Blogotariat

“If you’re a school leaver or unemployed and between the ages of 18 and 30″ writes Edward Eastwood, “then you’re considered fodder for the Job Network System as a unit of profit”. Edward demonstrates how the system is designed to make money from those unfortunate enough to be unemployed.

In 2011, the Gillard government announced a policy of ‘Earn or Learn’.

The initiative was designed to ensure that high school students completed Year 12, either through an academic stream or an optional vocational stream.

The latest fortnightly Newspoll results, related through Twitter by Stephen Murray, have the Labor two-party lead down from 54-46 to 53-47, from primary votes of 37% for the Coalition (up one), 36% for Labor (down one), 10% for the Greens (down two) and 17% for others (up two). Bill Shorten maintains a lead as preferred prime minister but it has narrowed considerably after a post-budget blowout, down from 45-35 last time to 40-37. Personal ratings for both leaders are down, with Abbott off three points on approval to 30% and up two on disapproval to 61%, while Shorten is down four to 34% and up two to 45%.

“While some sections of the media continue to show their political bias by accentuating what they think is a negative, Mr Abbott and Mr Obama, although from different sides of politics, have found they get on together.” Herald-Sun Editorial 16th June, 2014

Ok, I suppose most of you have read about Frances Abbott breaking her lease. If not you can read about it by Googling it or just reading the clearly biased post from Jennifer Wilson.

I am a big believer in states’ rights, but you’ve got to know where to stop.

If there’s one thing the Abbott government’s Commission of Audit got right it’s that our system of eight separate states and territories is a strength rather than a weakness. It ensures that our decision-makers ride the same trams, use the same schools and get treated in the same hospitals as the rest of us.

Frances Abbott, 24 year-old daughter of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, made news a couple of weeks ago when it emerged she’d been offered a $60,000 scholarship to attend the Whitehouse Institute of Design. The scholarship has been awarded only once before, to the daughter of the school’s director, and students interviewed say they had no idea such a scholarship was available, and would have applied for it if they had.

By Stan Shamu for Chris Weston, IG It has predictably been a mixed start to the week, with a lack of drivers to dictate price action. As a result Asia has been left to its own devises and investors seem reluctant to bid equities higher. The one factor in play at the moment is an [...]

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By Chris Becker Here’s a few Aussie stocks I’m watching a bit closer this week from several points of view, including technical, event and fundamental. I’m using a filtered watchlist here, so plenty of volume and depth of market, but some might be labelled “speculative”. Austbrokers Holdings (AUB) has had a marvellous run these past [...]

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You can’t keep a good sell-sider down. After downgrading Chinese property and upgrading the iron ore glut, Deutsche says buy the big miners. From Bloomie: *Cyclical weak Chinese steel demand creates unique buying opportunity Our recent trip to China uncovered high levels of property inventory. However we believe the property market (and steel demand) is [...]

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The RBA’s Christopher Kent is on the hustings this afternoon talking up lousy wages growth: While the growth rates of labour demand and supply have both been weaker over the past couple of years, we know that the former has been more significant than the latter. The fact that labour supply has not been constraining [...]

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The latest HILDA report is out! The HILDA survey is an extremely valuable resource – it asks a large sample of people a whole bunch of questions about income, family life, and other things, and tracks respondents over time. We learn things from HILDA that we can’t learn from any other Australian data source.

Concerns continue to grow in China where the value of land sales are down 38% y.o.y and VOLUME down 45% according to Market Watch: Total land sales fell to 1,767 transactions in May in 300 Chinese cities, down 45% from a year ago and 19% lower than in the previous month, according to a survey published […]

Here is Tony Blair from his website arguing that his Iraq War did not give rise to today’s ISIS insurgency. I am no Blairite but agree with some of the points made. My main issue is the selectivity of the argument. It’s impossible, very misleading or grossly naive to make a values-based stand on Western [...]

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It's no secret that a large percentage of the technology sector thinks that the current proposal by Federal Attorney-General George Brandis (pictured) to crack down on Internet piracy will have little impact, given that most such attempts in the fast have broadly failed, and the commonly held belief that commercial avenues represent the best way to handle the situation. However, some commentators feel things will go still further.