Australians have a history of being hard workers, especially the generation that reads this column. I take my hat off to them. My 95 year-old father had to work three jobs to hold our family together.
He worked at the sawmill five days a week, the local poultry farm all weekend and on his holidays he worked on the wheat trucks. It wasn't uncommon for people to work that hard. No talk of Sunday loadings, just responsibility for the family and the dignity of work.
I think he was fifth or sixth generation Australian and our "new Australians", as we used to call them, carry this great tradition. I've told the story before about Blaga, now 90 years old and in a care facility.
She arrived in Australia from Macedonia in 1974. As a widowed mother of three, she took up work in the Ukrainian and Macedonian communities looking after families with only one parent.
She also worked three jobs and saw nothing unusual about it. She struggled with our language but mastered it with a TAFE course which allowed her to add English to her fluent Macedonian, Ukrainian, Polish, Italian and Russian. Hardly an illiterate.
For Blaga, my father and the rest of the working people of Australia, a job is not just a job. It's what we used to call "a living".
First job memories
Occasionally at dinner parties I go around the table and ask friends to recall their first job and how much they got paid. Everybody remembers the details including the days of the pay-packet envelope with crisp pungent notes and shiny coins.
"Best day of the week," says Charlie.
"My first job was raking the sawdust in the butcher's shop and I got $20 in a sealed yellow envelope plus a bag of sausages. On a good week I might get a lamb's fry."
With an election under way and jobs and growth rolled into one word that becomes almost meaningless, I rang my old mate Gary Morgan to get his understanding of what's on people's minds.
His Roy Morgan research organisation has an enviable record for picking election winners. I've had many conversations with Gary and they are all conducted at the top of his voice.
"Jobs, jobs, jobs," he boomed, shaking the copper down the landline.
Unemployment numbers rubbish
With the phone at arm's length I pressed him further. His report for May makes rubbish of the Minister's claim that unemployment is steady at 5.7 per cent.
Unemployment includes those who don't have a job and those who are underemployed – people who want to work more but can't.
His report says it all, of the 12.8 million Australian workforce, down 134,000 from the previous month, 7.6 million are employed full-time and 3.8 million work part-time.
Garry's research reveals that just over 1.3 million are unemployed plus another million looking for more hours. That's 2.3 million Australian who are unemployed or underemployed or 18 per cent of the workforce.
"Outrageous," says Charlie.
This is the campaign sleeper.
RBA knows the drum
However it just might be that there is another economy operating in Australia, not unlike Spain where unemployment is 20 per cent but most people earn a euro somehow.
To work out what's really going on, we need to go no further than the annual report of the Reserve Bank. In the section on banknotes there is the staggering fact that the value of banknotes in circulation in 2014-2015 increased by 8 per cent, while the long-term growth rate is 6 per cent.
The growth was driven almost entirely by the big notes, with the value of $100 notes increasing by 11 per cent and the value of $50 notes by 6 per cent at the end of June 2015. Together, the $50 and $100 notes accounted for 92 per cent of the value and 67 per cent of the number of banknotes in circulation.
In case you haven't seen a $100 bill recently, it is a bigger note and greenish in colour.
"I reckon they should be printed black." says Charlie, who has twigged to the notes' primary use.
"They should match the economy they service," he says.
Untaxed economy must be hauled in
Some experts will tell us that people are storing them in their homes. That's rubbish. Who wouldn't spend a $100 note if they needed the money?
So where are we going with all of this? I think our good leaders have misjudged what's going on with jobs in the real world. Jobs are a massive worry to ordinary people and our untaxed black economy is booming.
It looks like there's enough cash passing from hand to hand to balance the budget – and keep bread on the table.
I'm on the side of all Australians who see work as dignity and know that it is the great national service that built the country. And they'll do it again if they get half a chance.
