The grand compact we ought to have
Updated
Paul Howes's idea of a grand compact has merit, but it should focus on things that really require action and not IR changes, writes Josh Bornstein.
The decision by Toyota to close its Australian operations will undoubtedly catalyse the odd industrial relations Ayatollah to declare another jihad on the Fair Work Act.
The groundwork had already been laid by Paul Howes in his recent National Press Club speech when he argued the IR system was letting us down.
But Howes got it completely wrong. The IR system is actually working well, particularly if you are prepared to tune out of the endless hyperbole and shameless rent-seeking.
That said, Howes’ speech triggered a raw nerve by calling for a grand compact. On this, I think Howes could be onto something.
His speech harked back to an earlier era, when consensus among participants in the body politic was easier to find. Or was it?
With each year that passes, the 1983 Prices and Incomes Accord has become both increasingly venerated and misunderstood. Let's start with what the accord was not - a broad political consensus.
There were only two parties to the accord: the federal ALP and the trade union movement.
It was strongly opposed by employers, employer associations and the LNP. In 1983, senior LNP politician Jim Carlton described the accord as: "The disgraceful deal cooked up between the ALP and the Australian Council of Trade Unions before the election. This so-called accord - this deal - was and is a recipe for the continuing exclusion of 10 per cent or more of the workforce from the opportunity to earn gainful reward for employment."
Secondly, as ACTU economist Matt Cowgill has repeatedly pointed out, the accord was conceived in the midst of a raft of alarming economic danger signs. He writes that in 1983, inflation exceeded 10 per cent and the unemployment rate broke into double figures for the first time since the Great Depression. One year earlier, the unemployment rate had been 5.4 per cent. It almost doubled in the space of 12 months.
Wage increases were outstripping productivity growth at a rate of knots. In fact, the wages of full-time employees had increased by a lazy 14.6 per cent for the 1982 calendar year, fuelled by end-to-end industrial disputes and strikes.
The circumstances that gave birth to the accord provide a sharp contrast with our recent economic performance.
For example, the rate of wage increase for employees in the last year was 2.7 per cent - the lowest rate of wage increase for more than a decade. That hasn't stopped Employment Minister Eric Abetz warning of an impending "wages explosion".
According to my (admittedly rough) estimates, warnings of wages breakouts now outnumber actual wages breakouts by 35-1.
To further illustrate my point, consider this: After two decades of consecutive economic growth, the share of that growth enjoyed by employee wages is at a record low; meaning the share enjoyed by capital is at a record high. This sits oddly with what appears to be the most pressing issue for employer associations at the moment. Which apparently is reducing our "unsustainably high" labour costs, including minimum wages and penalty rates.
If anything, the accord era is a jarring reminder of the transformation of our political culture over the last three decades. In recent years, a false crisis epidemic has dominated the political landscape as we have apparently lurched between "emergency low interest rates", a cost of living crisis, debilitating sovereign risk, a carbon tax catastrophe, class warfare, a budget emergency and a productivity crisis. Which begs the question: If any of those crises are, in fact, real, how did we survive 1982 without combusting?
Even if an outbreak of constructive cooperation about industrial relations gripped us tomorrow, what would the key tenets of a grand compact look like? Would the compact work towards increasing the rate of growth of wages beyond 2.7 per cent? Hardly. With labour productivity at the highest rate in more than a decade, the real productivity challenge is not labour productivity but a lag in the efficient use of capital. Would business seek union assistance on how best to allocate capital? Perhaps not.
Industrial disputes continue to trend at very low levels. Would increasing income inequality be on the table? Job security?
The reality is that the differences of unions and employer bodies are now more ideological than practical. Should unions have a workplace presence in a modern economy? Should we permit a system of collective bargaining or allow employers to impose standard form contracts to set wages and conditions? Should there be an industrial tribunal?
Notwithstanding my disagreement with Howes about the state of the industrial relations system, his speech hit a nerve for a good reason. Even the most partisan of political operatives must concede that adversarial politics has been on an extended frolic in recent years.
If one side shouts "black", the other hits the "white" button. Repeatedly. And with generous dollops of rancorous abuse. Adversarial, personalised hate politics is not a strong foundation for addressing difficult political or economic issues.
A "death roll that has every chance of taking the crocodile and prey to the bottom" is how journalist Jonathan Green described the body politic. Apt.
Howes is right in advocating that political gamesmanship could take a step or two back and that we might all benefit from a more rational and civilized discourse.
A grand compact, involving both sides of politics, business and unions is a good idea. It should be directed first and foremost at mitigating the greatest risk to our wellbeing, both economic and otherwise: the reality of anthropomorphic climate change. That issue has the potential to make a structural budget deficit look like a stroll in the scorched earth (formerly known as a park). There is no more important issue to confront, consider and address.
Calm, wise heads can only improve on our current policy response to climate change, a response that has been politely described as "business as usual".
Managing the difficult and multifaceted implications of an ageing population is another substantial issue that merits a considered, bipartisan approach.
And while we have you all around the table, would you mind sorting out an asylum seeker policy that does not compel breaches of human rights, domestic and international law? I'd be indebted. So would you.
Josh Bornstein is an employment lawyer and partner at Maurice Blackburn and a director of Per Capita. View his full profile here.
Topics: industrial-relations, business-economics-and-finance, unions, government-and-politics
First posted
Comments (178)
Comments for this story are closed, but you can still have your say.
EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 8:24:44am
A call for an end to partisan bickering, followed by a demand for action that favours one side of two very partisan issues: global warming and asylum seekers.
Sorry, not buying it. Bipartisanship doesn't mean "everyone should agree with my position".
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John:
12 Feb 2014 8:52:57am
Sooner we short circuit the Unions the better. The young ones don't want to be part of Unions anyway. Unions will die a slow death I reckon it has outlived it's purpose.
Both sides of the Politics however need to partnership the business sector. I doubt Labor will with close connections to Unions.
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Linda:
12 Feb 2014 9:16:59am
John, I think you'll find "the young ones" will wake up and want "be part of" a union when they find their penalty rates, conditions, OH&S protections etc attacked by greedy bosses who couldn't give a toss about our social wellbeing (profits are now at all time high % of GDP).
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Mark O:
12 Feb 2014 10:16:27am
Linda, just who are these greedy bosses?
Do you think the trade Union bosses could successfully run these corporations. Anyway, the greedy union bosses are the exemplars of greed by ripping off their members and driving their members employers to the wall.
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Colmery:
12 Feb 2014 11:07:45am
Greedy bosses and exploited workers, indeed all humanity shares behavioural influences that are buried deep in our psyche. The contest for power will always dominate discourse over governance unless we put mechanisms in place in the system that act against this.
Regardless of whether the issue is climate, industrial relations or taxation, Australian politicians will make smarter decisions if we the people focus on making our system more about rationality and less about our inclination to compete for power.
We now know a great deal more about how the human psyche responds to political systems. We can address the problems created by the Politico-Media complex, if we choose to.
Nothing matters as much as our system but that fact gets lost when everyone in the game is exploiting its flaws rather than seeking to make it fairer, better, wiser.
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WastaTime:
12 Feb 2014 11:50:50am
Mark O.
When are the greedy bosses going to forgo their million dollar bonuses and obscene perks they get, while their slaves work for a pittance in a country where the gap between rich and poor (and the impacts) is hidden by both sides of politics?
ALP has become LNP in a blue singlet.
Union bosses are tossers as well.Craig Thomson is no Robinson Crusoe.
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Applaudanum:
12 Feb 2014 11:53:49am
"Do you think the trade Union bosses could successfully run these corporations"
Who runs the union/industry superannuation schemes that consistently outperform the private schemes year after year after year?
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nick:
12 Feb 2014 12:27:13pm
It is certainly not Union Bosses...
I think you will find that the investment decuions are made by professional people who get paid for their specialised services.
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Applaudanum:
12 Feb 2014 1:04:56pm
Then do tell us, nick, how the union/industry schemes manage to outperform the private schemes so consistently when they all have the same access to the exact same class of professionals and their specialised services?
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jennbrad:
12 Feb 2014 2:31:19pm
Why do you say that? Boards of these bodies make decisions for investment and manage the overall strategy. And don't assume "union bosses" are thick and couldn't run a queue to the loo - many of them are well educated, experienced and have managed (well) large organisations with big budgets. Of course there are some crooks and drongoes - it's human nature after all, but the same can be said for business, politics, the professions etc.
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James:
12 Feb 2014 4:03:33pm
Name a few who managed business sector please..and what businesses thank you
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 1:19:13pm
Who runs them? That would be the fund managers.
Who gets a highly - paid sinecure on the board, despite having no discernible experience, talent or inclination for funds management?
That would the parasitic trade union leader.
Unions. Stealing members money since 1945.
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Applaudanum:
12 Feb 2014 4:07:41pm
So, why don't the private Fund Managers get the same results?
Are you also saying that the private schemes don't have expensive board members with no discernible experience, talent or inclination for funds management? If they don't have such expensive people on their boards, surely that would indicate a saving for those in that scheme and thus an improved performance result. If they do have such expensive people that do have the experience, talent and inclination, why are their schemes still being outperformed?
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 9:39:55pm
Some do. Some don't.
The industry funds are low-fee funds. That helps. The private schemes usually charge higher fees, but not always matched with higher performance. As it happens, I am a cynic about the compulsory super industry, as successive governments have allowed members to be robbed by the compulsory use of financial "planners" of dubious merit. Industry funds do well, by and large.
My point about stuffing the boards with useless unionists still stands, of course. There is no reason for these people to get the sinecures except for the obvious one of taking the public's money and diverting it to the union movement.
The Royal Commission will pick the scab off the rorts, I hope. The LNP will then legislate to remove the legal privileges of unions to bring them in line with corporations.
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James:
12 Feb 2014 4:01:44pm
Hmmm I didn't know superannuation is run by Unions ? OMG
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Dazonthecoast:
12 Feb 2014 6:36:35pm
Mark O
Let me have a stab at the question.
Maybe the heads of the big 4 banks. Obscene profits so obviously successful businesses. The heads earn several orders of magnitude more than "highly paid" workers.
Maybe the management in medium to large enterprises who receive exceptionally generous remuneration plus extra benefits to create and enact strategies reminiscent of a rudderless ship and then cull their workforce to enhance profits. I speak from personal experience on this one, being one of the culled.
Maybe those companies owners that hire young people on a commission only basis then do everything they can to maximise staff turnover so as to avoid paying these commissions.
Open your eyes and see there are opportunists and fraudsters on both sides of the political and employment spectrum.
Don't be one of those who say "thinking, yes I tried that once, didn't like it"
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IanM:
12 Feb 2014 10:38:22am
Linda, what will happen to the Toyota and Holden worker's "penalty rates, conditions, OH&S protections etc"? Not a lot of them when you're unemployed, is there? The unions went to court to prevent Toyota even talking to their workers about cost-saving measures. Now those workers will have nothing. What a win for "our social wellbeing"!
