Fiji Time – that wonderfully elastic concept which makes a mockery of Western schedule fetish – doesn’t apply to the country’s politics. Events there seem to run at warp speed.

On Thursday April 9, the Fiji Court of Appeal ruled that the 2006 coup that installed Commodore Frank Bainimarama as leader was illegal. The next day, Fijian President (and Bainimarama ally) Ratu Josefa Iliolu sacked the Appeal Court judges, installed himself as head of State and abolished the constitution. He also ruled out any elections until 2014, thus cementing Bainimarama’s rule as Prime Minister. Fiji has had four coups in 20 years, and this is the second time the 1997 constitution has been displaced.

The Australian government is not happy about this state of affairs; the question is, what should we do about it? Institute trade sanctions? Refuse visas to Fijians associated with the army or government? Kick Fiji out of the Commonwealth? Oh wait; we’ve done all those things before and they didn’t work.

Now, I’m not one of those people who believe democracy and human rights aren’t relevant to any society outside our own. The current Fijian government has shown its contempt for the people and helped cripple its economy way before the current recession hit everyone for six. Police and military brutality are rampant and the institutional racism against Indo-Fijians is disturbing (though, strangely enough, Bainimarama has championed the Indo-Fijian cause). 

Australia should condemn Iliolu and Bainimarama’s actions in the strongest terms. Treating Fiji as THE delinquent of the Asia-Pacific block is another matter, which I think is hypocritical and counterproductive.

We’ve hung out with bad boy dictators before and been happy to overlook their behaviour as long as they acknowledged us (President Suharto of Indonesia). We’ve sucked up to dictators who have ruled out having any elections ever (Chinese premier Hu Jintao, probably Kevin Rudd’s real political soulmate). For years we pledged to follow to the ends of the earth a President (George W Bush) who thought his country’s constitution was pretty expendable. Why should Fiji be a special case?

Maybe the Australian government got jealous of New Zealand’s status as self-appointed conscience of the Pacific. Maybe Queensland – which, like Fiji, produces idyllic islands, sugar and synapse-melting rum – lobbied to get rid of the competition.

Or maybe we have just decided that one badly-behaved country needs to be made an example of, and it might as well be one without natural resources or a large market for Aussie products.

I reckon this is a shame, because Fiji also has some qualities that could make it more receptive to the carrot than the stick. Compared to some of the neighbouring countries, it’s peaceful. For a poor country, Fiji has relatively high levels of education, literacy and skills. Lastly, it has cultural and sporting ties to Australia.

Hell, they really like Australia; no matter how many travel warnings we issue about them, visas we deny them or drunken expats we exile to their shores in return for superior rugby players.

Here’s my fantasy alternate reality Fiji foreign policy: demand elections now and reinstate the constitution, and in return they get

• favoured regional trading partner status.
• large-scale, official Australian government partnerships to train them in policing, infrastructure and health
• Aus government grants for Fijian manufacturing industries. If we aren’t going to have a manufacturing industry any more, I’d like to see it go somewhere close and mutually beneficial
• a chance to get dual citizenship (of course, the Fijian government would have to allow this too!)
• guaranteed Australia-wide distribution of Fiji Bitter beer. I’m happy to volunteer my services now to promote this excellent endeavour.

Seriously, wouldn’t it be better to engage with the government and political system they have, rather than the one we’d like them to have? Surely that would be better than having to send troops in once the country has degenerated into a failed state.

Guest blogger Carolyn Ride spent one month in Fiji in 2008, which here on Weston Culture qualifies her as the resident Fiji expert. Hey, that still makes her more qualified than Eddy Groves was to run hundreds of childcare centres Australia-wide.

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In the wake of the Federal Government’s overhaul of the Job Network I bet Job Network staff are crying into their chipped “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!” coffee mugs. I usually have sympathy with those in slashed government-funded services, but not this time. In fact, the only argument I have is that the Government should have killed this bloated, self-serving efficiency drain outright and not just wounded it.

