australian lives and livelihoods.

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Look no further than how Australia treats the Great Barrier Reef, recognised as one of the great natural wonders of the world. The coal industry contributes to the global heating now damaging the reef, with three mass-bleaching events in the past five years,2 but in Queensland employs half as many people as work on and around the reef.3 Additionally, this natural treasure generates over $6 billion in tourism each year,4 and is worth over $60 billion to the economy.5 The figures speak for themselves. There have been periods in modern Australia, usually when reformist Labor governments were in power at federal and state level, where major environmental challenges were addressed. Australia was instrumental in safeguarding the Antarctic. In the latter period of the last century, there were extensive additions to the national estate, including World Heritage areas like Kakadu National Park and the North Queensland Wet Tropics. The pioneering Landcare program, along with concerted community efforts to oppose destructive practices and rehabilitate damaged landscapes, show our values. Yet federal and state governments have never consistently treated the environment with the seriousness it deserves. Now Australia is a world leader in extinctions – a shameful state of indifference. Native animal species decline at warp speed unabated since 1788, polluted inland river systems run dry, and with hotter, drier landscapes, fire has destroyed large swathes of the country, including areas that never previously burned. The default position in government is short-sighted; to build or allow anything to be exploited that, it is claimed, will create jobs, without considering the alternatives, or the consequences. Finally, after a sustained period of economic growth, the end point has been reached as Australia’s natural environment degrades rapidly, while we continue to spew carbon dioxide and devour resources at an unsustainable rate.

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Environment NGOs, citizen scientists, communities and experts have been ringing the warning bell on this state of affairs, but few in our political institutions have listened. Even for those who seek to act, it remains the case that without national leadership we are stymied. What’s needed is a change of heart and mind in how we see and interact with our world, especially in the political and corporate sectors where much power resides. Many Australians yearn for politics that will create a robust national framework of policies that prioritises protection of the environment, attacks waste and pollution, and supports climate-friendly industries and practices. It is no surprise that the preponderance of donations to political parties from big business generally, and the resources sector specifically, has coincided with the absence of serious climate policy on the part of the Liberal–National coalition. No surprise either that this corporate largesse has occurred in tandem with declining public confidence in the political system. The science is unambiguous. To survive the climate crisis, we have less than a decade to start reigning in greenhouse pollution, including reaching net zero emissions by 2050. Consequently, the decisions of the Morrison Coalition, as Australia emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic facing a recession, are as crucial as any contemplated since the Second World War. To fail to seize the moment means condemning successive generations to a hotter, more degraded, less productive world. If we fail, these generations will judge today’s leaders harshly. For all the talk of ‘a fresh start’, even before COVID-19, a pattern had emerged. The Prime Minister, having appointed a former fossil fuel executive as his chief of staff, repeatedly downplayed the role of climate change in the bushfires. Talk of establishing any meaningful long-term emission targets was a no-go zone,

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and in international climate talks, Australia continued pushing to exploit a historic loophole to meet our current inadequate targets. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone given the Coalition’s past decades of inaction and regular defenestration of climate measures once in government. Former Prime Minister John Howard’s recent admission that he never really believed in climate change is instructive. His government’s last-minute foray into an emissions trading scheme was taken seriously by the media and the public, but never by Howard. The first genuine attempt to get to grips with climate came during the Rudd/Gillard years, where briefly there was a price on carbon, and a raft of policies introduced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. History records that in a hallelujah moment emissions actually came down. When wrecker-in-chief Tony Abbott became Opposition leader, and then Prime Minister, the sacking of Canberra by the anti-climate vandals resumed and the nation has been stranded ever since. Abbott and Howard, like many conservative politicians, simply do not believe what a substantial body of science, and personal observation, tells us about a heating world. The country has been held hostage by these unreconstructed ideological fantasists for too long. Yet the Prime Minister and numerous Liberal/National members are cut from the same cloth. The implacable hostility to protecting the environment and addressing the climate crisis remains hard-wired into the DNA of conservative politics. How else to explain the multiple cuts to the Environment Department since the Coalition took office in 2013, to the extent it can no longer perform its functions properly? How else to explain the continuing hostility to renewables, despite the coalition now tacitly accepting Labor’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), which it previously attacked mercilessly? The RET has worked so well that wind and solar are now unequivocally cheaper and cleaner forms of energy than coal- and

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gas-fired power. The world is moving forward, seeing the lower costs and new jobs as an opportunity. We are missing that boat. How else to explain the drive to reform national environmental laws under the guise of reducing so-called ‘green tape’, announced before the recent bushfires? As they stand, the laws to protect nature don’t work effectively, and can be easily circumvented by a determined government. The expression ‘green tape’, pushed incessantly by the resources sector, is simply code for freeing up rigorous approval procedures. In any event, Coalition ministers have rarely used their powers to rule out actions that may cause damage to matters of national environmental significance. How else to explain the convening of a secret review led by leading fossil fuel executive, Grant King, to provide advice on reducing energy prices? The conclusion? Australia’s funding agencies for clean, renewable energy should now invest in fossil fuels, something banks and investors are baulking at. In the age of so-called fake news, this was fake policy development. Since the pandemic began, the Prime Minister has urged a return to ‘business as usual’, with a ‘laser-like’ focus on jobs. The COVID-19 Commission, again led by a resources sector CEO, Andrew Liveris, is championing a gas-fired recovery, whereby potential major gas projects could be subsidised with taxpayer funds. Another form of industrial socialism aimed at turning the world into a blazing inferno. The release of Energy Minster Angus Taylor’s Energy Roadmap with the buzz phrase ‘technology not taxes’, followed. Whilst cobbling together a range of potential measures to reduce emissions, the roadmap effectively replaces Australia’s long-term targets to reduce carbon emissions altogether. Instead, it highlights gas (again), previously intended as a transition fuel, which would lead to increased emissions and require support from taxpayers to be economical.

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Other suggestions included a wink to nuclear power – unproven, unsafe and expensive – with additional investment for carbon capture and storage technologies, which to date have failed to deliver. The Coalition’s supposed free market principles are jettisoned for their ideological obsession. Side note: The roadmap also includes pumped hydro with an emphasis on ‘Snowy 2.0’, which aims to effectively act like a giant battery connected to the existing Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme. Snowy 2.0 is extremely expensive and unlikely to fulfil the claims made by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Small-scale pumped hydro projects would be much more effective. Much of the roadmap is ‘profoundly irrational’, as one analyst put it, aimed mainly at protecting the revenue stream of the country’s most emission-intensive assets. Next came the interim review of national environment laws by senior businessman Graeme Samuel, which, to no-one’s surprise, found they were ‘not fit to address current or future environmental challenges’. Overnight, the government ruled out a key recommendation for an office of independent oversight, while cherry-picking the proposals for greater deregulation, which suited its agenda despite no compelling evidence that this initiative was likely to lead to better environmental protection. In a rush to open the floodgates to unregulated developments, the environment minister announced the government would legislate on this issue prior to the release of the final report and before public comments had been received. The die was cast. Scientists and experts have repeatedly pointed out what is necessary to avert disaster, as they did with COVID-19. That is, setting ambitious short- and long-term targets and reducing greenhouse gas emissions immediately and at scale. Meanwhile, the world – and the global markets on which we

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depend – is moving on and will soon leave us behind. The mainstream is embracing the obvious, asking ‘if we have to rebuild the economy, why rebuild it dirty and risky?’ As the Economist argued earlier this year, the COVID-19 crisis ‘creates a unique chance to enact government policies that steer the economy away from carbon’. They pointed out that ‘Getting economies in medically induced comas back on their feet is a circumstance tailor-made for investment in climate-friendly infrastructure that boosts growth and creates new jobs. Low interest rates make the bill smaller than ever’.6 The World Bank7 and the International Monetary Fund8 are calling for equivalent policy shifts. The European Union is seizing the moment to stimulate economic activity by directly funding climate action. Germany is creating ‘future-proof jobs’, in areas specifically aimed at reducing carbon emissions. At home, the Morrison Government delivered a poorly designed tradies’ bonus, without linking the package to improving energy efficiency, and so reducing energy costs, or even addressing social housing shortages. As Treasurer, Scott Morrison famously hugged a lump of coal in parliament, and there is no sign this love affair is waning, despite the economics of coal heading south. The world’s largest fund manager, Blackrock, is abandoning companies with major investments in thermal coal. Insurers are retreating from coal operations and it won’t be long before investors assess Australian government bonds through a climate lens. Then we will really be in strife. There are conflicted views across the parliament, with some members in thrall to an imaginary future where a dirty, dangerous and increasingly uneconomic source of energy prevails over cleaner and cheaper alternatives. Many MPs refuse to acknowledge we are facing a climate emergency, preferring to delay the day of reckoning with a range of responses, ranging

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from outright denial to band-aid incrementalism. Yet the necessity for a safer, more stable future path has never been clearer. It sees us becoming an energy superpower, ably described by Professor Ross Garnaut in the next chapter of this book. Here, abundant solar, wind and precious rare mineral resources are deployed to meet current energy needs at lower cost while exporting surplus energy to the regions. This approach guarantees growing employment, with professional services network Ernst & Young’s most recent finding that a renewables-led recovery would produce almost three times as many jobs as one based on fossil fuels.9 We could build a new manufacturing base, reduce our dependence on imports (from China in particular), and adopt technologies that get us to zero emissions as soon as possible. Finally, we could again play a constructive role in the global community effort to stabilise the Earth’s climate after years of spoiling and undermining genuine attempts, like the Paris Agreement, to build an international consensus on reducing planetheating emissions. Australia’s relative success in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic was based on an essential three-way compact: governments working together in the national interest, incorporating the advice of scientific experts, underpinned by community co-operation. The threat of a pandemic was immediate and required drastic action. However, the threat the climate crisis presents is of far greater magnitude, albeit unfolding over a longer time frame. The Economist again: COVID-19 has demonstrated that the foundations of prosperity are precarious. Disasters long talked about, and

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long ignored, can come upon you with no warning, turning life inside out and shaking all that seemed stable. The harm from climate change will be slower than the pandemic but more massive and longer-lasting. If there is a moment for leaders to show bravery in heading off that disaster, this is it. They will never have a more attentive audience.

This is clearly no longer business as usual. Our future health and prosperity depends on a healthy planet. Seize the moment we must.

PETER GARRETT AM is a musician, activist and former Labor member of federal parliament. He is a renowned environmentalist and social justice campaigner through his work with trailblazing rock band Midnight Oil and his decade as Australian Conservation Foundation President. He was a Cabinet Minister in the Rudd and Gillard Governments and was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws by the Australian National University.

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SUPERPOWERED JOBS ROSS GARNAUT

Embracing the opportunities of the low-carbon world economy can accelerate Australia’s recovery from recession and put us in a strong position to realise our potential as a superpower of the emerging new world economy. Restoring Australian prosperity will require us to strengthen an independent centre of the Australian polity – independent of vested interests and of partisan competitive political interests. It will require an elevation of respect for the central role of knowledge in a successful democracy. Australia should have a much stronger comparative advantage in energy-intensive minerals and agricultural processing in a zero-emissions world economy than it had in a fossil-energy past. Japan, Korea, the European Union and the United Kingdom are the natural early markets and suppliers of equipment. The early and orderly movement to zero-emissions electricity is the cornerstone of decarbonising the Australian economy. It is also the foundation for Australia’s emergence as a superpower of the post-carbon world economy. The decarbonisation of Australian electricity is important globally, over and above the large contribution it would make to

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cutting local emissions. First and most importantly, it will reduce the global cost of decarbonising the production of aluminium, iron, steel and other metals (7 per cent of total global emissions come from converting iron ore into metal). Australia is the largest exporter in the world of mineral ores requiring energy-intensive processing for conversion into metals. Australia in the postcarbon world could become the locus of energy-intensive mineral processing for use in countries with inferior renewable energy resource endowments.

The electricity transformation Low electricity prices are the foundation for global competitiveness in new manufacturing. As we’ve seen in South Australia, once a state has adjusted to the closure of coal-fired power plants, continuing to expand the supply of renewable energy reduces the wholesale price of energy and the overall cost of energy. Until recently, South Australia had the highest wholesale electricity prices in the National Electricity Market. Increased renewable generation and reduced costs of renewable energy have begun to lower wholesale electricity prices in South Australia. For 2019–20, wholesale prices were lower in South Australia than in Victoria or New South Wales. South Australia’s wholesale price advantage over the large states will increase as they face the shortterm effects of coal generation closures, adjustment to which has been completed in South Australia. Once a large net importer of power from other states, South Australia has been a net exporter over the past three years. A swift transformation of the electricity system could be achieved in every state, with the right regulatory arrangements and funding support in place. Investment in solar and wind generation, energy storage and transmission to link resources

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to expanding industrial centres has the potential to quickly lift employment and incomes, and can be a major contributor to post-pandemic recovery. Beyond this there is the opportunity to change the structure of Australian industry in ways that reduce emissions while also lowering costs and increasing global competitiveness. That would open a new era of expansion in investment and production. Globally competitive electricity prices based on Australia’s exceptional endowment of renewable energy resources would provide the opportunity for productive structural change. While Australia has both fossil and renewable energy resource advantages, in the new zero-emissions era there is larger economic gain using electricity at home rather than transporting it overseas. Transporting liquefied hydrogen is far more complex and expensive than transporting coal. Total costs of hydrogen at ports of destination are likely to be more than twice as high as in locations of origin in Australia. Long-distance, high-voltage, direct-current submarine transmission of electricity to Java and through Indonesia to the mainland of Asia would also more than double costs at the place of delivery from Australia. It follows that the economics strongly favour using Australian electricity and hydrogen to process Australian minerals at home, rather than sending both the raw materials and the hydrogen or electricity to Asian destinations for conversion into metals. This advantage from low-cost domestic energy is much greater than in the gas and coal era, when energy could be made available to industrial plants overseas at costs that were similar to prices at home. Separately, and beyond savings in transporting raw materials mined in Australia and lower energy costs, Australia has several advantages in processing many minerals. These processes are capital-intensive, and outside the many industries in which an oligopoly artificially elevates costs, Australia, like other developed

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countries, generally has access to capital at near globally competitive prices. Australia also has rich reserves of human capital across the range of expertise required for processing resources on a large, globally competitive scale: engineering, financial, geological, metallurgical and project management. The easiest changes for Australia to make will be to process materials that use electricity intensively (either directly or hydrogen), or carbon from biomass, or that require us to capture carbon emissions. These advantages are magnified when more than one of these are relevant. But we have disadvantages in high construction costs (especially in northern Australia) and in many transport, energy distribution and other infrastructure services. Our big disadvantage is oligopoly, high costs and inflexibility in supply chains, including infrastructure services. Recent reports of the Productivity Commission and Australian Competititon and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have analysed these. It is not easy to break apart deeply entrenched anti-competitive structures and habits. The early stages of realising the Australian opportunity may require new entrants with more positive attitudes towards innovation and globally competitive pricing. Australian energy-intensive processing industries can be globally competitive when the transport cost savings on raw materials, lower energy costs and Australian skill advantages outweigh the drags on our competitiveness. They did outweigh them in aluminium and other energy-intensive manufacturing industries for a period late last century. They ceased to do so until now, in the 21st century, as energy prices rose to and in some cases above international levels, and with the high real exchange rate during and immediately following the resources boom. We now have an opportunity to regain competitiveness and for it to increase far beyond any early experience in the emerging low-carbon world

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economy. There are many large industries in which the price of electricity is or could be a major factor in global competitiveness.

Manufacturing aluminium metal competitively Aluminium is currently the most electricity-intensive product entering world trade in large volumes. At market prices for aluminium metal and $50 per megawatt hour of electricity, electricity accounts for about one-fifth of the product’s cost. China produces more than half of the global annual total of about 60 million tonnes, nearly all for its own use. China has downgraded the priority of investing in new aluminium capacity in its post-2012 economic model. The restructuring of the Chinese economy away from heavy and energy-intensive industries has taken a backward step during the economic downturns associated with the trade war with America and the pandemic, but will resume. As the growth in world demand for aluminium requires new capacity, somewhere in the world, as post-pandemic recovery proceeds, it is likely to be placed in the most competitive locations outside China. Australia is a modest global producer of aluminium (about 2.5 per cent of the total) but a substantial exporter (nearly 10 per cent). Australian production grew on low-cost hydro-electric power in Tasmania. It expanded on a much larger scale with lowcost coal in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria as world energy costs increased in the late 1970s and the 1980s, and Japan reduced is production. Australian competitiveness in coal-based aluminium smelting has been challenged by rising electricity costs in the early 21st century, and no mainland Australian smelter is at present certain of long-term survival in the absence of fundamental changes in electricity supply. Aluminium is smelted from alumina – refined aluminium

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oxide from the natural mineral bauxite. Australia is the world’s largest producer of alumina (about a quarter of the world’s total), and most of it is exported to smelters overseas. Aluminium smelting in Australia is responsible for large amounts of carbon dioxide emissions. The main source of Australian aluminium emissions is the generation of power from coal. There are also large emissions from within the process itself, from oxidation of the fossil fuel–based carbon cathodes and anodes used in electrolysis. Alcoa and Rio Tinto, the two global aluminium companies smelting metal in Australia, have committed to producing the metal globally with zero emissions. There are substantial cost advantages in smelting aluminium adjacent to alumina refining. This is only feasible if globally competitive power is available at those locations. This is achievable now, using renewable energy. It is no longer possible using coalbased energy. In the absence of artificially high costs for other inputs into production, Australia is naturally the home of new large-scale smelters. The Australian advantage will strengthen as the world moves towards zero-emissions electricity, causing its costs to rise in other countries but not in Australia. Smelting half of Australia’s alumina exports at home would require us to construct four or five worldscale plants, increase aluminium production several times over, and increase Australian electricity demand by around a quarter.

Manufacturing clean iron competitively The largest opportunity is in producing iron metal or steel from iron oxide ores. Australia is by far the world’s largest producer (nearly two-fifths of the world total) and exporter (nearly three-fifths) of iron ore. China takes about 70 per cent of Australian exports. China has supplied most of the increase in global

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steel production in the 21st century, and now accounts for around half of the global total output of about 1.8 billion tonnes. Much of the steel produced in the old developed countries in North America, Japan and Western Europe is now made from recycled scrap, through the electricity-intensive electric arc process. This can be zero emissions steel if it is powered by renewable electricity. But China and other developing countries do not yet have the steel consumption legacy that produces large amounts of scrap, and most of their output is from highly emission-intensive reduction of iron ore using coke. In a zero-emission economy, the relevant comparison between steel-making methods is between direct reduction of iron ore using hydrogen, and a coal-based blast furnace route with carbon capture and storage (CCS). Hydrogen would need to be available at around A$3 per kilogram for the cost of the reductant to be similar in the two processes. Recognising the costs of carbon would see hydrogen-based direct reduction emerge as the low-cost path to primary steel production. Energy research organisation BloombergNEF expects costs to fall to A$2.90 by 2030. That presumes that combinations of wind and solar power without firming (that is, the electrolysis plant ceasing production when neither the solar nor wind energy is available) at A$36 per megawatt hour in 2030. Non-firm solar and wind are already available at that cost in the best Australian locations. Many costs other than those of hydrogen and coke will determine the outcome of competition between hydrogen-based direct reduction and coal-based blast furnaces with carbon capture and storage. At present, the high cost of CCS would place the blast furnace a long way behind in the low-carbon world economy towards which we are headed. With prospects of large cost reduction in electrolysis plants for hydrogen, and further cost reductions for renewable energy,

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the costs of using Western Australian natural gas and hydrogen may be comparable in 2030. The costs of using a combination of Western Australian gas and hydrogen in direct reduction of iron ore is already competitive with a new blast furnace. If we recognised the value of zero emissions, cost parity would be available now. Meanwhile, increasing carbon constraints will raise the cost of the blast-furnace route to iron-making. Investors who are aware of carbon risk would not invest now in new blast-furnace iron-making without having access to globally competitive CCS opportunities. There is now a strong commercial case for building new primary iron-making capacity as direct reduction facilities using natural gas near iron ore mining in Western Australia, initially mainly using natural gas, and increasing the renewable hydrogen proportion over time. Initially, the hydrogen component would require public support for innovation, pending the expansion of the scale of electrolysis and the associated reductions in cost. As the world moves closer to requiring zero-emissions steel, there is scope for iron metal and steel production at an immense scale near Australian iron ore resources in the Pilbara, the midwest and south-west of Western Australia and in the Upper Spencer Gulf and adjacent parts of South Australia. Other advantages of old industrial locations in the eastern states may justify large iron-processing industries there as well, using iron ore from elsewhere.

Other energy-intensive manufacturing Producing pure silicon from sand or quartz and incorporating it into other valuable compounds is one of the most energyintensive industrial processes. Australia is a small silicon producer in the global context, but commands interest and high prices for

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exceptional quality. Demand for high-grade silicon has increased rapidly with the production of computers and solar photovoltaic (PV) panels – in both of which pure silicon is the critical material input. The economically efficient development of the global market would see expansion of production in places with access to globally competitive power and adjacent to supplies of high-quality quartz and sand. Several Australian locations meet these criteria. Ammonia plays a large part in the global production of nitrogenous fertilisers, explosives and some other chemical products. It is produced from hydrogen. Global production of around 150 million tonnes per annum is overwhelmingly from hydrogen from fossil fuels and produces large quantities of carbon dioxide emissions. The production of hydrogen and then its conversion into ammonia in the Haber-Bosch process is highly energyintensive. The production of hydrogen and ammonia can be with zero emissions if hydrogen were produced through electrolysis using renewable electricity. Renewable ammonia production is one of the most energy-intensive industrial processes and would gravitate economically towards low-cost renewable energy in Australia.

Locations of zero-emissions industries New industrial strengths will be built more easily in provincial cities with strong industrial traditions, and established energy, port, other transport and training infrastructure. This points to the Collie-Bunbury region in Western Australia; the mining ports of the Pilbara; the Upper Spencer Gulf in South Australia; Portland and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria; Port Kembla and Newcastle in New South Wales; Gladstone, Townsville and MacKay in Queensland; and the established materials processing regions of Tasmania.

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Upturn The best prospects for Australia in a post-pandemic economic recovery is in accelerated transition to low-cost renewables of established energy demand, followed by accelerated development of globally competitive energy-intensive industries based on our rich natural endowments of renewable energy resources. There is no comparable opportunity for private investment on this scale in other parts of the economy in the period ahead. The superpower opportunity will be centrally important should Australia choose a prosperous future rather than continued economic underperformance.1

ROSS GARNAUT AO is a Professor of Economics at the University of Melbourne. In 2008, he produced the Garnaut Climate Change Review for the Australian Government. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling Dog Days: Australia after the boom and Superpower: Australia’s low-carbon opportunity.

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ECONOMICS FOR THE PEOPLE ‘I want a society that provides decent jobs for those who can work and decent security for those who can’t.’ – Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress

SALLY McMANUS

This has been a year unlike any in our lifetime. It started with a summer of unrelenting bushfires. Then came the creeping menace of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Australia suddenly found itself thrown up on the shoreline, frantically searching for a passage back to safe, calm waters. Except there is no way back, and indeed, for many of us, the waters were treacherous all along. There is only going forward. Which path we choose on that journey will have a profound and enduring impact on the kind of country we leave for future generations. This is our moment. We have been asked to meet a challenge we could not have foreseen and have no road map with which to navigate.

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We do, however, have the luxury of choices. What type of country do we want to rebuild? One with an economy that works for the many and not just the few, a country that sees the real value of frontline work that adds capacity to communities and enriches all our lives? The other alternative is that we shrink from the challenge and return to business as usual, where millions of Australians are stuck in a cycle of insecure work, low wages and diminishing optimism about what the future holds for their families and communities. It’s important to recall where the old economy left working people when this crisis struck. I remember the deep and widespread unease that swept the country when infection rates started to triple in early March, when airlines began grounding their fleets and borders began to shut. The freedom of movement we’d taken for granted evaporated. For many of us, isolation and social distancing are anathema to who we are. We are a gregarious mob and we like to gather and engage, but the very thing that adds such richness to our lives had become our kryptonite. When panic buying took hold, Australians were expressing their anxiety about the uncertainty of a future they felt they had lost control of. The sight of endless job queues snaking around the streets of Australian suburbs and towns revealed to us all that our economy had been built on a casualised workforce who quickly fell victim to trapdoor economics. The empty promise from politicians that if only working people were even more flexible and productive then the wealth enjoyed by those at the top would eventually trickle down to them was proven to be a lie as laid-off workers saw their plans and dreams vanish. Australian workers in insecure work – casuals, contract workers, gig economy operators or labour hire employees – suddenly saw their jobs erased overnight. Many people in these

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circumstances had been able to cope in good times, but the pandemic’s economic impact exposed how inequitable the system is. Over one-third of the workforce are in insecure or nonstandard forms of work, and the majority of them instantly fell through the trapdoor into an economic abyss without sick pay, holiday pay or family and annual leave or any other entitlements. Initially left with no options and no support, many people accessed their superannuation early. A disproportionate number of women and young people, on low super balances and in the most insecure of work, drew down on their super and undermined their own prospect of retiring with dignity and certainty. As the leader of the Australian union movement, it was like staring over the edge of a cliff. We had no experience of a pandemic, no experience of large parts of the economy shutting down and communities retreating behind closed doors in trepidation. But there was one thing I did know. Our response to this crisis would only be successful if it was built upon the values that have been the foundation stone of the union movement for generations: commitment to collective action, determination to protect and assist the most vulnerable among us, a recognition of the value of workers and their contribution to the economy, and placing a premium on the health and welfare of families and communities. And, above all, a conviction that the economy should work for the advancement of all not just the few. It was the union movement that campaigned for a wage subsidy, something the government agreed was essential when it created the JobKeeper program. We knew that without it, the economy this government had built on the basis of flat wages growth and insecure work would collapse at the first gust of economic ill wind that blew its way. And we were right. This is the lesson that must be learned from this crisis. Insecurity in work feeds into instability in communities. It

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eats away at hope and optimism. We all want to know we can afford to pay the rent or the mortgage, to send our children to school and to pay our bills without racking up insurmountable debts; to retire with dignity, at a reasonable age, and not die in poverty. These are simple aspirations, but they need to be fought for and defended. For too many Australians, they have slipped out of reach and the consequences of that are social and economic dislocation and resentment. An Australia that learns the lessons of this pandemic is one that rejects a return to low wages and insecure work. The pandemic’s impact on our communities has seen many of us reexamine our priorities and given us pause to reflect on what we value most. Within the union movement we understood that the only way to navigate the storm was to engage in a wider dialogue, even with people who had sought to damage us, and to be open to working with both a previously hostile government and employers to focus on saving jobs and workers’ income. After all, we all want to protect jobs and livelihoods. It’s fair to say I have been surprised that the government has engaged as constructively with us as they have. In working with Attorney-General Christian Porter, we have both been focused on the practical, what has to be done and what needs to be done. Perhaps government members have learned that we are not the mythological demons we’ve been made out to be, and we have learned that they are capable of listening and engaging. Unions are very used to negotiating with those whose interests are different from ours. That’s actually what we do. It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic for this to occur to the government. However, trust has to be earned, and the track record of the Liberal Party since John Howard’s WorkChoices program has

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been one of demonising unions, rather than accepting them as good-faith actors in civil society. We are under no illusions that our differences have simply melted away. There is and will remain a tension and a struggle over the role of capital and labour in our economy. We will always advocate for improving workers’ pay and conditions, and we will always fight for a fair share of this country’s wealth. However, let’s be clear. When the country was staring at ruin, it was unions that this government turned to for its lifeline. It was our essential workers – from our hospitals to our supermarkets and schools – who kept the lights on and the country ticking when all else ground to a halt. It was ordinary workers, through their tenacity and determination, not hedge fund managers or stockbrokers, who saved Australia from a much deeper crisis. As the representatives of workers, unions negotiate with employers all the time, yet we have often been characterised as thugs and bandits by ideology-driven governments. Very few conservative governments in democratic countries have been locked into an ideological obsession to break workers’ representation and to muzzle workers’ voices like they have here in Australia. Yet, when the chips are down, they turned to us to find a way through the crisis. With the current government’s latest anti-union crusade, the Ensuring Integrity Bill (which would have been the most restrictive anti-union laws Australia had ever seen) rightfully in its grave, it’s time that the union bashing ends and workers and their unions are once again given a proper seat at the table to negotiate the best outcomes for working Australians. After the crisis, it’s worth remembering that no-one has a stronger interest in creating good, well-paid jobs than the Australian union movement. We want to see a strong economic recovery that delivers benefits broadly. Many governments in advanced

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economies understand that and seek to formally include unions in economic policy development. Australia should do the same. And we are nothing if not consistent in pursuit of our goals. For too long, Australian workers have seen their wages flatline while the cost of living has climbed. The cost of power has skyrocketed, while the price of fresh food, fuel, health care, childcare and other essentials continues to rise. While wages have hit the wall, pre-COVID-19, company profits had crashed through it. By August 2019, over 60 per cent of listed Australian companies had seen their profit margins grow in the previous 12 months. Profits were being privatised in returns to shareholders, while workers were told that the only way to keep their job was to forget about pay rises. After the pandemic, workers are not going to cop another merry-go-round of austerity and the tired old job con where profitable companies ask more from their workers while pocketing the profits they generate. Ordinary Australians know they’re being shut out of their fair slice of this nation’s wealth. Decent pay is in everyone’s interest. Workers with money in their pockets to spend are the engine room of economic growth. Sixty per cent of our economy is domestic spending. That money is spent in businesses, large and small, providing the demand our economy requires to generate jobs for other Australian workers. Australian unions know that to emerge from this crisis as a stronger, fairer society, it is government that needs to lead the way. National economic reconstruction will not happen by hoping for market miracles. Government has a responsibility to shape the future of Australia’s economic security and to ensure it has a place for all, not just the few. Those who want to look in the rearview mirror and pine for the destructive trickle-down economics of the Thatcher and Reagan years are abdicating their responsibility to guide

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economics for the people

Australia through a crisis that has exposed the depth of inequality of opportunity in this country. Working Australians don’t want a dose of ideological nostalgia, they want a plan for the future. We need a comprehensive plan for economic reconstruction that will see us emerge with a stronger economy, one that ensures that all working Australians can look forward to a future that offers secure, decent jobs and a vibrant future for their families and communities. Here are five ideas that would take us closer to a fairer Australia: 1 An early childhood education and care strategy that targets those key early years of education and recognises the crucial work of early childhood educators, most of whom are women, and the need to ensure that it is reflected in their pay and conditions. 2 A training plan for reconstruction that invests in providing the skills and training for the generation who will bear the heaviest burden of this pandemic – young workers. 3 A national reconstruction investment plan that commits 6.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to new capital projects in physical and social infrastructure that would create tens of thousands of jobs and deliver a crucial intergenerational legacy for decades to come. 4 A sustainable strategy that would reboot Australia’s manufacturing sector with a focus on sophisticated technology production and sustainable manufacturing practices. 5 The Rediscover Australia plan, which is aimed at reigniting our battered tourism, hospitality and retail sectors. Above all else, our economy must be rebuilt on the principles of fairness, offering the opportunity for stable, well-paid jobs,

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SALLY McMANUS

and a future free from the kind of insecurity that sees workers as disposable rather than indispensable. To build back better and stronger, Australian workers need to know their futures are on solid ground. One of my hobbies is taekwondo, and the reason it resonates with me is that, at its core, its philosophy encourages you to not only acquire power and skill for self-defence, but to also build a sense of justice in your character. It teaches you to take responsibility and embodies in you the principle of universal equality. These principles ring as true now as they ever have, particularly for those of us who want to see a fairer, more inclusive Australia. As unionists and workers, fighting for equality and fairness in defence of workers’ rights is in our DNA. It is when we broaden our movement further, adding more workers to our ranks and building a deeper connection across generations, cultures and industries, that we will have truly met our aspirations for a better country. Only then can we be united in building an economy for a fair Australia.

SALLY McMANUS was elected as the ACTU Secretary in 2017, the first female Secretary in its 90-year history. Sally commenced her working life as a Pizza Hut driver, cleaner and a shop assistant prior to joining the ACTU’s Trainee Organisers Program in 1994. From this she went on to become an Organiser and then the Branch Secretary of the Australian Services Union in NSW. Sally is the author of On Fairness.

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A NEW ACCORD JENNY MACKLIN

In recent months, the millions of Australians who have lost work have done so ‘through no fault of their own’, according to the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. As though the almost two million Australians who were unemployed or underemployed before the COVID-19 crisis were somehow at fault. In fact, unemployed Australians have been used for years as economic cannon fodder to manage inflation and wage costs, then vilified and punished for their vulnerability. And the aggressor has been the Australian government. It’s the Australian government that has sold the lie that the unemployed are largely to blame for their own poverty. That lie has been accepted as gospel by parts of the media, business, politics and bureaucracy. And as Australia’s economic bull-run lengthened, this lie bled into industrial relations as shown by the failure to regulate to protect gig economy workers, and the 2017 decision to cut Sunday penalty rates for retail, fast-food and pharmacy workers, meaning that casuals and gig workers were also treated as economic cannon fodder. This must stop.

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Jenny Macklin

The time has come for Australia to recommit to a national, bipartisan policy of full employment. Putting full employment at the centre of our economic policy would end the cold war on unemployed Australians and ease the economic impact of COVID-19. It would also enable us to get the most out of the other major challenge facing our country – the urgent need to create a carbon-neutral economy. By investing in job creation and training – with a focus on making Australia a global power in renewables – we can stimulate the economy for today, prepare for climate change tomorrow and use cheaper, cleaner energy to create new industries with thousands of new jobs. We should build an Employment and Emissions Accord. And if the economic sledgehammer of COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that keeping people working, or at least connected to work through a wage subsidy, is critical to recovery. Of course unemployment benefits should be higher, but beyond that Australia should invest in a strong, European-style unemployment insurance system. Inventing a system of wage subsidies on the run is not good enough to protect workers. According to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development’s Employment Outlook, one in four Australian workers are now casually employed, with more than half of casuals having zero guaranteed hours.1 This generational shift towards insecure, temporary work and significant underemployment – where millions of unemployed and casual workers are sacrificed in the pursuit of monetary policy – has been creating an underclass of Australians who are more likely to be younger and more likely to live on the urban fringes and in regional areas. Put it this way: the lack of economic justice for unemployed and casual workers is a social and economic time bomb – and the Morrison government’s response to COVID-19 has lit the fuse. The Morrison government’s first mistake was to pick

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A new accord

winners and losers – putting industries such as retail and hospitality on subsidised life support, but effectively walking away from others, including the massive arts and university sectors. The government’s second mistake was to exclude many casuals from the rushed new JobKeeper subsidy – a $1500-per-fortnight stimulus payment for employers to keep Australians in jobs – by only giving the wage subsidy to casual workers who had been with their employers for at least 12 months, in a move seemingly designed to exclude. And the government’s third – and largest – mistake was to bungle the implementation of JobKeeper. The JobKeeper program was supposed to help save 6.3 million jobs, but only supported 3.5 million. This shortfall translated to a $60 billion underspend in JobKeeper. As a result, the government failed to support the jobs of millions of Australians. That employment black hole cost Australians their jobs – and, once lost, many jobs never return. COVID-19 is a perfect storm for many casual working Australians. Casual workers are often the people carrying out essential service jobs in sectors like hospitality, risking their health to serve the public. If they are short-term casuals – and many are – their jobs are not covered by JobKeeper. That means, if there is an outbreak at their workplace, they are forced to self-quarantine for 14 days without pay or leave. It took months before pandemic leave was agreed to by the Morrison government. This is further evidence of the urgent need for a national system of unemployment insurance. Consider the one-way thinking behind the current policy setting: the Australian government expects some of the nation’s worst-paid, most insecure workers to risk their health for the public good, yet throws them under the economic bus at the first sign of trouble. So much for the great Australian fair go.