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 12:01:49pm
IanM, it's an old agage. If you work for nothing, you'll certainly have a job. However, it's a lose-lose situation because the less money you earn the less money you spend. And if nobody is spending any money, nobody is going to profit from selling stuff.
You see, it's not an either or, it's more a balance that needs to be struck between two competing interests.
As pointed out by Josh in the article above, income as a percentage of national income is at record lows compared to profits. And that fact seems to suggest the balance is shifting firmly away from wage-earners.
That's obviously good for those who don't have to actually work for a living, but not so good for those who have no choice but to work for a living.
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IanM:
12 Feb 2014 12:53:10pm
Mark, if Toyota had had its way, they would have been able to talk to their workforce who would then have been able to make up their own minds. Instead the union went to court to prevent this happening. The union's members will now be unemployed and the union is demanding public money to compensate for a situation they helped create.
As for the ratio of wages income to profits, this is largely due to the mining boom where a small highly paid workforce move a lot of material using heavy machinery. If that activity tails off, we will see the ratio move back in favour of wages.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 1:36:57pm
No IanM, wages as a share of national income hav been falling compared to profits for longer than the mining boom. The share of the pie is also being re-balanced to favour capital over wage-earners throughout the world, with the US and UK being the stand-out performers.
As for workers attempting to negotiate with the company and making up their own minds, why do you think employers form collectives and companies join lobby groups to represent their interests?
Perhaps a clue can be found here in the wording of the following advertisement placed by the Howard government in the media on the 5th June 2007.
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING - MAKING IT EASIER TO DO BUSINESS,
Collective bargaining enables businesses of all sizes to work together co-operatively. Small businesses can benefit by joining together to negotiate with a larger business. Larger businesses can find it more efficient to negotiate directly with a group of small businesses rather than each small business individually.'
If collective bargaining is so fantastic and beneficial for individual businesses, why wouldn't it be fantastic and beneficial for individual workers? The same principles would apply, no?
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IanM:
12 Feb 2014 4:48:37pm
"why do you think employers form collectives and companies join lobby groups to represent their interests?" Mark, apparently in this case to lose their jobs.
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seanone:
12 Feb 2014 1:40:46pm
Mark James glad to see someone with a bit of commonsense amongst the Noalition bloggers, who are so wrapped in a failed ideology and there love of the 50's kill of all Unions as they obstructed our right to rip off everyone we can. It is this attitude espoused so frequently by Abbott, Hockey and Co that is destroying this Nation and causing rising inequality. The writer is politely trying to point that out but a number of these bloggers focused as usual on some victim blaming have missed the point totally.
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mortan:
12 Feb 2014 2:25:02pm
Mark: The old adage is a fair days pay for a fair days work. I have worked in the public and the private sectors. And I can categorically state there are many career people in the public sector who would not know what a fair days work actually encompasses they just don't know.
In the private sector no work no Job and that should apply everywhere.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 3:39:55pm
Sorry mortan, but one personal anecdote shouldn't determine industrial relations policy or define an entire workforce.
Perhaps there is somebody in your past (or present) who considers you to have not done a "fair days work". Does that make you and all private sector workers lazy bludgers?
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 9:50:06pm
But both you and Josh are missing a large point (several, as it happens, but limited space here).
Real wages in Australia have risen for the last two decades. So Joe and Jane Worker are better off, on average. Wage -earners are NOT earning less. Capital has captured a larger proportion of the increased, additional income, sure, and it's a debate worth having, but we're still all better off than we were. A bit more inequality, but still individually still better off.
As for the publicly subsidised, over-paid and under-worked Unionised Car Workers of Australia? I don't give a flying foxbat, and frankly my dear, I also don't give a damn. They will land on their big fat redundancy packages, and then go and get another job.
Income inequality declined during the Howard years but, inexplicably, Josh forgot to mention this.
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jennbrad:
12 Feb 2014 2:32:27pm
Have noticed when looking at actual facts that these conditions are hardly over the top. Hasn't Toyota said the unions/workers are not responsible for their deciding to quit??
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saywhat:
12 Feb 2014 4:19:52pm
So Ian you suggest workers should cop whatever crumbs are dealt to them in fear of losing their jobs?
Just consider how far employers will take that if the likes of unions and Fair Work wasnt in place to provide protection.
I am not a union member but I see a need for employee protection. Giving employers free reign will never be a good idea except for employers who instinctively will always be out to make more money.
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John:
12 Feb 2014 10:39:05am
Linda they are smarter than we are more adoptable to change. The real smarter young ones know the world is on their door step.
The "greedy ones" will take their capital somewhere else where it is better appreciated.
We live changing times Linda..keeping Unions at distance is a smarter way to go.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 4:42:11pm
No John, the smarter ones are the ones who saw the writing on the wall and got a job in Tasmanian chocolate tourism, married themselves a woman of calibre, moved into marginal seats, or got themselves connected to lobbying firms who would perhaps be pleased to have their well-connected staffers involve themselves in pulling down healthy food rating websites?
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 9:24:04am
I just had a look at the Per Capita think tank of which the author is a member. Not surprisingly, it largely consiste of recycled Labor Party staff and assorted left-aing lobbyists.
Some declaration of his own partisan associations might have been appropriate before he launched into a spiel calling for an end to partisanship.
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NikMak:
12 Feb 2014 9:49:07am
He did declare his associations, it's right there at the bottom of the article.
As for "partisanship" - that isn't really something you "declare" is it? It's up to you as the reader to decide if you think he's partisan.
Did you do that before or after you read the actual article?
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Sub Pontem:
12 Feb 2014 10:25:46am
I know, right?
Imagine having to memorise the political leaning of all the major policy think-tanks in this Country. There are almost 5 of them!
Who has time for that, when there are so many open forums that require ill-informed commentary. Those ad-hom arguments don't write themselves you know.
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IanM:
12 Feb 2014 10:21:31am
John, the unions are short-circuiting themselves. A combination of pricing their industries out of business and the whole Thomson-Williamson affair makes the "grand compact" idea one of desperation rather than practical use. The unions went to court to stop Toyota even talking to their workers about cost-saving measures. They are dinosaurs and will end up the same way.
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Andie:
12 Feb 2014 1:45:18pm
There is a glimmer of hope for some seeing the writing on the wall. for exorbitant penalty rates
The AWU has negotiated away Penalty rates on Saturday and Sunday for other benefits like increase in super contribution with the Police Boys Clubs in NSW.
If they had not the clubs would have had to close. What a great headline that would be.
Pity union leaders didn't put their workers jobs before stopping the workers having their say at Toyota.
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Dove:
12 Feb 2014 8:54:40am
I'm inimpressed too. I took it to be either a showing of mettle for a future run at parliament, a deflection from scrutiny of the unions or both.
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Dean:
12 Feb 2014 9:06:39am
Ha, ha. Yes it does. Always has, always will. Your fault if you let your guard down.
The only issues where there can be genuine cooperation are those that are not covered by the media. If they are cooperating on an issue, you have never heard of it.
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the yank:
12 Feb 2014 9:13:00am
That is the problem people not buying into working together to solve common problems.
If you are married what is the best way to approach that relationship?
As far as I am concerned the country, like in a marriage, either works together or fails separately.
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Alan:
12 Feb 2014 9:54:26am
Does that mean that I can divorce the rest of the country and pay my own way without having to worry abt the stupidty of others and their bias!
Responsibility suggests that unless I fall into one of the sacred categories that is never going to happen and neither it should.
All Australians visitors, residents and colonists should be paying their way and contributing without the antagonistic attitudes about who to blame and who is right.
I am not suggesting a communal life but at least one where we find the points of necessity and agreement and not look for the points of 'fight'.
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Billy Bob Hall:
12 Feb 2014 2:12:41pm
I agree Alan, Let the unions fend for themselves for once, out there in the real world.
I'm happy to 'divorce' them as well.
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 9:58:22am
I'd love to work together to solve common problems.
But to do that requires some sort of negotiation toward a commonly agreed approach.
Simply saying "let's agree to end our differences and do it my way" is not good enough. Portraying that as a "grand compact" doesn't inspire trust in one's motives.
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Anon E Mouse:
12 Feb 2014 12:45:03pm
I cannot take Howse seriously. He is a master manipulator that will always have his own benefit at heart.
Howse role in the Lib/lite (Labor right wing) installing of Gillard failed miserably. It was a waste of any talent Gillard had and because of the nasty way it was done Gillard always struggled for legitimacy.
Howse conducted a nasty and vindictive campaign in his lust for power. Then he fronts up on TV, all dressed up like a spivvy polly, and wants to talk civil consultation and respectful dialogue.
Howse is as believable as Abbott - both are liars and master manipulators.
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Bush Dweller:
12 Feb 2014 1:42:58pm
Anon E Mouse :
Re Howse n Gillard in the Rudd sacking.
Don`t forget : Shorten, Marles, Randall & Feeney. Also Gillard was up to her neck in the assassination. I wonder who`s idea it was. Your memory must either be short or selective.
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Anon E Mouse:
12 Feb 2014 3:22:54pm
I remember very well, and don't forget Arbib, Bitar, Garret etc etc.
Having met Gillard in 2002, I could never be a fan of such a selfserving right winged pollie. It can be amazing how much info comes out when someone is cranky at you for asking ideological questions.
Wikileaks let us know that Shorten was skiting to the Yanks about shafting Rudd and installing Gillard - 6 months before it happened.
I have a very good memory thank you Bush Dweller.
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Farast:
12 Feb 2014 9:14:30am
Wait so accepting the opinions of the vast majority of scientists knowledgeable about the issue and believing that we should obey the law are partisan opinion now?
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 10:03:41am
That's an example of the attitude I'm talking about.
Common cause is not possible when one side refuses to budge.
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Rocky:
12 Feb 2014 10:20:50am
The scientific view, by definition, is always willing to budge.
That is how science works.
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A happy little debunker:
12 Feb 2014 11:04:59am
This 'science' is typified by the latest - acknowledgement by Matthew England that the warming is in Hiatus.
Rather than just an 'ocean ate my warming', he has come up with 'a washing machine (with cold power) solution'.
Of course a quick review of Q&A in July 2012 sees him asert that there was no Hiatus and insist that all IPCC projections since 1990 have been borne out.
This is not science - it is dogma!
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MT_Syd:
12 Feb 2014 1:11:04pm
not sure what you are going on about 'debunker'
the recent news about how intensified trade winds cause more mixing in the pacific between warm and cool layers is basically just more detail to the 'story' that oceans have absorbed most of the heat over the last decade (which is and had been been measured)
so, yes, the models are improving in response to new data and new research
what the new data and new research does not show is that climate change is not happening, or is the result of some 'natural' cycle
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A happy little debunker:
12 Feb 2014 2:47:02pm
Riddle me this MT-Syd?
2006 ABC Science reports a 3.5% fall in trade wind intensity
2012 ABC Science (via Matthew England) tells us they are getting more intense.
In 2012 there is no hiatus, but in 2013 there is?
