Compliance

• There’s talk of bringing back Australia’s Commonwealth Employment Service.
• The Commonwealth Employment Service was itself the result of Australia’s first employment white paper in 1945, which wanted a service designed, in its words:

• But my PhD research into Australia’s employment services suggests putting things back to how they were would be a bad idea, for two reasons.
• First, it would require commitment from the Commonwealth and resources that have been lacking for decades.
• Bringing back the Commonwealth Employment Service would require placing a new Commonwealth agency office in every major town and centre across the country – akin to expecting someone who was emaciated to train for the Olympics.
• The Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service was abolished in the Coalition’s first 2014 budget and the remaining social workers in Centrelink are overwhelmed.

The Commonwealth can now barely manage contracts

• In the early stages of outsourcing, the Department of Employment still had staff with Commonwealth Employment Service experience and were able to manage the outsourcing contracts well – they understood how complicated labour markets were at the local level.
• But these days it’s unlikely there’s anyone is left within the department with direct experience with the service, or even any kind of service.

The Commonwealth links programs to payments

• The other reason not to reestablish a Commonwealth Employment Service is that these days the government links the provision of services to the payment of benefits, through what it calls “mutual obligations”.
• Providers complain they’ve got to divert staff away from liaising with potential employers to managing compliance.

States do things better

• States and territories could then develop really superior services, like Switzerland, where employment services are developed and delivered at the level of individual cantons (states).
• The states don’t have that problem and do have an immediate on-the-ground interest in getting their citizens into jobs.

• But for Canadians living in remote northern communities, food affordability has been a crisis for decades.
• These high food prices, combined with limited economic opportunities and high rates of poverty, have led to Northern Canada having the highest rates of food insecurity in the country.
• However, residents of these communities have expressed concern that retailers may be taking advantage of them and using subsidies to increase their profits.

Insufficient accountability measures

• We controlled for factors like food inflation, energy prices and high freight/operating costs.
• We found that for every dollar paid to a retailer to reduce shipping costs, the prices paid by consumers fell by only 67 cents.
• Our findings indicate that Nutrition North Canada’s accountability measures are insufficient.

Better addressing the problem

• The contribution of retailer profits to high food prices today is still being debated.
• A substantial share of the subsidy still goes to consumers, so punishing retailers by removing the subsidy would make food even more expensive.
• How, then, can the federal government better address the problem of food affordability and insecurity in remote northern communities?
• Nicholas Li receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and a Nutrition North Canada Research Grant.

• In the UK, households collectively throw away an estimated 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging each year.
• In 2020, the UK government banned the sale of several single-use plastic products in England including straws, stirrers and cotton buds – but with exceptions for medical use.
• From October 1 2023, businesses in England are prohibited from selling several other single-use plastic products including plastic cutlery, balloon sticks and polystyrene cups.

What will the ban change?

• Plastics that are particularly difficult to recycle like polystyrene cups also have stricter rules, but with a few exceptions too.
• The new ban also doesn’t cover single-use plastic packaging.
• Single-use plastic packaging is one of the leading sources of plastic pollution in the UK.

How effective will the ban be?

• The new ban is a step towards tackling the impacts of pollution caused by single-use plastics.
• However, for such a ban to be genuinely effective, several key elements must be in place.
• This ensures that those affected understand the ban’s purpose and how its progress will be assessed, while also promoting accountability.
• The government’s new ban lacks any specific or measurable objectives.

Improving awareness

• For example, businesses were given several months after the consultation on the ban to prepare and use up excess stock.
• Adequate public awareness is also necessary to ensure everyone understands the reasons behind the ban, how it affects them, and what the available alternatives are.
• In Rwanda, where a ban on plastic bags was introduced in 2008, announcements were made on airlines and at ports of entry to inform visitors.
• In a similar way, the UK government’s recent ban is accompanied by official guidance explaining the ban’s implications.
• Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue.

• For the second time in three months, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed Alabama’s attempts to advance its legislature’s congressional maps that federal courts have ruled harm Black voters.
• The court had first rejected the maps in its stunning June 8, 2023, decision that upheld the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• But in an act of defiance, Alabama lawmakers resubmitted maps that didn’t include what the court had urged them to do – create a second political district in which Black voters could reasonably be expected to choose a candidate of their choice.
• On Sept. 5, the panel of three federal judges rebuked the Alabama Legislature when it ruled that the state’s proposed voting districts failed to create the second Black district.

A surprising decision to protect Black voters

• Alabama officials have denied any wrongdoing and said their proposed voting districts, including one where the percentage of Black voters jumped from about 30% to 40%, were in compliance with recent federal court rulings.
• Instead, our elected representatives and our voters must apparently be reduced to skin color alone.” At issue in the Alabama case is whether the power of Black voters was diluted by dividing them into districts where white voters dominate.
• After the 2020 census, the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature redrew the state’s seven congressional districts to include only one in which Black voters would likely be able to elect a candidate of their choosing.
• In its surprising ruling on June 8, the Supreme Court jettisoned Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama that a federal district court in Alabama had ruled in 2022 discriminated against Black voters and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• All three conditions were true in Alabama, and the totality of the circumstances suggested minority voters did not participate equally in the political process in the area.

What Alabama did

• In its decisions on Alabama’s redistricting, the Supreme Court upheld laws that were designed to protect minority voting power for the last nearly four decades.
• Given Alabama’s long-standing history of suppressing the votes of its Black citizens, the Supreme Court still may not have written its last word on race and redistricting.
• The court is scheduled in October 2023 to hear a similar case involving South Carolina’s voting districts.