Jobs growth is largely part-time
THE state and federal governments are banging on about how great the latest employment statistics are.
How many of the jobs created — full or part-time — are short-term contracts? Looking at the industries where those jobs are, it’s quite obvious to anyone with the slightest understanding of the labour market that they will not be permanent, ongoing, secure employment.
Moreover, the jobless rate has remained stable, so you do the maths. There are 19 people competing for every job and the unemployed, already below the poverty line, are being hammered with everincreasing ferocity by the Federal Government. You are counted as employed if you work just one hour in the survey week. Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Footy struggling
NEW Norfolk football coach Matthew Smith’s comments (Mercury, July 26) hit the nail on the head about football. Not only in the South, but statewide. He mentions that people are not coming to matches. Coaches want to be challenged as well as the players. I can remember in the 1960s, football was like a religion, whole families would go. It was a meeting place for mates and relatives to catch up, the grandstands would be almost full. You could see people stretched right around the boundary fences. People came to see their teams play and the champion players do battle. TSL general manager Carl Saunders’ view was there were no plans to expand the TSL or revert to a regionalonly competition. Tasmanian football for many years has been on life support and, to be honest, if the excitement is not brought back to the game and attendance keeps falling, Tasmanian football, apart from the AFL games coming to the state, will die a slow death. or losing interest. From teenagers to the very elderly, people do care about righting miscarriages of justice. actively lobbied to oppose this ban.
To those of us who try to build peace, this ban shows that attitudes can change for the better and some of us who do our bit towards peace will be publicly remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki this weekend.