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Jenny Macklin

In the years before COVID-19, the ranks of long-term unemployed Australians grew significantly. Between September 2014 and March 2019, the number of Australians on Newstart long term (between five and ten years or more than ten years) doubled to 150 000.2 Inequality also rose: the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook found that, among developed nations, Australia has some of the widest gaps between our wealthiest and poorest areas.3 And a life-expectancy gap opened up: with those in the wealthiest 20 per cent of the population living 10 years longer than the poorest 10 per cent.4 Unless urgent action is taken, COVID-19 will accelerate the social and economic descent of unemployed and casual workers. Not only that, the short- to medium-term economic impact of the pandemic will be exacerbated by the medium- to long-term economic impact of climate change. On present policy settings, Australia is on track for a future in which millions of Australians will be locked out of the middle class and our national prosperity will depend on an industrial economy unable to compete in a carbon-neutral world, with parts of our country either swallowed by the desert or the sea. Ultimately, we all stand to lose. Urgent action is needed, but – thanks to the chasm of inequity and insecurity created by the cold war on casuals and the unemployed – many Australians cannot afford to trust hypothetical promises of a more prosperous, sustainable future. Economic justice and environmental sustainability are connected. If we want to secure our future prosperity and sustainability by making the leap to a carbon-neutral economy, we have to start by delivering economic justice to working Australians right now. We can learn a lot from former prime minister John Curtin. In 1945, the Curtin government’s white paper on unemployment outlined ambitions for expanded social services, rural amenities

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A new accord

and full employment, stating that ‘to prevent the waste of resources which results from unemployment is the first and greatest step to higher living standards’. That inclusive, visionary investment in Australia’s human capital – together with the post-war booms in migration and industrialisation started by Curtin – was the foundation of modern Australia. Adopting a policy of full employment must be only the start. If we want to lay the foundations for future prosperity and break Australia’s deep-rooted connection between economic growth and carbon emissions, we have to give working people a reason to trust they won’t become economic casualties as Australia makes the shift towards new carbon-neutral industries. I’m not suggesting Australia should go slow on climate change – on the contrary, I believe Australia should go hard on climate change – but we cannot afford to leave people behind. We must develop and implement policies that give communities reliant on resource-intensive industries pathways to new industries and new jobs. For instance, in his chapter in this book, economist Ross Garnaut outlines how Australia could use climate change as an opportunity to become a global power in renewable energy. Garnaut’s hypothesis has been backed up by the Grattan Institute, with a report by Tony Wood, Guy Dundas and James Ha finding that Australia could win export markets and create 25 000 manufacturing jobs in carbon-intensive industry regions like Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley by harnessing renewable hydrogen to fabricate steel.5 Australians will need to be protected and supported through what will be – like Curtin’s post-war program – an enormous social and economic transformation. That’s why, as well as committing to a full employment policy, Australia must create a new social wage built around the fundamental protection of a decent unemployment insurance. Given the amount of labour-force change that is upon us, we have

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to ensure that people who lose their jobs don’t lose everything. Working people need to be confident that they can pay the bills and put food on the table while they look for a new job or retrain. Yes, there needs to be an increase to unemployment benefits, but – as set out in Professor Andrew Scott’s 2016 proposal for unemployment insurance6 – we should also use social insurance protection to protect working people and boost productivity. Without the peace of mind that unemployment insurance can bring, no government can expect working families to get behind the transformations necessary to reboot the economy and save Australia from the worst impacts of climate change. A transformation like this needs Australians to come together to respond to the economic and environmental challenges of the 21st century by developing and implementing an Employment and Emissions Accord. To work, this new accord would have to be developed by government in partnership with business and unions. After all, in the 1980s the Prices and Incomes Accord forged by Prime Minister Bob Hawke with Australian Council of Trade Union secretary Bill Kelty created broad support for a decade of economic reforms, as well as opening the door to landmark social wage initiatives such as Medicare and compulsory superannuation. I don’t make the statement lightly when I say Australia needs an Employment and Emissions Accord. I haven’t forgotten how hotly contested the reforms of the Hawke–Keating era were, including the introduction of Medicare and superannuation. But one of the lessons of that reform era is that, although good policy is never inevitable, it is always possible. In 2013 the establishment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) began to deliver the social protection that Australians with a disability needed. Under the NDIS, every Australian under the age of 65 is covered by a no-fault social insurance scheme – so that if they are born with or acquire a significant

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A new accord

disability, they will receive the support they need to live the best possible life. A similar approach should be taken with the adoption of an unemployment insurance scheme that, rather than punishing people who are out of work, gives them the support they need to get back on their feet. We must create a new social wage – including unemployment insurance – that protects the quality of life of working people. In doing so, we should consider the approach to unemployment insurance taken by places like Denmark and Germany. Denmark’s lauded ‘flexicurity’ model balances the needs of the market and the community by giving companies the flexibility they need to hire and fire workers, while giving unemployed people the economic security they need, through generous income support, to retrain and transition into a new job. During the pandemic, Denmark’s citizens were able to rely on their unemployment insurance scheme and Denmark’s government didn’t have to scramble to build a new program – meaning that they avoided the mistakes the Morrison government made with JobKeeper. In Germany, meanwhile, they responded to COVID-19 by expanding access to an employment support scheme called ‘Kurzarbeit’. Under Kurzarbeit – which means short-time work – the German government steps in to pay up to 67 per cent of the wages of employees who are sent home or forced to work reduced hours. Workers are supported, the economy is kept on life support and, when conditions improve, companies are well placed to go back into full production. Employers are demanding flexibility in the face of economic insecurity, but that flexibility must not translate into precarious employment and income. Good policy is possible. We can recover from COVID-19. We can prepare for climate change. We can become more equitable and sustainable. But, first, we have to bring Australia’s unemployed in from the cold.

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Jenny Macklin

THE HON. JENNY MACKLIN is a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Prior to this, she served 23 years as the Federal Labor Member for Jagajaga, and was the first female Deputy Leader of a major Australian political party. Jenny served as the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the Minister for Disability Reform in the Rudd and Gillard governments, and is associated with every significant Labor social policy reform of the past three decades.

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A SOCIETY BUILT FROM THE BOTTOM UP, NOT THE TOP DOWN ‘Democracy cannot survive in an excessively free market and containing the market is the task of politics. To ignore that is to court fascism.’ – Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time, Beacon Press Boston, 2001

WAYNE SWAN

In the year 2020, the 40-year rise of neoliberalism smashed into economic and social reality. The perils of smaller government, market fundamentalism, lower wage and higher profit shares, and the power of big money in politics was laid bare. We learned yet again, as political scientist Felicia Wong pointed out in the Boston Review, that ‘markets are important but they are not the sum total of our economic or social institutions; that markets alone cannot sufficiently reward, distribute or innovate, and that government will always be required to lead the transformation of our society’1 or as economists Mariana Mazzucato and Roberto Skidelsky suggest, ‘When push comes to shove, states – not private companies – are the primary economic actors’.2

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Wayne Swan

We’ve learned this lesson, of what we now call old neoliberal thinking, the hard way over the past 130 years: in the 1890s Depression, in the slump following the First World War, in the Great Depression, in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The Second World War and its aftermath saw the creation of the welfare state in Britain and across much of Europe to act as a buffer between communism on the left and fascism on the right. The Great Depression ushered in Roosevelt’s New Deal, which through massive stimulus and direct job creation schemes staved off economic collapse. In Australia, prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley’s post-war reconstruction policies were revolutionary. The embrace of full employment and the White Paper it inspired led the world with investment in housing and infrastructure, the creation of the Commonwealth Employment Service and vocational training, and settlement schemes for returning soldiers. During the Great Depression, one of my predecessors as treasurer, Ted Theodore, fought the notion that governments were powerless to act and alleviate the scourge of mass unemployment. He failed. But Curtin and Chifley were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression. Chifley’s post-war actions mirrored our nation’s story. As Adrian Pabst observed, ‘a story of nation building anchored in the lives of ordinary people rather than the privileged elites represented by other parties’.3 At their core was the notion that equality could not take a back seat to the pursuit of growth, that economic equality must drive prosperity, rather than being an afterthought to it. This creed underpinned the actions of subsequent Labor governments from Whitlam to Hawke to Keating to Rudd and to Gillard. Inevitably, there were tensions over the size and degree of government intervention, but Australian Labor has never

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A society built from the bottom up, not the top down

embraced the ‘Third Way’ ideology of minimum social safety nets and deregulated labour markets evident in the United States and Great Britain. A strong vibrant public sector, working with and alongside the private sector, was seen as every bit as important as any piece of national infrastructure or private industry. The purpose was to grow the economy to uplift working and middle class people and preserve economic mobility. In short, the power of government was seen as a positive force to transform the lives of ordinary people. More than once, Labor has been called on to lift employment and forge a path out of crisis. This time we are not so lucky, with a conservative government still hankering for a ‘snap-back’ to old-fashioned neoliberal policies. Now is the time for a new generation of activists to draw strength from this history and to revitalise the contest of ideas. COVID-19 has shone a light on the stark inequalities entrenched by neoliberalism. From the end of the Second World War until the elections of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States, the gap between rich and poor in Western countries narrowed as prosperity grew. It was the pay-off for the defeat of fascism, the ‘30 glorious years’ as the French called them. From 1980 onwards, the world became a place of stunning inequalities. In that time, the bottom 50 per cent captured 9 per cent of total income growth, while the top 1 per cent captured 28 per cent.4 That’s why it’s so alarming to hear the current Treasurer suggesting Reagan and Thatcher had solutions we might apply now. As we witness the American dream decaying and the rise of the authoritarian right across the world, we are finally seeing the foolishness of neoliberalism that has gradually eroded social

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Wayne Swan

democracy post-Reagan and post-Thatcher in many countries across the Western world. The Reagan/Thatcher mantra of lower tax, small government; lower wage share, higher profit share – or as the economist Richard Denniss describes it, ‘the right-wing ratchet’ – has systematically destroyed essential services in many countries, starving them of revenue. Simultaneous wage suppression has eroded the living standards of large sections of the workforce. The long arc of history will harshly judge this race to the bottom on tax and wages. It’s weakened public sectors, making them ill-prepared to respond to political and economic upheaval, and it has enslaved and wasted a large proportion of our workforce. This pandemic will entrench existing inequalities and further erode the bargaining power of working people. The age of extreme inequality has created the age of extreme politics: a dodgy property developer in the White House, Brexit and fascist parties rising across Europe. In countries like the United States and United Kingdom, a lack of revenue has hollowed out the ability of government to respond effectively. Fortunately for Australia, successive Labor governments and our union movement did not embrace neoliberalism, and have preserved the social contract. But conservative governments during this period never wavered from their determination to try to destroy large slabs of our social and industrial safety net, particularly Medicare, national superannuation and workers’ rights. And they are still at it in the middle of a pandemic! Since 2014, the Liberals have squeezed pre-tax income through wage suppression and eroded post-tax income through cuts to the social safety net alongside more regressive income taxation.

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A society built from the bottom up, not the top down

As we entered this pandemic, the Australian economy was already in a structural downturn with a falling wage share of national income. With the coalition promising further tax cuts for higher income earners and a ballooning national debt, the need for more revenue and a more resilient public sector is now on display day by day. Now is the time to mount the argument about adequately funding essential services as an economic good, not just as a social benevolence. It’s time to acknowledge that the drivers, the cleaners and shop assistants are essential workers and entitled to a dignified living wage. COVID-19 has exposed the absurdity of paying chief executives 200 times the average earnings of their employees, as we’ve learned yet again that wealth creators are the ordinary income earners, not the entrepreneurs and plutocrats. The pandemic demonstrates tax and public expenditure, along with wages and industrial relations, are the most important issues shaping the type of economy and society we aspire to. A Labor vision for the 21st century to tackle inequality and to create a society where the working class doesn’t miss out must include: 1 Stronger bargaining rights and a stronger voice for working people across all institutions in our society 2 Progressive taxation to distribute wealth and opportunity 3 A genuine nation-building industry policy, driven by clean energy 4 Political reforms to break the grip of big money in politics, including limits on campaign expenditure.

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Wayne Swan

When historians look back at what happened globally between 1980 and 2020, they will certainly conclude that strong, growing, vibrant unions, and a strongly progressive tax system, are the two best antidotes to tackle the poisonous impacts of rampant wealth and income inequality. They will see that a fairer society is the best medicine to treat the political polarisation being experienced across the developed world. So as we re-imagine our future and peer through the looking glass of this pandemic, social democrats have to convince people that the power of government to transform their lives for the better is real and in their hands. The reconstruction of a modern social democratic state can’t be funded on debt and credit alone. Our political opponents will constantly argue for regressive taxes, knowing their imposition will place a burden on those least able to afford them. They will say that money in the taxpayer’s pocket is better than money in the government’s pocket, hoping no-one notices the bulging pockets at the top. The pandemic contradicts their central argument. In 2015, even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), once a bastion of neoliberalism, concluded that a declining proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) going to low- and middle-income earners was a handbrake on growth and higher living standards for all. Their empirical work shows conclusively that when the benefits of growth are concentrated, growth is weaker, and when the benefits are more fairly shared, growth is stronger. There is no better time to mount the argument that a progressive tax system where the wealthy pay more and where workers are paid fair wages is the path to prosperity. In essence, it builds validation that we need an equal society, not just because we are kind, but because it builds a strong society, and that a prosperous working and middle class is a source of growth, not a consequence of it.

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A society built from the bottom up, not the top down

So does this crisis create the conditions for transformational change? Is this the opportunity to dismantle the old thinking of the trickle-down model – tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation for the powerful and wage suppression for the rest? Certainly, COVID-19 has reminded us all of the importance of social safety nets, of a job for all paid at fair rates, and just how fragile our democracy could become if wealth, income and race inequality is left to the market. For Labor to win the next election, this is a time to be optimistic and idealistic. There is no doubt that government, working with the private sector, must have a much greater role in job creation and support, and in these circumstances, a new social contract may well attract the support that was lacking for Labor in the 2019 Federal election. What has been extraordinary in the early stages of this crisis has been to watch the Coalition reject, embrace and then reject again substantive fiscal stimulus as a means of political survival, rather than belief, conviction and substantive policy. One day it’s a $130 billion-plus fiscal stimulus, the next day it’s ‘we can’t spend too much borrowed money’, except of course if it’s for defence or big business tax cuts. Labor’s response must firstly embrace fiscal policy to eliminate labour under-utilisation and achieve true full employment. Full employment is a non-negotiable objective for the labour movement. There should be no higher goal for the Labor Party and the trade union movement in a time of high inequality than obtaining and sustaining full employment. Government must commit to guarantee every willing worker a job, not necessarily by hiring them directly, but by managing the overall economy through expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, trade and industrial policies and active labour market policies.

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Wayne Swan

This is not a recipe simply to expand the expenditure side of the budget, it is entirely consistent with budget repair, especially if it focuses on restoring fairness and efficiency to the tax and expenditure systems, two of the key pillars to build a fair and prosperous economy and society. Labor understands that without basic economic equality, legal equality, racial equality and gender equality are fictions. Economic equality is vital if these other worthy goals are to have real meaning. Good jobs are an essential element of freedom, and critical to any social democratic platform. Sustained full employment, underpinned by a generous minimum wage, is a central part of a decent, productive society. In order to succeed, the progressive movement has to be a broad movement. It has to include not just the progressive middle class, but also working people and their unions. It has to talk about jobs – who has them, what they pay and what conditions they come with. In the 2019 election, we put forward a comprehensive progressive agenda, but it lacked an overall narrative. That, combined with a category-five cyclone of abuse from News Limited, and over $80 million spent by mining magnate Clive Palmer, allowed the Liberals to run a tax scare campaign that falsely claimed lowand middle-income earners would lose as Labor closed gaping tax loopholes to spend on health, education and child care. Progressive taxation, decent wages and the social contract are the foundations that make aspiration possible. Without these underpinnings, aspiration is the dream most people have to tell their children to forget.  Progressive taxation has never been class warfare; it was created to counter the class warfare that ripped the world to pieces during and after the Great Depression. We simply cannot have

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A society built from the bottom up, not the top down

a prosperous economy when a shrinking share of the national income goes to working-class and middle-class Australians. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith once called conservatism ‘the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness’. And the constant attempts by conservatives to demonise mainstream tax policies as ‘anti-business’ is one social democrats cannot afford to let stand. The old-thinking trickle-downers claim that redirecting resources to the rich at the top of the income and wealth scale is the best chance of sharing with everybody else. A rising tide lifts all boats, they like to say. Being a surfer, I happen to know a bit about tides. Tides never rise from the top down. They rise from the bottom up. There has never been a better opportunity to dispel the myths of trickle-down economics and present a clear and compelling argument for a fairer and prosperous society. A society built from the bottom up, not from the top down.

THE HON. WAYNE SWAN served as the Treasurer of Australia for nearly six years, including three years as Deputy Prime Minister. He was one of the longest-serving finance ministers in the G20 and was awarded Euromoney Finance Minister of the Year in 2011. He is the author of Postcode: The splintering of a nation and The Good Fight: Six years, two prime ministers and staring down the great recession. He is the National President of the Australian Labor Party.

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FULL EMPLOYMENT ‘An unemployment rate of 2 per cent is too high for us and we are determined to reduce it.’ – Treasurer Bill Snedden, budget speech August 1972

STEPHEN KOUKOULAS

Even before the COVID-19 health crisis hit Australia, the economy and the labour market were in a fragile state. As the Morrison government put the bulk of its energy on economic policy in returning the budget to surplus, the unemployment rate in early 2020 was 5.25 per cent (around 720 000 people), the underemployment rate was just under 9 per cent (1 175 000 people)1 and annual wages growth was stuck at around 2 per cent, much where it had been for the prior three years, which were the weakest on record. The rate of annual economic growth was mired at a substandard 2 per cent2 and private sector business investment had dived below 12 per cent of GDP – to be a fraction above the lowest point in over 50 years. In simple terms, businesses were reluctant to invest and hire. The only bright spots in the economy were exports (iron ore,

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Full employment

coal, natural gas, education and travel), housing and solid growth in infrastructure spending, mainly at a state and territory government level. Then came COVID-19. The response of the government to the health crisis was broadly appropriate. Borders were closed and social distancing rules caused many businesses to close or severely curtail operations. Businesses reacted by sacking staff or requiring them to work zero hours in part due to the structure of the government’s JobKeeper package, but also because there was no work for these staff to perform. As the bulk of the community stayed at home, the economy fell into what will be the deepest downturn since the early-1930s Great Depression. Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) are forecasting the unemployment rate to reach around 10 per cent. In addition to this chilling statistic, a further 10 per cent of the workforce is expected to be underemployed. This is around 20 per cent of the labour force, or 2.75 million people without enough work or who will have given up looking for work. The labour force data for July 2020 (the latest available at the time of writing) showed 1 009 400 people or 7.5 per cent of the workforce unemployed with a further 1 511 800 or 11.2 per cent underemployed. A further 225 000 people dropped out of the labour force between February and July 2020 with the participation rate falling from 65.9 per cent to 64.7 per cent. The JobKeeper program affected these results, by boosting the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ calculation of underemployment while reducing the estimate of unemployment. Either way, the labour underutilisation rate has been between 18 to 20 per cent since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, which remains near a record high. That means around one in five Australians is either unemployed or looking for work or more hours. This human and economic tragedy is close to rivalling the

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Stephen Koukoulas

weakest point in the labour market in the 1930s Great Depression. It should be obvious that all arms of policy should be directed at getting these 2.75 million people back to work and working the hours they want. In other words, jobs are needed not only for those who have lost work as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, but for those whose labour was underutilised before the crisis hit. As part of the task of finding decent, secure and meaningful work, a target for the unemployment rate should be set and embraced. An interim and achievable goal should be to get the unemployment rate to 4 per cent, and when that is achieved, aim for 3 per cent. Underemployment should be 5 per cent or less in this economic environment. While Australia has not sustained such a rate for unemployment since the mid-1970s, prior to COVID-19 hitting the world, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany and Japan, to name a few, had unemployment rates at or well below 4 per cent. Sustained low unemployment is not one of those piein-the-sky goals for the economy. It can be achieved with a set of well targeted policies that are complementary and interlinked. Without a strong economy, full employment will always be elusive. Without the requisite skills and training, some of the population will remain unemployed or working in occupations below their potential. A strong economy needs to have a vibrant and dynamic private sector, where entrepreneurial flair is encouraged and firms are able to tap the local population for workers with the skills, expertise and talent needed in the 21st century. The government has a vital role to play in underpinning a strong economy, with spending enough to deliver high-quality health care, education, skills, training and vital physical infrastructure. This spending can and should be funded by a progressive income tax system, which itself is better for economic growth

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than the regressive income tax structure imposed by the Morrison government. Done well, government policy can ensure that every Australian who wants a job, has a job. Good policy also means that every Australian should have unfettered access to schemes that allow them to maximise their skills. From kindergarten, through the school system and then to university and trade and technical skills facilities, no-one should miss out on obtaining the knowledge, expertise and experience that will maximise their chances of getting a good job with a good income. It is a disgrace and an indictment of the education and training system that even before the COVID-19 crisis hit, with nearly 2 million Australians unemployed and underemployed, many firms were concerned about a ‘skills shortage’. In other words, the talent pool of the millions of people underutilised was not compatible with the demands of Australian businesses in the 21st century. It would be wrong to blame those individuals for their lack of skills. Rather, it is the education and training system that failed to allow them to get and then maintain the skill set needed in a modern, vibrant economy. It is also the case that the wages on offer were too low to attract workers, which created the perception of a shortage of workers and an over-reliance on temporary visa holders. And it can be argued that there is no such thing as a skills shortage – it is just that firms having difficulty finding workers are offering wages too low to attract talent. The impediments to full employment can be changed. It should not need to be said, but employment delivers incredible benefits to individuals. The correlation between having a job and wages on the one hand, and well being on the other, is well established and obvious. Full employment also yields significant benefits to government

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finances. Think of the government framing a budget when the economy is in full employment. Dole payments will be tiny compared with an economy with high unemployment. Strong income tax flows allow for decent levels of government funding for priorities on social issues and more broadly in the economy. This is a clear win-win scenario. Health outcomes also improve. There is a huge volume of academic literature that show a clear link between employment and health – people with a job are healthier, live longer and are less prone to mental health problems than those who are unemployed. The COVID-19 health crisis has shown, as was the case during the Global Financial Crisis, how government policy can underpin economic growth and with that, employment. While the Morrison government support and stimulus policies have been slow to roll out and too small given the depths of the recession and the associated hit to the labour market, they have nonetheless injected around $230 billion into the economy. This has provided some economic support, and without this government intervention, the labour market would have been in even worse shape. But it must be highlighted that the policy measures have been inadequate given that GDP is set to fall by around 6 per cent and 20 per cent of the workforce are underutilised. History will no doubt show that the economic policy response during the COVID-19 crisis was timid and poorly executed. It is a problem that pro-growth economic policies are usually confined to economic bad times when sound policies can deliver even more favourable economic outcomes in good times. This mental block for policy makers needs to change. When the economy is travelling well, which it will at some stage after the COVID-19 health crisis subsides, job-creating government economic support can and should be designed and implemented to ensure the 4 per cent target for the unemployment rate

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is met. Many of the ideas to get to the goal are well trodden, even if they have not been pursued with any vigour. Infrastructure is vital and this includes provision of plentiful and affordable renewable energy. It extends to water security with more desalination plants and dams. It covers affordable housing and transport, areas where there is market failure. Private sector firms simply do not have the investment time horizon or confidence in the investment returns to engage in such investments without government support. Communication links have to be world best for Australia to compete in the 21st century. The economy and labour market conditions will improve when gender issues and imbalances are addressed, as Rae Cooper and Sarah Mosseri detail in their chapter of this book. Childcare that is accessible and affordable boosts women’s participation in the paid workforce, which also means their incomes and superannuation balances rise accordingly. High incomes mean stronger economic growth. Aiming for higher pay levels for sectors where women make up a large proportion of the workforce not only recasts how highly a society values those professions, but works, with time, to close the superannuation gender pay gap. The professions that can be targeted by the government to get above average wage increases in the years ahead include teachers, nurses and carers – arguably the backbone of the response to the COVID-19 crisis. These types of measures, together with a skilled and educated workforce, will help the private sector to flourish. Energy policy, having skilled and healthy workers, plentiful water, people with decently paying and secure jobs who will be inclined to spend, and efficient transport are the basic ingredients to generate growth and deliver strong demand for labour. Getting the unemployment rate to 4 per cent is not easy but it is achievable. It will require bold and well targeted government

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policy change to allow the private sector to flourish, invest and employ.

STEPHEN KOUKOULAS has 30 years experience as an economist. He has worked in Treasury, global financial markets and banking, advised Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and now runs his own economic advisory firm, Market Economics. He is also the Economist in Residence at Economic Security for Women. Stephen is a frequent media commentator on economics and policy.

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SAFETY NET LINDA BURNEY

I came from a middle-class family. My parents were respected members of the community. My father was the president of the chamber of commerce. I earned ‘A’s at schools and took part in lots of extracurriculars. I did not have the sort of childhood that most people associate with recipients of Newstart. My parents instilled in me the importance of earning my own income, of working hard and pursuing an education. I have always been ambitious. As a child, I dreamed of graduating university and starting my own company. I wanted to change the world. I never imagined that I would be here, close to 30 and stuck in poverty. Jamie Neal addressing the Senate Community Affairs Committee, 6 November 2019

Our social safety net has become inadequate to protect vulnerable Australians from hardship. In the opening weeks of the 46th Parliament, Labor proposed and successfully established a Senate Inquiry into the Adequacy of Newstart – now referred to as JobSeeker – to shine a light on the challenges facing Australians

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in need of social security, and the consequences of an inadequate social safety net. The inquiry reminded us of the human experience of those who have fallen through the cracks of our economy. As the COVID-19 pandemic forced the nation into economic hibernation, more and more Australians were forced to confront this grim reality. I believe we are on the cusp of rethinking and reshaping our social welfare system. Our social safety net as we know it today was conceived in the wake of the Second World War. It began when Commonwealth social security was introduced in Australia by the Fisher Labor Government back in 1908, with the age pension.1 But social security for the unemployed was introduced by the Curtin Labor Government in 1945.2 Perhaps it was spurred by Australia’s experience in the Second World War – sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters, killed in action or returning home with wounds and scars. The horrors of war did not distinguish between class, profession or background. Australians were willing to accept a social safety net because we understood the random nature of misfortune. We understand that the loss of a job, or being unable to find one, is usually beyond one’s control.  Australia’s social security system is a proud Labor legacy. Workers can rest assured that should they ever find themselves out of work, the social safety net will be there to help them make ends meet. Workers should have the peace of mind that they will still be able to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads, pay the bills, and look after their children. More broadly, social security payments provide economic stability, fostering smoother transitions between peaks and troughs in the national economy.3 The social safety net allows Australians who have fallen out of work to continue to spend at local businesses, and therefore sustain local jobs.

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Three-quarters of a century after the introduction of unemployment benefits, our social security system has again proven its indispensability. The system is currently supporting almost 2 million Australians, many of whom have lost their jobs or are unable to work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Income support not only assists the unemployed. Many social security recipients are underemployed – they have a job, but do not earn enough to support themselves. Prior to the pandemic, approximately one-tenth of the Australian workforce was underemployed and almost one in five recipients of the Newstart allowance had a job. Even in the most favourable economic conditions, there will always be a proportion of the population that is underutilised at any given time. This reality is reflected in the fact that our national definition of full employment – which has been adopted by governments of both political persuasions – takes into account a natural rate of unemployment. If a proportion of the population will inevitably be out of work, surely we have a moral obligation to ensure that they can live with dignity.

The safety net and the pandemic Staying at home, self-isolating and social distancing have been crucial to our management of the pandemic. We’ve only been able to do this by reducing the economic barriers to self-isolation and social distancing – namely, loss of income due to not being able to attend work. We did not want to see people in this country forced into impossible choices between staying at home or putting food on the table. A temporary boost to our social safety net – the introduction of the Coronavirus Supplement as well as the JobKeeper

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wage subsidy – helped sustain Australians who were unable to work through self-isolation. We saw and continue to see other countries – where they do not have the level of social security we are afforded here in Australia – experience very different outcomes in their management of the pandemic.   From the very beginning, Labor and the unions called for a wage subsidy. This was critical to keeping employees connected with their employers through the shutdown. And for those who – despite the availability of the wage subsidy – were unable to hold on to their jobs, a boost to income support allowed them to make ends meet. Seeing the long queues form outside Centrelinks across the country in the early weeks of the shutdown reminded us of the randomness of misfortune. In a matter of weeks, millions of Australians lost their jobs or were unable to work. But pandemic or no pandemic, we know that the loss of a job, or being unable to find one, is often beyond an individual’s control. A number of demographic factors influence employment prospects as well as the period of time spent unemployed.

Women over 55 Women over 55 experience the most difficulty re-entering the workforce. This is primarily the result of age discrimination. Older women are also at greater risk of financial insecurity as a result of the gender pay gap, including in superannuation, and over-representation in lower-paid roles.4 The Senate inquiry into the adequacy of Newstart found that these women were more likely to spend more time in unpaid caring roles. Many missed out on a strong career pathway to sustain them. One woman shared her story with the inquiry.5 She was 64.

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She stayed at home to raise her two daughters alone. She returned to the workforce later but now finds herself unemployed, despite numerous attempts to get a job. She has modest rent expenses. She has no savings. She is in a ‘precarious and frightening financial position’. ‘If there is any movement in expenditure, a crisis in health, a rise in rent … I am in serious trouble’, she explained.

Education and career no safeguard Tertiary qualifications and a lengthy career are no sure safeguards from long-term unemployment later in life. Any one of us could find ourselves in financially precarious circumstances. One man who wrote to the inquiry had tertiary qualifications and had enjoyed full-time work in administrative roles, paying taxes for four decades.6 He had a modest mortgage from the bank. Despite this, he found himself unemployed and struggling to meet daily expenses at age 60.

Jobs, stability, dignity The base rate of the JobSeeker payment (formerly known as the Newstart allowance) is inadequate and needs to increase permanently. The introduction of the Coronavirus Supplement, which effectively temporarily doubled the rate of JobSeeker, was an admission that the payment was too low. However, the national conversation about what our social security system looks like after the pandemic must be broader than the rate of JobSeeker. The present crisis provides an opportunity for Australia to recalibrate our social safety net by: 1 Getting Australians back into the workforce as quickly as possible, by keeping workers connected to and engaged

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with the jobs market, as well as reducing barriers to finding work; 2 facilitating economic stability, by providing an income buffer and supporting consumer spending during periods of weak growth and rising unemployment; and 3 above all, allowing Australians to live with dignity during transitional periods of unemployment and hardship, by ensuring the rate of working age allowances are adequate. Our social security system should sustain our workforce, stabilise our economy, and provide dignity to Australians who experience periods of vulnerability and hardship. In this pandemic, our nation is at a crossroads. This is an opportunity for us to recalibrate our social security system to meet broader social and economic objectives. With almost 2 million Australians now receiving unemployment assistance, many are wondering what the future has in store for them. The random and unpredictable nature of the pandemic, makes it harder to sustain the rhetoric that was being used against unemployed Australians just months ago. Catchphrases like, ‘if you have a go, you get a go’, ‘the best form of welfare is a job’, and the Prime Minister insinuating that people were choosing welfare over jobs framed social security recipients as morally culpable for their unemployment. And he has continued to reinforce this false narrative as he attempts to soften the political ground for a snap-back of social security payments. The Prime Minister has cited nothing more than anecdotal examples as the basis for his claims. The reality of the current job market is that there are 13 Australians on JobSeeker for every one job vacancy. For years, the government has refused to increase Newstart or even acknowledge it was inadequate. It has foreshadowed a national rollout of income management, which is about

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punishment, not jobs. It remains committed to forcing Australians – some in their 50s and 60s who have worked all their lives but found themselves made redundant – to undergo drug tests by urinating in a cup as a condition of receiving support. The government still wants to double the liquid asset waiting period, which would see people eat into their savings before they can access Centrelink. For four long anxious and fearful years, it has pursued hundreds of thousands of innocent Australians with false or inflated social security debts, as part of its infamous Robodebt scheme. Over the past decade, the government’s strategy on social security has been to make it so painful and so difficult that Australians just give up. For the more vulnerable, this means dropping off the social security system altogether; falling into the vicious poverty trap; and reliant on emergency relief providers and charity organisations, which are already under pressure.

Sustaining our workforce Jobs, and getting Australians back into the workforce, should remain a core objective of our social safety net. The social security system should not only provide interim relief for Australians out of work, it should function to keep workers connected to and engaged with the jobs market. The concept of ‘mutual obligation’ functions to keep social security recipients engaged with the jobs market through providing employment support services and requiring recipients to complete a minimum number of job applications. In recent years, it has been weaponised to punish income support recipients. Under the Liberal–National Government, mutual obligation has become more a mechanism through which to kick recipients off their payments, and less about assisting them in re-entering the

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workforce. The base rate of JobSeeker is so low it is a barrier to Australians finding work, with many unable to afford an internet connection to undertake job searches, or transport to attend job interviews, or the cost of studying to upgrade their qualifications. The concept of mutual obligation cuts both ways. The vast majority of recipients of unemployment benefits do the right thing. They do their utmost to re-enter the workforce. No one in their right mind wants to depend on unemployment benefits. But the government needs to acknowledge that it too has a role to play in ensuring the jobs are there, and that quality employment services help Australians find quality jobs that best reflect their skill sets: jobs they are more likely to remain in, in the long term. The social security system needs to be flexible, adequate and work to complement the other economic levers of government.

Stabilising the economy The social security system can foster stability and smoother economic cycles, by supplementing consumer spending during periods of weak growth and rising unemployment. Income support recipients are more likely to spend and less likely to save their payments. This means more money is spent at local businesses, meaning in turn that local businesses have more money to spend on wages and jobs, employing more people. All Australians feel the impact of a downturn. We feel it in our lack of job security and stagnant wages. Transfer payments – cash payments provided to individuals and families on the basis of need – soften this impact. Our transfer system is every bit as important as our tax system, in a fair and prosperous country such as Australia. The tax system is about who is able to pay, and the threshold at which they pay. And the transfer system is about who requires assistance, and the threshold at which they are

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eligible for support. As a nation, we have both a moral as well as an economic imperative to support Australians who find themselves out of work.

Dignity for all Australians Above all else, the social safety net should exist to provide vulnerable Australians with dignity, and to protect them from poverty. Increasing JobKeeper permanently is vital because vulnerable income support recipients are making impossible choices between accommodation, food, health or medical expenses, gas and electricity, transport and telecommunications. They are faced with daily dilemmas, which often result in meeting immediate needs at the expense of long-term needs. The Senate inquiry into the adequacy of Newstart was presented with instances in which people skipped meals or were forced into nutritionally poor diets that had long-term physical health implications – affecting the growth and development of children, and exacerbating chronic illness in adults. Many income support recipients are unable to afford to participate in and maintain their social networks. Social networks are not simply essential for mental health, they are a vital source of employment opportunities. The poverty trap deprives people of the means of participating in society and in their community. It compounds the risk of trapping people in a vicious cycle of poverty and long-term welfare dependency.

Moving forward The discussion about how we reshape our social security system for a post-pandemic world must be broader than the issue of the rate of JobSeeker. We must focus on how the system can help

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workers re-enter the workforce. This could include boosting and improving access to training and employment services, placing workers in quality and skill-appropriate roles; identifying public works priorities that can deliver long local employment opportunities, as well as harnessing opportunities coming out of the COVID-19 crisis to rebuild and strengthen Australian supply chains and capacity; and creating fiscal settings that can foster greater employee retention. We must also ask, how can the social security system help sustain consumer spending and jobs during periods of downturn? What role can it play in stabilising the economic cycle from peak to trough and back? The economic hibernation brought about by this pandemic reminds all Australians just how quickly and dramatically circumstances can change. When our circumstances do change, Australians should have the peace of mind knowing there is a strong and adequate social safety net to catch us.

LINDA BURNEY is the Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services and Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians. As a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation, Linda was the first Aboriginal person to be elected to the NSW Parliament and the first Aboriginal woman to serve in the Australian House of Representatives. Charles Sturt University awarded her, its first Aboriginal graduate, an Honorary Doctorate in Education in 2002.