A dumb idea is born

The previous Liberal government replaced the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) in 1998 with a decentralised and privatised system, the Job Network (JN). Different organisations – some private, some non-profit, and some specialists in supporting the disadvantaged – would be funded to match jobs to jobseekers and train and support the unemployed. Allegedly, it was going to be cheaper and more efficient than a centralised, unwieldy bureaucratic agency. The number of agencies reflected, in the jargon of JN aims, “the use of competition to drive greater efficiency for the taxpayer and increased choice for consumers”.

In reality, the Job Network spent ten years too busy elbowing their way to the funding trough to reflect on what they were doing for the unemployed or employers. Which was bugger-all; something that even the politicised Productivity Commission admitted in its 2002 report into the system.

How it ‘works’

There are two main ways for a Job Network provider to get money: place their client in a job or offer Intensive Assistance to disadvantaged clients (long-term unemployed, disabled, indigenous etc).

Putting someone who’s been unemployed for less than two years in a job nets the provider $1650 if they stay there more than 13 weeks.  It doesn’t have to be the right job for the right person, just a job. “So it should be,” say some. “I pay my taxes and I don’t want some dole bludger turning down work to go surfing”. The problem is, cramming anyone into any job isn’t good for employee or employer. JN providers are uniquely gifted at putting the shy and/or poor English speakers into telemarketing, people with bad backs into cleaning, over-40s computer-phobes into admin, and people with no transport into a two-hou-a-day casual job 90 minutes away by car with 5am starts.

$1650 is a nice little earner, but the real money for the Job Network is in Intensive Assistance. That’s Job Search Training and ‘Customised Assistance’ for the long-term unemployed and disadvantaged. After a tragically long unemployment stint a few years back, I landed in a leading provider’s Job Search Training course. Over three fulltime weeks, I learned that resumes should be good, not bad; that most jobs weren’t advertised so we should cold-call; and that jobseekers shouldn’t be fussy about the jobs they apply for. That took care of an hour, leaving only 104 hours to twiddle our thumbs and fight over the one cold-calling phone.

The Job Network has been criticised for failing the long-term unemployed and disadvantaged by focusing only on work and not on overcoming personal barriers but I think some of it misses the point. I have friends who’ve worked in the Job Network who have been strongly encouraged to keep Highly Disadvantaged (HD) clients in training programs and face-to-face assistance as long as they can. In other words, they’re worth more to their JN provider unemployed than employed. The Productivity Commission’s 2002 assessment into the Job Network found that “Intensive Support (comprising Job Search Training and Customised Assistance) will comprise around 80 per cent of Job Network providers’ revenue in ESC3”. ESC3 was Employment Services Contract 3, a contractual obligation for long-term unemployed and/or disadvantaged.

Inside the asylum

The average Job Network office combines the efficiency of Fawlty Towers with the cheeriness and warmth of a Romanian orphanage. Don’t get me wrong; some nice people work there. Or used to, since the staff turnover is so high that, if you don’t like your employment consultant, just wait five minutes.

Job Network clients are encouraged – and after a couple of months, forced – to travel to a JN office to use their jobseeking resources. These usually consist of the local jobs section from three days ago, a roomful of computers with no staff around to tell people how to use them or unlock the passwords, and the Yellow Pages. Sometimes they have a jobs board; I was impressed that my current JN provider included (in March) a job ad with a closing date in early January.

The staff, victims themselves of pressure to deliver profit and suffering from high burnout levels, don’t appear to have many useful skills to share with the unemployed. They tell participants that most jobs are unadvertised, but can’t tell them how to use informational interviews or networks. They just order them to cold-call from the phonebook. They tell their clients to jazz up their resume, but don’t provide anything helpful like a resume service, or even a colour printer. I guess they don’t get funded for such things.

