Employment and Unemployment
In 2007/08 Australia had a workforce of 11,189,500; while having a population of 21 million. The participation rate of the working age was 65.3%. In contrast to this Indonesia had a ten times larger labour force than Australia with 109,200,200 workers, the participation rate was also slightly higher at 68%. In Australia there nearly was a balance between male and female workers; males represented 55.2% while females represented 44.8%. Meanwhile in Indonesia 62.1% of their workforce were men and only 37.9% were females. The reasons for this is Indonesia being the largest Islamic country meant that Muslim mean were hesitant having their women working, but they also needed some women that could do jobs more suited to them such as working in the manufacturing sector e.g. weaving and sewing etc.
85.4% of Australia’s workforce is involved in services, 9.9% in manufacturing and 4.7% primary industry. In Indonesia however, 42% of their workforce is in agriculture, 40.5 in services and 17.5% in manufacturing, this reflects their lower level of development in Indonesia compared to Australia. The reason for this is difference because Indonesia has a more suitable environment to support agriculture; Australia has a higher literacy rate which means that more of the workforce can go to better jobs.
Seventeen years of sustainable economic growth and general restructuring of the economy has resulted in substantial employment growth in both full time and part time jobs. This also had a direct effect on unemployment rates which went from 11.25% in 1992 to 2.3% in 2007. In Indonesia due to the Asian Currency Crisis the unemployment rate rose to 20% but since has fallen to 10.3% because a recovery in economic growth. They were also helped by the World Bank and the IMF, who imposed reforms on the Indonesian government in return for loans to overcome the crisis.
The government tried to create more employment opportunities by introducing transmigration. This involved moving 2.5million Javanese to less populated islands such as Irian Java and East Timor. This absorbed much of the growth in the workforce, thereby helping to keep unemployment lower in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the 1980s, Indonesia also adopted a Birth Control policy to try to reduce the population growth rate (reduced from 2% in 1980s to 1.4% by 2006). Even though there was some economic improvement in Indonesia, the World Bank classifies 52.4% of the population under the international poverty line of US$2/day between 1995 and 2005.
Quality of Life
The quality of life refers to both material and non-material indicators of the standard of living of a country’s population. The HDI is calculated by the World Bank, it measures the life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and GDP per capita. In 2005 the World Bank calculated Australia’s HDI to be 0.962 (3rd in the world) while Indonesia’s was 0.728 (107th in the world). Indicators for the quality of life include access to services such as health and education, access to food, water and a clean environment, strong law enforcement and minimal corruption and the government allowing democratic rights and freedom to the people.
Environmental Quality
Australia has a higher level of environmental quality whereas Indonesia's environment is deteriorating rapidly in an effort for fast industrialisation. The major environmental problem in Indonesia is deforestation due to pressure for faster growth, higher export income and expansion of the paper and lumber industries. The policy of transmigration has resulted in land degradation because of the people moving from Java Island to Irian Jaya and East Timor. Smog in Indonesia has effected neighboring countries such as Singapore and Malaysia as well.
Australia is a highly urbanised country with 88.25 of its population living in its major capital and regional cities, but despite all this it still has high environmental standards. One of the reasons for this is the governments’ landuse zoning, which separates commercial and industrial areas from residential and agricultural areas and Clean Air and Water Acts are enforced in various states. Although all these strict measures are in place, there are still many environmental problems in Australia. Air pollution from factories, carbon monoxide from vehicles air pollution is most in the major cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. Irrigation, erosion, salinity and overgrazing has causes land degradation in rural areas, especially around the Murray-Darling Basin. Australia has large coal fired electricity industry has further contributed to the greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the burning of fossil fuels.
The Indonesian government collects less tax than the Australian government because of the low income per capita, collecting on 12.3% of GDP in taxes, compared to Australian government 23.7% of GDP. Comparatively the Indonesian Government spends less on health, education and social welfare than the Australian Government. Nonetheless, Indonesia was successful in raising its adult literacy rate to 90.4% and conducting universal immunisation programmes amongst infants to prevent various diseases. The Australian government provides a higher percentage of their total government expenditure on the social welfare system, with 35% of total government expenditure. The distribution of income in Australia and Indonesia is roughly similar, 28.5% of the total income in 2002 was brought in by Indonesia’s richest 10% income earners, compared to 25.4% for Australia’s top 10% of income earners. There is much more corruption among the military elite and government bureaucracy in Indonesia compared to Australia is one cause of extreme poverty and inequality in Indonesia.
