WELL

again, the Roy Morgan Research Corporation figures for the December quarter of 2017 are out, and they don’t make for enjoyable reading if you are either unemployed or underemployed. According to the corporation we had 2.6 million people either unemployed or

underemployed, 1.32 million Australians were unemployed, which was an increase on the same period the year before, an increase of 126,000 (up 0.6 per cent) on a year ago.

The Roy Morgan Research Corporation puts “real” unemployment for the December quarter, Australia wide at 9.8 per cent substantially higher than the year before, and yet this Coalition government tells us that everything is good. I beg to differ.

Coalition governments do precisely what this one has done; their policies have brought five consecutive quarters of falling living standards for ordinary people. We must remove them at the next possible opportunity or we will continue to slide into the mire. Just to add insult to injury, inflation is now on the rise as well. SHAUN NEWMAN