In other words, these paid professionals can’t provide a service that can be found free in your local library via the book What Colour Is Your Parachute? They can’t even help with specific applications advertised with their service, since they routinely withhold information about the employer from the jobseeker. (“It’s a retail position in a big company somewhere. I can’t say more”). This is insanely counterproductive, since everyone knows that the applicant who demonstrates knowledge of the company they’re applying to increases their chance of getting the job.

JN providers get lots of money taking on High Disadvantage (HD) clients, but seem to have no idea how to remove their barriers to employment. Even specialised services for the disadvantaged, I’ve heard from friends in the Disability Employment Network, have no idea how to help their clients. I have seen JN caseworkers flummoxed by women re-entering the workforce after raising children (odd, considering that they come across as the most highly motivated clients). (See True Stories From Job Network)

They don’t get paid for letting a client from another Job Network provider fill their vacancy, so they tend to fob off ‘outsiders’ calling about a job. (See: True Stories From the Job Network)

They do get paid, though, when their clients get a job; even if the client gets the job through no help from the Job Network provider. I’ve only gotten jobs through ads, contacts and door-to-door resume shopping – never from the Job Network. That has never stopped them from demanding my employment details so they can claim government benefits. I’m not alone in this; check out other people’s experience in Web forums. 

So JN services, and their ever-changing roster of employees, are pressured to chase profits and at the same time comply with Byzantine Federal Government requirements. This is the problem with semi-privatised or ‘purchased’ services. Which master should they serve, the market or social need? The usual outcome is that they dither between the two, to the satisfaction of neither. They can’t afford to cast off the shackles of government funding guidelines, but they can’t afford to annoy potential employers either (especially considering how few they have). Job Network flunkeys have got to take it out on someone, and that would be their hapless clients.

Powerless in every other regard, the JN is the omnipotent overseer with their clients. Anything they regard as ‘noncompliance’ (lateness to appointments, refusal to cold-call employers from the phone book) can be used against the client in the form of recommending a Centrelink breach. Anecdotally (ok, in my experience and that of my friends who were either clients or JN workers) frustrated JN workers learn to take an adversarial approach to the unemployed. Don’t want to apply for cleaning jobs because of your back surgery? Noncompliance. Get an ulcer even thinking of talking to strangers? Go for an interview at the telemarketing company or get reported for noncompliance.

If the JN has to comply with government guidelines even when it’s impossible, their clients have to comply with the JN even when it’s impossible. (See: True Stories from the Job Network) 

Can we end the Job Network?

What we’re learning from current worldwide recession is that governments should provide services; not purchase them, provide rebates for them or farm them out. You can’t run a service for the disadvantaged as a business, and you can’t run a business that’s solely dependent on the government teat.

Maybe the former CES was overly bureaucratic, expensive and unwieldy. Still, the Job Network has been an unfortunate experiment in proving that privatised doesn’t always mean more efficient, and government-funded doesn’t always mean equitable. 

On December 2, 2006, the Australian newspaper obtained a leaked document showing that the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations paid $158.7 million to Job Network providers between July 2003 and April 2005. Two organisations had been paid more than $10 million, and 37 were paid more than $1 million.

I’m glad people are finally questioning the usefulness of the Job Network, but the next step would be to actually dismantle this nadir of grant-fuelled middleman inefficiency and corporate welfare. I suppose such a radical move is unlikely under a Prime Minister whose wife, Therese Rein, made a personal fortune from leading Job Network provider Work Directions.

Still, in my crazy Keynesian fantasy, the Federal Government will replace the Job Network fiasco with a revitalised, more efficient CES. (Government services have learned to work smarter, not harder, before. I’m sure they can do it again). 

The Government of my imaginary social democratic world will create jobs for the long-term and disadvantaged unemployed themselves, rather than trying to persuade reluctant employers to do so. They’ll include confidence-building and the fostering of networks in their job search training. Lastly, they’ll encourage their staff to read books like What Colour Is Your Parachute and use their wisdom.