You tell me that the models are improving, yet the models do not match empirical evidence (or come close), meanwhile Matthew England tells us the models have all been correct since 1990
Yet none of the models deal with the largest albedo aspect of the catastropharian's settled science - Clouds.
Please stop guessing!
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A happy little debunker:
12 Feb 2014 4:42:51pm
Just a bit more MT_Sydney,
By measuring deep ocean warming, that you claim is and has been done, are you referring to the Argo buoy system?
As it does not measure deep ocean warming, only mid-level (up to 2000 metres) and data sets only exist for a decade.
In fact this new research suggests natural variability overwhelms any AGW experienced, which is to say all the models are wrong - in vastly overestimating climate sensitivity.
With vastly overestimated climate sensitivity, comes acknowledgement that CO2 is not the main driver of Global Warming and as a result attempts to mitigate CO2 levels are both pointless and futile.
QED!
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RosieA:
12 Feb 2014 2:12:34pm
Now, I wonder whom it would be, who is refusing to budge?
Fifty or so years ago, we had comparatively little understanding of climate and its drivers. Those who had any concept that humans could potentially affect the system were very few in number. As research progressed and understanding developed, so did the realization that through increasing the atmospheric concentration of GHG's, humans could influence and indeed were influencing, our climate as a result of the warming from the increased entrapped of heat. The debate over these processes has taken place in the scientific journals and now the climate scientists are telling us that a very high proportion of them are convinced that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.
So, the scientists have budged.......they have changed their minds as to how the climate system works and the effect of human additions to atmospheric CO2 levels. Not so though, the community at large. Many seem to be resolutely locked into the thinking of 50-100 years ago and the view that the climate is independent of human activity. They are so locked in, in fact, that they accuse the scientists of conspiracy theories and left-wing plots.......essentially of making it all up. Now you are complaining that the scientists won't budge in their thinking.......presumably you mean you want them to ignore decades of research, evidence and understanding and return to some religious belief.
I suggest that before you accuse the scientists and those who accept their understanding, of not budging, you reflect a little on your own position. I can only presume that the thought that the scientists might actually be right, is too much for you to bear. The point is though, if we act now we can mitigate the worst effects; if we don't, future reality will be much worse than the pain of any change now. If you had a broken A/C you would fix it......why are you so averse to fixing the problems we are causing the planet?
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Bush Dweller:
12 Feb 2014 10:40:12am
Farast :
Hope you are not advocating that we act on scientists advice based on models, and thinking, not necessarily fact. Especially when the UNSW has recently released research indicating that global warming/global cooling/climate change is stalling. About as accurate as an economic forecast.
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Gr8Ape:
12 Feb 2014 9:27:19am
I fail to see how the laws of physics and the application and enforcement of the laws of man can be described as partisan issues.
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 10:40:35am
You ar entitled to your opinion.
However, neither the majority of the Australian public, nor its elected government, share that opinion.
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Hudson Godfrey:
12 Feb 2014 9:37:11am
Sure but nor does bipartisanship work when we look at difficult issues through the prism of extremes. You say "global warming and asylum seekers" I say climate change and refugees. Neither of these goes away or is solved when we change the language and we're currently taking the middle position on neither.
The fact that both are a red herring as to the real issue should bother us though. it's one of the facts of life in politics that governments need to be able to multitask, or at least walk and chew gum even if some Nationals do have to stop to swallow or draw breath.
Howes in talking about IR at a time of industrial collapse is in danger of believing his own rhetoric just as much as the government do. It's the field of dreams "build it and they will come" mentality decoupled from building it.
Perhaps I can make it simpler for you all.
We don't need the worlds best practice IR policy for jobs we no longer have!
We need to save our manufacturing industries and get Australians back to work.
Otherwise we might as well bang up new signs at the Airport, "Welcome to Australia the Havana of the South"
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Bush Dweller:
12 Feb 2014 10:45:33am
HG :
"You say global warming and asylum seekers, I say climate change and refugees."
I say global cooling and economic migrants.
No wonder agreement on anything is difficult.
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Gary:
12 Feb 2014 3:41:18pm
For my part I accept the views of the 97% of the scientists over less than 3% of amateurs many paid as PR by coal companies or paid by companies (politicians)
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Peter the Lawyer:
12 Feb 2014 11:28:30am
But who is we?
Does it include you or me, or the other commenters here?
You seem to think that there is some magic formula that can somehow fix all the problems that you think exist in the Australian economy and that the Government can somehow apply this formula, if it wasn't subject to the evil forces of 'big business' or the Murdoch press.
The problem is that government interference in the day to day running of the economy is far more disastrous than leaving it alone. From Federation until the 1970s Australian governments eschewed free trade and helped lazy Australian companies build up businesses behind tarrif walls. This of course drove up prices. This would have have been all well and good had business and the unions realised that the protection was in place to allow them time to set up and be ready to compete against foreign firms. Of course tarrifs don't do that, they instead set up up a false confidence. It is the same with subsideis for businesses that have failed under normal market condiditons.
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Hudson Godfrey:
12 Feb 2014 12:13:27pm
We is society in general, the public interest, the greater good, or if you want to reduce it to the electorate who in some sense adjudicate that then by all means here we are.
Nor is there a magic formula, people who work for a living don't magically spirit themselves out of bed in the morning and spread fairy dust for a living. They get up, often at some inconvenient hour and they work a shift behind a machine or a desk doing something that maybe they occasionally love and usually that contains an element of honest drudgery. It isn't a matter of changing economic realities but of recognising them for what they are. For every primary job loss they're be several tertiary losses in ancillary and service industries, none of which are subsidised all of whom pay income taxes. When the size of the assistance requested was less than the GST those industries collected the basic calculus in play here is a net loss to the government, of capacity we need to remain on par with other developed nations and eventually of justification for tariffs which also top up the public purse.....
And you think this is a good thing why?
Or can we just cut to the chase and acknowledge what you're really doing is posting here as a partisan coalition supporter and apologist for whatever it is that someone else thinks, because no thinking person could find logic in the actions of this government to justify anything less than the very objections I have made here.
And your reading of History is lousy too. Imagine comparing market conditions at federation to those of a global economy!
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Peter the Lawyer:
12 Feb 2014 2:01:03pm
Thanks for your reply Hudson.
The problem I have is that there are 23 million perspectives about what 'we' should do.
Most of us can do little, except get on with the drudgery of living and doing our best for our families and our local community. Businesses can do little more.
Even the government is really limited in what it can do. If it interferes in the wrong way there can be dangerous consequences.
I still think that all the justifcations for subsidies are not corect. The problems are three. Firstly, there is precedent. If you give a subsidy to one fiailing company you will soon have to give it to lots of others. When the government's finaces are in such a parlous state, widespread subsidies are out of the question. Secondly, by giving subsidies to failing businesses you are encouraging failure and further rent-seeking instead of innovation and commercially viable business. Lastly, you have to stop thinking that somehow people have to have the same job for as long as they want it and can't be forced by circumstance to to do something else. The Government can't and shouldn't look after all our ills.
A government big enough to give you all you want is also big enough to take all you have.
In relation to the GST, are you thinking of just the GST on sales or the actual amount paid by Toyota to the Government when inpout tax credits are taken into account? Also, even if GST paid is more than the subsidy, the government is still losing revenue propping up an unviable business. Eventually the business will go into losses and pay no tax or GST. The subsidy will not stop this, but prolong the agony.
The workers at Toyota have 3 years, so they will be OK.
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the egg:
12 Feb 2014 12:35:16pm
Amazingly and begrudgingly I agree for once with Peter the Lawyer.
From my early Australian experiences I found that tariffs did make companies lazy and complacement and very probably workers/unions as well. They were very happy with the crumbs that fell off the table to plagiarise one very prominent business leader as he opined back then.
Trouble is that when the sunami comes it's far , far too late to react apart from run for the hills and I remain very negative about the future. I certainly do not place any faith whatsoever in the majority of the bunch of idiots, from both sides currently occupying Parliament House in Canberra.
A first viewing of Question Time yesterday was sufficient for me !!!!
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Hudson Godfrey:
12 Feb 2014 4:51:40pm
While not making any direct arguments about tariffs, other than to say they'll have to be dropped as an unintended consequence of the loss of the auto industry here, I don't think you can compare the argument you'd make on principles that apply to advanced industrial economies elsewhere that you would for Australia.
We know we're currently burdened by a high dollar and that we lack economies of scale that might better enable us to compete. But we also know that we'll simply never sustain ourselves as an advanced economy if we fail to maintain our own manufacturing industries. We desperately need the kind of employment that manufacturing provides and the capacity to do for ourselves rather than have others do to us. So if we're serious about confronting the challenge of being on the brink of losing all that then we have to make a political decision to do something about it. Whether it is the coarse application of tariffs or the more finely tuned supply of assistance packages the real question is who pays and how.
Currently that question has been answered by auto workers at Holden who were more willing to compromise than even their union supported them in. It has been answered by the management if the figures they cite about the dollar hurting their business are correct. Outside of that I'd suggest either the markets or the government would be welcome to come to the party, but since the markets have less to lose than the government do on behalf of taxpayers they've quite simply made a horrible decision here.
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leafygreens:
12 Feb 2014 10:32:44am
Here we go ... when someone raises the idea of a group discussion to cut through and get action, people start bickering about the agenda.
Now we have climate change, asylum seekers and human rights being pushed up the agenda ahead of IR.
Not as well as, but instead of.. because you are really really wrong... and I am really really right.. nah nah nah
Ironically perpetrating the adversorial tripe that got us in this mess in the first place..
Josh could have just as easily said "great idea, and when we get some concensus on IR we can go on and address other important issues like.. (insert your agenda item here)."
Positive. Inclusive. Likely to garner buy in.
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Consideredview:
12 Feb 2014 7:18:51pm
Bipartisanship requires sitting down with a person and respectfully listening to another point of view.
Bipartisanship means being prepared to have a dialogue that leads to a win/win solution.
Bipartisanship is about co-operation to build something better than what we have.
It means letting go of the view that there can only be winners and losers in our world.
If these kinds of blogs are anything to go by, it seems many people only want to score points and polarise debate.
Nobody wins from vilifying asylum seekers and the huge costs of the Navy and locking people up - we can look for better ways.
Nobody wins from uncertainty about a carbon price, or being left behind in the global drive for more economical re-newable energy.
Even climate change deniers must see that coal and oil are finite, and that our economy needs to diversify in order to thrive in the long term.
Consensus is about caring for future generations, and an understanding that inclusiveness and justice are values worth keeping, or everyone ultimately loses.
A beautiful life is not created in the midst of class warfare, which is what too great disparity in wealth creates.
