We honestly don’t know which element of the news — revealed elsewhere in Crikey today — that defence has launched a “nuclear-powered submarine propulsion challenge” in Australian high schools makes us cringe the hardest.
Is it considering the face of the communications flack who came up with the program as it dawns on them it’s been launched during a week when the primary association with submarines is pure, abject terror? The transparent propaganda effort this represents? Imagining the weapons-grade earnestness of the anti-war poetry that emo kids will write in their journals after being subjected to it? Or the “wears a blazer to free dress day” spods for whom a government program aimed at inspiring kids to “discover how nuclear propulsion works” achieves its goals?
All that aside, by getting kids to “design their own engineering plans for submarine nuclear propulsion”, the program joins the glorious tradition of governments and business groups endorsing child labour. The number of school kids with jobs has skyrocketed, which will delight many in the political class, from the sounds.
There was, of course, the Australian Retail Association’s recent contention that the best way to fill 40,000 jobs in the sector wasn’t to improve pay and conditions or do better at stamping out the harassment retail workers often face, but to get more children in the workforce by loosening regulations around the working age. But they also wanted to allow pensioners to work, and you’d expect businesses to ask for that kind of thing. Ditto for the realisation that many businesses haven’t so much advocated for changes to child employment law as just ignored them entirely. It’s when governments put it forward that it really raises an eyebrow.
For example, the New South Wales government discussed burnishing their really, really, really impressive pitch to young people by suggesting children as young as 10 could do unpaid labour to pay off the $1000 COVID-19 fines they were being issued.
And then there’s the undisputed big dog of poorly received and swiftly abandoned policy pitches: Scott Morrison putting forward the possibility, during his last few months in the Lodge, of solving COVID-19-related supply chain issues by allowing 16-year-olds to drive forklifts in warehouses. You might wonder at the safety implications of getting kids to do such manual labour, but as Morrison’s approach to the football pitch revealed, child safety wasn’t necessarily his biggest priority.
We should probably just cut the middleman out and start pureeing the kids into a nutritious paste. We can use their old clothes for toilet paper, and their dreams for kitty litter.
“Soylent Green” for the post-modern age, you think?
Not a new idea, see (Dean Jonathan) Swift’s “Modest Proposal” from almost 300yrs ago.
Ordabemorovit.
No, too valuable due to below replacement fertility and declining youth, working age etc..
Both the government and LNP know this, but we have had decades of ‘bait and switch’ i.e. on one hand praising or neutral on migration program, but then dog whistling refugees, temporary residents via NOM and population growth; to fee our xenophobic needs and deflect from substantive issues and policies, too easy.
Edit ‘to feed our xenophobic needs’
In fact our young population (<15 years old) has declined from nearly 30% in 1970 down to <20% in 2020 (with below replacement fertility), and continues…. vs. increasing population growth of oldies.
OECD (2023), Young population (indicator). doi: 10.1787/3d774f19-en (Accessed on 22 June 2023) https://data.oecd.org/chart/77Ih
So, “Make Love, not Wharves“?
Or airports.
Once products (incl people) were Empire Made so it might be time for Australian made?
Assuming agreement of the maid
I love the idea of child labour, especially if they have to work night shifts. It keeps the kiddies off the streets, it stops them from being inculcated into socialist propaganda because they’re too tired to learn abstract concepts, and it allows their parents to have more money for their alcohol/pokies/rental habits.
Arbeit macht frei.
Oder, re Volk, “machen wir selber.”
Maybe get the kiddies to play with drones instead. Maybe even make them. We are currently exporting wax coated cardboard drones from Melbourne to Ukraine. Nice and cheap but can knock out a multimillion dollar tank. Or even a multibillion dollar submarine.
Given the general messup of DoD purchases and designs, the Kids will probably come up with much better.
I’ll bet most kids would have known not to put those reciprocating explosive engines into Collins class subs.
They would have known that the company was in strife, and that most installations in commercial use were being re-engined with something else.
Would also hazard a guess that all Kids have a better understanding of computer systems and computer ability than some old geeser in DoD.
This needs serious revision.
If the climate alarmists have their way, there’ll be no chimneys for children to sweep. To move with the times, they could be put to cleaning PV panels. They’re light and nimble (unlike most pensioners), so ideal.
This is my Modest Proposal https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm
#30’s compassion has no bounds, getting children to paradise sooner. It’s his god’s will.
Apols. – posted before seeing this.
Thanks for the footie memory jog, I think.
You ping #30 perfectly.