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May 2, 2007
It's been building so quickly hasn't it---the negative reaction to the Rudd/Gillard IR policy by the big end of town. The corporate backlash to Labor's new industrial relations policy was to be expected, as was the overheated rhetoric about unions leaders being akin to crime bosses from the Liberal Party's corporate mouth pieces.
Sean Leahy
John Howard's Workchoices legislation is unfair as it basically tilt too far in allowing business to abuse worker's rights (eg., reducing penalty rates, overtime, redundancy pay and holiday pay) so Rudd and Gillard have corrected that excess. But the situation for federal Labor starts to get serious when Alan Carpenter, the WA premier, joins the corporate Greek chorus in criticizing a core ALP policy in an election. Just politics?
Well, Rudd and Gillard have found themselves placed in the position of needing to limit the fallout by making some sort of adjustment.
'Rudd threatens to strangle the booming resources industry' is the message now circulating throughout the media from the Greek chorus. Since this is the wealth creating sector of the economy, Federal Labor needs to deal with the criticisms in order to avoid having them converted into evidence of the ALP's inability to manage the economy. Howard is waiting to pounce after rushing out a a $1.4 billion business support package.
There is room for Rudd and Gillard to move in their 'work in progress'. Firstly, federal Labor's promise to abolish AWA's makes no distinction between AWA's at the top end of the market and AWA's at the bottom end of the market. It is the latter that the ALP should be concerned about ---as these are being used as an instrument to cut wages and working conditions of working families. But that is not the case at the top end of the market. So why not design a "fairer" system of individual employment contracts, rather than abolish AWAs altogether?
Secondly, the proposed one stop shop--Fair Work Australia as a regulatory and advisory body-- wears too many hats. It is policeman, prosecutor and judge. Isn't a seperate judicial authority needed? It is becoming clearer that Fair Work Australia exercising judicial functions could well fall foul of the High Court's strict requirements for judicial independence, and for judges to have judicial tenure as is required by chapter three of the constitution?
Thirdly, it would appear that business groups are particularly critical of the new policy for allowing unions to regain control by automatically opening collective bargaining arrangements if a majority of workers in a workplace want a collective agreement. Have Rudd and Gillard swung too far the other way in sacrificing flexibility for fairness? I guess it's the detail here that is crucial, but having things buried in the detail rather than upfront and open makes people suspicious.
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Amazing!
Someone has finally come up with an objective analysis of what's gone before (nothing to do with the fact that your position as identical to mine although exponentially more nuanced in detail and coherence).
A pity you are not writing politics for some of the newspapers or on teev, rather than some of the spastics plying their black arts at these places just now.
It is also a bitter, bad and sad day when a scab like Carpenter, following the example of Lennon in 2004 can again jeopardise the chances of millions of people seeking a bit of rest from the tiresome, intrusive authoritarianism of a neo facist state. Though "disguised"( disguise a gross, unsightly obscenity?) under the fig leafs of "efficiency", "growth" and "reform"; the three ugly sisters of neoliberalism, this Gitmo-isation of wider society continues apace. As for "efficiency" sacrificed for "fairness", spare me such guff!
As for for Carpenter, the Judas: if I could lay hands on him I'd wring his treacherous neck!