Well, I can dream…

Carolyn Ride is a writer, editor and, according to the Job Network, has excellent communication skills which make her the ideal candidate for the position of baker’s assistant. 

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1. True stories from the Job Network
2. Good karma job hunting: Connecting with the hidden job market

The following stories were all either experienced or witnessed by me…

True Story 1: Helping women return to the workforce

In a group orientation in a leading Job Network provider, we were told we had to make three cold calls from the Yellow Pages every time we were there or face a breach recommendation. One participant, a fifty-something woman re-entering the workforce after raising a family, got flustered. She wanted to do whatever possible to get a job but wanted some guidance on how to approach employers. Should she target companies she already recognised? What would she say if an employer asked about her work history, given that she had not worked for an employer for thirty years? The employment consultant snapped “I’m not here to answer every little question or hold your hand. Just call them and ask for a job”! This employment consultant was also too impatient to show the woman how to use the computer, so two clients did it.

True Story 2: The right person for the right job

I saw a job advertised on jobsearch.gov.au, placed only an hour before I saw it, by a Job Network provider I didn’t belong to. They gave no details of the employer, but the job looked good and just right for me, so I rang them. I spoke to an officious and frosty woman, who demanded to know if I was a Job Network member and had a job ID. Yes I did. She asked me if I was registered with her Job Network provider. I said no, I wasn’t, but I was with another provider and very keen to apply for the job. She said, “Well, the job requires editing skills, so it probably won’t be right for you”. I said I had edited a magazine, two theses and multiple business publications. She was silent for a while. I filled the silence by asking about the employer. She said, “Well, I can’t tell you anything or everyone’s going to go swamping them with phone calls”. I asked if I could send my resume. Sighing theatrically, she answered, “I suppose so. You’re definitely not our client?” I emailed my resume. Half an hour later, I got an email saying the job had been filled.

True Story 3: Don’t mess with us

Amazingly, this all happened in one morning at a major JN provider which has managed to avoid this week’s funding cuts. Obviously at the time the staff had been told to put a boot up the bludgers’ bums, because two Employment Consultants (ECs) did the rounds of the ten clients who were there, dispensing stern words (in tandem) to all.

First, the fiftysomething man who, as a result of three knee surgeries, told them he preferred not to do any heavy labouring.

EC 1: “You shouldn’t discount any type of work just because you don’t feel like it. I have a feeling that you’re using the excuse of a sore knee to avoid work”.

Man: “I have a medical certificate. I’ve had three surgeries in the last couple of years”.

EC 2: “It really does sound like you’re leaning on this knee stuff to avoid participating. Have you read Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life? She’s really clear on how so-called physical symptoms are actually emotional problems”.

Man: “No, I haven’t heard of her, but it sounds interesting. Have you got anything about that here?”

EC 1 (angrily): “We’re an employment services provider, not a lending library. I suggest you go to the library and get your own copy”.

Second, another fiftysomething man who had had no luck with the Yellow Pages or the Internet.

EC 1: “(Company X) down in Brisbane has jobs sometimes. Here’s the address. You’ve got a car, right? Well, hop in it and take your resume down to them. They might have something”.

Man: “So they have jobs going now? Why don’t I ring them”?

EC 1: “No, but it never hurts to go see them. Don’t ring them; it’s much better for them to see their applicants”.

Man: “It’s an hour away and I don’t even have enough petrol money. I’m not going all the way down there with no money for a job that doesn’t exist. That’s ridiculous!”

EC 1: “You’ve got no excuse. We reimburse transport costs. In some instances, with receipts. I think maybe you’re refusing to comply with your mutual obligation requirements. Let’s go to my office right now and ring Centrelink and say you don’t want your payment since you’re not a sincere jobhunter”.

EC 2: “Yes, they’d be really interested to hear that!”