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APM:
12 Feb 2014 8:38:21am
The author didn't need to drift off into general Left obsessions. Most Australians are practical people who are attached to the real world and not the pseudo legal pretend world of 'breaches of human rights, domestic and international law'. It all means nothing if any third world malcontent can just lob in without permission and a stack of deception, rotten backward cultures, and colonise at our expense. No matter how you slice and dice it, the legal approach effectively results in an open border and ignores other principles such as sovereignty and democracy. There are no global citizens thank god or we would soon be reduced to level of the worst societies with low standards - hardly progressive.
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Gr8Ape:
12 Feb 2014 9:39:50am
If a government doesn't have to comply with the 'pseudo legal pretend world' of laws and the legal system then who else does? It would seem to me that a government that feels free to ignore the legal system or restricts people's access to it is simply using the system as a method of coercion. Isn't that a little bit totalitarian?
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APM:
12 Feb 2014 10:45:28am
There is no international law that can tell us who can enter the Australian community. There are no human rights. These are motherhood symbols. It is 'totalitarian' to ignore democratic principles to invent overseas Leftist phoney authority that has little legitimacy. There is no social contract to hand over sovereignty to bogus international treaties/conventions. Australians governments have a mandate to make policies and law according to the democratic will.
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Gr8Ape:
12 Feb 2014 11:29:40am
So there is no duty of care between the state and it's citizens and all international treaties, sanctions, trade agreements, security pacts, laws, diplomacy, territorial claims.... are illegitimate?
If that's so then the government has no mandate to do anything and reduces democracy to little more than a 'motherhood symbol'. In fact the only claim to legitimacy comes through the exercise of power.
Very liberating.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 12:21:21pm
So, the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, NATO, the G20 and the EU are all beacons of "Leftist phoney authority" now, eh?
And funnily enough, given the Abbott government just signed off on a 'free' trade agreement (or "bogus international treaties/conventions" if you prefer) that the voting public is not allowed to know anything about (except it probably forced our car-manufacturers out), that makes the Abbott government, by your own measure, APM, part of this "Leftist phoney authority."
If you check under your bed for Reds tonight, APM, don't be surprised to find the PM smiling back at you.
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Dove:
12 Feb 2014 10:13:00am
The author was wrote about industrial relations. Why are you on about "rotten backward cultures", which I would hazard a guess doesn't include your own?
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Andy:
12 Feb 2014 8:47:15am
Quite possibly the most sensible article ever presented on this site.
Thankyou
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greg:
12 Feb 2014 9:22:28am
Quite possibly the silliest, most tendentious article recently presented on this site. Apart from clangers like "anthropomorphic" climate change, it presents bits of facts arranged in a way designed to deceive.
Toyota's closure is used as the obligatory starting rallying cry. Average wage rises of 2.7% last year are raised as a sign of moderation. No mention, however, of the fact that Toyota's workers will get wages rises of 3.25% in April and 2% in September this year.
A company going broke giving above-average rises to workers to be dismissed - because the "IR system is actually working well".
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rabbie:
12 Feb 2014 10:41:20am
greg, Toyota is not "a company going broke".
And relatively small wage rises are not the cause of its withdrawal from manufacturing in Australia.
Try to pay some attention to facts.
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GraemeF:
12 Feb 2014 11:41:12am
More proof that right wingers are allergic to facts.
There is more and greater proof of (up to 97%) that global warming is manmade and a danger, than there is that the worship of The Invisible Hand will take us to utopia.
What is the average of 3.25% and 2%. My calculator says 2.625% per year (April is for last years cost of living increase). In the real world that is less than 2.7% but since climate change denialists live on a different planet I can understand your confusion.
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gnome:
12 Feb 2014 12:28:20pm
So GraemeF- they give back the last pay rise before they get the next one do they?
In the rest of the world a rise of 3.25 and a rise of 2% in one year adds up to about 5.25%.
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Mark:
12 Feb 2014 3:55:27pm
"In the rest of the world a rise of 3.25 and a rise of 2% in one year adds up to about 5.25%"
Not if those pay raises occur in different financial years. 3.25% for the 2013/14 financial year and 2% for the 2014/2015 financial year.
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RichoPerth:
12 Feb 2014 10:37:30am
Nope. Just more self-indulgent left-wing groupthink. Alternatively, it may have been intended as parody, in which case it is vaguely amusing.
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Tamarrah:
12 Feb 2014 8:50:21am
A Grand compact presumes that there is a government that wants to actually create one. An ideologically besotted Government with massive political debts to pay campaign supporters cannot possibly participate even if their ideological religiosity inclined them to it.
Any compact with a shadow cloaked cabinet cabal of IR mujaheddin hell bent on class jihad would simply be a "peace for our time" pantomime.
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Maynard:
12 Feb 2014 8:53:57am
So Paul Howes is a dangerous, right wing, neocon intent on destroying the IR club in his bid to get our ALP back on track? Well he did a good job on Rudd, didn't he? How do you think we got our first female PM? Mate it was caucus consensus.
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Alfie:
12 Feb 2014 11:09:41am
Paul Howes is more 'endangered' than 'dangerous'. Apart from making himself look like a total goose on a regular basis, his opinion on IR is not worth squat.
Thankfully, Abbott is about to punch his ticket.
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Bruce:
12 Feb 2014 9:00:59am
This article is important.
The world we live in derives from the long practice of selfishness, and that is a construction we have to grow out of if we are ever to thrive, sustainably, and to approach our potential.
For millennia, ruthless selfishness (applying the political arts with which sophisticates of selfishness augmented the dangers of simple brutality) resulted in kings, aristocrats, prelates, and wealth crudely extracted from ordinary people at great cost to them and to the natural world - with a useful-to-the-mighty class in the middle. The grandees competed with each other - wasting much of what they had charged from the rest of the world and reducing the tiny efforts of technical achievement to building aids to just winning their pointless competitions.
Very slowly, 'gentlemen' were added to the number of the elite, gradually altering and complicating its politics and its economics but committed to the ideals of selfishness - of having and of the pursuit of property - and of ignoring their consequences on the world and on the great unwashed.
Then, just when the voice of ordinariness piped up in the French Revolution, along came the get-rich possibilities of technological progress that just a couple of centuries of a few gentleman-scientists had facilitated finally. Egalitarianism sold out to ambitious, selfish, middle-classism and with the invention of economic pragmatism and mass manufacturing, consumerist modernism raised its head - selfishness for the ordinary man.
That has been the achievement on which we wasted a world's potential and that of more than 100 billion human lifetimes.
The truth is, it is a fool's paradise built on omaginary bases and held up by sleights of mind.
Selfishness is anti-social. Ultimately it is destructive and, roaring along consuming everything in its path (including inevitably sputtering little and large economies and political populations). it is rushing to its end - presently taking us with it.
We cannot think about, talk about and act about this progress of self-destruction in political, economic, legal or historic terms - they are creations and devices of the chronic weaknesses of mind and men that got us here. We have to think, talk and act in new terms, terms with prospects. sociable terms.
No more veils of confidentiality shielding the devices of the status quo. No more sociably unconscionable behaviours as normal.
Public imagination in new terms. Let's get on with it.
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Bush Dweller:
12 Feb 2014 11:03:42am
Bruce :
An excellent post regarding the the dicotomy between me/I and you and the corrosion of selfishness.
However good luck with fixing the future. We have greed, avarice, and sloth. We have genuine citizens who wish to see all citizens "reach their potential". Conversely we have lazy bludgers who think the world owes em a living. We have decent employers who look after their employees, we have employees who steal from the employer, we have employers who rip off their employees. We have people who wish to keep up with the "jones`s", we have jones`s who see themselves as better than the rest. We have professionals (brain surgeons, lawyers etc) who work pro bono to assist the needy, others who want "show me the money".
Only solution I see is a magic wand, do away with greed, selfishness, power, and sloth Can`t see it happening whilst self interest is the core value of life.
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Bruce:
12 Feb 2014 11:41:30am
Bush Dweller
Your's is the majority opinion. One of the young people I respect most in the world thinks we are irretrievably stuffed - and he thinks that on deep consideration.
On the other hand, I think we can achieve complete disenchantment with the status quo almost certainly. I am not so sure we will realise that we have to 'do' society in ways that political-economic-legalist-selfish history has done its utmost to stamp out. These are ways that do not need any of these constructs of the madness that got us to this brink.
I live in hope, throwing by twopennyworth in where I can and trying to live 'post-historically' every day.
I would note that I do not equate self interest with selfishness. The one is destructive, the other - I prefer self-interestedness - is, I think, a high and essential value of identity and diversity and those are fundamental factors in a spectacular, gorgeous, sociable human community.
Those who claim the authority of self-interestedness for their selfishness are a huge part of the problems we face. This is not semantices. It is right distinguished from wrong.
I hope your future amazes and surprises you.
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Peter the Lawyer:
12 Feb 2014 12:12:15pm
Self interest is the best guide to human relations. What you will find is that it is in the best interest of us all, however, to consider the interest of others. The reason for this is clear. If others are satisfied by our actions it makes things easier for us.
The problem with your prognostications is that inevitably the government will come in and try to enforce unselfishness. That always fails because it is very difficult to impose co-operation without some element of force and compulsion which makes for resentment.
What many left wing people don't understand about conservative philosophy is that the latter is in fact the philosophy of co-operation. We on the right believe in a strong society and upon moral stigma to censure those that fail to do the right thing. Mostly we believe in co-operation, hence we form companies and other organisations to achieve goals that satisfy all tose who take part. We believe in charity and giving up time to help the disadvantaged.
In other words we believe that freedom brings with it adulthood and responsibility. If you let the government impose order on you, give you things and take over all altruistic endeavours you will end up with a compliant and childish client class thjat can do nothing for itself.
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MT_Syd:
12 Feb 2014 1:14:30pm
so what you are saying (as only a lawyer could), is that it is in our best interests to be cooperative
pretty much the opposite of everything the Abbott team has done or said in government or opposition over the last few years
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Bruce:
12 Feb 2014 1:18:06pm
Peter
On a spectrum on which selfishness forms the 'dark' end and self interestedness illuminates all of the possibilities of human potential towards the other end (largely imagined or inferred rather than clearly seen by most people - much like the near-certainties of physics that inform us even while they are specifically unknown), your use of self interest seems perilously close to selfishness, and quite unnecessarily so.
"All those who take part" cannot be an exclusive condition that reduces the entitled to a very few. We all take part, and the world takes part, in the consequences so we are shareholders in the activities as well.
Self interestedness is quite unlike unselfishness too - that has always seemed a wishy washy thing to me, much like mantras that talk about happiness, love, patriotism, rights and so on - too open to manipulation. Probably why, if they do, governments seeking to manipulate would use the term.
Self interestedness involves practising to be the best you that you imagine you might be capable of. Education (as distinct from brainwashing or rote learning), experience, the universities of life, freedom and opportunity to advance the quality of your me, all help. But then there is the society in which such splendid individuals contribute their 'musicianship' and the values of their individualitiies. It can be much more wonderful than you appear satisfied with.
