Our own business?

Q&A last night had set up live on Docklands in Melbourne. There was a six-person panel which included economist Judith Sloane, the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Ged Kearney, Greens politician Richard di Natale, industrial relations consultant Grace Collier, Labour politician Tim Watts, and the Executive Director of the IPA John Roskam. The audience was 35% ALP, 41% LNP, 15% Greens and the last 9% could have been unidentified or just mixed. Probably, like most of the audience, I just settled in to watch.

I enjoyed Q&A and the responses I would find on Twitter. Hundreds – thousands - of Twitter followers would pick on whatever question that got to them, and put in their comment of up to 140 spaces. Some comments, in the past, have been very good – just fit into 140, but still saying a definitive message.  

Last night I found myself looking at the panel and putting them in their own left-or-right area. I supported Kearney because the people she supports are workers. Employed or unemployed. I supported di Natale because he spoke about 3 million people in Australia living in poverty. I supported Tim Watts who spoke about how unions make lives better.

Sloan was an enigma. I couldn’t work out, from her very short/small comments on Q&A, what she was commenting about! Roskam was definitely right-wing. The IPA should be centre. Unfortunate.

And Collier is a journalist with The Australian newspaper. I definitely couldn’t have worked out where she sat. In the introduction in The Australian website they said she used to be part of the “Labour movement”. The political party is Labor. I would like to know what “Labour” she had been part of. Was it “work”?

I had a look through the list of stories by Collier and found these which take a pot at unions.

Unions able to make mugs of us: Cosy deals make Australia the most expensive construction site on the planet.

Unions not alone in thuggery: The Australian Building and Construction Commission can only do so much while companies exploit loopholes.

ALP leaders and the dodgy union: The IR club and the way business is done between big business and unions in this country is rotten to the core.

Fear and hatred become fair game People are angry, sure, but they can see through Bill Shorten’s phony union routine.

A matter of officials’ business: The core pursuit of some unions is political power, not protecting members.

And more, and more.

Last night Kearney answered a question by a person who had been a CUB worker, who was now unemployed. CUB had pretty much fired many workers and had offered them similar work for a lot less than they had already been earning. CFMEU had taken this to the streets Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else where public might see it. I supported them. Collier, it seems, didn’t. Collier’s belief about what the ABCC had been set up just made me scratch my head. She had said that anti-corruption was against corporations, not unions, and yet I have seen some videos recently which showed how union workers have been dragged into ABCC court cases and strung out when they were not even criminals.

PM Turnbull has said that the government is anti-union. Senator Brandis said the same thing. Many LNP politicians said the same thing. Anti-union is anti-workers. Workers fired, made unemployed, new on Newstart, have to fight whatever they get because Newstart and Centrelink and this government don’t care about unemployed people.

And neither, it seems, does Collier. At the end of Q&A last night Collier said that unemployment shouldn’t exist, that unemployed people should “start their own business”.

Excuse me??

Who would pay for that, Ms Collier? Do you really know how much an unemployed person gets? Or, for that matter, how much a person on DSP gets? Who would support them if they would/could open their own business? How could they pay anyone who would/could be employed by them? What would it cost someone… unemployed… starting their own business… to purchase any equipment they might need? Or would they be expected to just start with whatever they already own? Do you know what they own? Do you have any idea how much money anyone on Newstart would have?

Do you know that there are laws about that???

Ms Collier, I enjoyed Q&A, but you ruined what I watched. You know nothing about people in this country who are on Newstart, DSP, carers, family benefit, pension or any of those – which are far too low. For any person on any Centrelink income, the future is pretty much uncontrollable.

Maybe a few months ago… or a few years ago… they might have gone out, just like you would, to dinner in a nice restaurant, with a nice drink, dessert, never mind how much it costs. They might have walked into clothes shops and looked at lovely clothes which they could/should/would wear, never mind how much they cost. They might have gone on holiday at least once every year to somewhere overseas where they could just be tourists taking photographs before they came home again, never mind how much that would cost.

And they would have walked back into wherever they worked and kept doing it and kept enjoying it.

But if they are now unemployed? Did they walk out of their job? Did they decide that being unemployed was fun? Did they decide that they didn’t need much money for food, petrol, groceries, bills, dentists, doctors, insurance, car registration, car repairs, costs for their kids at school, clothes, shoes, hair, teeth? And toilet paper??

For pity’s sake, Grace Collier, do not tell anyone how you feel about unemployed people. Do not tell anyone that they should be in their own business. Do not just love what you do and dislike what too many people are involved in.

Because unemployment is not asked for. It is not what most people would do. It is not a route to their own business.

Please, Grace Collier, just think.