Candidate S. Jackson Webinar

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S. Jackson will be a candidate for councillor for the south ward of Moreland, the South Ward being Brunswick but only up to Albion St. This is a report on a Zoom webinar that he held on 27 August 2020.

Mr Jackson introduces himself in an email as "a progressive economist" and has spent "the last ten years of his life trying to convince politicians that our community needs government to play a stronger role in managing the economy, and I’m sick and tired of waiting for them to listen."

The S stands for Shirley. I am not in on the joke about using a woman's name though it has something to do with Skyhooks. I am happy to use a friendly nickname if that is what is wanted, but I can't bring myself to using a gender-bending name all the way through this report.

In a later email Jacko invited us to listen in on a webinar with three economic colleagues, one calling in from the UK. It was not free, probably the admission fees go to campaigning expenses.

I don't know how big is Jacko's mailing list. Most likely it is based on ALP mailing lists but I want to assume that Jacko would like to reach everyone in Moreland south ward if he could. Having said that the audience for the webinar seemed to based on the membership of the Brunswick ALP branch together with other ALP or union people who might be taking part in Jacko's council campaign. There were 20 odd in attendance.

My report on the meeting is based on memory. I would welcome a transcript or video record and it would be fine to carry it on this website.

Jacko started the meeting by addressing the listeners as if they were all branch members. I was a member of the branch at the time Jacko joined in early 2020. It is possible therefore that what he would say to branch members might differ from what he might say to rate-payers or voters at large, but I will assume not as everything was consistent with his announced interest in government intervention in the economy. He made an ambiguous statement at this point in his warm-up that he knows how much effort the branch puts into council policy work. I know how little work the branch put in. Both statements are true.

Jacko said he was as much as a candidate for the ALP as an individual candidate.

He said he had trouble getting through university and finding a professional job. His first job was as a union official. He told us more of his CV. So he is a professional economist but a modest one.

The title of the seminar was: Can We Build More Democratic Local Economies?

It was academic in style in that the speakers gave reports on specific themes. Though there was absolutely nothing technical in any of the reports Jacko should have known that branch members would not be interested in this kind of thing. He is a newcomer to the branch.

The first speaker was Dr Martin O'Neill a UK academic in political philosophy. He appears to be an entrenched academic who has written a number of books. Dr O'Neill was speaking from the perspective of chronically depressed environments in the north of England (Cleveland county, Preston). He wants to recruit immobile local businesses to intentionally cultivate local business efforts. Likewise councils should shape their procurement expenditures to benefit the locals. That pretty much sums up all he said.

The second speaker was Dr Lisa Fowkes. You can read her bio in Jacko's promotion for the event which I am reproducing without permission. Lisa is from the welfare sector. Lisa was kind enough to provide me with a summary of the themes she spoke about, as follows.

"Theme was how local government can influence local employment:

  • "Attitude to internal challenges like aging workforce
  • "Use of procurement to support social enterprise
  • "Using and fostering networks to bring employers, people needing jobs together"

You can see that is in sympathy to the first speaker's views.

The third speaker was Osmond Chiu from Per Capita and the CPSU, who seems to be a colleague of Jacko's. He was telling us that there has been some kind of retreat from out-sourcing by public institutions going on. The connection with the previous two speaker's themes would be that out-sourcing by the council is not desirable compared to spending the money on locally employed people.

Questions from the audience were taken. There were no questions from the branch members (which included former mayors). There was a question from a union official in the context of Jobkeeper type payments about how to argue for the council to continue to pay people who were no longer working for the council (but would be if not for Covid-19). The answer from Dr O'Neill was to ask ratepayers to take a wide view of their responsibilities and interests.