You talk about life contexts that are framed by the few you admit to membership of your 'self interest'. To me, that is just a statement of the staus quo coloured as you would prefer it.
The interests of others are a profound natural part of real self interestedness.
You are talking about something that falls well short of the mark.
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hph:
12 Feb 2014 3:16:02pm
Peter the lawyer says:
"If others are satisfied by our actions it makes things easier for us."
So, if I am satisfied by your actions, it will make things easier for you!!!
That'll be the day when I get "idiot" tattooed on my forehead.
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 12:30:16pm
That's an interesting analysis, Bruce.
But while your comment is long on the problem, it's short on the specific details of your proposed solution.
What, exactly, would be involved in this reimagining of society?
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Bruce:
12 Feb 2014 2:08:23pm
Thank you E Pundit. In the few hundred words allowed I ran out of space to detail the comprehensive solution.
First and foremost, that solution is up to 'everybody'.
Presently we are captives of the tendrils of the systems of selfishness, but these are things that only exist through a concert of imagination. It happens to be the imagination that was 'successful' in selfish history and that we adapted to selfish modernity. While we think that this is the way things must be and how they must work, the beast of an idea survives and its things has got us.
Step one is to disempower the idea of selfishness, as a communal value, completely. That requires more than letting our minds go blank; we need to think something in its place.
The Golden Rule? Not a bad choice. The quintessences of great faiths - not the god idea and all the trappings but the essential elements of goodness, in less than 25 words that everyone can understand - I would be surprised if the reductions of the twenty or so contenders would be very much different from each other. We could do worse - especially if we do not then get on with distinguishing cults from each other based on some which-end-of-the-egg delusions of rightness and orthodoxy.
I submit:
practise generosity, regard, respect and responsibility towards yourself and all others - persons, places and things.
Doing so heightens your realisation of your own self interestedness and from that viewpoint, much more becomes possible.
The other requirement is to live sociably. The best answer always comes out of the efforts of a group that has grown beyond selfishness and its political, legal, religious, economic, orders and theologies.
Seven billion people living like that would be something to behold.
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 7:04:00pm
Thank you, Bruce.
Nevertheless, your reply is stated in terms of broad moral principles, rather than specific goals and courses of action.
I am interested in getting a picture of what the world you envisage would look like. How, specifically, would it differ from the one we have now?
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hph:
12 Feb 2014 7:53:27pm
I am sorry to butt in on your conversation but I have a simple question to ask to you EP.
Now, you say, "I am interested in getting a picture of what the world you envisage would look like." ...and ask, "How, specifically, would it differ from the one we have now?"
After all said, written and done for the last 10,000 years of human history, is it really that difficult for you to envisage and get the picture? I don't mean any sarcasm or any funny business in asking this question. I am really puzzled, that's all.
cheers
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Bruce:
12 Feb 2014 9:31:07pm
You should understand, E Pundit, that my imagination of a grand future for mankind involves almost no prescription at all: it's up to them.
I think casting populations into moulds of prejudged and predisposed precepts and precedents, that are stiffened and monitored by better-knowers appointed by some executive authority with its own agendas is to cauterise the greatest parts of human potential.
But I think, and its my present state of imagination, that things might look a bit like this:
Communities, of perhaps 200 000 people whose living arrangements would be much less isolating than ours, would deliver their contributions to sociability, imagination, and effective service to their citizens, to their local society, and neighbours, and to the the world as a whole. No nation states. The scale of our societies would depend on our real capacities of collective sociability.
Communities of these communities would 'federate'around them and across the world. They produce much of their own requirements and contribute generously to the pool from which all communities extract their needs of what they do not produce themselves.
The quantity and range of goods and services would shrink enormously. The quality would improve markedly. The concepts of employment and unemployment would not exist. Everyone would have contributions to make to their community according to their own possibilities..
The 'sectors' of things political, legal, economic, commercial, financial, enforcement, and monitoring would have disappeared or changed out of sight. The idea (and the straitjacket) of 'my job' would have been replaced by 'my responsibility' to my society.
Civil moots with members drawn from the pool of citizens by chance and informed by resources of wisdom and of expertise would replace the political and legal institutions and would set the standards to be expected of citizens,
Wealth would be understood as the capacity to do things for others and as the product of communal effort and practical advantages.
Gross aggrandisements would be non-existent.
Consumption, of virtully everything, would be a small fraction of today's (my guess about 20%) as a result of the end of consumerism, and by recycling the non-essential stock generated historically. Population would be falling towards a general goal over the term of a couple of centuries.
Hard driving - anything - would be peculiar behaviour.
Got my general idea?
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Walker:
12 Feb 2014 6:12:11pm
Can we start by looking into how and why so many, in my opinion far to many, local jobs (including ones that ex car builders may well be looking into as their next alternative) have been quietly gradually ever more outsourced to overseas?
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Bruce:
12 Feb 2014 10:11:24pm
I think the answer involves changing the way we construct and operate our (global) societies completely.
If we go on as now - political-economically, selfishly - the thing plays out like this I think (for Australia and for every other nation, and commercial conglomerate, on Earth in their own time):
There are two chess games, one the Political game and the other the Economic game, in which WE play the WHITE pieces. Our Politicals play their pieces according to their political-chess ideas and our Economicals play their pieces according to their specific thoughts on the matter. Our Players talk a bit to each other, often after they have made a move.
Although our blokes move one set of pieces each they are simultaneously playing the black pieces of thousands of opponents: other nations, multinationals, organised crime, banks, alliances, players in the markets, hackers etc etc.
If we lose one game against one opponent, we may be done for so we are prepared to take ruthless steps - devalue currency, cut investments in tomorrow, pander to the powerful, dig up anything for anybody, allow the skills base to wither on the vine, increase taxes, sell 'our' endowments for 'our' survival, sign on as allies in senseless wars, spy on neighbours, cut services (and supply) to the most unimportant (politically and economically), robotise the population (metaphorically but, ultimately, literally.
The idea is that we want our last-man-standing to be standing longer than their last-man-standing. While there's life in our last-man-standing, there's hope!
It's called a Pyrrhic Defeat.
Maybe some of the Econophiles might play out these games on The Drum. They may prove me wrong. The smart money is on the Black pieces but sooner or later you can pick up an Australian bargain for a song.
I like the Paradigm Shift potentials much more.
While the chess games go on all around, not playing chess according to conventional political and economic ideas is a partial strategy, but it is likely (as Cuba has found) to be a tough row to hoe. Paradigm Shift has much more to commend it.
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Redfish:
12 Feb 2014 9:03:27am
Ahh so Paul wants to call balese now Tony is in power, whats up mate frightened a few birds are coming home to roost.
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barsnax:
12 Feb 2014 10:00:38am
Paul is thinking 3 years down the track. Let the Australian people see a reasonable man full of consensus so he can be put into a safe Labor seat and one day the leadership. I'd be worried because Howes is no Bob Hawke.
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Harquebus:
12 Feb 2014 9:11:16am
There is only one solution, population reduction. It's going to happen anyway.
?We are a plague on the Earth. It?s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It?s not just climate change; it?s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,? - David Attenborough.
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Huonian:
12 Feb 2014 9:12:16am
So, a grand compact involving the big business organisations (who don't represent the majority of businesses) and the unions (who don't represent around 85% of the workforce).
How's that going to work?
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The Other John:
12 Feb 2014 10:02:50am
It 'works' by providing a new platform for the safe parachuting of morons like Howes into our parliament.
I love the fact that the luvvies here are oblivious to the possibility that Howes is facing some serious problems with the upcoming Royal Comission. As usual, they simply take his word "with merit", and fail to question the man's motives for saying it.
Wasn't it David Marr that was arguing that only intelligent people hold progressive beliefs and the ability to be "scpetical"? Wow. He and Paul Howes have a lot in common.
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Rusty:
12 Feb 2014 9:13:17am
Josh,
Rather humorous of you a lawyer, who is a member of the most closed rent seeking and fee raping professional groups on this planet, lecturing anyone about fair negotiation of pay and conditions.
The legal profession thrives on conflict except when it is any conflict between the public and the rapacious fees that lawyers charge due to their "profession" being a closed shop.
BTW Scientists have since replaced rats with lawyers as experimental subjects as it was found that there were certain things that rats wouldn't do.
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Realist1:
12 Feb 2014 9:56:47am
Hear hear well said, the ultimate hypocracy
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Peter the Lawyer:
12 Feb 2014 12:25:35pm
Rusty
Actually scientists are becoming more and more corrupt. Just look at the climategate emails and you will see. But of course the problem is that scientists are good at collecting facts but are not trained as well as legal practitioners at discerning what the facts actually mean. It has taken 900 years to evolve the rules of evidence usedin Courts of Law. These are the best fact finding tools we have. It is a shame that the the government hasn't appointed a judge or two to review the claims of the 'scientists' who are pushing the AGW claims.
As to the legal industry being a closed shop, I wonder how you would feel if anyone could practice any profeesion without licence.
Like many lay-people you seem to think that you could do what a lawyer does. Most of what lawyers do doesn't involve conflict at all. It involves avoiding conflict by structuring transactions properly and ensuring that what is put into writing accurately reflects what the parties have agreed.
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Rusty:
12 Feb 2014 2:12:35pm
Peter,
Actually on a number of cases I have attended in the Supreme Court I and other non-lawyers actually did 99% of the legal research(including case law) for our overpaid QCs.
They even demanded $16,000 per day each even when they went to court for 10 minutes!
In fact much of the time their understanding of the law was very sketchy - for example our lawyers didn't understand the concept of jurisdiction in defamation and how the geographic source of an email is just as critical as the geography in which it is read. Just one example.
900 years ago justice was swift, sure and inexpensive. True, usually a head or limb was lopped off the losing party - certainly removed any frivolous litigation by plaintiffs.
Now justice is slow, uncertain and too expensive for the average punter.
Cases, even simple ones, can take years to reach court.
Of course the longer it takes the more the legal profession can rape their clients to the point where the client has no money left.
There is now no effective justice system in Australia. J
Judges are generally political appointments so there is little independence there. Just look at the ridiculously soft sentences handed down by judges/magistrates to multiple offending violent criminals? Why? Well most recently Labor state and federal government appointees.
If I am wrong then can all the people who like lawyers respond?
Lawyers need not respond as they are already in the worlds biggest daisy chain of mutual admiration.
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Gary:
12 Feb 2014 3:53:35pm
Peter really!
lawyers are about distorting facts to add doubt as to guilt.
The law is rarely about truth or justice.
Scientists are about relating reality to theoretical study and creating models that reflect that reality.
Climate change is happening that is beyond dispute, how it will affect the future is currently being modelled and the model is getting better at reflecting what is being observed.
What has been observed to date is the climate change is man made and is likely to be much worse than scientists initially predicted, especially as vested interests are unwilling to accept facts over short term profit.
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Paul Pott:
12 Feb 2014 4:43:17pm
Peter
If lawyers are so useful to society how come their public esteem is down among used car salesmen and politicians? Would it be the pompous self-opinionated rubbish they come out with, like this post?
