Department

• “This agreement with the Department of Labor is part of our whole-of-government effort to protect workers from unlawful business practices,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan.
• The agreement is part of a broader FTC initiative to use the agency’s full authority, including enforcement actions and Commission rulemaking, to protect workers.
• The FTC has made it a priority to scrutinize mergers that may harm competition in U.S. labor markets.
• The FTC has also prioritized cracking down on anticompetitive contract terms that put workers at a disadvantage.
• The Commission is considering a proposed rule that would ban noncompete clauses in employment contracts, and has taken action to protect workers in several Commission orders.

• Both issues reflect a court that has announced revolutionary changes in doctrine and must now grapple with how far the new principles will reach.
• Two years ago, the court began what many consider to be a constitutional revolution.
• The new supermajority of six conservative justices rapidly introduced new doctrines across a range of controversies including abortion, guns, religion and race.

Focus on guns

• Zackey Rahimi is a convicted drug dealer and violent criminal who also had a restraining order in place after assaulting his girlfriend.
• The court will decide whether the federal law prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order violates the Second Amendment.
• In the 2022 case of New York Rifle & Pistol v. Bruen, the court announced a new understanding of the Second Amendment.
• If the right to carry a gun can be regulated but not eradicated, limited but not eliminated, where is the line?
• The Rahimi case will provide a critical test of this historical approach to the boundaries of constitutional rights.

The power of the administrative state

• The court’s conservatives tend to see the actions of federal agencies as violating the constitutional principle of limited government.
• They fear that the federal government is likely to use its vast power abusively if it is unconstrained.
• In this view, the expansion of the administrative state allowed an end-run around the Constitution’s limits on government power.
• In the last few years, the court has emphasized new doctrines limiting the power of federal agencies.
• Overruling this precedent would strip power from administrative agencies and reallocate decisions to Congress or to courts.

• To address such costs, the federal government is proposing a national digital identity scheme that will let people prove their identity without having to share documents such as their passport, drivers licence or Medicare card.
• Finance Minister Katy Gallagher opened consultations for the draft bill last week, with plans to introduce the legislation to parliament by the end of the year.

What would change?

• The draft bill package includes strong updates to security requirements for how organisations store people’s IDs, as well as the reporting of data breaches and suspected identity fraud.
• In her speech to the Australian Information Industry Association, Gallagher outlined a four-phase rollout.

How would it work?

• To prove your identity to a participating organisation, you would log into the organisation’s website and select MyGovID as your verification method.
• You would then log into your MyGovID app and give consent for your identity to be verified with that organisation.

The upside of the proposal

• The Medibank, Optus and Latitude data breaches of 2022-23 have demonstrated the lack of regulation and enforcement of identity protection legislation in Australia.
• The bill also outlines minimum cybersecurity standards, and requires regular review of organisations dealing with identity data.

Unresolved MyGovID security flaws

• In releasing the draft bill, the government has highlighted a voluntary national digital identity – the MyGovID – which is already being used by more than 6 million Australians and 1.3 million businesses.
• In 2020, security researchers warned the public against using MyGovID due to security flaws in its design.
• According to Webber Insurance, 14 of the 44 recorded data breaches between January to June this year were reported by government authorities.
• More worryingly, the privacy act has a loophole which allows state and government authorities to remain exempt from compulsory data breach reporting.

A honey trap for hackers

• Also, streamlining distributed identification systems in this way will create an irresistible target for hackers.
• In cybersecurity this is called a honeypot, or honey trap.
• Just as honey is irresistible to bears, these data lures are irresistible to hackers.

What can you do?

• However, you don’t have much time to have your say: public submissions are being sought until October 10.
• This extremely short consultation period doesn’t provide much confidence a fit-for-purpose solution will be created.

• Today’s employment white paper has adopted the broadest-ever definition of what “full employment” means for Australia.
• The new paper says closer to 2.8 million Australians are either underemployed or out of work – equivalent to one-fifth of the current workforce.
• The white paper still cautions that “full employment” does not mean zero unemployment.

Underemployment and unemployment approach 2.8 million

• While 539,700 Australians are unemployed, there are another 1 million who are employed but want to work more.
• And there are another 1.3 million “potential workers” who are interested in working, but not currently actively looking.
• This lifts the total number of Australians who are in some way unemployed to 2.8 million, according to the white paper.

Employment white papers date back to WWII

• This isn’t the first Australian government employment white paper.
• That 1945 white paper was inspired by the British white paper released in 1944, which set out an ambitious plan to carry forward the high employment achieved during wartime into peacetime.

No specific target for our unemployment rate

• The 1965 Vernon Report on the economy was more optimistic, defining full employment as an unemployment rate of 1 to 1.5%.
• The Keating government’s Working Nation paper – released in 1994 when unemployment was almost 10% – adopted a target of 5% by 2000.
• The words, but not the numbers, in today’s employment white paper are consistent with an unemployment rate of 4% or lower.

Few ideas for lifting productivity

• The white paper identifies labour productivity (output per hour worked) as crucial to increasing the purchasing power of wages, yet details few ideas for increasing it.
• Labour productivity has slowed over recent decades, and in recent years has actually fallen.
• Declining labour productivity is also likely to reflect the gradual shift from manufacturing to services.
• Read more:
  Government's employment white paper commits to jobs for all who want them – and help to get them

  But weak productivity probably also reflects other things.