Murray Olds

And that's where Australia's going to be headed over the next decade, no doubt about it.

But the critics over here are saying, you are kidding.

How can you have a retired Brigadier General's pension being included in the defence spend?

It's bloody silly.

Yeah, but here's the thing.

That was my initial take on that headline figure.

But the economists...

who are much smarter than me, have pointed out that snapshot was taken long before the full impact, and we haven't even seen the full impact yet, have we, of the Middle Eastern war, the war in Iran, and I suppose in terms of Israel's attack on Lebanon, the economists are saying we haven't yet factored in to that unemployment figure the full impact of what's happening up in the Gulf.

And the economists are predicting that

that figure is actually well below what it's going to get to as the full impact of this energy crisis bites through the economy, no doubt about it.

Well, that's true.

You'll always have that in every single economy around the world.

But the participation rate measures people who are actively looking for work.

And so if they've found a job, they are no longer participating.

It's not the participation rate.

What that measures is people scouring.

jobs wanted advertisements across the internet these days.

I mean, there are no jobs anymore in the back of newspapers.

Remember those days?

Look, it's extremely complicated.