I am sure you heard the story of the young engaged couple who were killed in car crash, and went to heaven. They met St peter at the gate and he welcomed them in, but they said to him they still wanted to be married, could he find them a priest. St Peter went off and came back 3 months later, looking a bit frazzled, saying he had found a priest, but then they told him they had been talking while he was away and wondered that if their marriage did not work could they get a lawyer to organise a divorce. "A lawyer", he said, "it has taken me 3 months to find a priest. How many years do you think it will take me to find a lawyer?"
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KM UELLS:
12 Feb 2014 6:59:34pm
Peter the lawyer says that, "scientists are good at collecting facts but are not trained as well as legal practitioners at discerning what the facts mean." Peter, are you really saying that scientists should do all the research then hand it over to lawyers so they can tell us what the raw data means.
I've always thought you were a bit pretentious adding the title of lawyer to your opinions but surely you don't think lawyers are trained to do the work of a scientist.
Maybe the lab cleaner or the truck driver doing chemical deliveries could help discern what the facts mean.
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Alfie:
12 Feb 2014 12:33:46pm
Well said Rusty.
The people of Griffith have just elected another one of these parasites. They have no shame at all when it comes to making money from other peoples pain.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 1:01:02pm
So obviously you don't like lawyers, Rusty.
But, what do you think of what this particular lawyer wrote?
And, given your obvious distaste for hypocrisy will you dismiss out of hand anything the lawyers Abbott, Bishop, Abetz, Brandis, Hockey, Pyne, Andrews, Turnbull say or write? Or do you think hypocrisy is something that happens only to other people?
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chris:
12 Feb 2014 4:30:49pm
Good on you Rusty. A hearty bunch of opinions, there! Do a law degree - its not that hard - and join the merry throng of money makers.
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Rusty:
12 Feb 2014 6:38:55pm
chris,
No thanks mate - I would rather turn tricks on Fitzroy St St Kilda than prostitute myself as a lawyer. There are just some things even I would not do for money.
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Benice:
12 Feb 2014 9:17:56am
Josh, while I'm in strong agreement with you on the issues of climate change and asylum seeker policy, you realise bringing these issues up will now completely sidetrack any discussion onthe main point of your article.
This is not entirely your fault. You see, even though compassion for those in need and an acceptance of thorough and exhaustive research shouldn't be equated with any one political position, sadly we'll now see a tirade of comnents calling these 'lefty', 'greeny' etc.
Which kind of goes somewhere to illustrating the difficulty of the grand compact. Because people have their dialssetto conflict rather than consensus. I'm surprised by the number of abusive comments I seeon this site in response to reasonable discussion on any subject.
A compact could work but only if we stop seeing positions as left and right and reacting accordingly. Also we needtomapout where we want to go, merging the needs of capital and labour into those of a community.
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Benice:
12 Feb 2014 10:22:09am
And the whole point of a compact is for there to be compromise, so that there are no losers and so that beforehand, the spoils of increased productivity from such a compact can be equitably shared - including, as essential, some on resolving the bigger issues mentioned in the latter part of the article.
From previous post: *dials set to and ** need to map out
Sorry, space bar not working properly.
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AndrewB:
12 Feb 2014 10:37:27am
It's a sad truth that any discussion of issues which don't fall within the LNP's platform instantly gets dismissed with comments of "well who won the election" and luvvie/leftie/greeny bashing in the comments area. What happened to actual discussion of ideas? (It happens with people from the left too, and there are plenty of conservatives who do actually provide actual discussion - just drowned out by the loud obnoxious "HAHA WE WON" types).
I suppose that sums up the current state of intellectual discussion in this country...
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Smiggle:
12 Feb 2014 9:41:48am
"an asylum seeker policy that does not compel breaches of human rights, domestic and internatioanl law? I'd be indebted." Yes and they'd be indemnified. I long for the royal commission and or trial at the United Nations that ends the actions that we lock up or export refugees and hits them in the personal finances for compensation, not the taxpayers and ends the inhumane treatment this country is unjustly performing against asylum seekers.
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APM:
12 Feb 2014 10:30:09am
You want to play by the book, fine. That's a two edged sword. For example, all we have to do is assess refugees. We can start by demanding hard evidence of persecution instead of benefit of the doubt that encourages people seeking economic gain. We can deport all those who ditch their papers as evidence of dishonest claims. We can deport everyone who didn't apply for asylum en route as per convention. We should hold trials to prosecute people who claim to love mankind but inflict 'inhumane treatment' on their own country by stupidly opening the borders to anyone.
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leafygreens:
12 Feb 2014 11:47:29am
And we can opt out of being a resettlement country, too. Thats in the rules..
Get the scary big International Courts to address the root cause of the asylum seekers movements..
How effective will that be??, Syria can't even hold a cease fire long enough for the UN to evacuate women, children and the aged, and their government is allegedly rounding up adult males as they come out. UN peacekeepers get shot at by everyone. The Somaliis aren't listening, the Taliban doesn't recognise international law.. human rights apparently don't apply to Afghaniis, Iranians, etc etc. Just to us.
Its a one sided rule book, and when you see you are so far ahead of the pack, people start questioning why the gap should be continually widened.
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Paul Pott:
12 Feb 2014 4:49:48pm
The Abbott government just signed off on a free trade agreement that opens Australia's borders to anyone with money. But if they have lots of money they must be OK, right?
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old67:
12 Feb 2014 10:20:06am
INEQUALITY FOR ALL is already here just needs a brave soul to change the problem I would not count on the LNP.
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 10:20:32am
"Should unions have a workplace presence in a modern economy? " As the current representation of unions in the productive part of the Australian economy is down to only 13% and declining, I think that bird has flown.
No. Unions don't have a place in a modern economy. Not in Australia, it would seem. They Royal Commission will show us some good reasons why not, especially as the political wing of the union movement is now no longer in power, and individuals might once again have a chance of defeating the collective.
A left-wing lawyer from a left -wing firm of ambulance chasers, who is a member of a left-wing think-tank might see it differently, of course.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 1:18:34pm
Yes, MD, perish the thought that anybody might see anything differently to the born-to-rule.
Maybe the BTR need to change the curricula so that Australian kids learn by rote rather than develop a terribly left-wing critical thinking capacity?
Maybe the BTR need to shroud their government in a cloak of secrecy to avoid having an informed electorate?
Maybe the BTR need to pressure the non-aligned media to stop reporting independently or have their funding cut?
Maybe the BTR just need to ramp up the rhetoric further in order to persuade the voting public we really are at war with asylum seekers, unions, leftists, the greens, wage-earners and anybody else who doesn't think or act in the approved manner?
Or maybe the BTR are already on the case?
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 7:08:14pm
By the "born to rule", I assume you mean the anointed Labor Party dynasties, and their career path of student - union organiser/political staffer - MP.
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 8:38:36pm
I'm pretty sure my post was about trade unions, with a side of Lefty-left lawyers. Not sure where you're going with yours, but "off-topic" springs to mind.
We don't have a feudal monarchy when I last looked, so I assume "borne-to-rule" means "democratically elected by a fully enfranchised electorate in one of the world's oldest and best democracies, and with a guarantee that the same electorate will be given the chance to review their decision every three years".
In which case borne-to-rule it is.
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Lehan Ramsay:
12 Feb 2014 10:26:58am
So we get to the heart of the matter of refugees arriving by boat? That we would all be indebted, that we couldn't possibly afford to fulful our agreement as it stands? I don't think that's really the problem - money is just an excuse here isn't it? If we were using our resources of love, compassion, sharing and working together we'd likely just find a way to scrape by. Isn't the problem more likely to be that we don't want them, that we don't want to change our society to allow them a chance to become a part of it? Isn't the problem more likely to be that we are a conservative white nation, tied into a particular model by conservative white governments so that our futures - superannuation - are tied up in property markets? So we can't change? Is it likely that a drop in wages is going to be accompanied by a drop in rents? Haven't the "rent seekers" - the property speculators - taken advantage of a system designed for the security of the middle class to raise our cost of living to the point that to question the system is actually going to affect our abillty to HAVE a retirement? And isn't it possible that doing nothing about the environment is just a way to avoid solving the other great problem we will face in this century? Which is: that everyone wants to be up there and middle class.
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Lehan Ramsay:
12 Feb 2014 10:55:10am
But that's advertising for you. Aspirational.
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Rob:
12 Feb 2014 10:29:45am
In their rush to pick holes in the article and lay 'lefty" accusations the rusted ons have missed the most telling sentence- "the real productivity challenge is not labour productivity (which is actually rising) but a lag in the efficient use of capital"
In his book 'The Failure of Free-Market Ecomonics" Martin Fell tells the story of a high ranking Westpac banker rejecting a $150B currency deal to cover the value of Australian imports because the amount was too trifling for them to bother with.The four major banks were conducting derivatives trading worth some $4.2TRILLION- an amount equal to four or five years of our annual gross national income.
That was way back in 2002. Derivative trading is now in the quadrrillions.
So Abetz will go on about wages explosions- Hockey about budget emergencies- Abbott about union corruption- Cormann about productivity- Morrison about evil asylum seekers.
And you dumbheads will swallow it all!! Not once will you stop to think of just how many jobs all the casino money will create- if it was diverted to growing-making- fixing things and creating wealth for all-rather than being used as a tool of wealth redistribution to the few.
Cry my beloved country!!
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 11:00:11am
If the problem is speculative capital and derivatives - and it might well be - then the way to begin addressing it would be to write an article about that topic.
An article that's supposedly about industrial relations, which then digresses into partisan taunts over asylum seekers and climate change is not the vehicle needed to start that discussion.
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GraemeF:
12 Feb 2014 11:52:28am
The article says that most productivity gains were claimed by capital, not workers yet the only solution that the Coalition has is to pay workers less.
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The Prophet:
12 Feb 2014 1:02:47pm
Nobody is advocating "paying the workers less". Complete emotional strawman nonsense. What people like me advocate is that labour costs be based on the actual market for that labour. Most workers believe it or not are paid above award wages.
The wage market believe it or not actually works in most peoples favour. Yes, of course you'll say that's down to unions and such providing false wage market floors. Guess what? you'd be wrong. The wage market believe it or not is already fully operating just not in the way it should. If the cost of labour is too high, and this cost can't be naturally adjusted labour is either found elsewhere or liquidated. If the cost of labour is too low, the cost must be adjusted upward or labour moves elsewhere and can't be replaced.
Australia is experiencing both extremes of wage market problems.
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Rob:
12 Feb 2014 5:55:53pm
@EvilPundit- I picked up on one item in the article which I believe is more important than the rest but that does not negate any part of the article- even if you do not agree with any particular part.
My point is that the rusted ons rushed in to condemn the whole article. Sorry but you did the same thing-rather than either accept, dispute or discuss my point about derivative trading you criticise the author for not writing an article about it-even though he did mention it. See what I mean?