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WHAT NOW FOR YOUNG PEOPLE? LACHLAN BEEL AND ELI SCOTT

Recessions hit young people hard. The early data we’ve seen during this recession confirms that young people are already the worst affected financially. In May alone, more than 100 000 people under 25 joined the unemployment queue – representing approximately 45 per cent of all jobs lost; and between March and June, we saw more than 230 000 people in this age group leave the labour market. Youth participation is now at its lowest rate on record; and one in five young people are either not employed, in training or studying at all. We’ve seen this pattern in previous downturns, resulting in deep scarring of the labour market. A business can take years to grow enough to put on extra staff, but job losses are the work of minutes. After 29 years of continuous growth, Australia lost 822 000 jobs in just April and May 20201 and has surpassed 1 million unemployed for the first time in our history.2 A recent report by the Productivity Commission found that, during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the employment prospects for young people took a pronounced dive – and only recovered a decade later. The same thing happened in the recession of the mid-1970s, where youth unemployment shot up from 4 per

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cent to 15 per cent, and that of the 1990s. According to social wellbeing surveys, the people who came of age in those years reported that they were still struggling even decades after the recession was over. These scars run deep. Young people are being forced to bear the brunt of a failing economy while also being robbed of security in their retirement. The Australian Taxation Office revealed that between April and July, people under the age of 20 have withdrawn on average $2813 from their super funds – more than half the total balance for an average 20–24-year-old.3 At the average annual rate of return of super funds since the GFC of 8.3 per cent and working until the age of 65, that means they will be $113 513 worse off. The policy decisions being made now have impacts today and also well into the future. We need to get them right. Young Australians are graduating from high school and university, starting apprenticeships, applying for jobs, thinking about their career options. The world we’re entering seems very uncertain right now. Here, we – 17-year-old Lachlan Beel, until recently a machining apprentice in South East Queensland, and Eli Scott, a recently graduated mechanical engineer – tell our stories.

The apprentice (Lachlan Beel) Growing up on a farm, I always loved playing with engines. We also had animals on the acreage – horses and chickens – and I loved them too. But it was engines that always interested me most, and they were everywhere on our farm. Engines in cars, engines in tractors, engines in bikes. I loved them all. One of the happiest memories from my childhood was fixing an old FJ Cruiser with my dad. It was a big job. We swapped the engine for a new one, and swapped the chassis too. I was still young, so I mostly just handed Dad the right tools, but the feeling

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was still amazing. There’s nothing like turning something old into something new with your own hands. When I got a bit older, and reached the end of my school years, I started thinking about what I wanted to do when I left. What I wanted to do for a career. I knew that I wanted to work with my hands, and that anything with engines would be a bonus. By the time I got to year 11, I was ready to move on. My careers adviser told me about a few apprenticeships that were going in nearby businesses. One was as a machinist. The company wanted to recruit a local kid around Ipswich, so they asked the school if anyone was interested. I put my hand up and got an interview. After a bit of a wait, I got the job. I was really excited about it. Machining is a precise trade. It can get complicated, but it basically involves turning a larger bit of metal into a smaller bit of metal. You work the metal down so it can fit a certain size, which then makes a machine go. In my time at the company, we made parts for Volvo cars, which was very cool. We also made lots of bits for the mining industry in Queensland. You would be surprised at all the incredible things you can create with a piece of metal. I learned new things every day in my apprenticeship. The workshop had a great atmosphere. The old boys really welcomed me into the fold. It was an old-fashioned environment. We all mucked around and had a laugh. As the youngest in the shop, I copped a bit of stick – but I gave back my fair share too. I enjoyed going in to work every day. I looked forward to seeing everyone and improving my trade. The start of this year was really slow at work. We weren’t getting many orders in. The older workers said that they hadn’t seen it so slow in years. To be honest, I was starting to get a bit

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worried about the company myself, even before I’d heard about the coronavirus. The lockdowns hurt businesses everywhere. But when COVID-19 started spreading in Australia, it pushed us over the edge. With orders falling, the company let go a bunch of workers, even some of the guys who had been there for 20 years. Many of them had families to look after. Losing their jobs was devastating for them. It was all they’d known for decades. I thought I might be protected as an apprentice, but soon learned that I was also being let go. The business’s human resources person let me know, one year into what was supposed to be a fouryear apprenticeship. To be honest, it was gut-wrenching. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but it still hurts. It still feels a bit personal. I loved my apprenticeship – and I never wanted to lose it. Looking for another job has been really tough. I’ve been applying for them every night. The other day I applied for an apprenticeship that was based three hours away, in Gympie. Fifty-two people applied for the same position. With those kinds of numbers, you have to get lucky. It’s been the same in all the jobs I’ve looked at. I still think that, if I try hard enough, something will come up. But it doesn’t feel like that sometimes. The longer you go unemployed, the more you start to think people are looking at you funny. Like there’s something wrong with you. My union rep has been helping me search, but it’s hard out there. I’ve started thinking about my other options, if nothing comes up locally. I want to stay with an apprenticeship, so I can leave with a solid trade behind me. My TAFE qualification is also in fitting and turning – so I’m open to that as well. But it might get to the point where I need to move away to the mines. I’m making money with odd jobs, but I can’t afford to be out of work for too long.

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I’ve also been thinking about what I want to do in the long term. If I can help it, I don’t want to find myself in this position again. When you lose your job, you lose a bit of control. You have to wait on other people to give you a chance. In the long run, I would rather work for myself. I would love to own my own business. My dad and brother are also qualified in the same field – and it would be amazing to open a shop together. We could help fix motors for the farms around here, in south-east Queensland. I’m still young, so I don’t usually think too far into the future, but one day it would be great to have a family and my own home. I look at my parents, who have built a great life, and want something similar in the end. But to get to that point, I need a solid trade behind me. An apprenticeship is the best way to do that – so I’ll keep looking and hopefully get lucky. But that will be a lot easier if the economy picks up and businesses start hiring again. I’m not an expert on politics, but the government should find ways to help create jobs. We need to get people back to work. To be honest, I don’t expect a lot from politics. I watch the news when I can, but I don’t pay that much attention to parliament or the prime minister. But I do want them to provide the basics: an economy where, if you work hard, you get what you deserve. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

The graduate (Eli Scott) There is never a good time to be unemployed. Jobs give us meaning and purpose and a way to contribute to society. They provide us with community, stability and routine. Losing that at any time is hard. Facing that on top of a pandemic has sparked a nearexistential crisis centred on my professional life. But what my experience has shown me is that the issues are deeper than

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COVID-19. The economy was stagnating before this crisis, reducing jobs and limiting innovation. There is a gap between education and industry, making the transition to employment slow and difficult. This, along with the lack of government support and services that focus on the wrong issues, make a trifecta of problems that the pandemic has only made worse. However, times of extreme difficulty are also great opportunities for change, and by addressing these issues we can emerge from this time with both a stronger society and a more robust economy. I feel like I have met my end of the social contract – I studied hard, obtained a STEM degree in mechanical engineering, pursued a technical vocation and expected to follow an innovative career that boosted the nation. It is hard not to feel let down when I met a job market of mediocrity and struggled to find an entry-level job or ongoing employment. Most engineering jobs available require at least five years of experience, so it is difficult to get your foot in the door. Gone are the days of family-based apprenticeships training up the next generation, but nothing has taken their place and a disconnect has appeared between education and industry. Graduates and junior engineers need to be valued by companies because they lead to long-term stability and viability of a business. An innovative and forward-thinking workforce values ideas from young and old alike, and embraces mentoring and development. While we re-evaluate the way we will work after the pandemic, we should also re-evaluate the way we support and develop our workers, and build options for entrylevel engagement. Innovation is more than a slogan, or a study incentive. It is a vision for Australia to lead in global issues and be at the cutting edge of technology, and then make investments that reflect that. If the government wants to invest in gas, great! Let’s make it hydrogen gas. Let’s be the first nation to do it commercially, perfect its

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production and export not just the product but the expertise and associated technology. Let’s be bold enough to move away from the easy, short-term options that we are running out of. Getting ahead of that trend will net financial gains for decades, be a boon for the labour market and once again position Australia as an innovator to be respected on the world stage. Higher education is one of our best assets, but there is a gap in commercialising our intellectual property, which limits jobs and opportunities. We might never mass-produce items again, but there is a space for small-scale, high-value manufacturing that commercialises our research. Areas such as plastics, recycling and waste management are growing issues domestically and globally, and our solutions could be exported all over the world. Not to mention the positive psychological impacts on people working on a globally meaningful project. This is just one area in which we have the chance to be the innovators and manufacturers of the next generation of high-end products if we invest in commercialising our ideas, creating more job opportunities along the way. The way we talk about unemployment benefits is fundamentally flawed. An obsessive focus on a dollar amount (which definitely needs to be permanently raised) obscures the real issue – helping people find a job. I naively signed up to Centrelink because I thought they would help me find a job. Nothing could be further from the truth, and participation has just become an additional burden. But imagine a system which had as its primary focus long-term job placement, not superficial accountability. Imagine a system that celebrated placing people in jobs that matched their skills and set them up for long-term growth. That system would lead to higher incomes, greater tax revenues and better mental health outcomes, leading to massive gains to the economy. Unexpected things happen in life, but knowing there is

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a supportive social safety net to help in times of change builds a stronger, more resilient workforce. Australia is the lucky country, and a reductive conversation on employment does it a disservice. We have a great opportunity for a shift in thinking and to get excited about solving this century’s problems. We have the resources to invest in the future as well as survive the present and I hope we use that to build and develop a country that leaves an innovative, positive impact on the world.

LACHLAN BEEL is a 17-year-old apprentice from Queensland. He grew up on his family’s farm in Lower Mount Walker, just outside of Ipswich. Lachlan’s passion for fixing cars and machines led him to pursue an apprenticeship at a local foundry. Like thousands of other young people, Lachlan lost his apprenticeship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He hopes to finish his apprenticeship and one day own his own business. ELI SCOTT is a mechanical engineer with a passion for product design and sustainability. She divides her free time between her garden, her family, and chatting with friends about how they can make the world a better place.

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WELCOME HOME, DAD ANNABEL CRABB

Women’s working lives are shaped by family. On the charted trend-maps of women’s engagement in the paid workforce, the crenellations of family are clearly visible: a drop-off from fulltime work during the childbearing years, a fanning-out into parttime work as women incorporate family responsibilities into their careers. Men’s working lives are far more consistent. The average man’s working life in Australia coughs into action in the late teens or early twenties, revs into full-time work relatively quickly and then stays there until retirement. One cannot establish, looking at a graph of Australian men’s involvement in paid work, at what age parenthood typically arrives, or at what age a man’s own parents become frail and need help. Across Australian history, the only factors which have seriously bent male employment patterns out of their staid shape are external ones. Wars, for example. Recessions. Disruptive technologies. This phenomenon – women’s behaviour powered by the domestic, men’s by the macroeconomic – is a measure of how deeply gendered our expectations are in this country, despite our claims to modernity. And it explains how slow men have been to

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adopt flexible work, or parental leave. In the final chapter of my 2014 book, The Wife Drought, I argued hopefully that the digital revolution might (as did the industrial revolution before it) result in some long-term change in the lives of fathers. Technology makes extraordinary things possible. I spoke recently with Alex Flint, an American-born neurointensivist and stroke specialist who moved to Sydney with his Australian wife and two children in November 2019. In the old days, of course, such a move would have triggered the process of having Alex’s American clinical qualifications recognised in Australia, a rigmarole in itself apt to induce neural haemorrhage. Instead, Alex now works from his inner-west Sydney home, taking the night emergency-room shift as a stroke specialist at a range of Californian hospitals. ‘Imagine you’re having a stroke right now (God forbid) and you come into the emergency room,’ he said. ‘You’re seen by the ER physician and nurses and in addition to that, this cart is wheeled up to the side of your bed with a screen in it and in that screen is a doctor. Do you need a clotbusting medication? Do you get a procedure? That’s my face, and my voice, and I examine you. We’re able to interact, and I roll with you over to the CAT scanner and interact with the technician, and then with a neuro-radiologist.’ Alex used to work in one Los Angeles hospital. From Sydney, he now works in twenty-three. The advantage for the hospitals is that they have a willing and able specialist who can be available for graveyard shifts, as he’s coming from a different time zone. ‘If you’re doing that job, it ordinarily means being up all night and then switching back to doing your day job,’ he explained. ‘It’s much more of a ding on the person than it would be just working that number of hours during the day.’ Alex is, of course, an outlier. Not all jobs can be done like

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that, and indeed he cannot work via telemedicine as a neurointensivist: ‘It involves drilling holes in people’s heads, and you can’t yet do that via robot’. But even ten years ago, his current working arrangement would have sounded impossible. Technology is an amazing thing. And yet, technology itself hasn’t driven the change in working men’s lives that I’d hoped it would. Little did I know that an unspecified person eating a bat sandwich in Wuhan would eventually provide the trigger for workplace change that wholesale technological revolution and decades of lobbying and stressed-out wives proved incapable of generating. The changes effected on every level of life during the COVID19 months have been extraordinary. Employers who never would have considered having their workforces operate remotely were obliged to move to 100 per cent work-from-home models in double-time. Breweries started making hand sanitiser, restaurants started doing takeaway. Whole families – children included – found themselves working and learning from home. Rush hour disappeared. The workplace and the home – traditionally separate entities – merged into one as children and pets popped in and out of Zoom calls and workmates caught intriguing glimpses of each other’s home decor. A leadership conference at which I was due to speak instead became a three-part online session for several hundred remote-working employees. I noticed the camaraderie between senior and junior staff at this organisation. The junior staff loved the democratic daily contact, and the fact that in the background of a senior executive’s Zoom frame, his washing basket was always visible, the level of its contents indicative of his state of household organisation at any given time. Suddenly, a significant chunk of the workforce was home together. No government or employer initiative could possibly have brought about this radical change as swiftly as the pandemic did.

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I checked in with Dorothy Hisgrove from PwC, the vast majority of whose Australian employees worked remotely during the first-wave lockdown. ‘We are on the precipice of significant change’, she told me. ‘I think [COVID-19] will normalise working from home like nothing ever has before.’ Hisgrove reported ‘no dip in productivity’ during the lockdown, even though the PwC workforce of more than 8000 people was entirely remotely based. And one of the unexpected consequences of the enforced flexible working regime, she says, was a renewed confidence among the firm’s existing part-time workforce. ‘Obviously, we’re trying our level best to make sure that our part-time community is valued; we try to send the signal every year that they’re no less favourably treated’, she said. ‘Nonetheless there is a societal view that part-timers are less important.’ Hisgrove says the experience of the COVID-19 lockdown served to normalise flexible working, even for those who had resisted it, fearing the judgment of their peers or leaders. ‘I’m confident looking at our own results that more men will step up and ask for more flexibility. They’ve finally had an opportunity to experience life, connect with their children and live without that commute time.’ The Prime Minister’s national instruction in March that those who could should work from home did something interesting for men: it gave them a reason to work more flexibly that had nothing to do with family – an opportunity to test out the feasibility of the model without any intrusive gender stereotyping creeping in. Rather like when women flooded into factories and farms in the Second World War simply because no one else was available to do the work, the gender barriers of the 21st century were simply obliterated by a larger and more urgent force. Men didn’t work from home worrying that their boss would think them less committed, or whether a competitor was using their absence to seek advantage; they were there because everyone was there.

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Suit Tie Stroller, an Australian fathers’ group lobbying for more flexibility for dads, conducted a survey which asked fathers how the pandemic – and living in lockdown – had affected their lives and family relationships. Across several hundred responses, a staggering 84 per cent reported that they either ‘might’ or ‘would’ make significant life decisions to change the way they worked in order to improve and build upon the time they spent with their children, as a result of the lockdown. Only 3 per cent of respondents said they wanted life to resume the way it was before COVID-19. ‘It has changed me as a person, enabled me to be the person I wanted to be’, said father-of-three Roshan. ‘I struggled with this in the past as I couldn’t fit it into the old system. I find that a lot of dads don’t actually know how to engage at home. It’s actually easier to “bring home the bacon” by slogging away with long hours at work. It’s enabled me to be who I wanted to be all along.’ Father-of-two Adam reported that the lockdown had ‘completely changed’ his priorities. ‘While before I would never really consider working at home a necessity, now I do’, he said. ‘I am not going to compromise the focused time I have with my kids to respond to a message or an email, when before I would have in a heartbeat.’ To a researcher with a long-term interest in freeing fathers from the bonds of the workplace, these are exciting sentiments to hear. It’s important to take into account, however, that the online survey conducted by Suit Tie Stroller was an opt-in affair, circulated among like-minded dads who were keen to communicate their experiences. Like much of the research done during COVID19, it has depended on respondents identifying themselves. University of Melbourne researchers Lyn Craig and Brendan Churchill ventured into the field during the first COVID-19 lockdown in a study of nearly 3000 respondents. They asked for information

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about how child care and housework were being managed within families. The vast majority of responses were from women. Among two-income families, the researchers found 72 per cent of fathers and 69 per cent of mothers worked from home during the pandemic. The presence of adults and children in the home instead of at work or school dramatically increased the amount of housework and child care required; on average, men increased time spent on these by 53 per cent and women increased theirs by 48 per cent. Women still did more – around eight and a half hours a day, compared to six and a half for men – but the gap shrank a little due to the increased effort by men. Men had a taste of the juggle, too. Craig and Churchill report that while 11 per cent of men and 23 per cent of women described themselves as ‘always’ feeling rushed pre-COVID-19, the lockdown significantly evened out that sense of overwhelm. During the crisis, 24 per cent of men and 27 per cent of women ‘always’ felt rushed. But strangely, there was another layer of respondents: a group of men and women who felt substantially less stressed under lockdown. Pre-COVID-19, 40 per cent of men and 51 per cent of women said they ‘often’ felt rushed. But Craig and Churchill found that lockdown roughly halved those numbers; only 24 per cent of men and women often felt rushed. The researchers posited that one reason for this could be the disappearance of the commute and the temporary suspension of after-school activities, which contribute to daily family bottlenecks.  To be honest, I was disappointed at the initial results of the great working-from-home experiment that COVID-19 presented so unexpectedly. It is clear that the release of workforce pressures on men to be physically at work is not enough – or not right away, at any rate – to substantially rebalance the presumptions about who takes the greater responsibility for work in the home. During the lockdown, new questions among families working from home

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(Whose job is it to juggle their own work with the supervision of remote-schooling children? Who works in the quiet area of the home, and who works from the kitchen table?) seem to have been answered, according to available studies, along orthodox gender lines. But the sudden and enforced acceptability of flexible work – in circumstances that have nothing to do with gender – has to be, I think, a significant step. And for men whose entire experience of work and family has involved leaving the second all day, every day, in order to service the needs of the first, the pandemic has provided front-row seats to the spectacle of what it takes to keep a household running. Unpaid work in the home that was once invisible is invisible no more. So many changes have happened at once during the COVID19 crisis that it’s difficult to piece together consistent conclusions about what it means for the future. Of the recession’s gendered effects (it differs from previous recessions in that the industries hit hardest are feminised ones, unlike those recorded in the 1980s and 1990s in which blue-collar men were the most common casualties), more will be known in time. But the most significant likely effect of this time on the workplace is that flexibility is here to stay. A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey indicated that most workers favoured permanently adopting a ‘hybrid’ model in which they worked from home for part of the week, and large employers are now alive to the ancillary advantages of flexible workforces: greater loyalty and engagement, and lower expenditure on capacity office space. Crisis is never pleasant, but it can bring about epiphany; for many employers, fears about the productivity cost of flexible workers have been allayed in the most dramatic of ways. The opportunity here is for both governments and the private sector to build on the insights the pandemic has provided. While employers benefit from having happier, more engaged employees,

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governments can benefit from the reduction in pollution and congestion that comes with the easing of the commuter rush hour.  But there is a significant note of caution in all this. The pandemic has proven to be a magnifier of both advantage and disadvantage. For those secure in their employment and able to work flexibly, it has opened up new possibilities of how to live. The pandemic has torn apart our presumptions about how work can and can’t be done. But for those in precarious work, it has made life even more insecure. And for those in jobs that can’t be done remotely, the pandemic has opened up a new fault line. Researchers Alison Pennington and Jim Stanford calculated, in an April paper for the Australia Institute, that about 30 per cent of the Australian workforce could feasibly work from home. Those workers had an average weekly income of $1560, compared to the average $1259 paid to those who could not feasibly work from home. In the era of COVID-19, being able to work from home means more than just being able to see more of your family and finally get around to making sourdough from scratch. It means the ability to shelter from contagion, and enjoy continuity of employment and a better rate of pay. The flexible work revolution works for people who have communications or office jobs; who undertake their business using phones or computers. It doesn’t work so well, ironically, for the very workers who came to be known, during the COVID-19 crisis, as ‘essential workers’, for an extremely good and literal reason. Health workers, retail and hospitality workers, drivers, emergency workers, police, cleaners – these are among the groups who cannot do their jobs online or via Zoom. The work they do is indispensable to our survival, and yet they commonly have access neither to the benefits of flexible work nor to the compensations of higher pay. As time passes, this divide will become wider. As Australia reviews its industrial relations mainframe,

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some formalised recognition of and compensation for the risks and disadvantages assumed by such workers is an essential part of future planning. If this year is our opportunity to revisit our assumption of what work is, and where it can feasibly be done, then let us not miss the chance to evaluate truthfully the value to all of us of the work that is essential, whether it’s unpaid labour of (predominantly) women in the home, or the low-paid labour of those who assumed a disproportionate personal risk during the pandemic to keep others safe and fed.1

ANNABEL CRABB is an ABC presenter and writer who has covered Australian politics for 20 years. She is the author of The Wife Drought, a best-selling account of women and work in Australia. Her Quarterly Essay about Malcolm Turnbull, Stop at Nothing, won a Walkley Award and was expanded and republished as Stop at Nothing: The life and adventures of Malcolm Turnbull. Her most recent book is Men at Work: Australia’s parenthood trap.

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WOMEN’S WORK RAE COOPER AND SARAH MOSSERI

Very few Australians have fully escaped the devastating health, economic and social consequences of COVID-19, but not everyone has felt its impact equally. Women’s pandemic experiences have been particularly fraught. Prior to 2020’s unprecedented outbreak, women already faced numerous work hurdles. Our own research demonstrates that women are crowded into lowerpaid, insecure jobs, face persistent and debilitating discrimination and harassment at work, and struggle to meet unrelenting work demands while also being saddled with the lion’s share of unpaid household labour. COVID-19 has amplified women’s precarious position in paid work and threatened to cement their outsized role at home. It is now critical to address the systematic barriers to women’s labour market success, which have been laid bare by the pandemic, in order to pursue a vibrant and equitable recovery.

Women as the essential frontline Nurses and other healthcare workers are the obvious heroes of the COVID-19 crisis, just as firefighters were during the disastrous Australian bushfire season of 2019 and 2020. Many other

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frontline workers – including teachers, early childhood educators, aged care professionals and cleaners – have joined their ranks, providing critical services and care to our eldest, youngest and most vulnerable citizens. These occupations have one thing in common: they are highly feminised. According to government and industry data, women account for 88 per cent of registered nurses and midwives, 85 per cent of aged care workers and 96 per cent of early childhood educators.1 Despite the critical social and economic value of the tasks undertaken by this workforce, employees in these sectors are undervalued, underpaid, and a great many are employed on insecure contacts. They are also jobs which, for the most part, cannot be done remotely – putting these workers at greater risk of infection than those able to work from home. Women also played a critical role in keeping Australia’s important institutions running during this time. Supermarkets, where women make up more than half of the workforce, have remained open throughout the pandemic. Unfortunately, while these workers helped to keep family pantries stocked, they also suffered substantial customer abuse, including being the targets of customers’ deliberate spitting and coughing.2 Adding insult to injury, this increased workload and exposure to illness occurred at the same time as retail workers’ penalty rates were removed and as campaigns to improve the retail minimum wage were put on hold.

Women’s lost work and wages Whereas the last great shock to our economy, the Global Financial Crisis, more acutely affected men, COVID-19 has hit women harder. In April and May, over three-quarters of a million Australians lost their jobs, and of this enormous group, over 50 per

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cent are women.3 Women have lost more work hours and more jobs, and therefore more pay, during this time. As evidenced in the charts below, women’s employment dropped by 1.6 per cent more than men’s employment, and their hours dropped by 2.1 per cent more than men’s hours, in the two-month period from late March 2020 to late May 2020.4 Change in Employment March 2020 to May 2020 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8

Change in Hours Worked March 2020 to May 2020 0 -2 -4 -6 -8

-5.7

-10 -7.3

Men

-9.3

-12

Women

-11.4

Men

Women

As a result, women’s underutilisation rate – which reflects those unemployed and underemployed as a percentage of the labour force – is now sitting at an unprecedented 21.0 per cent, with men at 19.4 per cent.5 Given that Australian women walked into the COVID-19 crisis well behind men in what they earn, suffering a (best-case scenario) 14 percentage point gap on full-time ordinary earnings, this loss of hours, jobs and pay poses serious challenges for women’s long-term financial stability.6 This leaves many women in a perilous financial state and suffering higher rates of financial distress than men. On 22 March 2020, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that Australians would be allowed emergency access to superannuation funds. Early analysis suggests that the

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women who have accessed these savings have used the funds to cover family essentials like food and household bills, but men were more likely to be spending on discretionary items,7 pointing to a gendered gap in COVID-19-induced acute poverty. Industry superannuation leaders have already sounded the alarm that emergency raiding of super accounts by women will exacerbate the retirement saving gender gap that was already so stark.8

Women’s extra unpaid work at home Before COVID-19, women in heterosexual households with children already did double the hours of unpaid domestic work that men did.9 This difference matters, especially in the context of all-consuming workplace practices and norms that stigmatise and penalise workers seeking to manage often competing work and family demands. Early studies suggest this gender gap widened during the crisis as a result of, among other things, the mass movement of children to distance schooling and the relocation of work to home for many family members. As a result of COVID-19, mothers spent an extra hour each day on unpaid housework and three and a half extra hours on childcare. Fathers also increased their hours in these activities, but expended less effort, putting in 45 extra minutes on housework and slightly less than three additional hours on childcare during the crisis.10 Without men taking responsibility for their half of housework and childcare, the gender revolution is stalled, hurting women, families and, we would argue, the Australian economy.

Where do we go from here? The COVID-19 public health crisis and the related economic contractions and shifts have widened the gap between men and

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women in both paid and unpaid work. Women are the majority of the COVID-19 unemployed; they are the heroes of the frontline and they have struggled to meet challenges presented by Australians working and learning from home. One would think that these facts would impel government and other stakeholders to construct gender-aware recovery strategies. Sadly, the response to date has been disappointing. Despite some evidence that the Australian public is recognising the value of feminised professions and occupations and their role in the COVID-19 period, government stimulus has a key focus on helping male-dominated jobs ‘snap back’.11 So far, billions of dollars have been earmarked for ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure and housing construction projects in the hope that the spend will stimulate employment in this overwhelmingly male-dominated area of employment. In contrast, investments in highly feminised sectors, which represent some of the biggest areas of employment growth,12 have had government support pulled back and earlier than expected.13 We would advocate for an alternative approach: invest in feminised work. According to a recent analysis conducted by two leading international economists, the employment gains of post-pandemic investments in the care sector are projected to have higher employment returns than similar investments in construction, where much of Australia’s projects have been targeted.14 Investing 1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the care sector, which includes health, education, childcare, aged care and disability care, would produce a 1.7 per cent increase in the employment rate, almost double the 0.9 per cent increase that would be produced by a similar investment in construction. Additionally, of the jobs generated through care sector investments, women would be expected to fill 79 per cent of them, compared

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to only filling 11 per cent of the jobs directly created through investments in construction. Given these projections and the fact that women have been at the forefront of job loss in 2020, investing in feminised work is critical to Australia’s economic recovery. Relatedly, COVID-19 has been a social crisis. Thus, recovery strategies must address the nation’s social infrastructure, as opposed to its physical one. Early-stage pandemic investments in childcare were helpful, but more recent cuts in the childcare stimulus threaten the continued survival of childcare centres, risking greater job loss among care workers, creating barriers to labour market engagement for parents and reducing families’ disposable incomes. These unfortunate effects are likely to reverberate across the economy, hindering Australia’s post-pandemic rebuilding efforts. A gender lens must be applied to the COVID-19 recovery. This must build in measures to help women recover from the crisis of 2020. Doing so will benefit not only women workers, but will be vital for the health of the community, for building and leveraging much-needed social infrastructure, and will provide a strong and inclusive economic return.

PROFESSOR RAE COOPER AO is Professor of Gender, Work and Employment Relations at the University of Sydney Business School. She is an editor of the Journal of Industrial Relations, a member of the executive of the International Labor and Employment Relations Association, and has published widely on all aspects of women’s working lives. Rae was made a member of the Order of Australia in recognition of her contributions to Australian workplace policy and practice.

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DR SARAH MOSSERI is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School. Her research examines the production and maintenance of gender-based inequalities at work, and she applies a gender lens to topics such as work–family conflict, workplace culture and the future of work.

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AUSTRALIAN STORIES CATE BLANCHETT AND KIM WILLIAMS

Arts and culture help tell the story of who we are as a nation, where we come from and where we are going. Arts and culture support community cohesion and wellbeing, economic growth, tourism and regional development, and education and skills development, and promote our international identity. Arts and culture industries employ artists, performers, sound engineers, set and lighting designers, writers, producers, editors, dancers, singers, musicians, make-up and special effects artists, roadies, catering staff and ticket ushers. More than 650 000 Australians are employed in the arts and cultural industries.1 That is about 6 per cent of the Australian workforce: a bigger industry than building construction, agriculture and coal mining combined. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, creative employment was growing at nearly twice the rate of the Australian workforce. The sector contributes more than $111.7 billion or 6.4 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP).2 Across Australia, arts organisations changed overnight to adapt to the enormous challenges presented by COVID-19. In Sydney, Lyn Williams, the artistic director of Gondwana Choirs, one of the world’s finest children’s choirs, developed

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new online classes, delivering 102 weekly courses to more than 500 people across Australia.3 Belvoir Street Theatre’s artistic director, Eamon Flack, said years of federal government funding cuts made things extremely difficult. ‘COVID-19 was a catastrophe crash-landing on top of a crisis’, he said. But, he added, ‘the feeling that anything could happen … [meant] anything might be possible’. Belvoir fundraised to keep artists in work, putting 22 artists on staff, and offering over 100 one-off gigs.

Sunday best (Cate Blanchett) The other day I had to go into town for a dental appointment. I put on all sorts of lovely clothes as if I were going out to dinner and an opening night. The prospect of being out and about was both exhilarating and daunting. I so desperately wanted to be among people and in the city, but I’d also completely forgotten what an event was. The dentist did not seem surprised by my sartorial over-commitment – but then, I was not the first patient he had seen since lockdown. As a person working in the arts sector, the lockdown was strangely familiar on one level – a lot of actors get stuck in a kind of limbo waiting for someone else to give them permission to do what they are good at. It was as if we were all waiting by the phone for our agent to call. It was also strangely unfamiliar because the community that holds us together, the audiences, as well the changing of the shows and the new releases, were all put on hold too. The flow between us all was severely affected, and I was both heartened and horrified when it began to surface online. Heartened because the urge to express ourselves and the desire to communicate seems undaunted by anything. Horrified because the worst place to rehearse and perform is alone in the mirror, and sometimes the phone is just a mirror.

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It was amazing, though: the opera singers belting it out on their balconies, the dancers doing their solos in their living rooms, the DJs setting up on the verandahs of their apartments. Communication is definitely a need and not a want. And talent has to express itself. That need is like the roots of a tree seeking space and nutrition, and that single cell in the root hair that is the porous gateway between the soil and the plant – that exists in all of us, in our need to communicate and make shared sense. The porous gateway between audience and artist is just that – a two-way street where both seemingly separate worlds are alive together. The pub choir where everyone got on a group Zoom and sang. For themselves? Yes. For each other? Yes. For the universe? Yes. Wonderful space that came alive and thrived and tried to reach across the divide. COVID-19 has made one thing terribly clear – government is not the same as business. The role of government is to regulate and guide the increasingly complex social landscape. Business is only a part of that landscape. Health, infrastructure, the legal system, education: these are not businesses. First and foremost they are part of society, part of our duty to each other and to the system that we are all beneficiaries of – or should be beneficiaries of – but that is a whole other catastrophe that has been made awfully clear in the last six months. So what has COVID19 ripped open? The fragility of social space and the robustness of our need to share. The catastrophic misdirection of the past 30 years of economic and social planning (the guiding nonprincipal being that there is no such thing as society). No, short of nostalgia and regret, COVID-19 has ravaged the whole idea of small government, and highlighted the importance of social and economic justice. Powerfully illustrating these concerns, the most recent wave of Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism has underlined the need for an equitable and humane social plan.

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For the arts, I fear the good old days of root and soil porous gateway-ism are a thing of the past. The relationship between artist and audience has changed fundamentally. The tools of the future on hand today, from selfies to Zoom, are just awkward attempts to grab back the surface appearance of connectivity. Real connectivity will need to find a new way. The good news is, it will – and it will be fascinating and illuminating and confronting. My guess is, it will be in the event. The fabulous event of coming together; gathering and going out (even to the dentist) and I think it will be in politics first and foremost, in argument and protest. The iconic images and moments of lockdown for me are: ‘I can’t breathe’ written on the face masks of the BLM protesters; that courtyard in Italy filled with singing neighbours; that anonymous Lady Godiva protester in Portland, sitting stark naked in front of the police; the quiet skies; and the self-proclaimed business-genius president of the most important democracy in the world recommending ingesting or injecting disinfectant. The common link between these iconic events is profoundly political, because the political space is where we gather, and with rhetoric or imagery or gesture, with some kind of enhanced reality (let’s call it a performance) we express what we need to say. Each one of these is startling. There is a profound element in them that is revelatory. We engage with the performance of the gesture and the whole of it is greater than the sum of its parts. I think this need to gather is fundamental to who we are, and it has been stymied by COVID-19 but also underlined by it, and that need in us for community addresses the difficult lesson we have to learn: business is not government and government is not a business. The biggest choice as governments began thinking about easing lockdowns, the choice that really seems to divide us deeply, is that between community and economy.

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Like life, art can be a business. But like life, art is not ALL business – and it is that endangered space where life and art are not just about money that government is there to help safeguard.

Time for renewal (Kim Williams) When Bob Hawke was prime minister, he was persuaded to give copies of Australian films to key world leaders as gifts on official visits. Video copies were made in the domestic television formats of different nations and packaged in beautiful hand-crafted presentation boxes with liner notes about the film or television series. Ronald Reagan received a copy of Breaker Morant.4 Reagan was thrilled, saying it was the best official gift he had ever received. Hawke was delighted, and thought it changed his relationship with the Reagan administration. Bob Hawke went from being sceptical about this early example of ‘soft diplomacy’ to being a great enthusiast. Our arts industry is what makes us. It shows what we have to offer others. The creative sector has been one of the worst hit by the COVID-19 crisis. It stopped dead in its tracks. In the early months of the pandemic, the arts received no assistance. The government eventually announced a $250 million package, with the Prime Minister going out of his way to say, ‘This package is as much about supporting the tradies who build stage sets or computer specialists who create the latest special effects, as it is about supporting actors and performers in major productions’. The package was slow in coming, and questionable in its effect, but government neglect of the 600 000-strong cultural and creative sectors didn’t start with COVID-19. We have a real emergency in the national approach to creative and intellectual life in Australia. It arises not only from the severe fallout

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associated with COVID-19, but also from breakdown in the traditional ‘Australian content model’. Persistent government underinvestment in the arts sees us ranked 26 of 33 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations in cultural funding.5 And during the past 20 years, the federal government has presided over a particularly severe decline in funding to artists and thinkers (with a real decline of 20 per cent in the past decade alone).6 Our national cultural institutions are in a state of progressive decline. Cultural work represents a vast arena of neglect, even hostile action, by federal government. We have to re-examine support for our cultural and creative industries. We have to invest wisely and well in the fabric of the nation’s artists, institutions and policies that underpin national creativity and imagination. Successive governments have established or expanded Australian cultural institutions, beginning with Alfred Deakin’s establishment of the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1908,7 to the unparalleled blossoming in policy and funding commitment under Gough Whitlam. Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard all made advances for fresh institutions (with reinforced funding from Hawke and Keating), recognising the duty of care a government has to nurture the creative mainspring of the nation. These actions were made in sensible, practical acknowledgment that a society needs to hear its own voices, tell its own stories, and realise its own dreams. Only then can we protect and nurture aspiration towards a good society, built on more than basic survival. Currently, the model that has supported investment in, and production of, Australian content is under ferocious assault. All is in severe decline – from screen production, through literature, the visual arts, the performing arts and individual creators. COVID19 has made that decline exponential.