Thirdly, a twentysomething man looking through newspaper ads and minding his own business.

EC 1: “Yes, I know you, and I hear you’ve got a lot to say about us. I was standing behind you at Centrelink the other day and I heard you complaining to the lady at the counter about us. I suppose you didn’t think we’d find out about that, did you? Well, actions have consequences, you know.”

EC 3: (previously hiding behind computer in the corner): “I’m pretty sure that’s a breach. I think the rest of you can learn something from this”.

Me (really sick of it all by now): “Excuse me, but I think service users actually have a right to complain about their Job Network provider. I don’t think anything in the employment contract says they can’t”.

EC 1: “We’ll be the judge of what’s appropriate or otherwise.”

EC 3: “I think it’s time to check this young lady’s job contacts for the day, isn’t it?”

What about you?

Got any true stories from the Job Network?

Carolyn Ride is a writer, editor and one of the many ‘customers’ of the Job Network who .

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Torture: Ticking time bombs and slippery slopes
A Talk by Dr John Janzekovic

Embiggen Books, Noosaville, 25 March 2009

John Janzekovic discusses the ethics and politics of torture at Embiggen Books, Noosaville.

We’re not all recession-immune luvvies thinking about nothing more taxing than our next Restylene appointment in Noosa, you know.

Last night, about 30 thoughtful and concerned folk of all ages got together at  Embiggen Books in Noosaville to hear Sunshine Coast University professor John Janzekovic talk about torture. Specifically, is torture ever ethical, and are we in the West complicit in torture when  we don’t take steps to prevent it? (i.e in Abu Ghraib or ‘rendition-friendly’ countries)

What followed was a lot of lively, intelligent and occasionally frustrating debate – just what I like as a politics junkie. Dr Janzekovic has published extensively on military history and made some very thought-provoking comments. Basically, he refuted the idea that torture can prevent the jailed terrorist from activating the ticking bomb (it’s a fantasy scenario) and he said any ‘civilised’ country practicing torture is on the slippery slope to non-civilisation.

However, some major questions remained unanswered (by audience or speaker). If you don’t use torture, what DO you do to prevent terrorism? If torture is a slippery slope towards brutality, is excessive leniency a slippery slope towards advertising our vulnerability to our enemies? As one older audience member commented, we’ve been discussing the ethics of this issue for decades; where are the answers?

I agree. I respect some of Dr Janzekovic’s opinions, but he had no alternatives to torture as a means of information gathering besides ‘do something else’ and ‘trust in the UN’. Do what else? Trust in the organisation with the shameful legacy of Rwanda (and many more), which can’t even get ‘civilised’ countries to agree on a Women’s Rights Charter or ratify the International Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Like so many political discussions I’ve had recently, this one seemed to be unhelpfully split between both personal-political lines and left-right lines, and sadly this is usually the road to hypocrisy.

The It’s Personal defend torture as just something people do, so what are you gonna do about it? Or it’s something you’d do if you had enough reason to do it, so what’s wrong with it?

My confession: I can imagine myself torturing someone for any of a possible hundred reasons. Molesting children. Setting wildlife-destroying bushfires. Stoning women. Making my girlfriend unhappy. Kicking my cat. Thank God the KGB never recruited me when I was a communist, since I appear to be so prone to political violence. Sure, communism’s dead now, but don’t EVER kick my cat.

The political Right defend torture as the ultimate crime prevention tool, happily in line with human nature. At their extreme, like Dubya, they seem to think anyone who doesn’t believe in God, Guns and Money deserves a life of solitary confinement.

The political Left are righteously offended by torture – as long as it’s practised by the US, Australia or Israel. If it’s practised by China or Iran, we should engage in mutually humanistic and non-offensive dialogue with them. And forget, say, intervening in Zimbabwe. As one man said, “The Chinese wouldn’t like that”. Settles that then.