What astounds me is that there are so many economists, analysts,financial commenetators both conservative and non conservative who are saying the SAME thing. Many have written about it-Satyajit Das, Dan Denning,Martin Feil,John Bogle, Marc Faber and many more-yet Governments refuse to address it-why?- the word collusion come to mind-why is Bill Shorten not speaking up- becasue he is as much a prisoner and as scared of corporate and financial capitalism as Tony Abbott is.
I may not agree with the cure conservative leaning writers like Marc Faber or Dan Denning suggest ( I prefer Stiglitz- Feil and Bogle) but I cannit disagree with their analysis of a dsyfunctioanal rotten and corrupt global and now Australian economy.
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EvilPundit:
12 Feb 2014 7:10:30pm
That's a reasonable point, Rob.
However, the author's dragging in of multiple extraneous issues is certainly a distraction from the issue that concerns you.
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Rob:
12 Feb 2014 9:18:19pm
And that is a resonable point you made Evil- it may have been better if the author had developed the problem of unproductive capital more.
Wish someone would. How much of the US Fed QE has gone to real business or to support productive free enterprise? My understanding is that is has gone to the same "investment banks-fund managers and hedge funds as those who brought the global economy to it knees. They have been hoarding it-and why not- it costs them nothing and they lend to our banks at 2-3% interest for them to trade in derivatives and screw us.
I would love to see a RC into the financial sector as well as the unions.
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BBW:
12 Feb 2014 10:48:32am
I think its time for some form of government body to umpire wage decisions and conditions.Now that we have minimum wages, strong HSW laws and unemployment benefits the job of the Unions has been mostly achieved. Unions also need to come under the rules of company compliance. When organizations are turning over more than 50 million dollars a year of members money strong transparent and rigorous accounting procedures are needed.
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The Prophet:
12 Feb 2014 11:56:05am
Minimum wage laws are a meaningless nonsense, that only ever cause more problems.
There isn't a basic employee (excepting trainee's etc) that goes to work guaranteed they'll be financially worse off. Workers like business are there to make a profit. That means wages must at least cover a basic cost of living or a business doesn't have employee's. I do concede in some instances without such laws wages can indeed decrease and the market of labour will absorb such a decrease. Capital however already absorbs minimum wages by for example getting more productivity out of employee a, b, and c at the expense of employee d. The real reason why Australians are working longer and harder than ever before. Win one way lose another I guess.
Obviously such productivity can only be squeezed so much, and we're now beginning to see what happens when the well runs dry.
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MT_Syd:
12 Feb 2014 1:16:38pm
"minimum wages are meaningless..."
try telling that to someone on a minimum wage
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Lehan Ramsay:
12 Feb 2014 10:50:03am
We're old and befuddled to be sure. And they do appear to have Bill Shorten by the short and curlies over unions. But what unions are they talking about, Pynie?
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Peter59:
12 Feb 2014 10:50:48am
Interesting article Josh.
If your facts are correct we do not have an industry/union problem but rather a poor use of capital.
We do not have industrial thuggery but rather a very stable industrial relations situation according to your rough numbers.
This is not what the main stream media and TA & Co have been telling us.
My view is any time leaders can sit down in a conciliatory fashion with the goal of improving our country through adult discussion should be encouraged.
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Alpo:
12 Feb 2014 11:04:46am
The rhetoric from Business and the Coalition Government is that wages and work conditions are just too good in Australia and they are making our economy uncompetitive (remember Gina's $2/day wages?). The inference is that if the economy is uncompetitive, we will plunge into the third world in just a handful of years. That's truly scaaary, I don't like that. So, The Abbott Government tells us that if we are scared - as we should be - about that proposition, then we should stop asking for such luxurious wages and conditions, lower our head, raise our bum and be grateful for whatever we get.
Howes may have a point, but a "compact" can only work when a Labor Government is in power. In the hands of a Coalition Government a "compact" becomes a miniaturising contraption to decrease the well being of all Australian workers.
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Peter the Lawyer:
12 Feb 2014 2:36:00pm
I'd love to see some proof of your assertions about the Government, Alpo.
I think what the government is really saying is that freedom is more important than the 'equality' that the ALP was trying to enforce through giving unions excessive power. After all the fact is that when Labor is in power wages always rise more slowly than when the Coalition is in government. John Howard did far betterfor workers by allowing the economy to expand under well thought out tax and regulatory regimes. But the thing is that te government can't manage the businesses or do the work of the employees. The government should not be a player, only the keeper of the ring.
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GraemeF:
12 Feb 2014 4:42:18pm
"well thought out tax and regulatory regimes"
According to the IMF the last Coalition government was the most profligate in Australia's history.
It wasted the mining boom money on tax cuts/middle class bribes leaving a structural deficit.
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 8:45:59pm
An old furphy. Well, old nowadays. The report was by a couple of wallies who had a day job at the IMF. The report was a frolic of their own.
The IMF repudiated the report. So did pretty much every economist globally. Only left-greens with English comprehension problems bring it up nowadays, but it was an enjoyable "WTF" moment at the time. The authors have descended into the obscurity from whence they came, but they've probably still at the day job.
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Alpo:
13 Feb 2014 7:51:57am
"Freedom", Peter?.... Freedom to do what? To either accept the salaries and conditions offered or simply go away and find another job? That kind of freedom? And if everywhere is just the same: low wages and poor working conditions, what's your freedom? What's your choice?.... Think harder, think much harder.
Oh btw, the economy expanded under Howard on the back of skyrocketing private debt (and also don't forget that Gross Government debt was not 0 when Howard was booted out). That expansion, that was worldwide not just Australian, ended up in the GFC.... The GFC then contracted the world economy.
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Lehan Ramsay:
12 Feb 2014 11:08:22am
And interestingly enough, "Don't Change A Thing" has very strong similarities to the old Up There Cazaly. Who made that one anyway. Prime Minister Abbott, if your Honeymoon Campaign of anti-unions, etcetera, was being run by an advertising company with many of the decisions for who to target chosen by people outside the government you would tell us about that. Wouldn't you?
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Pedro Pesce:
12 Feb 2014 11:09:08am
The best thing the despicable Paul Howes can do is withdraw from public life. Any ideas emanating from this man should be treated with grave suspicion and immediately consigned to the garbage bin, preferably with him following.
And garbage it is - a complete brain burp that in another ego aggrandisement exercise by Howes has again has been used by Labor's enemies to distract from their own mammoth incompetence allowing the dismantling of the nation's manufacturing base - Howe's expected area of representation. Instead.....this pontificating. Nero fiddling whilst Rome burns.
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GraemeF:
12 Feb 2014 11:30:06am
The Coalition is hell bent on smiting their enemies, not governing the country.
They attacked the wages and conditions of workers at SPC that didn't exist and refused to admit they got it wrong. Even SPC brought out a press release to prove they were wrong and Dr Stone outed Abbott as a liar (it was a Coalition member who named Howard "The Lying Rodent").
Now we have the Coalition blaming the workers for the early closure of Toyota when as recently as December 2012 Toyota was opening a new factory and speaking up the prospects for manufacturing. What changed? Well not the unions as claimed by the Coalition in an article in AFR.
"Toyota Australia denies the allegations [in the story], Toyota Australia has never blamed the union for its decision to close its manufacturing operations by the end of 2017, neither publicly or in private discussions with any stakeholders".
You can't have a 'compact' with a bunch of lying scumbags.
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MJLC:
12 Feb 2014 11:39:03am
Australia already has a domestically-produced grand compact. It's called the Toyota Corolla. The current government doesn't see the need for it anymore.
Mr Bornstein should seriously consider reading newspapers a bit more often.
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 8:50:12pm
Nice try MJLC, but isn't the Corolla now imported? As for the Australian domestic car industry, none of us see the need for it either, as we've stopped buying the cars they produce and go for imported cars mostly. Including the Corolla.
New Zealand's car industry is the one we should emulate.
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gbe:
12 Feb 2014 11:39:56am
This is free enterprise country where wages should rise and fall on demand not manipulation only 18% of workers are in unions these days and no one is screaming for more regulation.
The days of the all powerful ACTU and it's Labor lackeys with their hand in a workers pocket are over times change.
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WastaTime:
12 Feb 2014 11:47:01am
Howes and his talkfests will deliver nothing but a longer career for himself.That is of course if the RCom doesn't catch him out somehow.
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Applaudanum:
12 Feb 2014 11:51:14am
"And while we have you all around the table, would you mind sorting out an asylum seeker policy that does not compel breaches of human rights, domestic and international law? I'd be indebted."
Indebted, you say? Talk is cheap, Josh, but here is the solution you seek:
We escort all asylum seeker boats to the nearest UN facility and facilitate their being housed in said facility. We can even build such facilities to show our support and to indicate that we mean to do our bit. Once at the UN facility, asylum seekers are processed and await their repatriation to their new home, along with asylum seekers and refugees in similar UN facilities around the world. Australia then takes its yearly quota of refugees and asylum seekers from the total pool of all facilities worldwide.
Simple eh? Here's why it works:
Asylum seekers then have no 'advantage' through arriving by boat. They are then treated in the same way as another asylum seeker on the other side if the world. 'Country shoppers', should there be any, won't like the idea of spending years in a UN facility only to be taken to a random country. Refugees and asylum seekers fleeing persecution will welcome the increased number of facility places, where they can cath their breath and complete various education programs about potential countries they just might end up in, and embrace their eventual repatriation in a friendly country, whichever country it is.
Shall we organise an appointment where I can receive your 'indebtedness', Josh?
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LordFitzroy:
12 Feb 2014 12:00:14pm
"After two decades of consecutive economic growth, the share of that growth enjoyed by employee wages is at a record low; meaning the share enjoyed by capital is at a record high."
Well put, Josh.
Abetz is wrong: what we are actually facing is an impending greed explosion on the part of owners.
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KM UELLS:
12 Feb 2014 12:32:14pm
Josh, I agree with your comments about "adversarial politics" and "generous dollops of rancorous abuse", there is plenty of it levelled at you on this site.
Keating used caustic whit against opponents in parliament but that wasn't much different to the rough and tumble in Menzies time or before.
I believe the nasty, adversarial, divisive politics was ramped up in John Howards time as Prime Minister. Over many years he had learnt how to be a great politician without ever being a national leader.
His comments suggesting we will decide who will come here and those regarding the children overboard were a rallying call for all those who felt uncomfortable about what was going on in the country. He was a master at identifying the negatives in peoples minds and using it to garner support, sometimes from those who wouldn't otherwise support him. A little like Pauline Hanson but much more sophisticated.
In my view the situation got much worse during Tony Abbotts time as the opposition leader and I don't see it getting better any time soon. Politics in this country reminds me of the war in Syria but without the bullets and bombs and it won't improve until the parties are forced to a ceasefire.
The electorate has responded by switching off but that is the worst thing they can do. The warring parties need to be reminded at the ballot box that we want politicians with a vision not just glib throwaway lines.