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The viability of our nation’s creative future is threatened. In contrast, Germany has elected to invest an additional A$1.5 billion in culture with special focus on performing companies and freelance creators.8 The United Kingdom has announced around A$2.84 billion (after an initial infusion of $300 million) in additional support to the arts – 1 per cent of stated cultural industry value – while the Canadian government announced it will invest over A$550 million to sustain Canada’s arts, culture, and sports sectors. New Zealand also invested an additional NZ$248.4 million (representing 1.27 per cent of the stated cultural industry value). Similar actions have followed across Europe, in Scandinavia and in Asia.9 Why did these governments take that action? For national identity, beauty and the enormous emotional and social (not to mention economic) value arts and culture provide. However, many here, including leading politicians on both sides, still question why governments should support creative and intellectual endeavour at all. ‘They’re all just a bunch of wankers’, is the suggestion. It is time to stop the marked, steep, and growing decline in the policy and resourcing of creative arts endeavour and in training institutions. And it is time to address the need for schools to be transformed so they accord arts education (with specialist teachers) as important a priority as reading, maths and science. The urgency of renewal in education, culture and the arts is impossible to overstate, because the old models no longer work. We need to think and behave differently. In an era where digital settings drive daily change, it is an immediate necessity to comprehensively review our arts policy. COVID-19 has demonstrated that when we work together, in a spirit of constructive engagement, we can get things done, quite wonderfully well. We are a small country at ‘the bottom of the world’. We have many parochial pillars which, while cheerful to some, are venom-

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ous to national ambition and achievement. After all, a nation of 26 million that speaks English is either profoundly advantaged or potentially disabled as a result almost entirely of its public policy settings. We can take advantage of our ability to share our arts and culture through the English-speaking world, or we can passively accept the products of larger English-speaking countries. But we have advantages many others don’t share, seen particularly in Australian First Nations’ arts and culture, which provides a rich and unique creative resource at home. One in which we have a national responsibility to invest and share with the world. Australian multiculturalism also offers a diversity of compelling stories that deserve to be told far and wide too. Australia needs a fresh, compelling policy approach that includes: 1 Renewed investment levels, enabling the talent in our performing, literary and visual arts and screen production to achieve a rightful place in the hyper-connected, competitive landscape of the 21st century. 2 A reformed Australia Council, which has become increasingly an instrument of bureaucracy and not an independent informed advocate, transformed into a robust contemporary delivery agent for policy on culture, the rights of creators, and with bold investment in a broad continuum of distinctive work. 3 Thoughtful reform of other federal assistance and policy agencies to ensure they are equal to the demands of a digitally dynamic, brutally competitive world. A complete turnaround on the continued decline in school arts education curricula, so that the process of dumbing down to lowest common denominators ceases. We can no longer allow the privileged few to be educated separately, while

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others are condemned to closed opportunity. It is just plain stupid. 4 Reform of inadequate and outdated copyright laws, so that they prevent intellectual property theft and defend the absolute rights of creators to protect their work and derive true value from it. 5 Renovated content regulation securing reliable Australian output, while reflecting the connected digital landscape in which we operate internationally. 6 Overdue rejuvenation in the fabric that connects cultural institutions across Australia – our national broadcasters, museums, galleries, libraries and research institutes – so they have their cultural purpose energised through connection, sharing and meaningful community outreach. There is precedent here. Harold Holt and John Gorton made arts and culture a core responsibility of the Department of Prime Minister. Whitlam supercharged the process with the Australia Council, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and the Australian Film Commission, all established and funded as statutory authorities – and with allied action on censorship reform, the Public Lending Right, Australian broadcasting content, the National Gallery, the Australian Archives, inspiring a creative renaissance unparalleled in our history. Hawke and Keating reversed the funding decline of the Fraser years and renovated policy with a powerful boost with the Creative Nation policy from 1994.10 Creativity was re-energised. It is not coincidental that the nation experienced a robust reformist economic agenda at the same time. Bob Hawke’s use of Australian films for ‘soft diplomacy’ affirmed that the film and television production industries were central to modern Australia, and it worked to change the

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view of Australia internationally from being little more than a mine and a farm with a great coastline, to something much more sophisticated and interesting. It wasn’t just Ronald Reagan who loved our films. The results are writ large before the nation. We have a profusion of actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, designers, composers, and numerous others central to world entertainment. All proud ambassadors for their nation, making an indelible impact. And yet here at home, we have fumbled the policy ball serially for the last two decades. Now, the political parties have slight policies – or in some cases, no policies – because they are not challenged. But a clear national arts policy is needed. The creative community needs to review the policy and logic that underpins investment and resource settings to make them work for contemporary purpose. Artists need to get back in the policy room, on the ground floor, working with politicians constructively. We keenly need the visions, stories and performances of Australian creators to remind us of our society’s rich value. Only through the creative community working constructively for renewal, with politicians, will we have a chance of securing the future wealth of creative Australia.

CATE BLANCHETT AC is an Australian actor and theatre director. She is the winner of two Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, three British Academic Film Awards and numerous other awards. KIM WILLIAMS AM is an Australian media executive and composer. Kim has headed a wide range of organisations such as Musica Viva, the Australian Film Commission, the Sydney Opera House Trust, Fox Studios, Foxtel and News Ltd. He is the chair of the

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Copyright Agency Ltd. Kim was awarded an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University for his contribution to the arts and entertainment industries.

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BUILDING SECURE HOUSING ADRIAN PISARSKI

As the CEO of a national peak body advocating for affordable housing, the last few months have felt like the beginning of a novel – of the dystopian genre – about a virally infected world. Our governments, in their benevolence, have provided hotels for people experiencing homelessness and placed a moratorium on evicting renters, while insisting everybody who can, must work from home. Looking into three different windows, we glimpse: A couple. They are running out of money, their jobs now gone, with no access to the income support on offer. Their parents had warned them that life in the theatre would be insecure – now the rent is due and their electricity is about to be cut off. Their landlord isn’t the negotiating type, and they sold a guitar to pay last week’s rent. A woman. She is stuck in the prison of her marriage, with her violent husband monitoring her every move and call. There is nowhere to hide, no safe place to go and quietly reach out for help. An ambulance is her only way out – if she survives the next beating, or a brave neighbour calls 000. A man. He is locked down in a hotel room, wearing out the carpet in an endless circle, wandering as the voices in his head

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grow louder and louder. The medication ran out days ago, and no worker has been to see him, to check in like they promised. It is time to get back to the street, regardless of the risks. While we have achieved some impressive results housing rough sleepers, and while rent relief and eviction moratoriums have assisted many, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the weaknesses in our housing system and shone a bright light on the opportunities to rebuild differently as our economy recovers. Nothing made this clearer than the clumsy and over-zealous role the police played in the North Melbourne and Flemington public housing tower lockdowns, locking out well-prepared community responses. The episode did have a bright side with the Guardian featuring many positive stories about the contributions residents make despite their often traumatic histories. Had we made these reforms before the pandemic lockdown, then perhaps we would’ve been even better placed to deal with it. While the isolation and economic shutdown were necessary defences against the ravages the virus wrought on other countries, Australia now stands exposed to massive household debts against properties likely to fall in value. Housing values have been propped up by high immigration and generous tax concessions, but our safety net has been neglected and is full of large holes. Between the 1960s and 1990s, Australia’s housing system better met the needs of working people, but the situation has been so eroded over time that today it is difficult for an ordinary worker to buy an affordable home. The pathway to home ownership now begins – not with hard work and saving – but with an investment property to build capital, or a portfolio of shares to offset tax, a timely inheritance or reliance on the ‘bank of Mum and Dad’. It is not surprising that home ownership rates are dropping alarmingly among people under 45 years of age and especially for those between 25–40 years of age.1

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As Cameron Murray and Josh Ryan-Collins have calculated, since 2000, home prices have climbed an inflation-adjusted 150 per cent. Inflation-adjusted wages have climbed only 30 per cent. In fact, the median Sydney home has earned more from capital gains than the median Sydney worker has earned from wages, and the proportion of Australians able to afford to own the home in which they live has fallen to its lowest point in 70 years. Those who can afford their own homes bear much heavier debts than in the past, limiting their ability to spend on other things – which is particularly harmful during a recession when we want to boost aggregate demand in the economy.2 Before COVID-19 hit, 43 per cent of Australians lived in rental stress,3 that is, paying more than 30 per cent of their income in rent, and 18.2 per cent lived in mortgage stress. Every night in Australia, 8200 people slept rough, another 120 000 were homeless.4 We turned more than 200 people away from emergency accommodation every night because there was no bed for them,5 and more than half were women and children fleeing domestic violence. As we look back while trying to think forward, we can see that getting rough sleepers off the streets and out of cars wasn’t all that hard. We can house rough sleepers if we want to. An estimated 6000–7000 rough sleepers were provided with hotels and food at the start of winter. In midwinter, this support began running out, and people were returning to the streets. Of course, we don’t always have empty hotels, but we do have other opportunities with vacant units that previously housed international students and temporary migrant workers. Instead of under-supply, we may now take advantage of some surplus without the pressures of immigration. In the lockdown of March and April 2020, renters got some protection from eviction if their circumstances grew worse due to a loss of income. Workers who lost their jobs got a few months’

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access to double the amount of welfare previously on offer, and others maintained their jobs on lower pay, more or less equivalent to the basic wage. Wolves were kept from doors. State governments have announced over $1.72 billion in direct funding towards new social housing, maintenance and upgrades, and rent relief for private renters. This investment complements the increased Commonwealth income support, but also highlights that we haven’t yet seen direct Commonwealth funding injections into housing, despite the fact social and affordable housing have been jointly funded by both the Commonwealth and states since 1946.6 Serious reform remains elusive, but silver linings might still emerge from the gloomy viral cloud. In New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and South Australia we have seen an economic jolt to construction via investment in social housing. The Master Builders, the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union, National Shelter, the Community Housing Industry Association and Homelessness Australia have all called for social housing investment. We have a social housing deficit of massive proportions, a construction and building industry in need of work, likely properties that can be acquired, repaired or renovated, and a community housing sector ready for growth and diversity. There has never been a better time to invest in social housing, as recognised by announcements by Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania, which plan to do so7. But investment should not only happen in fits and starts, just to meet an economic or employment imperative. It must be sustained, with a pipeline created, a different housing pathway established, a safety net repaired and expanded, to secure its viability and to support the overall housing system. At times like this, planned investment can be brought forward or increased, but it should never be abandoned when the crisis is over.

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At the moment there are calls for investments of up to $10 billion over two to three years to get people and industry working, and to build about 35 000 dwellings and bring another 100 000 up to standard. While we welcome this with open arms, it’s only a start against the deficit of at least 400 000 affordable properties needed for low and moderate-income households. New social housing should also include requirements for energy efficiency, accessibility for people with disabilities, and be built to accommodate an ageing populace. Replacing the kind of cladding that has led to disasters around the world, such as the catastrophe in Grenfell Tower in London, is another potential source of jobs. In Australia this is mostly in private developments, but it still needs tackling. We can see Victoria seriously considering swapping the inefficient, outdated, inflationary stamp duty for an annual land tax, as the Australian Capital Territory is doing. If house prices remain low or fall, then it makes financial sense to make this change now. Stamp duty has been a sugar hit to state and territory revenues, but moving to an annual land tax will stabilise revenue, remove inflation, lower costs to purchasers and remove inefficiencies like the disincentive to downsize or move for work. It should be the responsibility of government to develop a national housing strategy. A strategy is required to consider an uncertain future population, with many households needing lower housing costs for a considerable period. It needs to be flexible enough to meet the needs of cities and regions alike, establishing national targets for home ownership, public and private rental. And it needs to have a strategy for eliminating homelessness, matching housing with support services where required. These are tantalising goals, but they are not so distant they can’t be grasped. The reform pathway started under Labor in 2008 with The Road Home homelessness white paper. Laying

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out a strategy to stop people becoming homeless in the first place and to start building new housing, it was further developed with the introduction of the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS), and then, in an attempt at consolidation, establishing the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA), which replaced the old Commonwealth States/Territories Housing Agreement (CSHA). It was interrupted by the election of the Abbott government, which abandoned NRAS and tried to remove Commonwealth responsibility for housing. In some ways, responsibility was re-established when Scott Morrison as Treasurer established the National Housing Finance Investment Corporation (NHFIC), which has the potential to reshape the financing of affordable housing. We still have a patchwork of reforms begun but not completed, some abandoned, some promoted but not attempted, and still others left to wither or not even be contemplated. The word ‘unprecedented’ has been uttered in great numbers, with ‘pivots’, ‘pirouettes’, ‘resets’ and ‘restarts’ leaping from every screen and podcast, but in housing terms, a reboot seems possible, sensible and even essential. So what might it consist of? Turning it off and then on again won’t work this time. At National Shelter, we believe Australia must: 1 Complete the reform of the homelessness service system through a housing-led approach. We have learned we can immediately house rough sleepers if we decide to, and provide the varied supports they require in the housing itself. That will mean moving from a crisis approach, where we cram people into refuges, to one where we house people and support them in their long-term home. It means building the housing first – and a pandemic recovery

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2

3

4 5

stimulus could begin that job. At the same time, we ensure that the systems failures that lead to homelessness are also addressed (child protection, mental health, education, family violence, housing market failures). Build affordable housing of every kind. This includes public housing provided by states, social and affordable housing provided by Community Housing Organisations, and housing provided by employers like mining companies or remote housing for teachers and police (just as Kirribilli House is provided to the prime minister). This requires varying levels of subsidy, depending on how the housing is financed. We need to settle on appropriate levels of subsidy, whether as capital grant, gap filler, fully funded or cost based. This needs to be provided with certainty through institutions established for the purpose and over 20–40-year time horizons. Reform the tax treatment of housing. To me, that means equalising the treatment of income and debt associated with housing to other income, perhaps revisiting the Henry Tax Review reforms. Definitely reducing the generosity of capital gains tax discounts for investors, and reforming negative gearing with which capital gains tax discounts combine to distort housing investment decisions. Possibly looking at the general exemption of the principal residence from capital gains tax, with safety thresholds to protect the home as a utility. Tax reform can reduce government exposure to tax deductions and generate revenue to pay for other reforms. It’s a means to an end, not the end itself, which many commentators fail to grasp. Establish national targets and goals with appropriate capital and subsidy funding to rebuild our supply of social housing. Establish nationally consistent tenancy law, which balances

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the interests of owners, agents and tenants. Principally ending no cause evictions, but also improving tenure security, amenity and encouraging longer tenancies that help stabilise investments. The housing system of the future has a role for ownership, investment, public, community and private provision, but must not return to the ghetto of housing only the highest-need, lowestincome households practised over the past 30 years. The future relies on having a diversity of owners, renters, incomes and dwellings in a mixed-tenure approach to housing reform, with balanced returns based around secure housing appropriate to needs. If we do these things, we have the opportunity to rebalance our housing system, to encourage home ownership, to create genuine choice for tenants and owners to live in different ways by renting or co-owning properties with Community Housing Organisations. We will eliminate homelessness and interlink people’s homes with the support they require (think disability, health, home care for the ageing and so on). We will reduce our individual and overall household indebtedness, and over time reduce the over-valuation of property, releasing capital for other productive investment, and all live happily ever after.

ADRIAN PISARSKI is the Executive Officer of National Shelter, Australia’s key non-government organisation peak body advocating ways to improve housing affordability and end homelessness. He has a 40-year history in the community sector, including roles with housing, homelessness, welfare and youth peak bodies in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and nationally.

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HEALTHCARE LESSONS FROM COVID-19 ‘It’s year 7 maths.’ – ABC journalist Dr Norman Swan explaining that Australia was 20 days behind Italy in attack rates and that strong social mitigation action was needed (March 2020)

PAUL TORZILLO

In the beginning, Australia seemed to have COVID-19 under control, but the re-emergence of infection has made it hard to imagine a post-contagion time. In reflecting on the lessons learned, I have not aimed for comprehensiveness, but have highlighted issues that need more attention if we are to make our healthcare system better now and for the future.

1: Leadership matters Like many other countries, Australia’s initial response was too slow. Political leaders ignored advice, spouted platitudes, argued for business as usual and did not lead by example. In March, just as the government was preparing legislation for limiting crowd size at sporting functions, social activities and the like, leaders of both major political parties stated their intention to ‘be at the footy with the crowds’, marketing their tough blokey-ness. Belatedly they reneged on their brash claims – the Prime Minister

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leaving it till the eleventh hour. This at a time when the global pandemic was well established, information on its seriousness for other developed countries was easily accessible and it was clear what had to be done. The country needed to reduce crowding, implement societal scale hygiene practices, and strictly manage international travel. What we needed was the clear messaging that New Zealanders enjoyed, not televised handshake gaffes.

2: Our universal healthcare and public health systems really matter Compared to the United States, with their predominantly private health system and fragmented safety nets, if you get sick in Australia and you need to be in hospital, you can be. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted the critical role of public health systems. The capacity to identify cases, contact and isolate them, trace their contacts and contain the infection relies on public health resources being in place and reliably funded. Many things contributed to the second outbreak in mid-2020 in Melbourne. Having insufficient public health infrastructure and staffing was one of them.

3: Beware the politicisation of bureaucracy The constantly reiterated image of the Prime Minister standing next to the Chief Medical Officer is, on one hand, a statement that reassures us that politicians are taking health advice. On the other hand, it symbolised how health advice is still filtered through a political sieve. Whatever may have been happening behind the scenes, at the press conferences, the advice of senior health bureaucrats was always more conservative than that provided by non-aligned experts. For instance, they backed the political recommendations that no shutdowns were needed (when

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they were), repeatedly stated schools were safe (when it was an unknown), and until the end of July, dismissed public mask wearing (when the evidence was in). In fact, in the early months of the crisis, health leadership did not come from the public health bureaucrats nor our politicians so much as from the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Dr Norman Swan, who has continued to provide high-quality information to the populace. We need our ABC – and a more independent bureaucracy.

4: Protect those who protect others Death rates from COVID-19 appear much higher than those for influenza. Protecting healthcare workers is critical – for them, and for the population, who need trained staff in a fit state to look after the sick. Throughout the crisis bureaucrats have often used the phrase ‘there is no evidence’ when often there is some evidence but quite likely, no high-quality, definitive study has been performed yet. This tool for dissembling was mobilised in the push by some bureaucrats to prevent transfer of infected aged care residents out of their facility and into hospital.1 It also played out in long arguments and footdragging around personal protective equipment (PPE), the unspoken agenda being costs and procurement difficulties. Let me elaborate. What are generally referred to as ‘surgical masks’ are not as effective at preventing the transmission of aerosols as more expensive and less commonly available P2/N95 masks. When a person coughs, they emit a combination of bigger droplets and smaller aerosols. These aerosols can hang in the air for long periods of time. Droplet transmission is a well-established mode of spreading infection, but there is increasing evidence that aerosol transmission is also important with this disease. For these reasons it seems crazy not to recommend that healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients should always

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wear a P2/N95 mask. Yet both the national body (the Communicable Diseases Network of Australia) and state bodies, such as the Clinical Excellence Commission in New South Wales, have maintained that P2/N95 masks are unnecessary, beyond particular procedures involving the throat or lungs, claiming there is ‘no evidence’ favouring the case for P2/N95 masks. The truth is, there is some evidence which suggests that higher level PPE would be safer but there is no definitive study. My argument is simple: if there is even a small chance that they keep health workers safer, we should use them. With the recent dramatic rise in cases in Melbourne, the Victorian health guidelines now mandate N95 masks for use with COVID-19 or COVID-suspected patients. The failure to be transparent with frontline healthcare workers about PPE has fomented a professional distrust of the bureaucracy and government responses – and this may be the most dangerous legacy of all.

5: Changing how we work Even if we achieve very low community transmission, the health system will have to maintain systems to manage cases of COVID19 and patients at significant risk of being infected, such as returned travellers, at least until an effective vaccine is widely available and has population-wide take-up. This means cementing some of the changes we have made to manage COVID-19. Social distancing must continue within hospitals, which will require that human traffic be limited, with inevitable impact on visitor access. Outpatient and ambulatory care services in teaching hospitals cannot be maintained under previous models of care. Fifty patients and relatives sitting side by side in a small waiting room (a previously common hospital scene) won’t be possible for a long time – if ever. Hospitals with old infrastructure (and there

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are a lot of them) will be particularly disadvantaged. Emergency departments, intensive care units, operating theatres and in-patient wards will all need to either have dedicated COVID-19 areas or be able to rapidly accommodate and isolate suspected or at-risk patients. Such constraints will also have an impact on general practice. All these measures are likely to reduce the quality of care for patients, especially those with chronic and complex disease. Patients will have their appointments and procedures deferred, over and over again. Usual outpatient activity has been dramatically reduced so only a small proportion of people are being allowed appointments. These obstructions to delivering timely health care are likely to persist for a long time and have many ramifications. Because of the limits placed on clinical activity, for example, the training and progress of many young specialist doctors has been turned on its head. With elective surgery cancelled, critical bedside teaching prevented, and specialist examinations for 2020 suspended, qualifications, job applications and career progression have all been disrupted. Finding new ways to reduce the impact of these necessary disruptions to the delivery of health care – and the training of a new generation of clinicians – is a priority. And an urgent one at that.

6: Telemedicine should supplement, not replace, face-to-face medicine Like most of the adaptations to COVID-19 by the health system, the speedy expansion of telemedicine has helped but has limitations. Its main benefit is that it does allow continuing contact between doctors and patients, but the longer a patient goes without a face-to-face consultation, the more likely it is that things will be missed. Face-to-face discussion and careful physical examination are critical to quality care. The way a person is breathing, a lump in their neck, an abnormal appearance when

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they walk, can all be vital pieces of information. To repeat a point, in the search for workarounds now, let’s not pretend emergency compromises represent long-term solutions.

7: Science and research need support Although COVID-19-related research has dominated the scientific and public press, non-COVID-19 research has been badly affected by the pandemic. Because of the need to reduce contact between staff and patients, research trials involving patient assessment inside hospitals have been disrupted or suspended. Such trials will be slow to restart. Additionally, funding is less secure and research organisations more fragile as universities slash their budgets, having previously cross-subsidised government underfunding through reliance on international students only to have this market also become a pandemic casualty. We have also witnessed a retreat from liberal democracy and an associated suppression and rejection of medical science in several nations, not the least the United States, where President Trump himself has promoted unproven COVID-19 treatments. In Australia, recent policy decisions to discourage the study of humanities is extremely worrying. We need more Australians trained in critical thinking and versed in debate and communication to meet the challenge of a post-pandemic world. And we need them now.

8: Invest now for the challenge of climate change Climate change remains the greatest contemporary threat to population health. On the one hand, with COVID-19 we have a very clear demonstration that government intervention can be massive and rapid. The longstanding excuse for inaction that ‘governments

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can’t do that’ can be summarily dismissed. On the other hand, some pandemic responses have been damaging for the climate. Encouraging car use because public transport is crowded, increased use of single-use plastics, and further failure to invest in climate-friendly infrastructure in favour of $25 000 home renovation grants available to a small few are just some early examples. Climate-proofing our cities and changing water-hungry agricultural and mining industry pursuits should be a focus of rebooting the economy. Likewise, many of our hospitals are out of date: the global spread of antibiotic-resistant organisms as well as increasing frequency of infection pandemics mandates completely different building design and construction. These should all be national targets for investment. Clearly, COVID-19 is personal and global at the same time. For the individual health worker it has changed a fundamental aspect of our work: we can no longer touch patients to express care. Sitting on the side of a patient’s bed and doing something as simple as holding their hand is discouraged now. Talks are mediated through the barriers of masks. After all, this is not the only challenge we will face – there will be more pandemics amid the increasingly serious consequences of climate change. We will need to find new ways to reassure, comfort and develop trust.

PROFESSOR PAUL TORZILLO is Head of Respiratory Medicine, Intensive Care Physician and Executive Clinical Director at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. He is also the Clinical Director for Critical Care Services in Sydney Local Health District, and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney. In 1983, he helped establish Nganampa Health Council on the APY Lands and is currently their Medical Director. He is a Director of Health Habitat, an NGO working on housing and health in poor communities.

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FIGHTING COVID-19 TOGETHER ‘It always seems impossible, until it is done.’ – Nelson Mandela

SHARON LEWIN

On Friday 29 May 2020, President Trump announced the United States was terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO)1 after accusing the organisation of helping China cover up the origins of COVID-19 and allowing its spread. Given the United States is the largest funder of the WHO, this shock announcement could potentially dismantle one of the most important global health organisations ever created, at a time where we need global collaboration more than ever. Established on 7 April 1948 in the aftermath of the Second World War, the WHO’s objective is to achieve the highest possible level of health for all people. This is a lofty goal but they have had some pretty impressive achievements, including the neareradication of polio. The WHO was custom designed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure rich and poor countries work together to share the best science, to protect and empower key populations, and to deliver the technical capacity building and training that is urgently required to respond to COVID-19.

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Sharon Lewin

The word pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan ‘all’ and δῆμος demos ‘people’) is defined as sustained person-to-person transmission of an infectious disease in more than one continent. In 1978, Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and now recognised as the United States’ top expert in infectious diseases, said at a graduation ceremony for physicians specialising in infectious diseases, ‘Even with my great personal loyalties to infectious diseases, I cannot conceive a need for 309 more infectious-disease experts unless they spend their time culturing each other’.2 However, three years later, the first diagnosis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was made, heralding one of the most significant pandemics of the last century. More than 70 million people have been infected and 33 million have died from HIV. In 2019, there were 680 000 deaths related to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the illness caused by HIV. In addition to HIV, over the past four decades, there have been over 45 new or re-emerging infectious diseases, many of which have had localised outbreaks but many of which have pandemic potential.3 Given international travel, global warming, mega cities, and the array of new infections we have seen just in the past decade, the next pandemic will definitely not take another 100 years to occur. Another pandemic is certain much sooner than that. Global warming leads to an increased geographic distribution of mosquitoes that thrive in warm climates and are common carriers of infection, and densely populated cites greatly enhance the risk of person-person transmission of infection. COVID-19 has revealed the many strengths but also weaknesses of our scientific capabilities, and we need to reflect on how we can do better next time. There have been some extraordinarily positive aspects of the scientific response to COVID-19. First, the pace at which knowledge about it has developed has been

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startling. The virus was first identified on 9 January 2020 as part of a family of coronaviruses with some similarities to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which in contrast infected 8000 people, led to 800 deaths and disappeared after eight months in 2013, but with many new and distinctive features. The most important has been the capacity for COVID-19 to spread from person to person while they are asymptomatic and seemingly well, leading to silent spread across the globe. With the same efficiency as viral transmission, new knowledge has also been shared with great speed – a vastly different experience to SARS in 2013. Chinese researchers into COVID-19 rapidly shared the genetic sequence of the virus through online servers on 11 January 2020. This allowed for vaccine and diagnostics manufacturers around the world to get to work in early January. On 29 January, the virus was grown in Melbourne at the Doherty Institute, and within 24 hours was shared with vials sent to many national and international laboratories over the next three weeks. Every major scientific journal, the mainstay of how scientific knowledge is reviewed and shared, made all submitted papers available prior to peer review online. Information released in this way can disseminate knowledge three to four months ahead of when a manuscript is published and available to the public. This meant that information has been widely available and accessible to all much faster. Surely we should continue this practice after COVID-19. In Australia, we have seen science inform policy with great success. Epidemiologists and mathematicians who use models to predict the spread of infectious diseases have been at the table with Australia’s chief policy makers from the beginning of the outbreak. Mathematical modelling demonstrated that closing Australia’s borders to China on 1 February 2020, when there

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were only 12 diagnosed cases in Australia, was needed. This was probably the most important policy decision Australia made, drastically reducing importation of COVID-19 and giving the country time to upscale testing capabilities to deal with subsequent importations from Europe and the United States. I hope these relationships of trust in science expand beyond health, to inform other major global challenges such as climate change. The race to develop an effective vaccine for COVID-19 has also been exceptional. Teams working on vaccine platforms for other infections rapidly pivoted their technology to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. From publication of the first SARS-CoV-2 sequences on 11 January 2020 through to phase 3 clinical trials of an mRNA vaccine from biotechnology company Moderna in the United States in seven months is extraordinary. This is compared with a typical timeline of three to nine years.4 There are now five phase 1 or phase 2 trials of vaccine candidates published, more than 30 vaccine candidates in clinical trials and more than 200 pre-clinical vaccine studies. The real test will be phase 3 studies to determine if the vaccine is safe when tested on thousands of people and, just as importantly, if it protects from infection and/ or disease. We also still don’t know how these vaccines work in the elderly, the very young, pregnant women or people with other medical conditions. However, the major challenge to delivering a vaccine for COVID-19 may be beyond the science. Once a vaccine is shown to be safe and protects from infection or disease, it will need to be manufactured to immunize at least 60 per cent of the world’s population (no easy feat) and then made available to countries (rich and poor) and then delivered. There is great concern that vaccines will only go to countries that can pay. One innovative approach to ensure this doesn’t happen is the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility – co-led

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by the Global Alliance on Vaccines (Gavi), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the WHO, working in partnership with vaccine manufacturers. COVAX aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world. It will achieve this by sharing the risks associated with vaccine development, investing in manufacturing upfront so vaccines can be deployed at scale as soon as they are proven successful, and pooling procurement and purchasing power to achieve sufficient volumes. More than 75 countries (including Australia) have already expressed interest in the initiative. This level of global collaboration will be what is needed to ensure an end to COVID-19 for everyone, not just a handful of wealthy countries. Finally, delivering a vaccine may not be that simple. There is already worrying information emerging that some people, particularly young people, are reluctant to receive a vaccine for COVID-19. Vaccine hesitancy still plagues our public health system, even for highly effective and safe vaccines, such as measles. Community engagement and leadership needs to start now to ensure that when an effective vaccine for COVID-19 arrives, all communities are aligned and ready. Treatments will also play a very important role in the response to COVID-19, but pose similar challenges to vaccines in relation to equitable access. An effective treatment can reduce time in hospital, death and potentially even transmission. Large clinical trials enrolling thousands of patients have already shown some success, with the identification that the steroid dexamethasone can reduce mortality from severe COVID-19 by 20–30 per cent. Dexamethasone is cheap and easily accessible in every country. Another drug, remdesivir, initially developed for Ebola, can also be of benefit, by reducing the time in hospital for people with moderately severe disease.

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In contrast to dexamethasone, manufacture of remdesivir is protected by the pharmaceutical giant Gilead, who developed the drug. The cost of a single treatment course of remdesivir is estimated to be AUD $4600, while the cost of manufacturing the drug is around AUD $8.5 Cost and funding aside, global access to remdesivir has already become a major challenge – with the United States purchasing nearly the entire supply. Gilead has granted a licence to five generic companies to manufacture remdesivir, using a similar model to what was established for HIV and hepatitis C drugs. The unknowns now are how much this will cost in low- and middle-income countries, who will pay and how will high-income countries access the drug should there be limited access through Gilead and no access to generic drugs. Vaccines and drugs are effectively only manufactured by the private sector. Each cost billions of dollars to get a successful product to market. The private sector needs to answer to its shareholders, and the incentives to make a product with either an uncertain market or a market with limited funds greatly influences the focus of activity. Going forward, we need far more agile models for vaccine and drug development for a pandemic response. In response to COVID-19 and beyond, we will also need to invest heavily in our workforce who can innovate, develop, evaluate and synthesise these solutions. Investing in research through our universities and medical research institutes is absolutely critical to ensure we are prepared and can respond to the next pandemic. Long-term investment is needed in epidemiologists, mathematical modellers, virologists, immunologists and clinical trialists. We need to ensure that Australia can contribute to the global response through generating breakthroughs to diagnose, prevent and treat infections, not just for our own citizens but for our region and the rest of the world. This kind of workforce can’t be generated overnight; it requires decades of investment.

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Globally, we will need more than CEPI, the WHO and collaborative academic research networks. Preventing the next pandemic should be part of our plans for national security. Just as we invest in our military, in each country alone and in partnership, we need a similar approach to innovate and develop diagnostics, drugs and vaccines in peace times, so we are rapidly equipped in war times. We will need international alliances, not just of highincome countries, but alliances that will build stable partnerships between high- and low-income countries to ensure global access of any products developed. And these structures and alliances need to include but can’t be dependent on the private sector. Despite the devastations of COVID-19 on our economies and lives, we should be proud of the pace of scientific discovery, the willingness to share information and share widely, and the speed at which governments, philanthropists, the private sector and the community have come together to slow the virus’s global spread. We have learned that expert technical advice can inform and translate to good policy and that we need community partnerships and engagement to make public health work. But the world will need to look different after COVID-19. We will still need the WHO, and will need to fund it properly, but entities or alliances that focus on vaccine and antiviral development as well as global access will need to be larger and stronger and formed as public-private partnerships. The scale of investment to be truly prepared will need to be vastly different. Unfortunately, infectious diseases are our one enemy that will never go away.

PROFESSOR SHARON LEWIN AO, FRACP, PHD, FAHMS is the inaugural director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne Laureate Professor, the University of Melbourne, a consultant infectious diseases physician, and internationally renowned for

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her research on HIV. She leads a large national network focused on pandemic preparedness. Scientists from the Doherty Institute were the first to isolate and share the SARS-CoV-2 virus outside of China and have a broad program of research focused on testing, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. In 2014, she was named Melburnian of the Year and awarded the Peter Wills Medal from Research Australia.

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SAVED BY THE SCIENCE Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. – Carl Sagan1

IAN CHUBB

The ‘Australian way’ as many of us live it can be both fantastic and fantastically frustrating. For many of us, but sadly by no means all, it’s a life of opportunity. And people with abundant opportunities tend to think ‘she’ll be right’. If you can sell the contents of the mountain you’ve turned into a hole, for example, just get in a ‘plane and find another mountain. If you’ve dammed your rivers into drains, just wait for the rain. If you’ve got attractive bits of the country left around the edges, bring in tourists on cruise ships and aeroplanes, and assume it will last forever no matter what we do to it.’ That’s the version of our national story we tell ourselves in the opening verse of our national anthem. It’s a mining prospectus and a tourist brochure in one – golden soil, girt by sea, beauty rich and rare. A land abounding and advancing on nature’s gifts – not earnt, discovered.

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There’s a second verse, of course. That’s a verse we tend to leave off. It’s the one where we talk about a Commonwealth renowned of all the lands. About toiling with hearts and hands. About boundless plains to share with those who’ve come across the seas. About combining with courage as the true path to advancing Australia. When I think about the reasons we’ve been ‘lucky’ in global terms through the great pandemic of recent times, I’d say it’s the second verse that mattered far more than the first. To ‘hearts and hands’, I would add ‘heads’ – the heads of scientists and researchers, of doctors, nurses and teachers, of innovators and policymakers. The unprecedented inclusion of expert advice in managing the extraordinary consequences of COVID19 is clear demonstration of the value of expertise. We have seen more of the state and territory chief medical officers in a month than in the previous few years combined, and we wanted to. We have the Australian Academy of Science drawing on the expertise of its fellows (and others) to develop answers to questions posed by ministers via the Rapid Research Information Forum. We have seen political leaders constantly acknowledge that their actions are based on expert advice, and we expect them to follow it. The outcome shows that hearts, hands and heads can combine to make our future better than our past – if we have the courage and the imagination to want to be renowned of all the lands. Perhaps it seems inevitable that science, in particular, would have its place in the spotlight, when evidence is so critical, and our hopes are bound up in a cure. But scientists have learned that just because scientific evidence is extremely useful – even essential – there is no reason to believe they will be funded to produce it; or that once it is produced, the politicians we pay to make decisions in our interest will care to use it. Or, indeed, to make it available to the public who provided the funds.

