So I was listening to ABC Sydney this afternoon, and the dulcet tones of Sarah Macdonald. In two more or less contiguous segments, she interviewed
- Mike Kelly, MP for Eden-Monaro
- Margie Osmond, CEO of the Tourism & Transport Forum
Mr Kelly was on to talk about his vision of a standing army of volunteers to assist the rebuilding of all the towns devastated by the bushfires. He was at pains to point out that his plan was entirely voluntary, and no-one was going to get conscripted into this Green Army.
Ms Osmond followed, talking about the ramifications of the bushfires on tourism in Australia and the east coast in particular. One anecdote during the course of the conversation was an operator that owned four caravan parks on the south coast, who was facing a 90% drop in occupancy rates over the next twelve months as a result, again, of the bushfires.
I wasn’t able to call up during the latter interview, but I was shouting at the radio: “the government can solve both these problems at once!”
Forget the idea of campaigning for volunteers to do this work. We have no shortage of volunteers doing useful stuff already. In the SES and RFS (obviously), but also the likes of Erin Riley’s accommodation hub for people offering rooms and houses to others who’ve lost their homes.
Think bigger. What better opportunity could there be to stand up a Federal Job Guarantee? Like we had in the post-war period, when the CES would find a job for anyone who needed one. Anybody who is unemployed or underemployed, and is willing to work could rock up to the newly formed National Bushfire Recovery Agency, and be given meaningful work, for the minimum wage. That might be environment rehabilitation, or repair of public infrastructure, or anything else that Local Councils in bushfire affected areas request. If Job Guarantee participants have specialist skills that can be put to good use in this recovery, so much the better!
And to Ms Osmond’s Caravan Park mogul? If volunteers are willing to travel to affected areas, then they can get a living allowance on top of their minimum wage. That way they can fill the accommodation vacated by tourists, but they are also effectively replacement tourists as well! A big proportion of what they earn in the town will get spent in the town, which will help all the other impacted local businesses. Just like fruit picking back-packers, but these are proper paying jobs for unemployed Australians.
But how are you going to pay for it?
Well, that’s the brilliant part. (And the Federal Job Guarantee isn’t my idea, I’m not claiming that. There’s plenty of finer minds than mine that have written on this topic. I’m just laying this out in the context of the bushfires and the interview on the radio.)
Every person who wants to work but cannot find work is a commodity with zero demand. And they are already on the federal government’s payroll, because they receive NewStart or whatever.
So the Federal Government buys their labour at the minimum wage. Because no one else wants their labour, it cannot be inflationary to do this. And now those people have an opportunity to participate more fully in the economy: buying goods and services, creating demand and stimulating the economy. This will eventually lead to increased demand for workers from the private sector, and so these Job Guarantee workers in time get enticed back to private sector work that pays at least the minimum wage.
The FJG is the perfect countercyclical tool for the economy. A devastating natural catastrophe like this is going to put a lot of people out of work. This is how you keep them working, improve the environment, keep their towns from dying, and permanently solve unemployment.
Because even when this disaster is behind us, there will never be any shortage of useful things that can be done to utilise the labour of anyone unable to find work in the private sector. Local Councils can continue to offer suitable community-led programmes for inclusion in the FJG. Eventually, the National Bushfire Recovery Agency transforms into the National Employment Agency.
Because surely it’s better to pay someone a living wage to do something really useful, than pay them a pittance to do nothing.