In this Red Report Back:

The ABC recently put out an article under the headline “Tens of thousands more jobs must go to finally crack this cost-of-living crisis, economists say”.

Bosses at price gouging duopoly supermarket giant Coles have turned their eye on their own employees, seeking to shake them down for every last cent as well. Workers at the chain have denounced a proposed new enterprise bargaining agreement that includes an hourly rate just 54 cents above the legal minimum.

The Federal Government’s proposed “Help to Buy” Scheme is, bluntly, a smokescreen. The scheme as proposed will have the government contributing up to 40% of the cost of a mortgage for a new home, 30% for an existing house. purchasers will only have to front up a 2% deposit. This seems pretty good on paper to allow people the opportunity to afford a home. However, it has many significant drawbacks.

Only 0.7% of all houses are vacant in Australia currently. In Perth and Adelaide, this sits even lower at about 0.3%. If anything was proof that there are not enough houses in Australia, it is this. We have allowed the logic of the market, supply and demand, to ravage our understanding of housing in Australia. It is a simple equation, when supply is low, prices go up.

In this Red Report Back:

New data provided to the senate has continued to show alarmingly high rates of payment suspension by some providers under the Jobseeker system.

As the Australian Government pivots towards more and more funding for arms, and in particular the Navy, they are abandoning key research in humanity’s fight against climate change.

Working people all around the country are feeling the strain of trying to make ends meet, with skyrocketing prices for the basics of daily existence pushing budgets to breaking point.

The Productivity Commission’s report on Housing and Homelessness released last month exposes a fact working Australians know all too well – the dream of secure housing is eluding our grasp, and the government has no intentions of recovering it.

In this Red Report Back:

The Senate passed a motion to split the government’s industrial relations legislation into four separate bills with backing from Senators Jacqui Lambie, David Pocock, the Coalition and One Nation. Introduced by Lambie and Pocock in mid-September, the bill sought to spin-off and pass areas of the ‘Closing Loopholes Bill’ they perceive as less fraught

The NSW Government is preparing to make a slight retreat from the privatisation free-for-all in the state in recent years. In a revealing move, the management of maintenance for 95,000 “social” housing properties will be brought back under public control, with the government labelling the current system “confusing, disjointed and unworkable”

It’s been almost two years on from the climate-change driven NSW floods that destroyed almost five-thousand homes, and severely impacted the lives of tens of thousands of northern rivers residents, yet many of these families remain forgotten and ignored.