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How many reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, have been publicly dismissed – and, one suspects, gone unread behind closed doors? How many politicians have done in the face of the climate emergency what we see them do today in the face of the pandemic: make the case for the sacrifices required to protect our prosperity and keep us safe? The COVID-19 crisis has confirmed that relying on the first verse version of our nation – the luck – leaves us dangerously exposed. Luck can change. Friends in other places can fail. The second verse version – the shared ideals – is the one we should have the courage to trust. We do appear more united in our commitment to our collective future than we had imagined. We seem to be more prepared to act together for the Australia we want our children to inherit than we were before. With this resolve, we have an opportunity to decide how we will chart our way forward. Do we coast on luck, or do we deliberately and strategically work to grow an economy that provides for all our citizens, supports a vision for the country that we share, and minimises our sovereign risk? In short, do we use our heads? If the latter is what we want, then we have to do a far better job of looking after the same sure pillars that have held up our COVID-19 response: our science, our skills, and our capacity for innovation. For far too long, we have taken these pillars for granted. We have resisted calls to decide, as a country, what skills and industrial capabilities we need to build, and what research strengths we need to sustain them – science, engineering, inventiveness, mathematics and imagination. Instead, the economics commentariat decries the notion of picking winners – and our leaders buckle. We are told the market will decide – when it clearly doesn’t. Just

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look at the subjects Australian students enrol in while ‘the market’ complains about skill shortages in the areas fewer are choosing to study. We have failed to act significantly on the worrying signs of ongoing decline in science and mathematics education in our schools, not least of which are the unforgiveable and widening gaps between urban and rural, and rich and poor. We should know better, because this is not the approach taken by countries with which we would compare ourselves, such as most European Union countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada. The consequence is obvious. Australia has one of the world’s least differentiated economies according to a study by Harvard University.2 At the end of the decade to 2017, Australia sat at 93 (down 23 places) on a global index, way below the Philippines (33), Uruguay (47) and Vietnam (57). The authors of the index place ‘know-how’ at the heart of a country’s growth story and conclude that ‘growth is driven by a process of diversification to enter more and increasingly more complex, production’. We have allowed the fruits of Australian inventiveness to be shipped off for development overseas. We have left the epicentres of innovation, our universities, perilously exposed to the enrolment options of international students. As a consequence, we now see that some 4000 researchers are likely to lose their jobs because international students can’t come here. The funding model that ought to secure a foundation of our national interest is broken. Change will require many interventions in many places, but none more crucial than a shift in the mindset of government. The science portfolio in government has long been the definition of tinkering around the edges. Pilots and feasibility studies abound. Serious strategy – tied to the national agenda for jobs, health, education and energy – remains elusive.

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We need a government that genuinely understands the interdependence of every part of the knowledge ecosystem, from primary education to basic research – the sort you do without needing to flog something next year. We need a government with a clear view of the role in building community benefit through learning, and commercial return by using it better. We need leaders with the courage to make the case for building knowledge-based strengths – whether in areas of comparative advantage, national need or existing high performance. It has been too easy, particularly in Australia, to imply that some parts of the equation – not to mention the education and the futures of a growing majority of our children – can be ignored to get to the commercial return part more quickly. This was not the view that prevailed immediately after the Second World War, a war that the military fought but science, technology and innovation undoubtedly won. In the United States, again, Vannevar Bush (an engineer and inventor who became the first presidential science adviser) reminded the whole world in 1945 that ‘new products and new processes do not appear full grown … today it is truer than ever that basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress’. The United States became an enlightened leader of the research world, and a contributor to global prosperity, through the development, sharing and use of knowledge. About 50 years later, leaders of major corporations in the United States pushed the same theme. In an open letter, they reminded President Clinton of the critical role of publicly funded research. They called it the ‘patient capital’ that led to a culture that encouraged risk-taking and technological innovation. A very similar call in 2018 fell on deafer ears.3 In Australia, we watched, listened and learned. Australia’s boldest experiment required courage and imagination, and action.4 We established the Australian National University in

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1946, for example. It was based on four research schools: Physics, Social Sciences, Asia and the Pacific, and Medical Research. It was an acknowledgment that Australia’s limited capacity to work in and to understand key areas of science along with little deep understanding of history, peoples and cultures was antithetical to our direct national interest. We did not have a seat at the table where the big advances were made, and our dependence on everywhere but home for nearly everything multiplied our sovereign risk beyond any acceptable level. It had to change, and it did. In the United States, they often point to the iPhone as an example of innovative technology. As the National Academy of Arts and Sciences notes, ‘it depends on seven or eight fundamental scientific and technological breakthroughs, such as GPS, multi-touch screens, LCD displays, lithium-ion batteries, and cellular networks. How many of those discoveries were made by Apple? None. They all came from basic research supported by the federal government and conducted in universities and government laboratories’.5 We could point just as fairly to the work of the Australian National University’s first chancellor, Howard Florey. In his words – rarely quoted – ‘people sometimes think that I and others worked on penicillin because we were interested in suffering humanity. I don’t think it ever crossed our minds about suffering humanity. This was an interesting scientific exercise, and because it was some use in medicine is very gratifying, but this was not the reason we started working on it’.6 Australia has changed. There is now a tendency to think of publicly funded research in particular as a dispensable luxury – something we do only because some of us think it’s heartwarming to have clever individuals wandering around in some sort of myopic daze adding little value to anything important. We

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fund on short cycles with small amounts. Our best researchers have to juggle multiple grants to do the work we need them to do. If Australia is to prepare a path that provides its citizens with secure social, cultural and economic prosperity, we too will need to break with the approaches of the past, and think about the lessons from the ‘boldest experiment’ that could be applied today. What, then, would I put on the table as we reckon with the task of making a future in this volatile world? Imagine: 1 We must first give the education of our children the priority and respect, as well as the funding, it deserves. Every one of us needs to know at least enough science to understand what is and isn’t science, evidence and expertise. We will need to know well enough how science works to choose between the options that science and technology will present to us in coming decades. And we will need scientists and engineers. Everyone who attends Australian schools should have the encouragement as well as the opportunity to pursue study and then a career in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, if they want to. I don’t mean the opportunity on paper – the sort that evaporates when you get to university and realise that basic mathematics is no preparation for the most basic expectations of a science degree. And we will never advance on these goals if we continue to underserve our teachers. Let’s not forget, come next year, that in COVID-19 we called them national heroes. We all, at last, recognised how hard they work for us, even if it took remote (home) learning to realise it. We should equip our teachers with discipline-specific degrees in fields such as mathematics and science alongside their studies in pedagogy. We should also increase the funding for proven programs for teacher recruitment and professional

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development, and provide more opportunities for students to expand their skills and career horizons through partnerships between educators and innovators in industry. 2 We must restore the place of science in public life. A striking feature of the Australian response to the pandemic has been the use of Australian scientists to guide the response of federal and state government, to the credit of both sides. We have seen experts from many institutions: Peter Doherty Institute, Kirby Institute, Walter and Eliza Hall, as well as many scientists from our universities. We were keen to know what experts advised. What now? Expert groups should be established to ensure governments are continuously supported on key issues in the same way they have been served through this emergency. 3 Identify areas of comparative advantage, or national needs. Australia has comparative advantages that it can and should exploit – boundless plains to share, resources, marine environment, to name a few. At the same time, we have needs that we cannot rely on other nations to meet, including the need to understand our unique environment and what it will take to ensure it can continue to sustain a prosperous life for our people. We should commit to a national strategy that nurtures the full ecosystem, from education to entrepreneurship, encouraging private investment while recognising the limits of what markets can be expected to fund. 4 The plethora of grant programs should be collapsed into fewer programs offering larger grants for longer periods. Too many of our scientsts have to spend too long seeking out grants because no single agency fully funds the actual costs of doing research. It is time they should spend actually doing research, not aiming to buy better tickets

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in more lotteries. We should use the federal Research and Development Tax Credit for what it was always intended to be: a way to encourage more private-sector innovation investment that stays here, in Australia, incubating scientists and skills as well as jobs. 5 Stimulate further improvements in using knowledge and innovation to produce new and improved products and processes (advanced manufacturing). One of the most stable programs among everything the United States Congress approves is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. It was begun under President Reagan in 1982 and it endures with near-unanimous support to this day, inspiring many similar (and similarly successful) initiatives in other countries. The SBIR program is designed to fund promising ideas and generate investment in areas of specific national priority that are still too high-risk for the market or venture capital. In brief, it requires government departments to do more than spend their procurement budgets on whatever Department of Finance guidelines at the time decree is ‘best value for money’, which, these days, is too often the cheapest thing available from other countries. Government actually has to identify where a novel technology or innovation could be useful (or needed), and then use a given percentage of its annual budget to back people and companies with promising solutions. Like many proven approaches, we have piloted this idea in Australia. Now we should scale it to a level that is appropriate for a country with an urgent need to accelerate innovation in manufacturing, and new government– industry–research partnerships.

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My hope, at the end of all this, is that the second-verse version of our country is the Australia we advance, today. If we learn the lessons of COVID-19, it will be. Imagine that.

EMERITUS PROFESSOR IAN CHUBB AC was Chief Scientist for Australia from May 2011 to January 2016. Prior to that, he was Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University. In 1999 Ian was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, and in 2006 a Companion in the Order for service to higher education.

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LESSONS LEARNED: EDUCATION IN RECOVERY ‘What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must be what we want for all the children of the community’ – John Dewey, philosopher and educational reformer

TANYA PLIBERSEK

We didn’t have much money growing up. But all I had to say was ‘it’s for school’ and my parents would find a way to pay for the excursion, or the book, or the art supplies. Like most migrants, especially those who had their own schooling interrupted by war, they knew that an education was a ticket to freedom and choice. My parents were prepared to sacrifice a lot for me and my brothers. More than anything, they wanted to give us the chance to study; to learn about life and the world; to get a good job. What my parents wanted for me, we should want for all children. Unfortunately, Australia now has one of the biggest gaps between least and most advantaged students in the developed world and COVID-19 has made it worse. The Grattan Institute found that disadvantaged students learned about half their

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normal rate during remote learning, ‘losing about a month of learning over a two-month lockdown’.1 Reducing that gap should be a central, urgent aim of our education system, and a vital part of our recovery. But equality doesn’t mean dumbing down schooling. It means giving every child the chance to excel. We need ambition for excellence; a plan to provide a world-class education for all our children. Sadly, our results were already falling before the crisis. Just last year, Australia recorded its worst results in reading, maths and science since international testing began, and if our current rate of decline continues, we will go from top five in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for maths to bottom five by 2030, with similar declines in literacy. The good news is we know what to do to fix these problems, and when we do, the benefits go beyond individual children. It’s good for all of us. Australia had low growth and productivity before the COVID-19 crisis. Improving education is one of the surest ways of turning around our frightening falls in productivity and insipid growth. Australian studies estimate that for each additional year of schooling a person completes, their future income rises by about 10 per cent.2 Just one cohort of young people leaving school early results in $12.6 billion of lost personal income and tax revenue over their life course. If you add in the social costs, that figure almost triples. A Deloitte report in 2017 found ‘if those schools with the worst performing practices were lifted to the quality of the highest performing schools, GDP would be around 0.5 per cent ($8 billion) higher’.3 And an OECD projection suggests if all 15-year-old students in Australia attained at least the baseline level of performance in its Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) by 2030, Australia’s GDP in 2095 would be 10 per cent higher.

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Education policy is a question of justice and equity; of course it is. It’s equally crucial to our collective long-term prosperity. This begins at the very start of life. Babies are learning from their first day on earth. Even before that, a pregnant mother’s health and welfare have a lifelong impact on her child. Recognising this, we need to support prospective parents, even before children are born, to be the best possible first educators of their children. Early childhood education and care must focus on child development and family support from the earliest days. All children should have the opportunity for universal preschool at age three, as well as four. For those beginning with significant disadvantages, early and intensive intervention can close gaps and help end the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage. We must develop a comprehensive plan for the first 1000 days of a child’s life. At school, proper funding matters, but it’s what we do with that funding that transforms lives. Teachers need the time and professional confidence to know every child and to make sure every child is progressing every day. We need to ensure students have the basics by age eight (it gets increasingly harder after that). They need to learn to read, so later they can read to learn. Time for individual attention also means gifted and talented children get the opportunity to make the most of their gifts, students with special needs get the help they need to do their best, and disengaged children don’t slip through the cracks. Parents shouldn’t lie awake at night worrying about which school is best for their child. They should be able to send them to the local school and know that it’s great. This has obvious educational benefits, but it goes beyond that. In the past, 70 per cent of kids used to walk or cycle to school. That’s now flipped – with 70 per cent of school students being dropped at the gate by their parents. This wastes millions of hours of parents’ time (let’s be honest: mostly mothers’ time). It clogs up our roads and

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adds another frustration to the daily commute. Your local school, preferably within walking or cycling distance, should be as good as any in the world. That’s not an argument against school choice, which I support. It’s an argument in favour of high standards for all schools, with investment and intensive mentoring of schools that are struggling – with the mission of turning them around. There is no genuine choice if some schools are underfunded or struggling academically. Objective data is important, so we can direct the biggest funding increases to where they are most needed. Before the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), we had no way of knowing where the greatest educational need was. Before MySchool we had no national measure of socio-economic need in schools. Robust data allows us to challenge stereotypes, too. For example, NAPLAN testing has shown us that, all else being equal, public schools do just as well as high-fee schools. In my own electorate, Glebe Public School shows the importance of data demonstrating ‘student learning growth’, because students who begin with educational disadvantage are given the help they need to flourish. In contrast, some schools in much more advantaged suburbs take children who start educationally advantaged and don’t really stretch them. We didn’t know any of this, other than anecdotally, before we started collecting national data. While nationwide testing is necessary to ensure that schools and school systems are performing well, generally testing should be low-stakes, with results available on the spot, or at least quickly. Tests should be designed to help students and teachers in the classroom, not used to rank schools. And testing isn’t everything. Parents will look for schools that meet the social and emotional needs of their children; that share their religious views;

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or that provide good sports or arts or languages programs. This diversity is healthy. Of course, the most important ingredient in any recipe for success is the teacher. COVID-19 has shown us emphatically that our teachers are highly skilled professionals doing complex, difficult, valuable work. We should use this crisis to zero in on attracting the best and brightest to the profession. University teaching courses should become as competitive as medicine or dentistry to get into. We should be testing potential teaching students before they enter their degrees, not once they are complete. We should ration places, as we do with medicine, to ensure only the smartest and most dedicated begin a degree, driving up entry marks in the process. I want parents boasting that their son or daughter got into a teaching degree, instead of telling their children not to ‘waste’ their high HSC mark on teaching. And more of those degrees should be Masters degrees, preceded by an undergraduate degree or work experience in a specialist field. Perhaps the shocking levels of unemployment we are facing will encourage research scientists to retrain as science teachers; or accountants to retrain as maths teachers; or musicians to retrain as music teachers. There needs to be high-quality courses that efficiently bring mature, skilled professionals who want to inspire the next generation into the classroom. School systems in Singapore4 and Finland5 take their teachers from the top 30 per cent of academic achievers. In contrast, in Australia we see the marks to get into teaching degrees fall every year, and too many experienced teachers leave the profession – often saying it’s the bureaucracy of the job driving them out. We need to attract and retain the best and brightest, then trust them to teach – not bog them down with paperwork. And like doctors, we should expect teachers to keep learning throughout their careers, to know the latest research, to collab-

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orate with their colleagues – even to produce their own research into the vital work of educating our young people. Remote learning during COVID-19 has been difficult, but we must not waste the opportunity to learn from this natural experiment. When the dust settles, we should ask teachers, students and parents how they experienced remote learning. We might find, for instance, that letting teenagers sleep an extra hour in the morning is great for their learning and attention for the rest of day, and that shifting start times for older students produces better outcomes. We might find that more self-directed learning at their own pace works for some students – though it obviously doesn’t for others. Certainly, collaboration and communication between parents and schools has been revolutionised in the best possible way. I knew exactly what my children were learning, and how they were progressing because I could see their lessons. I attended my first Zoom parents and citizens meetings and my first online parent–teacher interviews. We were able to radically change schooling virtually overnight. We need to capture the benefits where they have emerged. Almost all students who finish school will need a TAFE or university qualification to get a job. Unskilled entry-level jobs hardly existed before COVID-19. Nine in every ten new jobs needed a TAFE or uni qualification. Right now, there are 13 applicants for every job vacancy and many, many more for entry-level jobs. Next year’s high school graduates won’t be taking a year off to work or travel. The first of Peter Costello’s baby boomers are about to graduate from high school. All this means demand for TAFE and uni will be higher than ever, right at the time the government is cutting access to both. Before COVID-19, spending on vocational education was the lowest it’s been in a decade and there were 140 000 fewer apprentices and trainees than when the Liberals came to office.

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None of the emergency measures announced by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic adequately reverse this trend. Universities were among the very few organisations to be legislatively barred from getting JobKeeper support. The fall in international student numbers was catastrophic, with funding for research smashed and 30 000 predicted to lose work, including thousands of researchers. Our researchers are among the best in the world, and funding for university research shouldn’t rely on uncertain future income from international students. The government chose this time to increase the cost of some degrees by more than 100 per cent and cut another billion dollars from universities each year. The government pretends that TAFE and university education are in competition. Australia needs both, and many students will study in both at different times, ideally getting a portfolio of qualifications that suits their career ambitions. Both TAFE and university must be high quality and affordable. Australian uni students now pay one of the highest shares of the cost of their education in the OECD. Whenever someone is prevented from getting an education because they can’t afford it, the individual loses – but so does our entire community. Learners should still contribute to the cost of their education. There is a private benefit to a degree or diploma, after all, and our budget is not endless. But costs should be affordable and repayment delayed until students have an income. And business can’t absolve themselves of their responsibility for training the workforce of the future. Large employers that once employed apprentices don’t any more. We need to promote this relationship again. Government can lead the way here, by mandating that all publicly funded infrastructure projects must have at least one apprentice for every ten workers. Government-funded social services also need to build workforce plans into their operations, including a place for trainees or

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entry-level positions. There is a constant fight between states and federal governments over who pays for training places for doctors and nurses. These types of arguments need to end. Paid positions for trainees should exist throughout the workforce. Child care providers, aged care facilities and disability services should all work with educators, businesses and unions – identifying training and career paths, with clear workforce development plans. We could even incorporate this relationship into teacher training. Final-year students could work part-time in classrooms, freeing experienced teachers to give focused attention to their students, or tutoring students who need additional help (especially after the COVID-19 disruptions). This type of training means graduates are job-ready and highly skilled professionals are freed to focus on the more complex part of their work while trainees help with the basics. It is simply wrong to allow skills shortages in some professions to last for years, while Australians languish in unemployment and underemployment. With international travel restrictions, it’s unlikely that we will be able to fill these places with skilled migrants any time soon. That means we need to train Australians for the jobs emerging from economic recovery. Before COVID-19, one in five chefs, one in six hospitality workers and one in ten nursing support and personal care workers held temporary visas. Cabinet makers, mechanics, hairdressers and arborists, for example, have been in short supply for years. We should urgently be training Australians for these jobs, and others where there is demand. During the Global Financial Crisis, we brought together universities, TAFE, state governments, business and community organisations with the Better Futures, Local Solutions program. One typical beneficiary was a woman from the south coast of NSW, who completed a certificate in retail at TAFE. She then got a six-week paid traineeship at the local supermarket and was

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offered a permanent position afterwards. She was so happy to have a job for the first time in her life that she convinced her husband to join the same program. He had two job offers. Neither had ever worked before, but they were able to save up and take their sons on their first ever family holiday. They said the best thing, though, was that they could teach their sons what employers looked for, protecting them from unemployment in the future. This type of place-based, practical collaboration will be more important than ever as millions of Australians look for work. We need to ensure that, if people aren’t earning, they can be learning and genuinely improving their chance for a job. Education serves many purposes. The most important reason to get an education is so you can look after yourself and have control over your life: get a job, fill in your tax return, apply for a new Medicare card, read the label on the poison jar. But there are other reasons too: to know yourself; to learn music and art and languages, history and geography; to gain the skills of critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and imagination. To find out what excites you. To get inspired about the good you can do in the world. And so you can be a good citizen. People went nuts on Australia Day 2020, when they first paid attention to something I’ve been saying for years. Australians should learn and know our citizenship pledge: From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey

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Education gives us the chance to bind together as a nation. Not to become unquestioning automatons, but people who value our precious democracy, who care about each other; who would defend our own rights and liberties, as well as each other’s. As parents, we shouldn’t rely on teachers to teach our children manners, self-control, morals or kindness. But the truth is that some kids aren’t getting that at home, and if we want a better country, schools will have to be a place where everyone is exposed to these higher virtues. Luckily, most of the teachers I know relish the opportunity to instil values as well as knowledge; to inculcate a love of justice as well as a love of learning. The world is changing so quickly. When I first saw my grandfather in Slovenia, he was cutting wheat with a scythe. We rode back from the field to my mum’s childhood home in the back of a hand-hewn wooden cart, pulled by the cows my grandfather would milk by hand at night. My grandfather could not have imagined the technology I now use every day, or the way our world is now connected, just as I can’t imagine the new world my grandchildren will inhabit. But I know one thing for certain: teaching all our children to love learning, and to be lifelong learners, is the greatest investment we can make in their success as people – and in our success as a nation.

TANYA PLIBERSEK is the federal Shadow Minister for Education and Training. She served as Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party and Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 2013 to 2019, and has served as Member for Sydney since 1998. She was a Cabinet Minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments.

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GETTING TO KNOW MY NEIGHBOURS ‘There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.’ – Margaret J Wheatley

REBECCA HUNTLEY

I walked a lot around my neighbourhood during the first tense and bewildering weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. My dog was in tip-top condition by the time restrictions were eased. I had walked the neighbourhood a lot over the years of living there but was always in a hurry to get to and from the car, for the dog to sniff and pee his way up and down the streets and lanes. Because there was nowhere special to go and no pressing reason to rush back home during restrictions, my neighbourhood walks were strolls where I could pay more attention than I usually would to my surroundings. On these strolls, I noticed I was more eager to smile and say hello to people I met, perhaps to compensate for the fact that I had to so obviously veer away from them in order to abide by social distancing requirements. I stopped to talk at length with the few older, single people who live close by, just to see if they

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were okay, if they needed anything. Mostly they just needed to chat to someone friendly and I suspected that was the case regardless of the pandemic. In the early weeks of the crisis, as media reports about hoarding circulated, our street Facebook page was more active than usual, with people offering to swap extra pasta for extra toilet paper. I wiped down novels with sanitiser and walked around depositing them in the well-used street libraries. I texted our close friends two doors down before I went out for supplies to see if they needed any extra milk, bread, chocolate, beer or wine. They did the same for me. These walks were a welcome break from time inside with three children and endless Zoom meetings. No – more than welcome. Essential to maintaining my equilibrium at a time in which I was living day-to-day, where 18 months of work and family plans had been wiped away in a matter of weeks – holidays cancelled, social events cancelled, conference and festivals cancelled, research projects on hold. I would circle the blocks slowly, relishing the fresh air and the chance to see people I didn’t live with. The weather during the first few months of the pandemic in Sydney was very temperate for autumn and I thought more than once that if I wasn’t busy freaking out about COVID-19, I would be freaking out about the warm weather in May. I reflected too on how lucky I was to live in a safe suburb with green spaces. My favourite moment on my walks would be to pass by a corner terrace where the owner had created a hand-made fabric banner in red, blue, yellow and green and hung it on the first-storey balcony for all to see. It had love hearts and a little house under the words ‘Stay Safe, Be Kind’. I spent a lot of time scrolling through Instagram looking at how communities here and overseas were responding. Posts seem to fall into two broad categories – black humour about how horrible it is to be trapped at home (especially with children who

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needed home schooling) or inspirational sentiments about how lockdown has forced you to appreciate the simpler things in life. I must admit I gravitated towards the black humour. I was doubtful that those people who had lost their jobs and businesses, people who had lost family members and not been able to attend their funerals, and the many, many frontline workers who continued on in stressful jobs made even more fraught by COVID-19 have much time or energy to muse wistfully about the spiritual benefits of a pandemic. Researchers like me, when faced with such events, find solace in (online) focus groups and survey data. Almost as soon as the crisis hit, I was involved in shaping and reviewing research on the impact of COVID-19 on Australian society. While the findings around increased concern about economic hard times and increased hand washing among the populace were hardly surprising, my larger interest was in the social and psychological impact of the pandemic. And how long would any attitudinal or behaviour changes last? Of course, there was the beguiling theory that the pandemic would make us all appreciate what we already have, reassess our values and lifestyles and become kinder and gentler to each other. But the evidence was mixed here. Research by the ABC and Vox Pop Labs found that there was no substantial difference before or during the pandemic in terms of people’s feelings of being connected to others, their feelings of having close friends or that they have someone who they can rely on in a time of need; both before and during the pandemic these numbers were quite high. The only notable difference was that those who already strongly agreed that they knew their neighbours by name increased from 24 per cent pre-pandemic to 31 per cent post-pandemic. Research by the firm Newgate found that despite the shaky video footage of people skirmishing over toilet paper in the supermarkets,

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community concern about ‘violent and inconsiderate behaviour’ was way down compared with economic and health concerns. That research also showed that Australians believed one of the lasting impacts of the pandemic would be that we would all check in with family and friends more often. Research by agency FiftyFive5 found that the main impact of COVID-19 on Australians was improving their sense of what was important to them, to slow down and reflect and focus on wellbeing. Less than a third agreed they felt more connected to family, friends and neighbours. So there is a limited capacity for a pandemic is bring us all closer together. Despite the public rhetoric of many of our politicians (stronger together, in this together etc), those of us already struggling with social isolation before a crisis are going to find themselves struggling more during it. Prior to COVID-19, much of the data was already showing loneliness among Australians is a serious issue. A 2018 study by the Australian Psychological Society found that about one in four reported that they were currently experiencing an episode of loneliness. The same study found just over half of us report they feel lonely for at least one day each week.1 I wondered whether some of these contradictory findings from the research on COVID-19’s immediate and long-lasting impacts reflected the fact that many Australians were trying to processes the pandemic as a personal and societal phenomenon. It’s a cliché to call it unprecedented but the truth is, it felt like there were no parallels to draw on. And I myself went through waves of feeling about the pandemic and its impact on my life, from boredom to anxiety and back again with brief stops at ‘contentment’ and ‘acceptance’. It was in the first few weeks of the pandemic that I found myself reviewing typeset pages for my climate change book. As I reached the final chapter, which outlined the kind of personal

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and political responses that could help people deal with climate change, I couldn’t help re-reading my own words through the filter of the pandemic. One section of the conclusion is entitled ‘get to know your neighbours’ and draws on the work of American academic Susanne Moser, who has a particular interest in how communities affected by climate change deal with grief and loss and build resilience. In an interview with Dumbo Feather magazine, Moser comments: There is no doubt that the harsh conditions we’re currently creating will make us dependent on each other in ways we don’t even know yet. We’re so focused on, ‘Can I protect myself from this? Where can I move?’ As if there is a place to hide from this global change. But to have any chance of surviving as a species, we need to share resources … and we’re going to get a lesson in dependence and interdependence like none of us have seen.2

Reading Moser’s words made me realise the importance of investing and reinvesting in groups around me that sustain my family and my community. Both the realisation of the impacts of climate change and the constraints the pandemic have imposed on freedom of movement have reinforced to me the significance of staying put, getting to know my neighbours better and putting more energy, hope and trust in the community around me. Once the pandemic is gone, I will need to keep walking my dog slowly around the block and remembering those sage words from that colourful banner. ‘Stay Safe, Be Kind’.

DR REBECCA HUNTLEY is one of Australia’s foremost researchers on social trends. She was the Director of The Mind & Mood Report,

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Australia’s longest running social trends report, and currently heads Vox Populi research. Rebecca is the author of numerous books. Her most recent is How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference.

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MULTICULTURALISM IS A STRENGTH ‘I am not a virus.’ – Anti-racist slogan coined during the pandemic

TIM SOUTPHOMMASANE

Minorities rarely fare well during pandemics. During the bubonic plague of the 14th century in Europe, Jews were accused of poisoning wells and suffered pogroms in retaliation. In the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, outbreaks of cholera and smallpox were blamed, respectively, on Irish Catholics and Chinese people. Here in Australia, the pattern has been similar. When the bubonic plague struck Sydney in 1900, newspaper reports referred to it as the ‘Asiatic harvest’, with suggestions it emanated from germ-ridden Chinese dens in the Rocks, Haymarket and Botany. Chinese people were removed to Sydney’s North Head quarantine station, where they were segregated from others and quartered in tents near the foreshore.1 And so it has been with the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, China, there has been a predictable surge in anti-Asian racism in many countries. ‘The pandemic’, as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

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said in May 2020, ‘continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering’.2 As with the pandemic itself, Australia hasn’t been immune. The Australian Human Rights Commission has recorded a spike in racial discrimination complaints.3 Community advocates have recorded hundreds of instances of Asian Australians experiencing verbal abuse, threats and even physical attacks in the months following the pandemic’s outbreak.4 Extremists on the far right have sought to capitalise on the spread of fear and anxiety, though coronavirus racism has by no means been confined to fringe elements. The virus threat has, in many ways, provided cover for the expression of racism. Among the most striking features of living through a pandemic is the fear. Death from a pathogenic threat, spread by microscopic droplets and aerosols, is enough to make most of us afraid. Yet some of us have more reason to fear than others. Along with our doctors and nurses, our sick and elderly, and our fellow citizens who have lost their livelihoods, there are also those who have become visible scapegoats for our predicament. There are multiple challenges to rebuilding our nation when the pandemic passes. Along with the task of economic regeneration, and addressing social inequality, there must also be a concerted effort to repair the social divisions caused by racism. Defending our multicultural character must be part of any social democratic nation-building mission. Australia’s multiculturalism, frequently lauded as a national success story, has been seriously wounded. To be sure, our multiculturalism faces periodic challenges. It always manages to come through – not always stronger, but at least strong enough to keep on going. It saw off the challenge of the 1980s from historian Geoffrey Blainey and then federal opposition leader John Howard. It survived the Hansonism of the 1990s. It endured

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through the nationalism of Howard’s prime ministership. This time, though, the danger feels different. First, there’s the ascendency of populist nationalism. The tone and language of politics has shifted. Globally, the political momentum seems to be on the side of those who trumpet nativism and protectionism, and who take aim at foreigners and so-called globalism. Our politics in recent years have been conducted within the shadows of Brexit and the Trump White House. These aren’t the kinds of conditions where multicultural societies, open to immigration, can flourish. Yet that is exactly where we are left after COVID-19. The closure of Australia’s borders – albeit a necessary temporary measure as part of an emergency response – seems to signify a return of a ‘Fortress Australia’ mentality. It was no accident that, when the federal parliament sat for the first time after the pandemic hit, Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke of the government’s response as being about ‘defending and protecting Australia’s national sovereignty’, as though COVID-19 were an enemy combatant in war.5 At the time of writing, Australia’s borders remain closed indefinitely to nearly everyone who is not a citizen or permanent resident; even within the nation itself, borders have been closed between several states. Given it’s unlikely there will be a return any time soon to pre-pandemic levels of international travel, tourism and immigration, we are shifting away from an open, globalised Australia to a more closed Australia. Although immigration has historically been a vital ingredient of our modern economy and society, the experience of COVID-19 has cast immigration as an unambiguous threat to Australia’s national sovereignty. Second, right-wing ideologues have been emboldened in prosecuting a culture war against multiculturalism. Recent years have seen an escalation of rhetorical blasts at ‘political

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correctness’ to organised campaigns against racial equality. Few issues captured the imagination of the Australian right as the campaign to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (the provision that makes it unlawful to engage in acts of racial hatred). On two occasions in 2014 and 2017, with the vociferous support of sections of the media, the Coalition government sought to water down racial hatred laws. These pushes helped normalise racism in our public discourse. By declaring that Australians had ‘a right to be bigots’ (as then Attorney-General George Brandis put it in his bid to repeal 18C), those agitating for change gave licence to people to believe that venting racism could be justified as the exercise of free speech. They created, in part, the conditions for the return of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to national prominence, and for the resurgence of far-right extremism.6 Not even the global anti-racism movement generated by Black Lives Matter protests has deterred conservatives from this culture war. If anything, it has reinforced their commitment to it. While the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May 2020 has focused attention in many countries on institutional racism, it didn’t take long for anti-racism protests here to be dismissed as leftist excesses. Most notably, Scott Morrison criticised protests in Australia against Aboriginal deaths in custody for ‘importing’ the issue of institutional racism into domestic political debate. He also said that anti-racism protests have been ‘taken over’ by ‘politically driven left-wing agendas’, and that racism here couldn’t be compared with that in the United States because ‘there was no slavery in Australia’ (a statement for which he was taken to task and later apologised for).7 Finally, the threat to our multiculturalism has been complicated by concerns about China. Fears about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in our public institutions have spilled over into a more general antagonism against Chinese-Australians.

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There has been growing suspicion that Australians with Chinese heritage can’t be trusted to have loyalty or allegiance to Australia, at least not in the same way as others. This kind of distrust has fuelled some of the anti-Chinese – and more broadly, anti-Asian – sentiment expressed in relation to COVID-19. Discrimination always arises from existing anxieties and prejudices, and for some time anti-Chinese sentiment has been building. Alongside the concerns about Chinese Communist Party ‘fifth columnists’, there has been growing unease about Chinese buyers outbidding locals at house auctions, or acquiring agricultural land. This explains why those of Chinese appearance have been targeted for backlash against the virus – and why the labelling of COVID-19 as a ‘Chinese virus’ (as Donald Trump and others have christened it) is so dangerous. It also explains the potency of unfounded rumours about so-called tourist buses, often identified as Chinese or Asian, raiding supermarkets in regional towns for supplies during the early days of COVID-19 lockdown, and of the hostility expressed at Chinese-Australians for sending medical supplies to China. If there has been such marked hostility against Chinese people during our experience of the pandemic, it’s because people were ready to think the worst of Chinese-Australians. So what, then, must be done? What must we do, to ensure we emerge from the pandemic with Australia’s multiculturalism intact, rather than imperilled? We must begin with a more emphatic public stance against racism. Public condemnations of COVID-19-related racism in Australia, including by the Prime Minister and senior politicians, have been important. Any rejection of discrimination, though, must be consistent and comprehensive. Not since 2015, for instance, has the federal government funded dedicated anti-racism initiatives – a glaring omission when it comes to Australia’s multicultural policy.

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Even when Australia has had a national anti-racism strategy, as it did from 2012 to 2015, the financial support for it has been modest (a mere $1.7 million over four years). Compare this with Canada, where the national government is funding a four-year CA$45 million anti-racism campaign aimed at countering the rise in racism linked to far-right extremism. Our national public inaction on racism leaves it open to the question of whether talk about Australia being the ‘most successful multicultural society in the world’ amounts to empty boasts by politicians who do not care enough to back their words with action. Anti-racism must also encompass the normal conduct of politics. For all the official statements from Australian political leaders condemning discrimination during COVID-19, forms of racism arguably crept into elements of Australia’s response. For example, it was commendable that the federal government swiftly evacuated Australian citizens (mostly Chinese-Australian) stranded in the Chinese city of Wuhan in early 2020 following the outbreak of the virus. That it chose to quarantine them on Christmas Island, however, smacked of dog-whistling. Australians deserved better than to be quarantined in an offshore immigration detention centre, 1500 kilometres from mainland medical facilities. An Indian Ocean solution wasn’t the only one possible. Indeed, the New South Wales Department of Health proposed that Australian evacuees be screened at the Richmond RAAF base in Sydney and quarantined in New South Wales hospitals. That thousands of cruise ship passengers would later be quarantined in city hotels, following their disembarkation from the ships, only demonstrated the point. Anti-racism must extend to our institutions, too. It remains an abomination that the rates of incarceration for Indigenous Australians remains so alarmingly high: though they account for just 3 per cent of the general population, Indigenous people

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comprise about 30 per cent of our prison population. More broadly, we must deal with the near-total absence of racial diversity among the leadership of our institutions. It isn’t enough for there to be societal lip-service to cultural diversity. When public figures, for example, suggest that multiculturalism is successful because there are diverse faces represented on television cooking shows, it reveals a blindness to the realities of racial power in Australia. If representation were a measure of success on multiculturalism and race, what does the lack of diversity within the leadership of our political, governmental, educational and business institutions say? What does it say that close to 25 per cent of the Australian population has a non-European or Indigenous background, but only about 3 per cent of Australia’s CEOs have those backgrounds?8 If only curing racism were as easy as liking Masterchef. Beyond anti-racism, immigration must be reinstated as a nation-building exercise within Australian life. Accompanying the rise in racism, COVID-19 has created or revealed a troubling exclusion and marginalisation of migrants. It is migrants, after all, who work disproportionately in parts of the economy most directly hit by lockdowns and by economic contraction, such as hospitality and retail services. Moreover, emergency measures such as JobKeeper payments have excluded a number of key categories of migrant visa-holders, including international students. The images of long queues of international students waiting for free meals in Sydney and Melbourne illustrate the precarious economic position in which many now find themselves. In part, this speaks of the relative decline of the nationbuilding ambition behind Australia’s immigration program. For decades following the Second World War, the nation-building rationale of immigration was axiomatic. Political leaders understood the need to build an immigration program that was accepted as serving the national interest, and as enlarging the nation – if not

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literally in the mode of ‘populate or perish’, then in creating the conditions for a more prosperous and dynamic Australia. People understood that those who came to Australia did so with ambitions to set up a new life here, and would in time become citizens and Australians. This path to citizenship is no longer as linear as it might have once been, with the rise of temporary migration. Whereas Australia’s migration intake was traditionally set centrally by the federal government, during the past two decades, migration has become market-driven. Temporary migration is now the engine of our immigration program, which in recent years has been dominated by arrivals of international students, holidaymakers and skilled workers. And while many of those who come here as temporary migrants end up as permanent residents and eventually citizens, their experience is perhaps not viewed in the same way as those of migrants in the past. If migrants aren’t permanently settled, but valued only for their temporary economic contributions, they aren’t being accepted as genuine members of our society and they are more vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace.9 This is one reason why the federal government found it so easy to exclude many migrants from emergency COVID-19 economic measures: these were people who didn’t truly belong here; Australian government’s responsibility was to Australians first, and those who couldn’t support themselves had the option of going back home. Our attitude to migration must avoid seeing it as just about extracting short-term economic benefit from migrants. We must instead see it as a national challenge to ensure everyone who contributes to our society is a citizen, or has the opportunity to become one. If our multicultural society is to emerge from the pandemic stronger, we must indeed re-value trust and citizenship. We must speak again of the common good and seek to forge a solidarity founded on the equality of citizenship. Liberal democracies

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everywhere are finding these aspirations under challenge. If there is a prolonged economic downturn, we face every likelihood that prejudice and racialised anger will deepen – making the conditions for solidarity impossible. This has implications far beyond just racial equality and multiculturalism. As the political scientist Francis Fukuyama has highlighted, the countries that have fared best in dealing with COVID-19 are characterised by trust. What matters, it seems, is ‘whether citizens trust their leaders, and whether those leaders preside over a competent and effective state’.10 With the federal government – and for that matter, many state governments – having raised the drawbridge for now, there’s a risk of our national sentiment becoming too insular, too defensive. What’s needed isn’t so much a rallying cry of national sovereignty, but one of nation-building. If we need trust, it’s not only trust in government, it’s trust among citizens. The kind of nation we rebuild – the kind of social contract we re-enact – will be determined not just by government, but by us as citizens. In these extraordinary times, nearly all our lives have grown more ordinary. The little things, the small gestures and exchanges between us, have taken on new meaning. For a multicultural nation such as ours, it has become all the more urgent to stamp out the racism, often insidious, creeping into the lives of many of our fellow Australians.

