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Ashley Robinson: What should we believe in news headlines?

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I am slightly confused most of the time, but recently even more so.

I have some elderly neighbours who are simply wonderful people, but have lost some of their mobility so every morning at about 5am when I walk past their driveway, I pick up their paper and leave it on a little table on their porch so they don’t have to go looking for it.

I usually read whatever is on the front page before I put it down, so here is the confusing part – headlines.

One day it was a tourism boom with the borders being sprung open, then the next day the unemployment rate is starting to rocket heading for record highs, then the next day a spending spree before Christmas has turned our economy around with record sales.

I hope you are now confused as well. It’s a bit like Federal Parliament, where the Opposition has bleated on about how the government should extend JobSeeker but on the other hand, whined about the deficit and budget blowout. In my view, you can’t have it both ways.

Alan Joyce has been in the firing line (the overpaid Qantas boss) about outsourcing ground staff and making a small army of employees redundant.

Is it possible our union movement had something to do with that decision and possibly Holden closing down as well?

We are a country representing the definition of oxymoron. We want everything possible but appear not to want to work for it, but when someone else does it, we blow up.

Unless of course you are a fruit picker, then we are happy to let someone else do it while we cop JobSeeker?

I am also confused when I look on Seek, seeing pages and pages of employers looking for staff and can’t find them, but on the other hand retailers, car dealers, motorcycle dealers, jet ski sales are all through the roof.

Unemployment figures continue to rise, but no one can find staff.

It is the weirdest set of circumstances and I wish I had the answers because it seems no one is ever happy, not in this country anyway.

Imagine if we lived in Bali where there are no tourists but no welfare – then we would have something to whine about.

If I could solve even part of it I would happily dance with joy, but hey I am not allowed to do that either.

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