How to make all Queenslanders a priority?
A just urgent sustainable transition
by Professor Scott Baum
There is unlikely to be a clear winner when polls close on Saturday 31 October. But when the Queensland parliament regroups, those charged with governing the state have an opportunity to make a real difference. The difference being to make all Queenslanders a priority.
Coming into the election, 198,000 Queenslanders were unemployed. Will promised job packages mean all these people will have a job? Even before the current economic slowdown 15.3 per cent of Queenslanders (773,000 people) were living in poverty. Will promised incentives like giving rebates on car registration provide these families with a sustainable financial future?
Large numbers of Queenslanders reside in communities that suffer from extreme economic distress, lacking vitality and resilience and seeing entrenched and concentrated disadvantage. Will policies aimed at reducing red tape or the promises of shiny new infrastructure help all these places? I doubt it.
Despite the rhetoric surrounding ‘working for all Queenslanders’, it is difficult to see the results. Those hoping to win our votes are driven by the need to retain power and so promises and announcements focus on good photo ops and marginal seats.
The ideology of neoliberalism has become the benchmark by which polices are compared. While the events of 2020 have meant that governments have stepped in to offset the failures in the market, the general thinking is that the intervention is just part of a short-term emergency. At the national level Prime minister Scott Morrison has argued:
“The measures are all temporary, targeted and proportionate to the challenge we face. Our actions will ensure we respond to the immediate challenges we face and help Australia bounce back stronger on the other side, without undermining the structural integrity of the Budget.”
In Queensland, Treasurer Cameron Dick in his 2020 fiscal statement talked about ‘when the private sector takes a hit, Government must step up’, implying that once the market is back in good shape the government can go back to business as usual.
But is business as usual what we need? The topsy-turvy world of 2020 has raised lots of questions. If we believe, that most crisis situations are opportunities to either advance or stay where you are then perhaps 2020 should be the line in the sand when we begin to look for something different.
A new normal that transitions us towards a better society and economy. I am not the first to suggest this, nor will I be the last. Pre-empting where we now find ourselves, social commentator Hugh Mackay writing in January said
“Australia Day is widely regarded as a chance to celebrate what it means to be Australian. Perhaps, this year, we might turn the national day into a time of sombre reflection, and ask: are we the kind of society we want to be?”
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers joined the chorus of those arguing for fresh thinking suggesting:
It’s not too early for the rest of us to start thinking about what this crisis is teaching us; what the world looks like after the virus is gone; and what all this means for Australia in the years ahead.
What we need is a plan for transition. Some have talked about a Green New Deal aimed at addressing climate change and economic inequality. The name referring to Roosevelt’s set of social and economic reforms and public works projects undertaken in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Green New Deal combines Roosevelt’s economic approach with modern ideas such as renewable energy and resource efficiency.
But the problem with a New Deal is that it is not meant to be a long-term strategy. If we want to turn things around, we need to have a sustainable proposition. Recently with my colleagues Bill Mitchell from the University of Newcastle and Noel Pearson from the Cape York Institute and I have been talking about the need for a Just Urgent Sustainable Transition (JUST) for Australia.
Our JUST blueprint is built on propositions such as:
- providing jobs for everyone who wants to work through the implementation of a Jobs Guarantee;
- implementing policies that support an economy for everyone, not just the 1 percent;
- ensuring that environmental justice is maintained so that the decisions on environmental changes don’t unevenly impact on those who have the weakest voice; and,
- ensuring that our most disadvantaged individuals and communities receive the help they need and deserve.
The transition we are calling for is aimed across different governmental levels of responsibility. The Federal Government will have a large role to play. But the states can ‘throw their hats into the ring’. The Tasmanian parliament has already moved to consider how a job guarantee could work for their state. The regrouped Queensland parliament should equally give a job guarantee serious consideration.
Whichever party forms government in Queensland after October 31, has the opportunity to generate policies that lead the way in actually working for everyone. It will take a brave few and it will require stepping away from the business as usual approaches that have shaped policy for so many years. Now is the time to move on from a Queensland economy that only works well for the minority and has, in the past, left so many out to dry. Can we be optimistic about the future? I would like to think we can. Let’s hope the politicians are listening and really start working for all Queenslanders.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SCOTT BAUM
Professor Scott Baum is a member of Griffith University’s Cities Research Institute and Policy Innovation Hub. He is trained in economics and sociology. His research focuses on understanding the economic and social outcomes of change across the settlement system. Most recently he has been involved in studying the impacts of local labor markets on the individual socio-economic outcomes.