TIM SOUTPHOMMASANE is Professor of Practice (Sociology and Political Theory) and Director, Culture Strategy at the University of Sydney. He was Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2013 to 2018. He is the author of five books, including I’m Not Racist But … 40 Years of the Racial Discrimination Act. His most recent book is On Hate.

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THE PRICE OF FOOD ‘Eating is an agricultural act.’ – Wendell Berry, American ‘farmer poet’ and environmentalist

GABRIELLE CHAN

Australians are not used to seeing empty supermarket shelves. After all, we grow a lot of food and export two-thirds of our agricultural produce, including food.1 Yet it took about two weeks of a pandemic to see great holes where staples like rice, pasta and tinned goods used to be. Apparently, we are only nine meals from anarchy at any one time. It is unclear how far anarchy is measured in toilet rolls. The issue was a combination of ‘just in time’ supply chains and drought shortages for goods like rice. The government and the National Farmers Federation assured us that they had our backs. But for all of our food security, many of the communities and landscapes that grew the food for those staples are stretched. Three decades of market mantras to increase the amount of what we produce, to shave a little more off our costs, to stretch the land and the people who work it that much further, have pushed people and the environment to the limit.

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Though the Darling (Barka) River had begun flowing at time of writing, it has been dry for three years. Its Barkindji people – literally the ‘people of the river’ – are distressed. River-reliant communities have been running out of drinking water. Hundreds of species have become extinct since white settlement, and 310 species of animal and more than 1100 plants are at risk of disappearing across the country.2 At the same time, farm productivity has made huge strides by replacing people with technology. But increasing drought has pushed farm incomes down, with New South Wales’ average business profit in 2019–20 on broadacre farms projected to be the lowest recorded by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) in 40 years.3 In other states, the projections are patchy. The national average farm profits are expected to fall into negative territory (–$19 000) – the lowest since the end-of-the-millennium drought. Averages can obscure a story, yet here is a contradiction at the heart of farming. Productivity and profit levels are decreasing but farmland prices are increasing, driven by increasing interest by both global players with patient capital and large domestic family/corporatised farms buying out neighbours. According to ABARES Snapshot of Australian Agriculture 2020, 15 per cent of farms now account for one-fifth of the broadacre population, but two thirds of land, income and output. ABARES has made a value judgment: ‘The structure of Australian farms reflects market conditions, which tend to see the best managers operating the largest farms’. Those large-sized farms (inflation adjusted) have grown from 3 per cent of farms to 15 per cent over the past four decades.4 The number of small and middle-sized farmers is shrinking. That land for the top end has to come from somewhere and the middle is either getting big or getting out, as they have been exhorted to do for 40 years.

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The nature of the big agricultural players has changed, from the old pastoral companies and family operations to Canadian, American and Dutch pension funds, Macquarie Bank, or highwealth individuals such as mining magnate Gina Rinehart, as well as managed investment trusts like Rural Funds Group and GoFARM or growing players like Duxtons. The people who own or control a large chunk of the most productive land these days never lose the shine on their RM Williams boots or the glint in their smile. These big players are putting together more land parcels with gigalitres of water in a changing climate.5 The map of ownership, annually published by the Weekly Times, extends through the New South Wales and Victorian wheat belt, through horticulture in South Australia along the river systems and down around southern Western Australia. They have done their homework. Yet I would wager that the average Australian thinks of farmers as the middle, multigenerational family food producer. And here I must declare a conflict of interest. I derive part of my income from one such farm, a middle multigenerational food producer of wheat, wool and sheep, in the south-west slopes, west of Canberra. My children went to school at the local primary and my life has become interwoven with the fortunes and challenges of the small towns around the farm. I have seen the hollowing-out occur over a generation both locally and in my reporting. The family business is typical of those people who lie in between the niche small producer who might survive with a mainline into farmers’ markets and the large corporates. They are caught in the vice of input costs (the cost of chemicals and other inputs) and the food price, whether it be a commodity or a cauliflower. Under pressure from the cost price squeeze, all they can do is work harder. So they try to shave a little more productivity out of the system. They try different concepts, multispecies cover crops to

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retain ground cover, one of the many versions of regenerative agriculture, or pin their hopes on technology. It’s going to save us, you know, drone sprays, flying across the skies replacing the arc of swallows. Precision agriculture uses technology so you sow the maximum number of seeds in your paddock. Extra plants mean extra dosh. Extra stock means more to sell. Trees are sometimes cleared to make way for such technology. Trees stand in the way of earning a living for some farmers if the economic system does not value them. Agronomists, banks and, hell, every farm conference push for the need for greater productivity to get that extra five or ten dollars a tonne at the end of harvest. Whereas a tree, well, where is the value in that? This is seen as acceptable in some quarters, even for the big players who have already made tidy profits. Macquarie Bank took out significant remnant trees at one of their properties near Cootamundra, just after getting $100 million of taxpayer funds from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) for some pretty standard farming practice.6 One of the reasons CEFC backed Macquarie was their scale. The federal government has also been actively inviting superannuation funds to invest in farms. In 2018, the treasurer at the time, Scott Morrison, established a parliamentary inquiry to look at how Australia could remove the barriers to get superannuation flowing into agriculture.7 This is an active structural adjustment program to get more money into Australian agriculture. More investment from mobile global capital like superannuation funds means bigger farms and greater concentration of ownership. With climate change pressure testing our environment and the economic model whipping us along, we are losing diversity in our farming businesses. Australia is sleepwalking into a very different landscape and food production model. It could well involve a reinvented squattocracy – corporate or corporatised family style.

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Every farming community can cite examples. When a big private global firm bought an old family farm around us in south western NSW, they took down fences, bulldozed cottages, and the families that had lived in them moved on. Drive-in, drive-out contractors are brought in for sowing and harvest and move on to their next part of the empire when the job is done. No kids for the school, no members for the touch footy team. That is fine if that is what the country wants. Just know we are losing communities, including along our river systems where the big players congregate like ducks on a dam. Large-scale irrigation is the growth industry, hence the expansion of corporate farming in the southern Murray system. In fact, there is so much development in permanent horticulture plantings in nuts and fruit trees that a report for the Victorian government warned of extreme dry years: ‘Of critical importance, the analysis suggests that during periods of future extreme dry water availability, existing permanent horticulture may demand essentially all surface and groundwater available in the connected Murray region (i.e. there may be no or very little water available to other industries such as dairy, cotton and rice)’.8 We are losing control of our landscapes. We are so attuned to the need to increase the amount we produce, we are not thinking about the quality of what we produce, the health of the soil, the water or the communities that produce it. And why? So we can export more to help our balance of payments. We have to feed the world, we’re told, at the same time as we know that 40 per cent of the global food produced is wasted, much of it on farm or in the production process, due to supermarket and processor specifications, before it even gets into the aisle or the home. Every bit of food wasted represents the loss of the natural resources that went into the wheat for that bread, that bottle of milk, that lamb chop or that salmon steak. Oh, and food has to be cheap, so in

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some cases the farmer cannot factor the full costs of producing that litre of milk into the end price. So the small to middle farmer pays with her cheap or unpaid labour, and often the environment pays because, as the saying goes around agricultural circles, you can’t be green if you’re in the red. The funny thing is that Australian governments regularly pay homage to the small to middle family farms. Every party purports to stand up for them. Corporate agriculture and food processors deliberately use pictures of family farmers on their products and websites because they can trade on the image. The family farmer takes a key place in Australia’s myth-making, but the reality is changing. After 30 years of rationalisation, there is no detailed policy regarding agriculture, which takes in strategic interests: food production communities, soil and water in a changing climate. Don’t only listen to me on this. The defence department said this two years ago: ‘Australia’s national security includes state and human security and is inherently linked to the security of health, water, energy, food and economic systems at the local, national, regional and global level. Defence views climate change as a threat multiplier, having both direct and indirect impacts on Defence’s business’.9 Former governor-general, distinguished soldier and former soils advocate Mike Jeffrey wrote to the Prime Minister in 2018: ‘The emerging concept of “soil security” also underpins the world’s six existential challenges: food, water and energy security, climate change abatement, biodiversity protection and human health’.10 Yet the last agriculture white paper, released in 2015, did not even mention climate change because we were still in Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce’s phoney war. Abbott, who famously referred to climate change as ‘crap’ in 2009, won government in 2013 and dumped the Gillard government’s carbon price.11 His then

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agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce drew up the terms of reference for a White Paper to guide policy on agriculture without even mentioning climate change.12 We can’t ignore global warming. We also have an economy hungry for the income from the two-thirds of our food, fibre and forestry, which are exported. That pay cheque comes with strings attached. Agriculture accounts for nearly 60 per cent of both the water extracted and the land used.13 We have a very deregulated food production sector compared with other countries, with almost none of the subsidies other countries provide to their farmers. That access to large parcels of land and water with almost no government intervention is exactly what makes us increasingly attractive to global players with the time and money to sit and wait. Unlike the small to medium farmer, a global pension fund doesn’t need to worry about profit year on year because they factor in capital gain and they have a steady income stream. Australia needs to decide if this is the path we want to follow. First we have to answer a few questions. What is the land for? What is the best use of water? Does it matter who owns it? How robust and diverse is our food system? Do long global supply chains serve Australia well in hard times as well as good times? Is economic production the only yardstick for food production? Do the local food producing communities and their own food supply matter? What farming practices ensure we are not mining the environment? Should better land managers – Indigenous and non – be rewarded if the whole society benefits from their work? How do we balance a fair income for producers and a fair food price for eaters? What is the acceptable price to pay for producing food in both landscape resources and rural communities? The political moment is here to fuse agriculture and environment. For all our talk of farmers as the backbone of the country, we have no food or agricultural plan that answers these

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questions. On the flip side, the most recent national State of the Environment Report (2016) said: ‘an overarching national policy that establishes a clear vision for the protection and sustainable management of Australia’s environment to the year 2050 is lacking’. Here is a chance to think about the country as a whole: which bits are productive, which bits need protecting, which communities and species are under pressure and whether we are happy to let them wither and die. We have to drop the useless debate that separates people from the environment. Humans have been part of the Australian landscape for more than 60 000 years, and in that time have introduced management techniques to a greater or lesser degree. Solutions to the tensions between food production, species decline, land degradation and climate change need to be solved as a package, not in silos. Policy thinking about a new kind of agriculture is already happening around the world. As the United Kingdom enters its transition period after leaving the European Union on January 31 this year, the conservative government is inching toward a national food strategy that aims to deliver healthy food regardless of income, restore the environment, build on resilient and humane agriculture and contribute to rural and urban economies. As a set of principles, it is not a bad start. The Gillard Government had a National Food Plan white paper in 2010, which had the potential to deal with some of these issues but ended up being closer to a food marketing and export plan and continue the fiction of endless growth.14 Tony Abbott axed the food policy working group in 2014 and any chance of creating more expansive policy was gone. Given the coronavirus has forced us to focus our minds on the things that matter, we should now take the chance to bring it back and broaden its remit and include more than large corporate or advocacy industry groups, such as public health advocates,

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Indigenous land managers and small to medium producers and food advocates who might help provide regional food resilience. One of the mainstay concepts in the United Kingdom food discussion uses the concept of natural capital – the idea that governments and businesses actually measure their natural resources like trees, water and soil as an asset. We have a small environmental accounting system, but it could be expanded and form the basis for a conversation about what we want to enhance, retain or exploit.15 An expanded environmental accounting program would include a strong regionally based focus that measures our natural assets like we measure our money in the bank or our stock and plant. As a simple rule, if our natural assets are depreciating, we should be as alarmed as if we were running down any other economic asset. It’s just not sustainable to keep using something without replenishing it, whether it is the soil on a farm or the petrol in your car. Environmental service payment systems have been happening for decades around the world, including in Brazil where sales taxes and oil and gas royalties are levied to pay for protected areas, or in Ecuador to protect water quality.16 Australia has scattered examples, including in Indigenous rangelands,17 but there is no strategic thinking at a government level as to how they all fit together in the national estate. Ecoservices are another tool for driving good landscape outcomes, but such a system would have to be underpinned by evidence-based assessment. We cannot afford to break the trust between metropolitan and rural citizens. As a starting point, we could agree on some principles. First, good food is worth paying for; everyone deserves access to it regardless of income. Second, food price should include all the costs of production, economic and environmental. We shouldn’t settle for below minimum wages in the industrial relations system and we shouldn’t expect food producers to work for nothing.

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Third, we acknowledge farmers manage more than half of the Australian land mass and its water, so it is worth getting their management practice right for the sake of the country’s benefit. Fourth, government and public rhetoric voicing warm support for agriculture requires more meaningful policy development than the current vacuum. We eat and we vote, so we all have a stake in the outcome.

GABRIELLE CHAN has been a journalist for more than 30 years, writing about politics and rural affairs for diverse publications including the Australian, Guardian Australia and Meanjin. Her book Rusted Off: Why country Australia is fed up was shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the 2019 Walkley Awards. Gabrielle is working on her next book on food, farming and landscape.

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FARMING: GROWING OUR WAY OUT OF A CRISIS ‘Agriculture is our wisest pursuit because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness.’ – a letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, August, 1787

FIONA SIMSON

By the time the seriousness of COVID-19 had hit home to Australians, the bush already felt bruised and battered. A once-in-ageneration drought had crippled much of the eastern seaboard. For the best part of 2019 and for some years before, NSW was 100 per cent drought-declared. Many farmers had not had a successful winter or summer crop for consecutive years. Livestock producers had to make the difficult decision between continuing to feed their sheep and cattle or to send them to a premature slaughter. It’s a situation that resulted in Australia’s sheep flock being depleted to its lowest numbers since 1904. Our precious rivers in many cases ran dry. Who could forget the scenes of the mass fish deaths in Menindee? Towns were running out of water too. In my regional centre of Tamworth, we

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were within days of the town running completely dry. The same was true for Stanthorpe in southern Queensland, Walgett in western NSW and Braidwood near Canberra. For city people (and I have to admit, even those like me born and bred in the bush), the idea of completely running out of water was hard to fathom. In the cruellest of ironies, at the same time the drought’s grip was really taking hold, in central north Queensland, an unthinkable flood wiped out more than 500 000 head of cattle and millions of dollars’ worth of fences and other essential infrastructure. The situation was desperate. Some producers, like Jacqueline Curley of Gipsy Plains Brahmans, lost bloodlines that had taken generations to establish. It was the bush that again bore the brunt of last summer’s catastrophic fires. Who could forget the devastating scenes from the main street of sleepy dairy farming village Cobargo, the heartbreaking pictures of charred livestock and wildlife, and decimated orchards and vineyards? More than 100 000 sheep perished on Kangaroo Island alone. Up to 5000 koalas were killed and 24 per cent of Australia’s koala habitat was lost in the inferno. All up, it’s estimated that 1.25 billion animals were lost. The damage to forests and national parks was in some places so severe that the bush will take many decades to recover. Most tragically, a number of farmers lost their lives. The compounding nature of the disasters felt biblical. In fact, a plague of locusts did rip through what was left of pastures in parts of western New South Wales and Queensland. But then, in early 2020, as is often the case in this land of drought and flooding rains, the good times seemed to return as quickly as they left. As Australia was going into lockdown around Easter, there were actual and metaphoric green shoots for our farmers and regional communities. Grain growers in my patch, the Liverpool Plains, were sowing

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winter crops into heart-warming levels of soil moisture. And, while it can’t be said that the drought was over across the board, sheep and beef herds were beginning to be rebuilt. It looked like an already resilient sector would emerge from our recent challenges even more resilient. And then came COVID-19. Thankfully, in the very early days of the pandemic, it was soon apparent that, while agriculture and the regions would be challenged, we wouldn’t be at the coalface of this crisis. As businesses big and small closed their doors, as hundreds of thousands of Aussies found themselves unemployed and kids and families embarked on a whole new way of living and learning, farmers were fortunate to be able to by and large keep on keeping on. We were well practised in the art of working from home. Throughout March and April, farmers worked hard with state and federal governments and the supply chain to ensure the necessary continuity of the food supply. Abattoirs, saleyards, wool auctions, shearing sheds and packing sheds were to remain operating albeit with new COVID-safe procedures. Agricultureand food-related interstate movement was negotiated. Even roadhouses were given special exemption to ensure truckies could safely keep truckin’. The ease with which the measures were put in place to shield agriculture from the COVID-19 shutdown demonstrated the value of our industry to Australia. I know time will tell just how important these measures have been in our nation’s successful COVID-19 response. In the dark, early days of the pandemic, when the uncertainty was at its peak, there’s no doubt Australians, like so many across the world, went back to basics. Life was stripped back to the things that really matter: family, good health, a job, shelter and access to plentiful quality, safe food.

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At the peak of the panic buying, the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) sent a message of reassurance to Australians. To remind them of the sheer volume of food our farmers grow each year – more than enough food to feed our nation three times over. We told Australians, ‘We have got your back’ and that ‘farmers are getting on with the job, continuing to produce the meat, grains, milk, fruit and vegetables that we all love and rely on’.1 The work of our farmers makes this nation among the most food secure in the world. But research by the NFF shows that up to 63 per cent of people report having no real connection with how their food and fibre is grown or with regional Australia. Undoubtedly, angst over food shortages are a symptom of this disconnect. COVID-19 represented an opportunity for us to lead a conversation with Australians about just how much of what goes on in the paddocks, orchards, vineyards and packing sheds across this country contributes to the everyday lives of all Australians. Including the food on their plates and the fibres on their backs, but also their economic prosperity. As we dare to open one eye towards a post-COVID-19 world and a recovery from the economic devastation necessarily inflicted, agriculture is limbering up. We’re ready and raring to flex our muscles to put Australia back on its pathway of growth. A well-worn track, on which Australia feels most comfortable. We believe the farm sector and regional Australia is ready to be the economic saving grace Australia needs. It wouldn’t be without precedent: strong growth in exports helped Australia stave off a recession during the Global Financial Crisis. The NFF already has a plan to supercharge agriculture as part of a bold but, we think, an achievable vision for farmgate output to tally $100 billion by 2030, up from about $60 billion today. Already on a trajectory of growth, the numbers tell us that

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even if we do nothing, agriculture would get to $86 billion by 2030. But with the government’s help to release the handbrake, agriculture can and will put its foot down. What will $100 billion in farm output by 2030 mean? Achieving this target would see more Australian food and fibre enjoyed across the globe. We already export two thirds of our agriculture produce. It would mean stronger, more vibrant and sustainable regional communities with the development of new innovative business and industries, and more sophisticated, technology-based supply chains – from paddock to plate. Our reform wish list for growth isn’t rocket science. In many instances, the policy levers we’re calling to be pulled aren’t new. At the heart of our growth will be a focus on our people and communities. Things that we now know all Australians will support after COVID-19. As overcrowding and congestion dog our cities, regional Australia is vastly underutilised. Australia needs a genuine focus on regionalisation and a bona fide commitment, to the tune of multimillions of dollars towards bolstering economic centres in our regions and connecting them to local and overseas markets, akin to the Government’s Cities Deal Program. Capitalising on environmental and infrastructure advantages, regional communities must identify new and nurture existing industries, collaborating and scaling up success. There are great examples of this, like the Canberra Regional Joint Organisation, that takes in 10 local governments spanning the mountains, the sea and the tablelands. Members work together to promote primary industries and tourism, but also improve health and education, making the region a better place to live and work. Right now, there is an intolerable inequality in the access to services urban Australians have compared with those outside the city bounds. Enhanced and new industry, such as a renaissance of regional

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agriculture-based manufacturing, will bring jobs and people to our regions, and jobs and people lead to a business case for improved infrastructure, services and cultural and social amenities. It might surprise many Australians to know that 100 per cent of our renowned Australian cotton is exported for processing. The same is almost true for our famous Merino wool. There is a huge opportunity to bring a larger degree of the processing of our food and fibre onshore. A streamlining and simplification of the industrial relations system is essential to ensure the rights and obligations of farmers as employees and farm workers are well understood. And for too long now an inadequate workforce has been impeding the farm sector’s growth. We need investment in our people so that, as in other industries, there is a recognised skillsbased pathway for those exploring a farming career – something akin to an Agriculture Apprenticeship. Agriculture has always relied on a mix of local and overseas workers. We continue to need more flexible visa programs to ensure our workforce is adequate. Minimising red tape is essential as is a tax system that promotes growth rather than impedes it. Small business regulations that encourage investment in new and updated plant and machinery have allowed farmers to invest in upgraded plant and technology. The COVID-19-expanded depreciation measures should be maintained indefinitely. In the interests of economic recovery, consideration should also be given to raising the thresholds further still for the purchase of Australian-made goods. Australian farmers are renowned across the world for being early adopters of new technologies and practices. The Research and Development Tax Incentive (RDTI) should encourage innovation in farming, leading to new approaches and new products, but it is currently not available to unincorporated businesses.

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That is, most small businesses and, indeed, most farm businesses. This means 77 per cent of farm businesses are ineligible for the RDTI, which provides a tax offset of up to 43.5 per cent for research and development activities. No doubt an extension of this important measure to unincorporated farm businesses would result in significant productivity gains. After all, a study by the Australian Farm Institute, an agricultural think tank, said the adoption of digital technology on farm, such as the remote monitoring of water sources, boundary fences and crops, could add $20 billion to our bottom line alone by 2050. The shackles must also be released when it comes to farmers’ access to new science. It’s past time for a risk-based approach to genetic modification technology. Access to safe and effective gene technologies will continue to deliver not only productivity improvements but sustainability and consumer health benefits too. For example, genetic modification technology has seen the development of canola with improved drought tolerance and with higher nutritional properties. Agricultural chemicals and veterinary medicines (agvet chemicals) are a major contributor to agricultural productivity and competitiveness. We badly need to prioritise the more timely assessment of new products that have the potential to give Australian farmers the edge in the global market place. It’s clear that agriculture’s greatest growth potential lies in expanding our international markets. Never has maintaining and growing our valuable export relationships been more important. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated concerning global trends towards protectionism: the imposition of unreasonable tariffs and other trade barriers and a disregard for the rules-based global trading system. As a free-trading middle power, Australia has a significant interest in combatting these trends. This is particularly true for the farm sector.

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It’s vital that, despite COVID-19 tension, the Australian government continues to lead the expansions of our valuable relationship with China, while at the same time exploring new opportunities with, for example, the European Union, the United Kingdom and India. Our produce continues to be dogged by restrictive nontariff barriers in many countries. We must invest more heavily in tackling these issues. Government should also move to establish export and import protocols that recognise Australia’s high biosecurity standards. Our biosecurity regulators must uphold a zero-tolerance approach to imported products carrying pests and diseases foreign to Australia, and take strong action where there are incidents of non-compliance. Never have strong biosecurity measures been more important. And we are nothing if our environment is not managed sustainably. Australian farmers manage 51 per cent of our landscape. The NFF is currently working with the government on a pilot project that could see farmers remunerated for delivering positive biodiversity outcomes. Everyday farmers are protecting water ways, managing invasive weeds and feral pests for the benefit of all Australians – at their own cost. We have a goal for agriculture to be better recognised for its role in promoting biodiversity, in part by farmers being financially rewarded for their environmental improvements. By 2030, we’d like to see 5 per cent of farmers’ income derived from ecosystem services. Throughout our sector’s recent challenges, the Australian community rallied, donating literally millions of dollars towards fodder drops and cash support. I never cease to be amazed by the empathy and generosity of my fellow Aussies. It’s clear that our farmers hold a special place in the heart of all Australians. Farmers take very seriously their role in growing the food and fibre that Australians and millions of others across the world

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depend on. And right now, we are committed to repaying the support Australians have shown us during recent tough times. We are primed to lead an accelerated COVID-19 recovery. Australia is the envy of the world in how we are managing the COVID-19 health crisis, and we’re well placed to lead the world in economic recovery also.

FIONA SIMSON was elected President of the National Farmers Federation in November 2016 after a career in local government and leadership of the NSW Farmers Federation. Fiona chairs the Future Food Systems CRC, is the Deputy Chair of NRMA, a Board Member of Australian Made Campaign Limited, sits on a number of Federal Government Advisory Committees, and is part of a family farming business on the NSW Liverpool Plains.

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ENTREPRENEURS ARE EVERYWHERE ANNIE O’ROURKE

In 2002 Treasurer Peter Costello asked Australian women to have more babies: ‘one for mum, one for dad and one for the country’, and so do our bit for the economy. Perhaps he was striving for his own ‘Team Australia’ moment. At the time, I was at the start of a 10-year climb that would take me from the most junior political Opposition staffer position to a senior adviser role in the prime minister’s office. I found this announcement staggering. As a young(ish) woman at that time, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in asking whether growing the population really was the only activity women could do to help the national economy. Nearly 20 years later, in the face of a major recession, we are going around again. Our current Treasurer has repeated Costello’s call for a ‘baby-led recovery’. Now, running my own successful strategic communications agency from Byron Bay in regional New South Wales, I thought, ‘Huh, wait, what?! Are we still here, asking women to stay home and reproduce? No!’ To paraphrase another treasurer (Paul Keating), every galah is talking about the need to rebuild the Australian economy, to innovate and embrace digital disruption and so on. Yet no one is

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talking to female job creators. Women are far more experienced at working from home, being agile and managing employment disruption than men (and yes, this is said with much exasperation). So where are the women leading truly innovative taskforces to figure out how to do things differently in this different world? While we have clearly made plenty of progress, it’s indisputable that women remain several rungs below men on the economic and jobs ladder. While female workforce participation for those aged 15–64 years here in Australia has reached almost 75 per cent,1 the persistently stubborn gender wage gap is still 14 per cent.2 In almost every organisational structure, women remain a distant second in terms of representation, remuneration and recognition. Ever the optimist, I started this new decade with the hope that we could get there within a generation. I even hoped that my two young boys would never experience the skewed gender imbalance when they enter the workforce. My fear coming out of COVID-19 is that if we don’t take concerted policy action, this event and its recessionary impact has the capacity to set womens’ status in the workforce back yet another decade. Within the space of just months, the economic impacts of COVID-19 have removed hard-fought and hard-won opportunities for women everywhere, effectively wiping out decades of financial and workplace gains for women across the world.3 Countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Brazil, Germany, Nicaragua and New Zealand have seen women’s workforce participation rates inching up for years, and before COVID-19, Australian women (at 61 per cent) were well ahead of the global participation rates of 47 per cent. Paid parental leave introduced in the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and Australia had started to lift the barriers to women’s return to work after having children. All this is now at risk. Some have called it a ‘pink-collar

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recession’,4 others a ‘she-cession’.5 Women have faced far greater job losses and cuts to working hours than men in 2020. Between March and April 2020 in Australia, women lost 10 per cent more jobs than men in our major capital cities and 43 per more jobs in other locations.6 So if you are a woman in a regional area – double whammy. The first jobs to go were in the female-focused sectors of retail and hospitality. Other decisions like the early removal of JobKeeper from the female-dominated childcare industry and reintroduction of full childcare fees before an economic recovery had even started have created justified concerns that a fatal body blow is being dealt to women’s workforce participation. Sadly, the economic disempowerment of women is nothing new. It just sucks when you’ve begun to make progress only then to see it whittled away. As a nation, though, we’ve come too far to simply accept this. Social and economic upheavals can burn away old norms and bring unexpected new opportunities to reshape societies for the better. As we start our economic recovery, we must ensure that the ‘Team Australia’ effort doesn’t effectively leave half the team behind. A key tenet of our successful recovery will be seeing and understanding that Australian women are capable of delivering economic growth – not just through their contributions to population growth. It makes no financial, social or economic sense to allow the momentum achieved in increasing female workforce participation and its resultant economic output to turn, overnight, into a sunk cost. This is especially true in regional areas where women are increasingly setting up their own enterprises to support themselves, their families and communities. If we act now and see women as job creators, this economic crisis can hold the seeds of the next wave of women’s economic

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empowerment – and with it the driver of the next wave of Australia’s economic prosperity. We need to provide the enablers and remove the barriers to assist more women into positions where they too control the levers of economic and financial power. The fact that today women hold only 6 per cent of ASX 200 CEO roles is simply unacceptable.7 Of course we need more women in leadership positions in the engine rooms of our largest firms and enterprises, but just as importantly, we need more women starting their own businesses. Only then will we truly have economic influence. There is no better time than the aftermath of COVID’s wreckage to start this journey. Now is the time to genuinely help women start, grow and prosper in their own businesses – and we can’t stop until we have a critical mass of female business owners. Recent data shows us that when women go into business themselves, they are nearly four times more likely than men to start up a business in health and social care. These are also industries where research tells us that investment is likely to generate more overall employment than in male-dominated industries such as construction.8 To get more female entrepreneurs into the driver’s seat – and not just the passenger seat or back seat – of our economic recovery, we should: 1 Make childcare universally available (and free) so that women’s primary caring responsibilities don’t limit their start-up capacity. Currently, women with a child under five years of age are only half as likely to start a new business as men in the same situation, and 25 per cent less likely even when they have a child over the age of five. 2 Support and incentivise women to enrol in management and commerce courses – and perhaps even review the curricula so that it is more inclusive of women’s business interests.

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Despite having much higher enrolments across higher education in general (58.4 per cent compared to 41.6 per cent), women still only represent 46.6 per cent of students in management and commerce, putting them behind the eight ball. 3 Provide a dedicated stream of retraining options for women to reskill or upskill after their children have started school, or later in life, with an emphasis on training that encourages women’s entrepreneurship. 4 Back a campaign to profile and promote female entrepreneurs to the whole community, including in schools. The current invisibility of female entrepreneur role models is an ongoing problem. For every Mike Cannon-Brooks, Nick Molnar, or Ruslan Kogan, we need to see and hear from a female entrepreneur who could inspire other women to take the chance and back themselves in a new business. But we are simply not seeing these women as much as we could: while Naomi Stimson and Janine Allis built on their existing business success and profiles through their time on Shark Tank, we need another hundred women operating small to medium enterprises being profiled and encouraged to share their stories – both successes and failures. Confidence is one of the key things holding women back, so promoting role models alongside other initiatives to build confidence are extremely important. While a global economic downturn might seem like a strange time to be encouraging women to set up new, innovative businesses, there are some great upsides to making a move at this time. There are likely to be fewer competitors in some fields, cheaper finance available, reduced rents on many commercial properties, and a large number of talented people looking for work.

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By finding the right niche – whether for-profit or social enterprise – women could find there are opportunities now that weren’t there before. The change in consumer sentiment away from high-end luxury goods and towards more basic services could also signal that now is the right time for new and different retail and food services to be offered, through home delivery, online ordering and other channels that could easily be set up from home rather than needing commercial retail premises. Research from 2019 estimated that if Australia boosted the number of female entrepreneurs to reach parity with men, this would add an additional $71–135 billion to the economy.9 The clear economic benefits also need to be added to the additional lifestyle benefits that women with young children would reap by being their own boss, having greater say over their own work/life balance, and being given the opportunity to contribute to rebuilding Australia’s job market. As a proud regional business owner, I’ve seen that despite droughts, floods and plagues of locusts, COVID and homeschooling, there are many women entrepreneurs in regional areas because there just aren’t the job opportunities. The #buyfromthebush campaign led by Grace Brennan shows that with the right support and attention, they can generate a significant income whether as a side hustle or as the main breadwinner. Over the past 25 years working both inside Parliament House and now running my own national strategic communications business, I’ve observed, advised and participated in many meetings involving people with power and money. I’ve seen decisions being made that affect the lives of thousands of people, decisions that change courses for major industries and communities. Yet it is still incredibly rare for women to be participating as decision makers. If nothing else, the COVID-19-driven economic slowdown with its disproportionate impact on female employment, has

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demonstrated to women just how fragile their grasp is on economic power. If, as a nation, we can learn anything from the COVID-19 crisis – and its economic and social fallout – it’s that we need more women with a voice in those meeting rooms of power to ensure a diversity of interests and viewpoints are considered in the decisions being made that affect all of us. Many of our leaders guiding the way through this crisis are women: NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant, Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk and in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Let’s build on this momentum so that female voices leading the conversations across business and government are no longer remarkable or exceptional. Let it be the norm. To do this, we need to ensure that women, no matter where they live in Australia, have the opportunity to use their full set of talents, have the opportunity to run their own businesses, and the opportunity to generate the money that inevitably leads to power. We need more female entrepreneurs, and now is the time to make that happen.

ANNIE O’ROURKE is the Founder of 89 Degrees East, a national strategic communications agency that helps governments, businesses and communities address and communicate critical and complex issues. She’s directed major federal government campaigns, been a Senior Adviser to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, is currently a Director of the Academy of Enterprising Girls, and is passionate about how user-level technology can contribute to resolving critical policy challenges.

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SUPERANNUATION – PERSONAL AND NATIONAL WEALTH GREG COMBET

As Australia emerges from the immediate crisis management phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now the time for policy and business leaders to turn our minds to how we will pull Australia’s economy out of the depths of this downturn. We are in recession for the first time in almost three decades. The policy challenges we face are considerable, with the highest unemployment rate in a generation, more insecure work than ever, a contraction of economic growth, and a reduction in business investment. We all know how damaging recessions are to people and communities. We cannot afford this one to be any longer or more painful than it has to be. Just like it did after the Global Financial Crisis, our $3 trillion superannuation system is well placed to do its share of the heavy lifting in this effort.1 In fact, the superannuation system is in a unique position to help with the recovery: to provide muchneeded financial stability in the market, and to provide some of the investment Australians need to pull ourselves out of recession.