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 8:59:07pm
Wrong on every point, particularly about Menzies vs. Keating.
Menzies never used personal abuse like Keating. As for Howard ramping up the abuse, he didn't descend to the gutter either and adhered to rather high standards of debate in that respect. He was the recipient of sustained torrent of personal abuse from the media, and the Twats who Twitter, though.
I always like the pain felt by Lefties caused by the expression "we decide who comes here, and the circumstances in which they come". It's a good one. Howard got it from a Palestinian refugee who had settled in Australia.
As for the electorate switching off - too early to tell. Let's see what happens after TA's second or third election wins.
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peter of mitcham:
12 Feb 2014 12:55:27pm
Funny how the word outstripped always pairs up with wages, whereas catch up lines up with profits. Capitalist profits, socialist losses.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 1:45:43pm
Yes, I've never ever seen a "Workers warn of profit explosion," but have seen plenty of "Business fears wage explosion."
Massive profits are, of course, the norm and entirely expected, nothing to be remarked upon. However, any rise in wages (2.6% is verging on an explosion according to the the class warriors of the Coalition) are blamed for anything from increased cost-of-living pressures, high or low interest rates, inflation, deflation, uncompetitiveness, unemployment, the high or low dollar, and falling productivity, regardless of any supporting evidence.
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Peter the Lawyer:
12 Feb 2014 4:44:47pm
Yes, that's right, socialisst make losses, not of their own money, but of the money of the rest of us.
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scottbellson:
12 Feb 2014 1:15:12pm
Sorry Josh, but it seems to me that you and Jonathan Green have both swallowed Paul Howes' hackneyed self-promotion without even a hint of actual analysis of what he said. If he's so bent on forming consensus and making changes, who did he consult? Who has he brought with him before making this address? I call bull#$%&.
You're giving Howes far too much credence, in my humble opinion.
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hph:
12 Feb 2014 1:58:34pm
Josh is a man who works for the *system*
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barsnax:
12 Feb 2014 2:38:48pm
Call me cynic but life-long union hacks like Howes have only one goal in their blinkered lives and that is power. How to get and how to keep it.
Leopards don't change their spots so for Howes, a leading figure in all of Labor's recent woes, to claim that things need to change in our labor market is a joke. It might be true but it's a joke coming from Howes.
He has one eye on public opnion and the other eye on the lodge.
Bill Shorten had better grow eyes in the back of his head.
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Jay Somasundaram:
12 Feb 2014 1:49:42pm
"In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany's big three car companies BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz ), and Volkswagen are very profitable." - From Forbes.
It is our leaders who are letting us down.
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Applaudanum:
12 Feb 2014 4:10:24pm
Is there an automobile per employee figure to go with that. How do the Aussies shape up?
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micka:
12 Feb 2014 2:08:31pm
No, we don't need a grand compact. I want a government to govern. And I want an opposition to hold it to account. If it doesn't govern well, I want to be able to change it and not be left with a legacy of a mediocre consensus that might shape the actions of an incoming government.
It is always a mistake to confuse governing with consensus-making.
Having said that, Howes' key idea - stop the pendulum swing of large changes in employment law with changes of government - has some merit. Perhaps, if ever Abbott gets round to IR reform and takes a middle of the road position, the ALP will feel able to support it.
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Mark James:
12 Feb 2014 4:47:09pm
By the looks of it, micka, Abbott will only get around to IR reform policies once he's helped "liberate" a critical mass of workers and ensure the labour market is rigged so far in favour of employers that a WorkChoices The Sequel might even get a 2nd term release.
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Barnesy:
12 Feb 2014 2:12:12pm
The government are laying the groundwork for a return to a workchoices type of legislation. They never accepted the 2007 loss was a result of their faulty ideals.
The only way they could possibly return to such terrible legislation is with lies an deceit. So, that's exactly what they are doing.
Holden, Toyota and SPC all ceasing manufacturing because of unions? Give me a break. Please.
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Esteban:
12 Feb 2014 4:51:01pm
At least the unemployed auto workers can console themselves in their victory in throwing off the terrible yoke of work choices.
They got what they asked for - No work choices.
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Harquebus:
12 Feb 2014 7:14:52pm
Early casualties of peak oil mate. Trade depends on transport depends on oil.
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Esteban:
12 Feb 2014 2:25:05pm
Everyone knows the line by Kilgore in apocalypse now "I love the smell of napalm in the morning..."
But after a pause Kilgore throws a handfull of sand on the ground and with disappointment he says "One day this war is gonna end" thus ending his perfect life of combining gunship warfare with surfing.
For unionists and industrial lawyers industrial peace is a threat. The end of a good secure gravy train.
Reconcilliation and elimination of aboriginal disadvantage would be the end of another gravy train.
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Oaktree:
12 Feb 2014 2:28:23pm
1 job lost every three minutes since Libs came to power.
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jeorg wmd busche:
12 Feb 2014 3:38:43pm
Would the fact that Australia is isolated country, that has no shipping companies, are at the mercy of foreign shippers that treat Australian businesses with absolute disdain, contribute to high cost of Australia doing business with the world?
We pay the highest ton /mile shipping rates in the world.
Howard, in his world of union paranoia, a viewthat appears to be shared by many of the self confessed intelligencia, removed all Australian shipping from the seas thus strengthening the power of these overseas shipowners.
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Michael Dixon:
12 Feb 2014 9:06:22pm
No we don't. We pay some of the highest coastal shipping rates in the world because Julia Gillard and Anthony Over-easy "reformed" the industry to rig it in favour of the MUA. I know you're shocked to hear it.
If you export internationally, however, current shipping rates are very low. There is a huge glut of bulk shipping available for hire. Good for coal and iron ore etc.
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chris:
12 Feb 2014 4:27:43pm
What is the difficulty here? The market has had its way, as it always does, and motor vehicle manufacturing is dead in Australia, not to be seen again for decades, if ever. That is a lifetime in most people's book. Think about it. Did not everyone but the denial-ists and florid lunatic-demented see it coming from well before Mitsubishi folded? All costs are too high, in Australia, but wages is a major factor in all the costs of doing business. The unions are greedy. Cashed up greedy, and they control a popular political party, so they will not fade away in a hurry. Howes is a dinosaur .... a man of 70s opinions .... who would listen to him? Be assured, services are dead in the water too, just no one has turned their attention to it yet. Then, other than food and mining, what is there? They are too expensive as well. We might muddle through, but I find it difficult to see how.
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Artful Dodger:
12 Feb 2014 6:05:46pm
I take it you are not greedy chris and you-along with every corporate/-financial/manufacturing CEO and senior manager will agree to taking an immediate 50% pay cut.
That should bring the costs down somewhat.
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Chris:
12 Feb 2014 10:22:19pm
No, Artful, I am not greedy. I am not an exec, manager or CEO, and have no problem with your suggestion re their remuneration. I am a sole proprietor of 40 plus years, and object to supporting workers year in year out who are paid far, far more than me. If they become genuinely entitled to centrelink benefits, then I have no issue with that. I hope the goose has not been cooked.
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JMJ:
12 Feb 2014 4:56:15pm
Josh, why tinker with an IR system when 'Industrial disputes continue to trend at very low levels'? Qantas has proven parties can still use Arbitration if they wish to end disputes.
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Jay Somasundaram:
12 Feb 2014 4:56:17pm
" the real productivity challenge is not labour productivity but a lag in the efficient use of capital".
Finally, someone who points out the real issues to be addressed.
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Harquebus:
12 Feb 2014 7:11:14pm
Like the destruction of our biosphere?
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Paul Taylor:
12 Feb 2014 6:13:19pm
There is a common thread or link between the reality of anthropomorphic climate change & the recently announced departures of General Motors Holden & Toyota from Australian car manufacturing & it relates to the reasons behind the impending Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between South Korea & the US.
Despite having an economic growth rate of 4 per cent & exports doing well, South Korea has stagnated & unemployment has increased to 3.7 per cent.....internal pressures are the problem & not an external source. South Korea imports 97 per cent of its energy requirements. According to the Korea Institute of Construction Technology (KICT), energy consumed by buildings account for 25 per cent of all energy consumed in Korea...there are forecasts of Korea consuming 250 per cent more energy by 2020 compared to 1990. To avoid a major energy crisis in the future Korea needs to take measures now that involve energy efficiency investments....Australia could be a big player in assisting but the current Coalition government is doing all it can to travel in the opposite direction while major international cities like Tehran, New Delhi & Beijing are suffering economically in productivity & production, socially in quality of life & health whilst their environment is degraded....South Korea, Japan & the US are impacted by air pollution from China. Stringent, mandatory environmental & energy consumption standards for buildings will be applied by 2018 with emphasis on solar thermal, photovoltaic, geothermal, biomass & wind power systems....great opportunities for US exporters of equipment & services under a final negotiated Free Trade Agreement between South Korea & US.
Like the FTA being currently negotiated between Australia & China, a final agreement can take years. In the case of the US the major stumbling block was the disadvantage it would put its automotive vehicle & parts industry at risk...that all changed with quantitative easing pushing down the $US & pushing up the $A, the bailout of Ford & GMH with retooling investment that produced smaller cars of better design, engineering, fuel economy & safety. Duties on European cars have fallen from 3.2 per cent from 8 per cent since a trade pact was implemented in 2011 . A US deal has halved tariffs for passenger vehicles to 4 per cent & will eliminate them by 2016. Like Ford, GMH & Toyota in Australia a liberalised, aggressive & regionalised South Korea finds its home brands Hyundai & KIA rapidly losing market share.....continued
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Paul Taylor:
12 Feb 2014 6:14:16pm
Continued....Lower tariffs in South Korea are making better foreign luxury cars cheaper & making local buyers abandon a decades long preference for domestic brands....sound familiar. You could say the GFC, the need to address carbon pollution, the rebirth of the European & US motor vehicle industries with subsidies/ government assistance, South Koreas new liberalised approach on reducing tariffs, the forced rise of the $A through in part quantitative easing have all finally contributed to the end of the Australian Automotive industry....industrial relations have played but a small part.
South Korea have basically reduced the tariff on steel imports to zero.....Herein lies an Australian opportunity working with Japan to save the automotive parts industry working with international steel makers to produce the cheapest slab steel in the world ( value adding iron ore, coking coal & gas 3 fold) for local manufacture & EXPORT; partnering with Japan & Australian business to further value add steel slab into renewable energy products, automotive spare parts etc......The privately funded EWLP $45B Project Iron Boomerang. Australia really needs to look at long term planning like South Korea & look at the impact of climate change....you can see the visible impact of carbon pollution on an economic leader like South Korea through the burning of fossil fuels; you do not have to believe in invisible CO2 warming the planet...but the source is the same!
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David Arthur:
12 Feb 2014 7:06:40pm
Here's a grand compact we'd all love to see: unions kick out corruption rather than hide it until a Royal Commission is needed to root it out.
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