So there’s my problem with torture debates. So few people admit their own weaknesses that would lead them to support torture. So few people admit their own hypocrisies. So few people want to design alternatives, even those folks smart enough to design them.

Despite this, credit due where credit must be due. The folks at Embiggen Books have created a real space for fascinating debate and discussion in Noosa. They made informed and interesting points in the general debate (gender! religion! thank you!) They have a non-fiction bookclub which discusses this stuff, and quantum physics, and humanism, where most bookshop-related talks stick to the safest and most middle-class topics (like renovating in Tuscany).

I’m a bookshop girl, having worked at five of them while you slackers were off studying and building careers. I was at first dubious about Embiggen being a nonfiction bookshop, but now I’m sold. Like Red Books (RIP) in Brisbane, it’s a cauldron of ideas, about more than the sale. I can’t wait to go and hear the talk on humanism in a month, which will almost balance out my being vaguely nice about Christians last month.

Carolyn Ride is a writer, editor and is frequently embiggened by a noble spirit.

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Carolyn Ride seeks out some cheery reading with the recently re-published dystopian classic that inspired the cult film Soylent Green.

I bet Nicholas Stern has read this book.

Maybe you haven’t read this classic work of environmental dystopia, published in 1966 and set in 1999 New York, but you may have seen the 1973 film adaptation, Soylent Green. OK, Harrison got his dates skewed but it doesn’t make this book any less convincing or prescient.

In the novel, 1999 New York is overpopulated, constantly under threat from droughts and heatwaves, and food is so scarce people riot every time their rations are cut. The rations in question are tasteless seaweed crackers. Only the frail and old get to supplement their meagre diet with the occasional teaspoon of peanut butter and meat flakes (made from snails). Fresh fruit and vegetables are unheard of (especially since the US is mostly dustbowl).

Diseases like kwashiorkor, a protein deficiency, are common. Only the rich can dream of such unattainable luxuries as showers, privacy, and the occasional soylent (soy and lentil) steak.

Overworked cop Andy Rusch has to battle riots, heatwaves and millennial hysteria to find whoever killed a wealthy businessman. Meanwhile, his friend Sol fights in support of birth control; Shirl, the murdered businessman’s kept woman, has to learn to survive without the dubious protection of rich men; and a little boy, Billy Chung, enters a world of trouble after stealing valuable Soylent steaks.

Make Room! Make Room! sometimes chooses polemic over plot, a common error in books with Something Important To Say. He’s also not terribly inventive with his characters’ names and speech so they sound dated. There’s no way Harrison could have predicted how Americans would talk in 1999, but he could have guessed they wouldn’t discuss ‘stool pigeons’.

Still, what an achievement this novel is! I can really smell and feel the sweat of millions of jostling bodies, the despair at being turned away empty-handed from the communal water tap, and even the triumph of the character who spies a nice, juicy, edible…rat!

Science fiction does love a dystopia, not least since utopian futures would make lousy reading (“Wow, the future turned out super-fun, hey? Well, that’s all for now. Byeee!”) [TW: Hey! That’s my novel!]

What’s refreshing about Make Room! Make Room! is that Harrison’s dystopia is not, like so many others, ruled by technology. The police state is not watching you. The police equipment is from the 1970s and they can’t even clear the most obvious murders. Humans didn’t create any technology that then turned on us and tried to destroy us. We didn’t discover other worlds and colonise them. People communicate by messenger boy, barges are powered by people pulling ropes, and cars serve no purpose except to house the homeless.

If you can handle a plausible if frightening future in these times, then I recommend this book. If you have a really strong stomach (not only for the plot twist but for Charlton Heston) see the movie Soylent Green. The movie changed quite a few things from the novel, such as the year (2022) and a major plot point. Like Make Room! Make Room!, the movie is a classic. Invite your friends to come over and watch it with you. Maybe skip the popcorn.

Carolyn Ride is a writer, editor and often simply referred to as “the book lady on the radio”. 

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