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A strong superannuation system means a strong economy, and vice versa. This interwoven strength will be vital for economic recovery as we come through this crisis. Our superannuation system draws its strength not just from the Australian economy, but the years of stable policy settings that allow it to invest for the long term. Any additional instability in superannuation policy will weaken the sector – and undermine its ability to contribute to the recovery. Australia’s retirement savings fall into three segments: profit-to-member super funds including industry funds jointly governed by worker and employer representatives, as well as corporate funds; retail for-profit super funds, which are usually run by the big banks or insurance companies and generate profits for shareholders as well as members; and self-managed super funds, generally run by people with the financial capacity to meet the costs and demands of managing their own scheme. Industry funds have a strong member-first ethos; they have low fees and return all their profits to members. Most industry super funds originally covered workers from specific industries, but now draw their membership from a diverse range of workplaces. The assets under management of industry superannuation funds now exceed the other segments of the system. We understand the responsibility this places on us. It is incumbent on us to safeguard not just our members’ savings, but the system and the economy that underpin it. The economic downturn has only heightened our importance in the broader economy, as well as our responsibility towards it. Superannuation assets exceed Australia’s annual nominal GDP,2 as well as the market capitalisation of the stock exchange. With over 5 million members3 and more than $700 billion in funds under management,4 industry super funds hold a major stake in our economic life through investments in listed companies, debt

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markets, infrastructure, property and the wider financial system. We are important providers of liquidity to the banks. Industry super funds collectively own just under 10 per cent of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), lend to Australian businesses, invest in important sectors, including aged care and technology start-ups, and hold about $80 billion in property and infrastructure. Our capital expenditure on infrastructure in the next three years will create more than 200 000 jobs. These activities contribute to growth, jobs and productivity, and aid Australia’s current account by investing overseas and repatriating dividends and capital gains. This economic activity will be vital to assist in the economic recovery in the months and years ahead – helping stabilise volatile markets, and providing funds for projects that get people back to work. There’s been a lot of commentary about how industry super funds are faring in the midst of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, and the government’s decision to enable super fund members to withdraw up to $20 000 to assist with the hardship imposed by the pandemic. There’s no doubt that the downturn has presented a number of difficulties to the superannuation sector, as with other financial organisations. Listed equities and other asset prices have fallen substantially, affecting people’s super accounts. In response, some individual members have been switching their super investments into cash. The Australian dollar has been volatile, affecting some super fund foreign exchange hedging positions. And the government’s decision to allow members to withdraw money has also, for the first time in 30 years, punched a hole in the bipartisan policy that has preserved super savings until retirement. All of these events place pressure on the liquidity of the super funds. But let me be blunt on behalf of the funds I represent:

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despite the challenges, the industry super funds are effectively managing the liquidity pressures. And let me be clear about something else. The industry super funds have done everything necessary to help people in hardship access $20 000 of their super in these extraordinary times. If someone is facing hardship, unemployment and/or homelessness, the industry funds understand as well as everyone else that assistance is needed. But it’s also in everybody’s interest that profound policy changes to super, such as the suggestion to suspend super guarantee contributions, or to allow super to be withdrawn for other reasons, go no further. Indeed, the existing changes will themselves have implications for people across decades. The government initially estimated that, by September, 1.6 million people would withdraw $27 billion from their accounts. This estimate has already proven too low. By July, more than 2.6 million Australians had applied to withdraw money from their super accounts – to a total of over $31.9 billion.5 Of this group, more than half were under the age of 35. More than a third were under the age of 30. More than 610 000 Australians drained their accounts down to zero. And according to a recent report by AlphaBeta – which crunched the numbers on the bank account transactions of more than 13 000 people who withdrew their super early – 64 per cent of spending from these withdrawals went to discretionary items such as clothing, furniture, restaurants, gambling and alcohol, not into essentials.6 This was exacerbated by the fact that the opening of super accounts preceded the announcement of JobKeeper and JobSeeker. People weren’t given a full picture of their options before they made what can be a momentous decision, with far-reaching personal consequences. For young people, $20 000 invested today means a substantially more comfortable retirement. For a 30-year-old with

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$20 000 in super now, at a conservative rate of return of 5 per cent per year, by the time they’re 65, that sum would have compounded to a nominal return of over $110 000. At a rate of 8 per cent per year, it would have jumped to just under $300 000. And at the rate AustralianSuper’s balanced fund has performed over the past decade (9.76 per cent), it would have become $520 683. For individuals and policy makers, taking this money early will inevitably produce problems down the line. Many people, particularly women, and particularly those in insecure or intermittent work, already find it tough to save sufficiently for their retirements. For many people, if they withdraw their super early, it will make it much more difficult. Future governments will need to confront this issue, with millions of people with lower super balances compounding over fewer years. As well as the long-term impacts for individual members, there is a short-term hit on investment returns. To meet the demands of the scheme, funds have had to carry more in lowerperforming but highly liquid asset classes. This change in investment strategy wipes 0.35 per cent from the average industry super fund’s returns. That’s about $2.58 billion drained from the retirement savings of all 5 million industry fund members over the nine months the scheme is scheduled to run – or $251 per member. The legislated rise to the super guarantee is the most realistic way members who have accessed their super early can make up that lost ground before they retire. The compulsory super rate is scheduled to start its rise in the middle of 2021 when it lifts to 10 per cent. It will rise half a percentage point each year until it reaches 12 per cent by 1 July 2025. The 0.5 per cent increase scheduled for July 2021 will see a person on $50 000 get about an extra $5 per week paid into their super – a very modest cost to businesses big and small, especially since the increase has been locked in law since 2014.

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The first increase adds just 0.1 per cent to the national wage bill; for most businesses it will be an insignificant amount. But while the cost to business is modest, the super rate increase delivers a great benefit to members’ retirement outcomes – boosting the nest egg of an average 30-year-old couple by between $150 000 to $200 000. These extra savings will be the key to a dignified retirement for Australians who can expect to live far longer than previous generations. The savings workers generate themselves will be even more important as the reality of our ageing population takes effect and there will be far fewer working taxpayers to support those on the pension. But despite the objective benefits of Australians being able to build up a sizeable nest egg, there remains a continued push to ditch the legislated increases from some government MPs, supported by a few media commentators and a sprinkling of academics. This would be a short-sighted decision that would undoubtedly leave members far worse off and lump the next generation, who will already be shouldering the burden of paying the debt the government had to borrow to deal with the COVID19 crisis, with the cost burden of a burgeoning population living just on the aged pension. These MPs use the specious argument that an increase in super comes at the expense of wages. Well, in 2014 Tony Abbott froze the super guarantee at its current rate of 9.5 per cent on the promise of higher wages; since then, wage growth has flatlined. It defies real-world experience that foregone super guarantee increases would be returned to workers as higher wages; the argument is quite frankly nonsense. People would simply lose their super contributions and get nothing in return. We welcome the repeated commitments of the Prime Minister, Treasurer, Finance Minister and Assistant Minister for Superannuation to stick to the legislated super guarantee increase

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schedule and trust they will keep their promise to the Australian people. With many economists now conceding that the prospect of real wage growth after the COVID-19 downturn is remote, it would be a particularly cruel blow to workers if the government backflipped on its promise to stick to the legislated super guarantee increase, as it would deprive them of the only income increase most workers are likely to get in coming years. Not only would freezing or cutting the super guarantee increase harm members’ future retirements, it would impact the economy now. Just like making the early release of super scheme or something like it permanent, allowing nest eggs to be raided for housing deposits or making super voluntary for low-income workers, delaying or scrapping the super guarantee increase would be a further policy-induced liquidity pressure that would restrict capital available to invest for the future. These policies and others like them will shrink the pool of funds that can be used to get local projects off the ground. Maintaining stability in policy settings for super will therefore be critical for the economy as we emerge from the pandemic – and that means it’s critical for members. Industry super funds usually invest with a 20- to 30-year investment horizon. The purpose of our investments is to deliver long-term returns for super fund members when they reach retirement. This long-term horizon can be a vital element of Australia’s recovery from the COVID-19 shock. It will be critical to the recapitalisation of companies and investment in job creation. This occurs in a few ways. The first is on the macro level. During a downturn, superannuation can operate counter-cyclical to the market. As others are dumping stocks, super, with a steady cash flow from contributions, and no leverage, can buy. This puts more liquidity into the market and mitigates volatility, meaning downturns are less extreme and less damaging.

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The second is investing in good Australian businesses with patient capital. With our longer investment horizon, we can afford to support businesses that might take longer to mature. This focus on long-term returns leads to sustainable business growth, which creates and supports jobs. And third, industry super funds have a strong commitment to invest in local infrastructure and property. These investments in ports, rail, electricity distribution, renewables, aged care, airports and the buildings people live and work in, drive growth and create jobs. We’ve already seen examples of this in the industry super system. By May, industry super funds had already earmarked $19.5 billion to expand infrastructure and property holdings in the next three years, and invest in Australian businesses. This money is funding solar farms at the Darwin airport, terminal expansions, rail upgrades, and the construction of residential and commercial buildings. As the recovery goes on, these projects will expand – across every state in the nation. The benefits and profits from our infrastructure and property investments go back into the super accounts of the Australian workers who built them and use them every day. It’s a win for our members, and it’s a win for the Australian economy. That’s why industry super funds are keen to partner with government, federal and state, to finance the projects that will get Australians working again. But the capacity to contribute in all these ways rests upon stable policy settings. Market disruption is one thing, but illconceived policy suggestions that contribute further liquidity pressure risk undermining Australia’s economic recovery and financial stability. Rash decisions like permanently busting open preservation rules, dumping the legislated rise in the super guarantee or adopting an opt-out of super for low-income earners

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– which would only see them pay more tax now and retire with nothing – would be bad for the country in the long term, but also in the short term. We need to resist these temptations, and prioritise the foundations of ongoing prosperity. In the coming months, there will be a need to recalibrate from near-term health and economic crisis management to long-term recovery. This will be a tough task, requiring unprecedented discipline and unity across our society. We will need to use every tool at our disposal in these efforts. I am sure that, across Australia’s superannuation sector, everyone stands ready to play a part. On behalf of industry super, we will be there.

THE HON. GREG COMBET AM was the Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and a federal Minister. Between 2007 and 2013, he served as Minister for Industry and Innovation, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, and Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science. Greg is now Chair of IFM Investors and Chair of Industry Super Australia. From March to June 2020, Greg served on the board of the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission.

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THE FUTURE IS HERE – AND IT’S DIGITAL DANIEL PETRE

As I write, a global economic downturn, whose impact trails only the Depression of the 1930s, has begun, and a pandemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. What can we say with any certainty about the future? It is certain that we are headed into a deep recession, yet this is not going to be one where everyone is equally affected. It is clear that while the economic impact of COVID-19 will be the destruction of many retail businesses, large and small, there are parts of the economy that will benefit from the lockdown we had to undertake. You only need to look at how the stock markets around the world are making their call on where things are headed. In all cases (US, UK, Australia, Canada) while general stock/share markets have recovered from intial COVID-19-inspired drops, Technology indexes (NASDAQ) are at all-time highs. Two things are going on. Companies are realising they can achieve higher productivity with fewer people (therefore higher profits and a higher share price) and the providers of technology tools are seeing their use (and revenue and profits) soaring. As major retailers like Neiman Marcus are going into

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bankruptcy in the United States, Target shuts about half of its stores, or converts them to Kmarts, and legendary investors like Warren Buffet dump every airline stock he previously owned.1 We can see that major technology companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are within 10 per cent of their all-time high. Amazon is at an all-time high and so is Australian software developer Atlassian, which is up over 80 per cent this year alone. We have moved almost overnight to working from home, educating our kids from home, and socialising at home using platforms that were mostly designed for business meetings but are now being used to keep us socially connected. Shopping from home and eating restaurant food at home has exploded as a share of commerce. We’re talking to our doctors by phone or online. How do we capture the benefits of these swift and massive changes? Are we really going to go back to how things were before? Or can we use these new ways of working, learning, shopping and socialising to support a strong economy and create new jobs? Obviously, when you are in social lockdown, buying online makes sense. It’s both convenient and safe. Across the globe, ecommerce companies have predictably seen revenues grow significantly. When the world reopens, buying patterns won’t return to pre-COVID-19. COVID-19 has accelerated a shift that was already occurring from the offline to the online world. We can expect that, while there might be a small drop in ecommerce growth as some transactions move back to the physical world, the future is clear and it is online. The huge changes at Australia Post – just one part of the ecommerce logistics chain in Australia – give some insight into the scale of this shift. Australia Post is processing and delivering 2 million parcels a day;2 parcel volumes almost doubled in April, up by 90 per cent compared to April 2019;3 2000 traditional

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motorbike posties have been retrained to deliver parcels in vans;4 and 600 additional casual workers were hired.5 You can see this massive shift in telemedicine too. Historically, online doctor appointments in Australia were mainly reserved for rural patients being ‘seen’ by city-based specialists. Again, while a return to normal life post-lockdown will see a return in physical visits to the local GP, you can expect that over time more and more appointments will be conducted online. This will be a tremendous benefit to patients who find it difficult to travel to doctors’ offices, and to doctors who want to expand their ability to reach patients. Software tools that support remote medicine will be useful in diagnosis and remote monitoring and treatment. For example, MetaOptima software helps doctors determine whether a mole is dangerous or not – regardless of their professional experience with skin cancer. The software helps with the diagnosis. M3dicine, a Brisbane company, has produced an e-stethoscope (called Stethee). This device can listen to your heart and lungs, and provide specialist-level diagnoses of heart or respiratory issues. A patient could be at home and place the device on their chest and their doctor 5 or 500 kilometres away can see the results (and listen to the actual audio). These sorts of tools will become the norm and make the best quality of diagnosis available to all Australians, not just those in a capital city, giving us the ability to close the urban/ rural health gap, which currently means that a person living in the country has a life expectancy several years shorter than someone in the city. By April, more than 5.4 million telehealth consultations had been conducted in Australia6 and the government has added 28 extra telehealth items for specialists and allied health professionals to the Medicare Benefits Schedule.7 Demand for telehealth is predicted to increase by 64.3 per cent in the United States in

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20208 and the telehealth market in the United States is estimated to grow seven-fold by 2025, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate of 38.2 per cent (13 May 2020).9 The use of video conferencing through COVID-19 in work, education and social settings is again something that is not going away. While nothing replaces a face-to-face meeting, in most instances, particularly in work settings, you do not need to be face-to-face in the same room to have a meaningful and productive conversation. All of the best products are sourced from the United States (Zoom, Teams and Meets). Here, again, the numbers tell the story of the massive shift to videoconferencing: Microsoft Teams has 75 million daily active users or a 70 per cent increase in a month10 and on April 30 there were 200 million Teams participants in a single day. Zoom had 300 million participants in its biggest day in April,11 compared to 10 million in December 2019.12 After COVID-19, there will, of course, be a return to some meetings being held face-to-face, but the trend to more work being done with software collaboration tools is here to stay. This is of great benefit to workers, who are hopefully able to work more flexibly, but also for employers who can cut back on office space as they find that having more employees work from home means that working from the office may well require a smaller physical footprint. The impact on our city CBDs is yet to be seen. Certainly, interstate travel budgets will see big savings – great for the businesses that aren’t facing additional costs at a difficult period, not so good for the travel and accommodation industries that are on their knees. All of these trends are enabled by technology – and more often than not software technology. It is then fair to say that the big winners going forward will be companies whose software is used to deliver products and services in the digital world.

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If all the tools used by Australian companies and Australian citizens to engage in ecommerce, collaboration and telemedicine are from overseas companies, then we will only gain some benefit. If I have an online fashion shop and the best software platform to create my online presence is from overseas, then of course I can create a world-class online fashion shop and do well financially. If I also happened to use an online shopping platform that was Australian-owned, then not only do I benefit, but so do a bunch of other Australians, as well as Australia as a whole – due to the amount of money now kept in Australia. This duality will play out in all aspects of the digital economy, and while it is unlikely that Australia will create a competitor to Google, there is no reason that we can’t have more locally created companies like Atlassian, online graphic design company Canva, workplace safety company Safety Culture, bookseller Booktopia, online pet shop Pet Circle, medical practice software HotDoc and others, so we get to capture not only the endpoint advantage but the full economic stack (or at least a lot of it!). It would be wrong to ask Australians to use only Australiandeveloped and owned products. In situations where there is a direct comparison and no loss of functionality (or significantly higher price paid) then ‘choosing Australia’ makes sense. But we have nothing that provides the usefulness of Google or Google Maps. Nor do we have anything as good as Spotify, Facebook or Instagram. Our small retailers are probably better served on the Amazon platform than any Australian ecommerce aggregation effort. Excel/Word from Microsoft and Sheets/Docs from Google are better than any locally produced productivity solutions. By forcing or coercing Australians to take up potentially sub-standard products or services, we end up actually hurting the business using the substandard offering. If you are a small Australian business selling a product, then you should use the world’s

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best tools to ensure your offering is best in class and the most efficient in providing the service. The only long-term and sustainable answer is to produce better products and services. Atlassian and Canva are great examples. They have globally best-in-class software platforms. This is the same for other companies like Secure Code Warrior (software developer security environment), A Cloud Guru (cloud training platform) or Ento (Workforce Management). How do we ensure we have more Australian best-in-class products? 1 Help all Australians understand that every job, company and industry will be disrupted by technology – whether we like it or not. This is not about choice, but rather seeing the world as it is. 2 Understand that if Australia is only a user of other people’s products, then we are in for a lower standard of living in the future. 3 Embrace our scientists and engineers as we do our sports stars and actors. Most people can name two or three top Australian actors or two or three top Australian sport stars, but most Australians could not name even two of our 16 Nobel Laureates (half of which won their award for work in Medicine and Physiology). 4 Radically transform our education system to ensure every child coming out of school has a high level of digital skills – not just as users but also as people skilled in creating digital products and services. 5 Motivate our companies to spend more on research and development. We can do this by buying from the company with the best product or service. Losing customers is a great motivator for innovation.

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6 Continue to publicly fund research and development and not cut back its support, as we have seen in the past few years. The cuts to government funding in all aspects of the research and development ecosystem is a mix of stupid and appalling. Cuts to research funding will ensure Australia will be less able to find cures to diseases than it has in the past. Cuts to support for start-ups will ensure we have fewer people in highly paid jobs working in companies that provide more tax revenue to Australia. The federal government should take a truly long view and realise research and development spending is in fact a proxy for the standard of living a society will have in the future. 7 Stop damaging the growing start-up sector, which has produced perhaps 50 $100 million companies in the past 10 years. Governments struggle with this part of the economy, as they inherently do not understand it and often see it as too small to bother with. However, the Paul Kelly song ‘From little things, big things grow’ says it best. For example, Canva raised money at a $25 million valuation in 2014, and in 2020 raised money at $8 billion. Sadly, too many of our industries in Australia are basically oligopolies – large industries with a small number of players and bugger all real innovation going on. If you are sitting with comfortable market share in an industry where everyone else has comfortable market share, where is the incentive to invest heavily in research and development to create something truly unique?  Is it any surprise that the majority of innovation in the supermarket industry, to use one example, has come from mimicking participants in more competitive markets like the United Kingdom and United States? Further, while Amazon started in the United States in the mid-1990s, why is it that not one Australian major

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retailer thought about even following the model until around 2015 – by which time Amazon was already a global powerhouse?  Aside from great, large companies that truly innovate (like CSL, ResMed, Cochlear and a range of mining companies) most of the ‘big end of town’ is missing in action when it comes to innovation. Motivating these guys to step up is near impossible. The good news is that we have a raft of ‘start-ups’ that are now at scale and taking on the ‘big end’. In the financial services space, it is great to see Prospa (small business lending), Athena (mortgages), Judo Bank and others taking on the sleepy Big Four by creating simply better products for their customers. This is the future: a decline in traditional players and a rise of players who are truly innovative. We just need to make sure that a significant number of the new players are Australian, which means motivating a sense of entrepreneurship across all sectors. All in all, COVID-19 has shaken up our economy. The result will be a more digitally enabled economic and social ecosystem, with the transition coming faster than was the case even a year ago. We need to prepare for the opportunities this trend will create, quickly establishing research and development as a core area of focus for every person, company and government in Australia. It also means all Australian businesses taking notice of the massive shifts in consumer behaviour that is enabled by technology.  Perhaps rather than expressing sorrow that Myer or David Jones are in poor shape, we should instead see a future where some businesses will fail, but where we can have more Australians employed in high-paid jobs in companies providing world-class products and services, and where people have more flexibility to buy something, chat to someone or see a clinician.

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DANIEL PETRE AO has been a prominent player in Australia’s technology industry for more than 30 years, and has held leadership positions in technology-based businesses, including time working for Bill Gates at Microsoft’s headquarters in the US. Daniel has served on a range of corporate and not-for-profit boards, including the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney Childrens’ Hospital Network, and Sydney Theatre Company.

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BANKING POST-COVID-19 CAMERON CLYNE

Twenty years ago, following the first internet boom, banking was going to change forever. Home computers and internet connections went from being a luxury to a necessity. The number of Australian households with a computer went from four in ten in 1998 to six in ten in 2002. ‘Bricks and mortar’ bank branches would disappear as consumers moved exclusively online in a cashless society. Instead, branches transformed. Some closed, but more than 5300 survive today, an increase from 20 years ago. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was the next great structural shift that was going to change banking. Once again, changes were predicted to be permanent and, while some were, ultimately it was like all prior financial crises. They are primarily crises of counterparty trust. Whether it be tulips in the 1600s, or subprime mortgages in 2007, when the troubled asset is stabilised and confidence returns, the world resumes, at least for banking. But what the internet and a GFC could not achieve will now likely happen because of a pandemic. Why will this change be permanent when the other disruptions weren’t? Because this crisis has largely eliminated choice. This comes after years of

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community anger at banking behaviour, which means banks will be forced to deal better with their customers’ financial hardship. When the initial dot.com boom first swept across the world in the late 1990s, banking consultants – me among them – were eagerly predicting the death of cash and the end of the branch. The reality was quite different. The technology had not advanced sufficiently to handle anything but the most basic transactions, and customers overwhelmingly preferred face-to-face interactions when discussing major issues, such as a mortgage. In the preZoom world, that meant a branch. Internet banking ultimately became another channel, rather than a replacement channel. Customers could use whatever channel suited them best and generally used them in combination. While cash use decreased substantially, the bulk of what a branch did was still handling cash. Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, said in 2009 that the only decent innovation in financial services in the past 20 years was the ATM – and its main job is to give you cash. We still have more than 27 000 ATMs in Australia today.1 COVID-19 has eliminated that choice. Businesses stopped accepting cash. Trips to the bank that might have been part of bigger to-do list seemed unnecessary. The speed at which this transition took place was remarkable. Simple changes to transaction limits and easy, real-time services that allow us to transfer money to a friend who has just bought us lunch using their phone number, have facilitated even greater use of mobile payments. We have all become used to the benefits and convenience of cashless payments and the transition back to cash will be limited. So, if the structural changes brought about by the pandemic are likely to be permanent, what of the changes in bank behaviour? Banks have announced a raft of changes, ranging from mortgage and business loan deferrals to credit card holidays and

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fee waivers. Dozens of reviews, including the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, have probed banks. Is the problem a function of investor demand for excessive returns, personal incentives, greed, a warped sales culture or poor governance? Critics argue that all of these factors contributed, but that debate is for another book. The question for this book is why the behavioural changes are more extensive now than after all the inquiries and probes, and are they likely to endure beyond the pandemic? The changes are coming at a pace now for two main reasons. Firstly, the dozens of reviews have had a cumulative effect. There have been a number of changes made internally within banks that have streamlined the process for managing hardship. Decisions can be made more quickly, with greater discretion closer to the frontline. These changes have come about as banks have recognised community anger and examined their practices. The process changes that the reviews had initiated facilitated a rapid response to the financial distress the pandemic created. The improvement in customer management will continue as the community continues to demand it. Periodic flashpoints such as profit announcements, CEO salaries, interest rates and inevitable stuff-ups will ensure banks remain a focus, and an attempt to minimise that focus will force more improvement. There is an almost unique Australian obsession with interest rates given our cultural desire to own our own home and grow our wealth via negatively geared rental properties. With more variable rate mortgages than many countries, this makes interest rate movements a source of intense focus. The most likely interest rate impact of the pandemic will be to keep them low for an extended period. From an economic point of view this may help boost demand for loans, though history shows that confidence in the future is a more important driver. The most immediate impact

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will be on retirement savings as low rates depress returns on savings, though this is offset to a degree by low inflation. The key question is: will these changes be sufficient or will banks revert to type, at least in the minds of the public, and resume their role as bastards? If you define a bastard as a company making billions of dollars of profit and occasionally failing their customers, then the answer is yes. Unless the major banks are broken up, which opens up a debate about regulatory stability, they are structurally set up to make billions. There is a technical debate about return on equity – that is, whether billions are excessive – but return on equity does not suit a newspaper headline. The sheer complexity of banks with a patchwork quilt of systems and a myriad of rules and regulations means that even with the best of intentions errors will occur. Some of these will have significant impacts on customers, ensuring banks remain perceived in an unfavourable light. The second reason for the swift pace of change now is that banks are part of the economy and cannot stand outside or be immune from its broader performance. Banks do best when the economy is thriving and people and business are undertaking transactions with confidence in the future. Helping an economy minimise the impact of recession, which translates into helping customers mitigate financial distress, makes sense for everyone. Taking harsh remedial measures, such as imposing strict loan and foreclosure provisions, would not only increase the immediate economic impact of the downturn, but prolong the recovery. It is hard to make money in a deep recession, even for banks. What should banks look like in a world after COVID-19? Ideally, they should represent the society they operate in and be responsive to its needs. I can see four main areas that should be at the centre of not just banks’ but all financial institutions’ philosophies, after COVID-19:

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1 Developing a more flexible model for assessing credit worthiness, including designing both savings and loan products that reflect transient employment. The pandemic has accelerated a trend of increasing workplace insecurity and casualisation, which, coupled with more independent contractors, requires a new approach. Traditional income and employment verification criteria will limit credit products in particular and potentially create significant financial exclusion for a large section of the population. As an increasing proportion of the workforce are ‘gig’ workers, such as Uber drivers, the ability to provide products and assess incomes for those people will be essential to a growing economy. 2 Facilitating the move to a cashless society. While this has advanced rapidly as technology has allowed more convenience, there remain groups who are uncomfortable using mobile payments or don’t have the necessary technology. Mobile payments discriminate against some groups due to age or disability and others because they can’t afford the technology to connect. Banks should play a major role in providing education to customers on the use of mobile payments, including amending product design where necessary. Banks could partner with both phone or internet companies to ensure the broadest possible access to mobile payments. For example, a senior citizen could receive a mobile phone that can be configured to suit their needs (such as large font and simple one-click payment icons) and is accompanied by hands-on training. 3 Continuing investment in cyber-security. As we move to a largely online world, the safety and integrity of our financial systems architecture becomes even more central to national security. My view is that Australia is among the

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world leaders in cyber security in financial institutions; however, they need to strengthen their existing partnerships with government agencies to combat an increasing number of external threats. This investment and co-operation should remain paramount and we must always assess the impact on cyber-security of any change required of the banking system. 4 Accelerating improvements in customer management and complaint handling. No company enjoys the government intervening in their business, but my view has been that the easiest way to prevent that is to not do the wrong thing. When I was running NAB a decade ago, areas that sparked community concern, such as penalty fees, drove our customer reforms to minimise the need for government intervention. Governments and regulators often only have blunt tools at their disposal, which have unintended consequences; for example, stamping out poor lending practices often limits credit availability overall. Far better that the banks excise their own failings than invite a broad-brush reaction. The path to economic recovery will no doubt see a focus on bank behaviour and potentially more inquiries. It would be nice to give the inquiries little work to do. While the post-COVID world is largely an unknown, there are some certainties. Banks will be one of the central agents of recovery. They will remain big. They will make large profits. They will occasionally make mistakes. While all of that will cause angst and should be a focus for accountability, Australia can replicate the experience of the GFC, where our recovery was among the strongest in the world. The size of our banks, coupled with regulatory oversight, equalled stability and the opportunity to restart the economy. The same structural environment exists today. The challenge for banks is to use that power as an agent for growth.

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CAMERON CLYNE is currently Chairman of Camel Partners and the Chairman of Whitecoat. He is a director of numerous organisations, including the Western Sydney University Foundation, Camp Quality and The Whitlam Institute. From 2009 to 2014, Cameron was Group Chief Executive Officer of National Australia Bank.

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REBUILDING CONFIDENCE HEATHER RIDOUT

It’s very tempting to pick up on the adage ‘don’t waste a good crisis’ and enthusiastically put forward big and sweeping ideas to reboot the Australian economy, fix up a whole lot of problems, and push comprehensive reforms through under the guise of needing to act in the crisis. Somehow, we can take out the old songbooks: widespread deregulation and free market strategies; or socialist income redistribution, high-taxing ideologies and off we go. This presumes a lot. Firstly, that after a decade of drift in which real reform seemed to belong to a past era, Australians are open to this challenge and will embrace radical change. And secondly, that the old songs are the right ones. That the solutions of the past are the right ones for the future. There can be no doubt that there will need to be a period of healing, reassurance and confidence-building once we finally emerge from this crisis. Australians were averse to change before it happened. Conservative thinking rather than big thinking has won most of the debates for the past decade; short-term tactics and transactional approaches have dominated much of the political debate. Policies from all sides were about winners and losers.

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Scare campaigns have been easy to wage. When we finally emerge from the crisis, given the physical and mental health impacts it has engendered, the community is more likely to view radical plans with suspicion rather than trust. Equally, however, there is no doubt we have little choice but to re-boot and renew our economy. The extent of our structural weaknesses gives us little option. Australia wasn’t in great shape going into the pandemic and ensuing crisis. Our economy was slowing and there wasn’t much in the pipeline to change the weakening trajectory. A lot of economic indicators had been stuck for some years at weak levels: business investment had been flat for over five years;1 underemployment had been stuck at nearly 9 per cent for the same period.2 Profits were mixed; productivity moribund; and real wage growth had been negligible for a decade, while household debt was high. Digitisation and online operating models were starting to shape new and less secure employment arrangements where workers were bearing most of the risk. Moreover, we were dealing with the bushfire crisis, which had wreaked havoc with tragic effect across the country in the summer; yet we couldn’t resolve the argument that human-induced climate change was a contributor. Energy policy was a political football. Our tax system is increasingly not fit for purpose, relying on bases that are being rapidly eroded by changes in consumer behaviour and technology, and on taxes that are impeding rather than incentivising activity. Our economy was lagging well behind similar advanced economies in terms of digitisation and complexity. Coming out of the crisis, we are still facing all these problems but with heightened intensity and urgency. The pandemic has accelerated a lot of the structural change that was afoot before the crisis. The move to online shopping, the digitisation of business operations, telemedicine, the role of robotics, artificial intelligence and data, and so on, all portend profound

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transformations in the way business and communities operate. In part reflecting this, but also an outcome of the crisis itself, unemployment is going to be high and will be very sticky downwards. Long-term unemployment was at attention-demanding levels before the pandemic; after, it’s potentially going to be at levels that will test community tolerance. We have also used a lot of our fiscal and monetary policy ammunition. Restoring the robustness of our national budgets, while a longer term problem, will also demand action. As noted above, our current tax system is not up to this task. The pandemic also exposed the vulnerability of our economy to disruptions in international supply chains. And this was not restricted to the health sector. Across agriculture, finance, manufacturing and services generally, vital links in our value chains were disrupted and, after decades of relying on the resources sector and allowing it to dictate the structure of our economy, we were left scrambling and exposed. The task ahead is to rebuild confidence and to strengthen our capacity to successfully tackle our problems and move forward. Like reform itself, this is a big challenge. Indeed, it’s more akin to cultural change than mere policy shifts. It involves attitudinal and behavioural change as much as a new agenda; it’s about process as much as strategy; and it involves a leadership that engenders trust rather than suspicion, and which is unifying, not polarising. Like all cultural change, it will require patience and resoluteness. Central, though, to effectiveness and engagement will be determining the right policy focus and solutions. Getting this wrong will risk failure and disengagement. A good place to start would be to take on board some lessons from the pandemic period itself. Some stand out to me. There has been – mostly, anyway – an absence of malevolent politics. The community has appreciated this. State and federal

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governments have worked together. The importance of strong and well-resourced bureaucracies and public services has stood out. Experts have been respected and looked to for guidance. Because we have strong domestic research capability, we’ve been able to participate in world-leading research efforts. The need for sovereign capabilities (such as the ability to manufacture a vaccine and personal protective equipment) has been brought into stark relief. While sovereign capability should align with international best practice, blind adherence to international price competitiveness as the benchmark will mean we will persist with an economy that is exposed to international supply chain disruption and fundamental strategic gaps. Interestingly, we were also able to reach into our Medical Research Future Fund to support research into vaccines. While the amounts were small compared to international funding, it highlighted the value of having big national savings pools to draw on in tough times. Indeed, while drawing down on our national superannuation saving pool may be a short-sighted policy for many, it did in fact support household cash flow more than increases in other social assistance, including the increase in job seeker.3 Our superannuation funds also supported the extensive capital raisings across the economy required to support businesses. As well, our history of fiscal discipline meant that, relative to most advanced economies, we had a lot of capacity to increase our public debt to fund income support and other support and stimulus measures. We need to re-commit to our values and let these, not political ideologies or pragmatism, shape our agenda. Australia is an aspirational country; we believe in free enterprise, but we also believe in a fair go. We are neither a ‘let it rip’ nor a socialist society. Our strong social safety net comprising our allowances and benefits systems, our public universal health and education

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systems, our minimum wage system, our progressive income tax system and so forth, provides a reliable ballast. Above this, we have a go, and as citizens, we have an obligation to do so. We need to agree on the right issues to focus on. There are several big themes that policy should target: 1 Long-term unemployment, which is essentially a reflection of the level of structural unemployment in our economy. It was stuck at too-high levels going into the crisis; the crisis will deepen this problem immeasurably. This is toxic for social cohesion and for our economic performance. For many years, we have relied on immigration to fill skill shortages. While we should still run an ambitious immigration program, we cannot tolerate or afford a huge percentage of our workforce being marginalised. Upskilling should not just be focused on the young but also mature workers. New technologies are going to make a lot of Australia’s skill base redundant. 2 Digitisation. Australia is lagging in this space, and the pandemic has shown this up in a range of areas. This area demands major investment and determined effort by all sectors of the community. Australia needs a comprehensive digital strategy that pulls together a lot of fragmented work and efforts. Investing here is to play both defence and offence. It can strengthen our national resilience and create a lot of jobs. 3 Climate change and green energy. As Ross Garnaut, Jenny Macklin and Fiona Simson all make the point in this book, this is the source of sustainable growth in all its dimensions.  4 Infrastructure such as public transport or freight transport that improves our quality of life, solve blockages in our cities, links regions and enhances market efficiency. It can

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also aid housing affordability as well as enhance mobility, which is crucial to our economy. Acting on these themes is going to require a bigger involvement by government, not smaller government. Reflecting demographic and other trends, and protracted interest rates, government demand will be needed to support the economy. This isn’t easy to accept, but it’s the world we are headed into. However, we also have big pools of domestic savings that can be harnessed. Australia has lots of options and opportunities. With the right leadership and some patience, we can face the future with confidence. 

HEATHER RIDOUT AO is a Director of ASX Ltd and a Director of Sims Limited, the world’s largest publicly listed recycling company, and the Cyber Growth Centre Board. She has served on the Reserve Bank Board, as Chair of AustralianSuper and as a member of the Henry Tax Review. From 2004–2012 she was the CEO of the Australian Industry Group.

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PROSPERITY, OPPORTUNITY, SUSTAINABILITY JIM CHALMERS

In Canberra’s Parliament House, hundreds of identical clocks tick noisily and in unison. In the ministerial wing in the middle of 2009, that’s all the Treasurer and his advisers could hear as we huddled nervously and silently for news of whether the economy had grown in March of that year and Australians had avoided the first recession since the early 1990s. But the jubilation and high-fiving that followed us learning we’d defied global economic gravity was not about one abstract number, or even a set of them. It wasn’t even that recession had been averted, but rather that we had avoided the concentrated and cascading disadvantage that would have accompanied it. It was what those numbers signified: real people clinging to jobs in communities right around the country. It also demonstrated that economic policy matters. When recession last loomed, the navigating light of Australia’s response was to do what was necessary to avoid the long-term unemployment and human wreckage associated with a deeper downturn – and it worked.

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This time, under the Liberals, as Australia deals with the COVID-19 pandemic, it has not avoided recession, but it’s not too late for us to avoid the worst ongoing consequences. What’s needed isn’t the current Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s Thatcherite obsession, which saw him replace ‘all in this together’ with ‘no such thing in society’; not harsh industrial relations, extreme deregulation and social division. The highest priority needs to be stronger and more inclusive growth; more fairly distributed opportunities; and most of all, secure and well-paid work for more Australians. We can’t afford a jobless recovery or to discard a generation of younger people at risk of long-term unemployment.

Before the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has brought devastating economic consequences that accelerate already-worrying trends towards job insecurity at work and financial insecurity at home, and ended Australia’s remarkable run of almost three decades of uninterrupted growth. Uncertainty about the future was already weighing on investment and the economy, and now that uncertainty is even worse. You don’t reduce uncertainty by ignoring the big changes that were already underway in the global economy, and that have now sped up. It is not reassuring to get one message from government – ‘more of the same’ – and another from the world – ‘massive change is coming’. In times like these, government is called on to provide a vision and a direction for the future, which businesses can invest in and people can work towards. Australians should be proud of those three decades of growth. The lesson is that it comes from extending opportunity, from investing in people and their potential, and from creating a more dynamic and confident society.

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COVID-19 presents a different set of challenges to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of just over a decade earlier. Then, we were able to grow our way out of the crisis by shoring up aggregate demand with cash transfers and payments, investing in a pipeline of infrastructure projects in every corner of the country, and emerging with an economy structurally quite similar to what came before. It’s early days, but what we already know is that the post-COVID-19 economy will have to be different. Growth needs to be broader, more inclusive and more sustainable. It will need to come from cleaner and cheaper renewable energy; lifelong learning to keep up with technological change; and converting research and development into investment more effectively – turning Australian ideas into Australian jobs. To know where we are going, we must be upfront about where we have been. Before COVID-19, Australians and our economy were already struggling. The pandemic might have arrived without warning, but economic weakness did not. The Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) all told us that growth was likely to be lower than predicted. And they didn’t just tell us once – they kept revising down their predictions for Australian growth. The Reserve Bank had already downgraded Australia’s growth forecasts three times.1 The IMF had already downgraded Australia’s forecasts by more than global growth, in fact, by four times as much as the other advanced economies.2 The OECD had also slashed its expectations for Australian growth before the crisis and by twice as much as they had for the other Group of 20 (G20) biggest economies.3 By the end of 2019, quarterly growth was slowing and annual growth was well below average, well below expectations, and well below what would have been necessary to get

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historically stagnant wages growing at a respectable pace again.4 The private domestic economy had already been shrinking for six months, consumption growth was the lowest in ten years,5 business investment was the lowest in 30 years,6 and productivity was declining too. Private and public debt had both reached historic highs.7 Living standards were flat,8 underemployment was common, and for more and more people, work was precarious at best. Although there was some growth, it didn’t come with a fair distribution of opportunities. That made it harder to turn the rhetoric of aspiration into the reality of secure work. It meant too many were left behind, and others held back, with consequences for social mobility.

Recession and recovery Then came the virus. With it, the Australian miracle of uninterrupted growth, unique and envied the world over, collapsed. Not with another financial crisis, or a cyber-attack, not a hot war, a cold war or even a trade war, not nuclear fallout or an environmental catastrophe like the horrendous bushfire season we had just endured, but with a devastating pandemic that spread fast, killing hundreds of thousands globally and crippling economies, and pushing our economy into recession here at home. People who were already doing it tough were now at risk of seeing disadvantage cascade through generations. Australian businesses that were already hesitant to invest were now faced with a more uncertain future than ever before. We’ve learned from this crisis that the Australian economy has been running with the engine light on for far too long and was overdue for a service. Maybe the long tail years of the long growth decades really did obscure this truth – but it is very plain to all

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of us now that the economy hasn’t been working well enough for ordinary people for a while. COVID-19 has been a global pandemic, but anyone who believes it was a great leveller might as well believe the world is flat. For some it meant more welcome time with kids, more exercise and healthier home-cooked food, less commuting, an opportunity to reset and reflect. For many, it meant something scary and disorienting – a greater sense of vulnerability, loneliness or uncertainty; more employment insecurity and financial pressure; more debt and delayed repayments. In the same way, the impacts of recession are not indiscriminate. They never are. We didn’t all enter the crisis from the same place; we didn’t suffer the consequences in the same measure. The journey has been different, and we won’t leave with the exact same luggage. Recovery will come, but with an unemployment problem that will be with us for some time. That’s why we need to design policies so that the hundreds of thousands of Australians who sacrifice their jobs to this crisis don’t become long-term unemployed. This is the most important, most pressing concern we have because that long-term unemployment turns to long-term disadvantage in pockets of our country. Unemployment is a growth issue because it puts at risk around a tenth of the workforce, their skills, hopes, and their capacity to contribute. We need to grow our way out of it, as rapidly as we can. We recognise parts of the private sector will not recover immediately or as quickly as we’d like, and that means there’s an important role for government. Investors right now are more worried about the future than ever and they’re looking to the government to reduce uncertainty and provide future direction. This doesn’t mean we can just put our foot on the accelerator again, because the world is changing around us and there’s no

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point driving faster in the wrong direction. Instead, to grow our way out of this crisis, we need a vision for future growth that Australians can get behind.

Growing the post-COVID-19 economy Growth is central to fulfilling the potential of our society. So much of what we need to achieve for Australia, from creating good jobs in the regions, to extending new opportunities in our suburbs, comes back to growth. Australia must reject the false choice between growth that is strong and growth that is fair. The world’s best economists have come around to Labor’s long-held view that growth is stronger when it is fair – when more people have a stake in it.9 We know that the rhetoric of aspiration is hollow without real opportunities for people to actually grasp. And that growth and social mobility are mutually reinforcing. Growth needs to be stronger than it has been, but also more inclusive and more sustainable. The vast majority of Australians already feel the costs of weak, narrowly based growth, through the erosion of real wages and their overall living standards. Failing to invest in growth comes with many costs, not least the decade of energy policy paralysis, which has put a handbrake on business investment, contributed to more severe, frequent and costly natural disasters, and forfeits Australia’s opportunity to become a clean energy superpower as Ross Garnaut describes in his chapter of this book. This uncertainty not only hurts our energy sector, but threatens investment in the industries that would benefit from cheaper, cleaner energy. The pandemic has created a range of new challenges, risks and opportunities. But most importantly it has shone a spotlight on the problems we already had. It revealed how Australia desperately needs a strategy to secure strong, inclusive and

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sustainable growth that creates good, well-paid jobs, gets us on the path to full employment, lifts living standards and tackles intergenerational disadvantage; growth that recognises the uneven impacts of recession on people and communities, and finds new jobs without abandoning our traditional strengths. To get Australia growing we should: 1 Take action to boost consumer and business demand. This was important before the virus outbreak, but it is essential now we face the looming threat of long-term unemployment. Steps to support demand and jobs are reinforcing – the more people in work, the more consumer demand, and in turn, the more demand for labour. A big part of getting this right is about sensibly tailoring and targeting the financial support provided during the health crisis itself, and tapering support as the economy recovers, not attempting to ‘snap back’. 2 Invest in a pipeline of future activity. The jobs crisis demands our immediate attention, but as government support such as JobKeeper is withdrawn, the economy will only bounce back if businesses have confidence that the demand will be there to warrant rehiring workers and recommencing investment. As we emerge from this crisis, the economy needs much more than a short-term sugar hit to get it back on track. It is essential that we have a pipeline of future infrastructure and other projects to give businesses confidence to create jobs. 3 Recognise we won’t avoid long-term unemployment and get near full employment if we don’t provide better and more cost-effective employment services and place-based labour market programs, which better respond to the specific needs of workers, businesses and regions as similar efforts in the

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1990s with Working Nation and local job coordinators during the GFC addressed. 4 Improve productivity by boosting investment, dynamism and competition. Over the last ten years, we’ve seen a dramatic fall in entrepreneurship, with the number of new job-creating businesses falling nearly 30 per cent over the last two decades. We can’t meaningfully lift business investment without a stable energy policy framework, smarter investments in science and research and development, and better turning our ideas into jobs. 5 Harness the megatrends remaking our economy. Our prosperity will be determined by how we manage rapid changes in technology, the costs of climate change, the changing shape and ageing of our population, and the shifting economics and geopolitics of Asia’s rise, including rising tensions between China and the United States. Uncomfortable as some of these big global trends are, we won’t succeed in the 21st century by pretending the world isn’t changing. We need to find the opportunities the changing tide brings, rather than swimming directly against it. 6 Make technology work for people, not against them. The virus will also accelerate some of the longstanding trends in the labour market, including automation, technological change and the increase in flexible work. How well we support workers with new skills and new protections against exploitation and underpayment will decide whether these trends improve fairness and security. This will require a rethink of how we invest in people – right along the pathway from early education to retraining – to ensure we have the right mix of jobs and skills into the future, especially when it comes to harnessing the business-expanding and

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productivity-enhancing possibilities of digitisation in ways that help us overcome the barriers to better communities and a stronger economy. Growth needs to be a bigger part of a bigger conversation about life in the post-COVID economy, focused not on the same narrow and ideological prescriptions and pre-occupations that weakened the economy in the lead-up to the pandemic. We owe it to Australians who have made so many sacrifices to limit the spread of this virus to offer them something better on the other side. A future powered by cleaner and cheaper energy; our people trained to benefit from technological change; our good ideas turned into jobs. That’s how we grow the economy and build a society worthy of the sacrifices made by our people during the pandemic.

DR JIM CHALMERS is Labor’s Shadow Treasurer. Prior to his election to the House of Representatives in 2013, he was Executive Director of the Chifley Research Centre and Chief of Staff to the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer. Jim has a PhD in political science and international relations, and is the author of two books: Glory Daze: How a world-beating nation got so down on itself and Changing Jobs: The fair go in the new machine age (with Mike Quigley).

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GO EARLY, GO HARD, GO HOUSEHOLDS ANDREW CHARLTON

When the fallout from COVID-19 hit Australia’s economy, it was accompanied by the grinding sound of backpedalling from the Morrison government. After rebuking Labor’s response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) for the past ten years, this new crisis required them to hastily replicate it with a massive Keynesian fiscal program. Every economic crisis forces the government to grapple with three challenges: a short-term challenge to keep the economy from collapsing, a medium-term challenge to support the recovery, and a long-term challenge to look for new sources of sustainable growth. Australia’s successful experience from the GFC – implemented by Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan – provides important lessons to help us navigate each of these three challenges in the context of COVID-19. Stopping the economy from falling is the immediate imperative, and this crisis has reaffirmed the effectiveness of the Rudd and Swan formula of fast-acting, targeted stimulus to avoid a downwards spiral of collapsing demand.  The critical lesson from the GFC was that stimulus will have

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a greater impact if it is targeted to lower-income people. That’s because lower-income people are more likely to spend extra money that comes their way, rather than save it. The COVID-19 stimulus was well targeted and, as a consequence, was rapidly spent within the first few weeks. This money arrested the rapid decline in spending and flowed through the economy to support business and jobs. New data in this crisis also showed that financial assistance to lower-income people provides crucial support to families and eases household hardship. In the GFC, many commentators used anecdotal evidence to suggest that the stimulus was frittered away on flatscreen TVs, alcohol and poker machines. The hard data from this new crisis shows that not to be the case. The vast majority of the $750 stimulus was used to purchase essential items. In particular, women overwhelmingly spent the extra money on household necessities and bills. While expanding the social safety net through JobKeeper and JobSeeker was a positive step, the decision to allow early access to superannuation was not, as Greg Combet articulates in his chapter of this book. The superannuation policy was poorly conceptualised and badly implemented. Superannuation is designed to support people in their retirement, not during hardship. For millions of Australians, the withdrawal of retirement savings won’t so much alleviate the impacts of the crisis, but kick that hardship down the road to their retirement. If the government felt that the social safety net was inadequate to support people through hardship, then they should have augmented it. Encouraging people to raid their retirement nest egg only adds to their long-term financial challenges. In the GFC, the Labor government actually took steps to increase Australians’ retirement security, through measures to increase the pension and strengthen the superannuation system.

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The second lesson from the GFC is that immediate stimulus isn’t enough. The government also needs to provide medium-term support to build private sector demand and confidence to support the economy as the initial stimulus fades. In the GFC, the Labor government implemented stimulus over three horizons: shortterm household support (cash payments), medium-term building programs (school halls, road maintenance and social housing), as well as long-term infrastructure projects (rail, major roads and the NBN). To ensure a persistent recovery, the Morrison government will need to show a pipeline of economic activity stretching beyond the end of the health pandemic so that people have the confidence to spend and businesses have the confidence to hire and invest. The third element of the Rudd and Swan formula is to emerge from the crisis with a reform agenda to support long-term growth. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the engine of our economy was getting rusty. We were suffering from the corroding trifecta of falling productivity, weak investment and low wages growth. As we begin to craft a reform agenda, rather than starting with old policy proposals and entrenched partisan positions, we need a national conversation in our parliament and through the media about the problems we are trying to solve. Consensus on our challenges will help us to find new solutions that move our country into the future. We need to address one of the root causes of Australia’s slowing growth: the loss of dynamism across the economy. Despite all the rhetoric about ‘disruption’ and ‘innovation’, Australia’s economy was anything but agile. On almost every objective measure – business start-ups, innovation, research and development, worker mobility – our economic vitality was waning. We need to address long-term economic problems by investing in skills, infrastructure, research, clean energy, aged care and

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digital technologies. Dealing with these challenges will require resources, but these are investments, not expenses. The critical difference is that they will generate an economic return for the future – in skills and research they will create a more prosperous labour force, in infrastructure they will enhance our economic efficiency, in clean energy they will reduce the cost of dealing with climate change, and in digital technologies they will open opportunities for growth in the global economy. These investments add to our national assets. There is no better time than now to make these investments when the cost of finance is low. As Australia cautiously emerges from the depths of the health crisis, we should be optimistic about the possibilities of a post-COVID-19 world. Australia is blessed with many strengths. We have robust democratic institutions, strong business and union traditions, abundant natural resources, and a young and engaged population. But re-imagining our economy can’t be done in a business-asusual way. We need to learn from the past, but also look for new solutions that will set Australia up and pragmatically create the foundations of growth that will take us to the next decade.

DR ANDREW CHARLTON is the founder of AlphaBeta, an economics firm based in Sydney, Singapore, Melbourne and Canberra. From 2008–2010, through the period of the Global Financial Crisis, he served as senior economic advisor to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. He is the author of two books, Ozonomics: Inside the myth of Australia’s economic superheroes (2007) and Fair Trade for All: How trade can promote development (2005), co-written with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

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MEDIA – WHO CAN YOU TRUST? LENORE TAYLOR

The most daunting challenges seldom arrive when we are all neatly organised and ready to meet them.  COVID-19, one of the biggest stories and greatest reporting responsibilities of our lives, hit at a time when newsrooms were under pressure from all sides – digital platforms eroding advertising revenue, a polarising public debate, even attacks on the very idea that facts and truthfulness should still form the parameters of a national conversation. In Australia, the virus also arrived just as newsrooms were drawing breath after an exhausting, smoke-filled summer reporting on the bushfire crisis.  Like everyone – from frontline health workers to the cafe owner with no customers – we had to adapt, fast. Locked down like everyone else, I scrambled to figure out how to lead a news organisation via Zoom from a desk in the corner of my bedroom. Reporters conducted interviews online or shouted questions from across the street to the newly unemployed on the Centrelink queues that were suddenly snaking along city blocks. We had to quickly cobble together a new working-day ‘normal’ as we tried

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to explain and analyse a terrifying health crisis that in short order became the greatest economic crisis of our generation. We had to figure out how to tell this huge human story when our lives and those of almost everyone we needed to talk to were contracting into the confines of our homes. We had to judge how to fairly hold governments accountable for momentous decisions that were also being made on the run. We thought hard about how best to serve our readers, who we knew were scared and potentially overwhelmed with information.1 From kitchen tables and home offices and makeshift bedroom desks across the country, we ran a seven-days-a-week liveblog to keep pace with the rapidly changing story, and used summaries, explainers, and a data tracker2 – all regularly updated – to give readers quick access to the information they needed. We tried to avoid the sensational, to stay focussed on facts. We questioned what we were told. When our health reporter Melissa Davey raised doubts about the data behind a study that had resulted in the WHO and research institutions around the world halting trials of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine,3 a global scientific scandal unravelled. The Guardian investigation caused the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine each to issue an ‘expression of concern’ about the report that had caused the trials to be stopped, and trials resumed shortly after. We found new ways to talk to readers, created Zoomfacilitated book clubs and roundups of all the joy available online when none of us could venture too far from home. But meanwhile, the economic impact of the virus so exacerbated the financial squeeze on media businesses that some were forced to close and most of us had to cut costs.  It was a pandemic paradox – ratings for credible print and television news sources soared in March and April. Australians had an apparently unquenchable thirst for trustworthy factual

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news as they faced their fears and uncertainty. It’s hard to imagine how the country would have made it through everything 2020 has thrown it without access to quality news. But at the same time, many of the organisations providing it were shedding staff and closing mastheads. Readership of most Australian news sites increased in March by between 50 and 100 per cent compared with the month before,4 and compared with the same month in the previous year. There was similar audience growth for television news and current affairs. But in the past year, Australia has lost 200 news mastheads either via closure, merger or the axing of print editions, the Australian Newsroom Mapping Project conducted by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative has found. The biggest losses are in regional Australia, where both News Corp and Australian Community Media Group have closed scores of papers. At least 500 Australian journalists are likely to lose their jobs this year,5 according to the journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, on top of the 3000 or more jobs lost over the past decade. Just when we most needed every resource we could muster, the pandemic accelerated the decline in advertising revenue that had been undermining the old media business model for years. The advertising that had once paid for news was rapidly migrating to the digital platforms, especially Google and Facebook, and lockdown was particularly hard for publishers that still produced print editions. Moves had already been underway to try to arrest the slide. Media companies were morphing and adapting, turning back to subscriptions or, in our case, voluntary contributions rather than relying so heavily on ads, a shift that rewards the best and most engaging journalism rather than cheap clicks. More than 60 per

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cent of Guardian Australia revenue now comes from our readers. News sites like Buzzfeed that were still primarily reliant on ad revenue were hardest hit by the crisis, closing both the Australian and United States offices. Governments and regulators were also starting to understand the dangers of a democracy without a functioning free press – well, sort of, some of the time. The Coalition government had backed a recommendation from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that the digital platforms sign a code of conduct, including the idea of payments to the media companies whose content they hoovered up for free and then monetised via the advertisers that had once placed their ads in newspapers and funded the journalism. The pre-crisis pressures were not only commercial. Citizens were losing faith in institutions, the media included, and some, most loudly the president of the United States, waged a deliberate campaign to crush the foundation of our job, the once immutable idea that facts and truth should form the guardrails of civic debate and discussion. Those same digital platforms, especially Facebook, refused to label lies and mistruths, however dangerous, and facilitated closed-loop online communities outside the reach of alternative viewpoints or facts, as well as the deliberate manipulation of electoral processes beyond the reach of independent scrutiny. In Australia, the practice of journalism was also threatened by expanded national security laws, raids on reporters’ homes and workplaces, and outdated and restrictive defamation laws and freedom of information laws that seemed designed to return blankedout pages without any useful information being disclosed.  But we persisted, imperfectly to be sure, but as best we could, and the crises seem to have galvanised those fighting to maintain Australian journalism as something a healthy society cannot do without. 

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Many mastheads reported big increases in subscriptions and reader revenue,6 even as the economy slumped into recession. Australians realised that good journalism has to be paid for somehow. At Guardian Australia, where readers are asked to volunteer contributions rather than pay for a subscription in order for our journalism to remain accessible to all, reader contributions offset much of the ad revenue decline. This is not intended as an exercise in self-congratulation. We still have a long way to go as a profession to meet the lofty goals we like to talk about and to build our readers’ trust. But faced with a life and death situation, readers demonstrated with their attention and their wallets that they value what we do.  The stream of news site closures and pleas from the big media groups also prompted the government to fast-track the ACCC process, instructing the regulator to unveil a mandatory code by the end of July and a final code to be settled ‘soon thereafter’. Again, it’s too early to unfurl the streamers. When Spain legislated to require the platforms to pay publishers, Google just shut its service in the country. Both Facebook and Google are resisting the ACCC recommendations here. But the apparent regulatory resolve is welcome. At the eleventh hour, a group of ‘impact’ investors stepped in to save Australia’s only domestic wire service AAP, which was slated to close at the end of June. AAP provides daily, factual reporting and photography across courts and public events and inquiries that every news site, but particularly the smaller ones, use to fill gaps in the news that they have not got the resources to cover themselves. The investors were motivated by a clear understanding of the dire knock-on effects across the media if AAP were to close. And our public debate stayed more or less fact-based and led by scientific and medical advice and considered reporting across

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most major news and television stations. Neither the government nor the opposition tried to play the situation for political gain. The pivot seemed to come as a shock to ‘commentators’ who had grown used to being able to circumvent scientific facts on global heating. On Sky News After Dark, Rowan Dean fulminated that COVID-19 and what he termed the ‘so-called’ global warming crisis were both ‘fake catastrophes built on a fraudulent threat of doom’7 – in the case of COVID-19, apparently because the public health response had been successful in preventing the originally feared number of fatalities. Alan Jones was also furious that governments had given in to ‘fear-mongering’, but in this instance at least politicians didn’t listen to him either. Nor were they swayed by a smattering of columnists making the chilling argument that we should limit economic restrictions because the elderly were willing to sacrifice their lives for the common good. Instead, the policy-makers heeded the experts, and the media – for the most part – reported the facts and the science, and the conspiracy theories remained on the fringes. This stands in stark contrast to the United States where the President suggested variously that the virus was a hoax, or that it could be cured by injecting bleach, and where it has been widely – and inaccurately – reported that the horrific official death toll has been deliberately inflated for political reasons.8 Australia’s policy response has not been perfect. Processes have been set up with inadequate scrutiny or checks, scandals including sports rorts have been swept under the carpet, the debate about options for the post-pandemic recovery has been utterly inadequate. But compared with the spiralling dysfunction and institutional failure overseas, Australia looks at least functional, and the media has played some part in that. Nevertheless, the immediate future for Australian journalism remains tough. After proving its value as a truly national reporting

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institution during the bushfires, with local knowledge and on-theground reporting that saved lives, and then proving it again with its coverage of the pandemic, the ABC is once more cutting jobs to meet another $41 million funding shortfall, taking to $783 million the funding cuts since the Coalition came to power in 2014.9 The closure of so many local and regional papers has left tracts of Australia as news ‘deserts’ with no reporters to hold councils or local authorities accountable, and no newsroom to collect the region’s stories or the first draft of its history. Studies in the United States have shown that when factual local news disappears, readers have no alternative but to turn to more partisan and polarising national news alternatives.10 And in Australia, the ownership of the national news is more concentrated than ever, with News Corp still controlling 60 per cent via circulation. That was what motivated us to set up Guardian Australia in the first place, to create a new independent, influential source of reliable Australian news. We’d talked about the perils of concentrated media ownership for too many years. This was a chance to do something about it. Despite all the challenges, millions of Australians read us every day and we are growing. We weren’t ready for COVID-19. Who possibly could be? We don’t yet know exactly how we will be able to find a way to pay for the expanded reporting Australia needs. But we do know readers value our work, and that of other reliable Australian news outlets. We’ve seen more starkly than ever why conspiracy theories and shouty commentators chasing ratings by confecting and fomenting conflict must never be allowed to fill a news void. We are confident of finding a way through. The pandemic has proved, once again, that the alternative is unthinkable.

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LENORE TAYLOR is Guardian Australia’s editor. She has won two Walkley awards and has twice won the Paul Lyneham award for excellence in press gallery journalism. Lenore spent 30 years in the federal parliamentary press gallery for various publications and was a foreign correspondent in Europe for the Australian Financial Review. She co-authored a book, Shitstorm: Inside Labor’s darkest days, on the Rudd government’s response to the global economic crisis.

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INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. – Benjamin Franklin, 1776

GARETH EVANS

Before COVID-19 struck, Australia’s international environment was already more challenging than it had been for decades. Towering over everything else was the reality of China’s dramatic rise and new assertiveness, America’s equally dramatic comparative decline, and the prospect of ever more serious confrontation between them. Beyond that we were affected, like everyone else, by the deteriorating worldwide commitment to multilateral problem solving, and in varying degrees by Europe’s struggle to maintain its collective identity in the face of surging nationalist and populist sentiment and Britain’s Brexit brain-fade, Russia’s playing the role of regional hegemon and global spoiler whenever and wherever it could, and continued roiling conflicts in West Asia. Closer to home, it mattered for us that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was losing whatever remained of its coherence and credibility, that China’s rival giant India was

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continuing to punch well below its potentially very constructive weight, and that the South Pacific was re-emerging as a potential playground for a major power contest. Whether the COVID-19 pandemic changes everything, something or nothing very much in all of this remains to be seen. One obvious scenario is for an acceleration of extreme nationalism, with protectionist, anti-foreigner and anti-globalisation sentiment fuelled by fear of further pandemics and supply-chain disruptions and a lack of confidence that multilateral institutions and processes can serve national interests. This would carry the risk, among many others, of not only a plunge back into a cold war between the world’s great powers but, in an extreme worst case, hot war. An alternative outcome, much more optimistic, would be for the crisis to serve as a giant wake-up call as to the absolute necessity of effective international co-operation and collaboration, not least between the world’s biggest players, if the world’s biggest problems, beyond the capacity of any one country to redress – including not only pandemics but climate change and potential nuclear annihilation – are ever to be solved, and if the economic and social benefits of globalisation are not to be squandered. My own instinct is that when COVID-19 has run its immediate course, global and regional geopolitics will resume much of their present character, with neither the worst- nor best-case scenarios sketched above being fully realised. While the hard power of both the United States and China remains more or less intact, and their strategic competition will remain a reality, the international credibility of both has taken a drubbing over their performance during the crisis, and neither seems likely for the foreseeable future to be able to command the global legions of ideologically motivated allies, partners and proxies that Washington and Moscow could during the Cold War. While major

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powers sleepwalking or stumbling into deadly conflict is hardly unprecedented, it remains barely conceivable that either country could seriously calculate that the rewards of a hot war – whether started over Taiwan, the South China Sea or anything else – could ever outweigh its catastrophic downsides. And major economic decoupling will be incredibly difficult to achieve given the extent to which the two countries are now joined at the wallet. Elsewhere, while we can expect post-pandemic sentiment for harder borders and less supply-chain exposure to remain strong, there is simply too much interdependence now built into the global economy, and too much obvious benefit to be derived from the free movement of people, goods and services, for any kind of extreme unwinding to be really credible. Authoritarian populists like Bolsonaro, Duterte, Erdogan and Orban have done no better in managing the ravages of COVID-19 than their more democratically inclined counterparts – and sometimes much worse – and it should not be assumed that their brand of aggressive-defensive nationalism will gain any kind of boost from the crisis. The biggest question mark is whether confidence can be restored in the capacity of multilateral institutions and the rulebased order they serve, to meet global, regional and national interests. At its height in the immediate post-Cold War years, that confidence has been dwindling over the last two decades, and has not been helped by the UN Security Council – and most regional organisations – going missing during the COVID-19 crisis, and bodies like the WHO manifestly underperforming. Whether confidence is capable of restoration depends, more than anything else, given the traditional centrality of the US international role, on the outcome of the November 2020 election: while a Biden presidency offers some hope of a return to decency, four more years of Trump’s contempt and sabotage may simply be irremediable.

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So how should Australia position itself in the conduct of its international relations in the post-COVID-19 environment I have described – with the most likely outcome a continuation of the basic geopolitical dynamics that preceded it, but on one side the risk of things getting much worse, and on the other the hope of them getting rather better? My view is that our best policy response has been for some time, and should remain, one built on four pillars: Less America, More Self-Reliance, More Asia and More Global Engagement.

Less America Australia should not walk away from the United States alliance, from which we unquestionably benefit in terms of access to intelligence and high-end armaments, and – however flimsy the ANZUS guarantee may prove to be in reality – the notional deterrent protection of America’s massive military firepower. Continued counter-balancing American engagement in our region is certainly highly desirable. But less reflexive support by Australia for everything Washington chooses to do or ask for has been, and remains, long overdue. Neither we nor anyone else in the region should be under any illusion that, for all the insurance we might think we have bought with our past support, the United States will be there for us militarily in any circumstance where it does not also see its own immediate interests being under some threat. While that was almost certainly the reality under previous administrations, it has been thrown into much starker relief by Trump’s ‘America First’ approach, and it should not be assumed that anything would be very different in a post-Trump era. I think the reality is, as my ANU colleague Hugh White has repeatedly put it, that ‘we need to prepare ourselves to live in Asia without America’.

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None of this positioning is as breathtakingly adventurous, or politically dangerous, as it might once have been. Recognition that the United States is a much less reliable ally than it once might have been is alive and well in Europe, is creeping into the writing even of the conservative commentariat here, and was clearly a subtext of the government’s own Foreign Policy White Paper in 2017. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent update to the national defence strategy, announced in July this year, was also premised on this assumption of need for greater self-reliance. Both sides of Australian politics are going to have to think long and hard about how sensible it is to resist coming to terms with this new reality.

More self-reliance Preparing ourselves to rely less on America certainly means being more of a diplomatic free agent: adding to our reputation and credibility with an activist foreign policy that is creative, proactive, value-adding and unconstrained by the constant urge to look over our shoulder to Washington. And with increased – not declining – diplomatic resources to match. But more than that, it does entail, in military terms, building defence capability that involves not only more bucks than we are usually comfortable spending, but getting a bigger bang for each of them. More self-reliance certainly means maximising our capacity to protect our shores and maritime environment (including the South-west Pacific) from hostile intrusion, but also means having a capacity to engage in military operations wider afield if there is a good national interest (including responsible global citizenship) reason for doing so. While defence expenditure has been increasing – with both sides of politics committed to maintaining it at a credible 2 per

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cent, or slightly more, of GDP – given the size of our continent, our capacity to defend ourselves against any real existential threat is limited. I am optimistic enough to believe that in the world of today and the foreseeable future, the costs and risks of waging war so wildly outweigh any conceivable benefits for any significant player that the likelihood of a major conflict in the foreseeable future is actually very low. But defence planning always has to be based on worst-case assumptions, taking into account potential adversaries’ capabilities, not just known intent, and in that context we are going to have to get used to doing more.

More Asia  The first dimension of this is strengthening our relationships at all levels with key regional neighbours like India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea, as a collective counterweight to a potentially over-reaching China. As much as one would welcome Australia developing an even closer relationship with ASEAN as a whole – with all its potential for harnessing the region’s collective middle power energy and capacity – for the foreseeable future, internal divisions, and the organisation’s culture of extreme caution, make that unlikely. Our efforts in South East Asia should be focused on its two heaviest players, Indonesia and Vietnam, as well as our traditional partners Singapore and Malaysia. The other dimension is getting back on a credible and sustainable track in our relationship with China itself. This does not mean becoming Beijing’s patsy, any more than we should be Washington’s. We should not hold back in making clear our own commitment to democratic and human rights values, and should be prepared to push back strongly when China over-reaches externally, as it has in the South China Sea, or domestically as in

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Xingian, Tibet and Hong Kong. And of course, we have to resist strongly any undermining of our national institutions. But we do need to rein in some of the counter-productive stridency of some of our public rhetoric, to recognise the legitimacy of many of China’s own security and economic national interest claims, and to acknowledge how provocative some of our own self-interested actions are (for example, our very heavy reliance on anti-dumping trade rules). We should acknowledge the essential legitimacy of the scale and ambition of the Belt and Road Initiative, be a little less anxious about its regional security implications, and be prepared – with appropriate commercial caution – to be an active participant in the enterprise. And we certainly need to recognise the legitimacy of China’s demand now to not just be a rule-taker but a participant in global rule-making. When a relationship is under the kind of strain ours has been with China, the smart diplomatic course is to focus hard on potential shared interests, issues that can unite rather than further divide. I have long argued that one of the most productive ways of building new content – not just economic – into our presently very one-dimensional relationship, is for Australia to play both on what’s left of our reputation as a good international citizen, committed to finding effective multilateral solutions to global and regional public goods issues, and China’s desire to project soft power. Beijing’s efforts to improve its image have often been clumsy, and occasionally counterproductive, but in areas like international co-operation on climate, peacekeeping, counterterrorism, arms control and – for the most part – response to pandemics, it has in recent times been playing a more interested and constructive role than has generally been recognised.

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More global engagement This should be a defining theme of our overall foreign policy, not just a core element in our relationship with China. Australia has been at its best, and our standing in the world highest, when we have projected ourselves effectively on to the world stage as a country deeply committed to our common humanity and determined to do everything we can to make the world safer, saner, more prosperous and just. Intense commitment to multilateral engagement should ideally have committed bipartisan support, but regrettably that has not always been the case with the present government and a number of its conservative predecessors. Speaking of ‘negative globalism’, resisting international process on climate and refugees, and challenging the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to protect Israel’s interests, are recent unhelpful examples. The Morrison Government’s call for an international inquiry into the management of the COVID-19 crisis could have been a welcome demonstration of commitment to good international process, but was marred by being ill-thought-out operationally, ill-prepared diplomatically, and lending itself to the perception of playing into the Trump administration’s anti-China campaign. One area where active Australian support for advancing global and regional public goods could make a difference is nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, where – rather more than in the case of pandemics – at least Labor governments have played a major role in global agenda-setting in the past. We did so with the Canberra Commission initiated by Paul Keating in 1996 and the Australia-Japan Commission initiated by Kevin Rudd, which I co-chaired in 2009, and can play a major role again, including – I don’t think it’s too naïve to hope – by working with

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China, which has long been among the least enthusiastic of the nuclear-armed states. Playing to Australians’ natural, egalitarian instinct for decency, we should focus on co-operative problem solving, working not only through the United Nations, but forums like the G20 and East Asia Summit and APEC where, as a result of past Labor government efforts, we have a top-table place. Using all the energy and creativity that has traditionally been associated with Australian middle power diplomacy at its best will be far and away the best way of ensuring that this great country of ours not only survives but thrives in the years and decades ahead, in a region and world in which the tectonic plates are shifting and – not least post-COVID-19 – every possible kind of uncertainty abounds.

PROFESSOR THE HON. GARETH EVANS AC QC was a Cabinet Minister throughout the Hawke–Keating governments, including as Foreign Minister from 1988–96, and later President of the International Crisis Group in Brussels and Chancellor of the Australian National University. He co-chaired the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, and the Australia–Japan International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He has written or edited 13 books, most recently Incorrigible Optimist: A political memoir.

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NOTES Introduction 1 Andrew Leigh, ‘Reducing Inequality through Reconstruction’ in Emma Dawson and Janet McCalman (eds), What Happens Next: A Handbook for the Reconstruction, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2020. 2 Caroline Barron, ‘Post-Black Death: a “golden age” for medieval women?’, History Extra, 8 June 2014, . 3 ‘The Black Death led to an improvement in agricultural technology, changed the status of women, and increased wages. This process helped the Industrial Revolution’, Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, . 4 Dana McCauley, ‘Morrison announces 6100 new home care places, 100,000 still waiting’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 July 2020, . 5 Cevat Giray Aksoy, Barry Eichengreen and Orkun Saka, ‘Young people exposed to Covid-19 can lose trust in politicians for decades: Study’, Print, 15 July 2020, . 6 Sarah Repucci, ‘A leaderless struggle for democracy’, Freedom House website, . 7 Francis Fukuyama, ‘The thing that determines a country’s resistance to the coronavirus’, Atlantic, 30 March 2020, . 8 Arundhati Roy, ‘The pandemic is a portal’, Financial Times, 4 April 2020. Remote communities and First Nations 1 David Daley, ‘Crisis in the Navajo Nation: Voter suppression, racism and a deadly pandemic’, Salon, 3 July 2020, . 2 Robert Booth and Caelainn Barr, ‘Black people four times more likely to die from COVID-19’, Guardian, 8 May 2020, . 3 ‘COVID-19 advice for health workers’, Unison: The public service union (UK) website, .

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Indigenous Incarceration: Unlock the facts, PwC website, May 2017, p. 27, .

Fossil fuel fixation 1 ‘Addressing global warming’, Climate Action Tracker website, December 2019, . 2 Graham Readfearn and Adam Morton, ‘Great Barrier Reef suffers third mass coral bleaching event in five years’, Guardian, 25 March 2020, . 3 ‘Explained: Adani’s continuously changing jobs figures’, The Australia Institute, Medium, 26 April 2019, . 4 Deloitte Access Economics, At what price? The economic, social and icon value of the Great Barrier Reef, 2017, . 5 Deloitte Access Economics, 2017. 6 ‘Countries should seize the moment to flatten the climate curve’, Economist, 21 May 2020, . 7 ‘Climate change’, the World Bank website, 2020, . 8 ‘Climate mitigation’, International Monetary Fund website, 16 October 2019, . 9 Michael Slezak, More jobs in renewable-led COVID-19 economic recovery, EY report finds, ABC News, 7 June 2020,