From the AFR this morning.
So it was that, on July 15, 2011,1400 [Qantas] engineers downed tools for 60 seconds. On the same day some of those same engineers were ordered to use their tools in their unnatural hands while others were banned from jobs that required them to use their personal tools.
Now you could be forgiven for thinking these are pretty amusing ideas. Certainly, given the strategic theme of industrial action is that management’s pain should always outweigh the workers’ sacrifice, they were ingenious.
For example, as Qantas made clear in its submission to the review of the Fair Work Act, the cost of deducting that one minute from the strikers’ pay packets far outweighed any lost income for the workers while the company exposed itself to the certain risk of prosecution “for any error in calculating the deductions involved”.
This is how John Black – former ALP senator – describes the situation.
Fair Work Australia is a complete dud that froze job creation last year and has produced a new equilibrium for unemployment 1 per cent higher than before 2007.
Black also says
And every time our Treasurer introduces a new tax, he spends more on perks for perceived Labor interest groups than he gains in tax revenue.
The epic economic incompetence of the world’s greatest treasurer, in a nutshell.
If the goose didn’t exist, someone would need to invent him for inclusion in a precautionary tale.
Entitled: “The idiot’s new brain”.
Rabz
21 Feb 12 at 2:04 pm
Funny, John Black and all these other former Labor party characters develop these amazing insights into the economy and welfare systems after they leave politics. Prior to that they are content to occupy the Senate benches and vote as instructed by their factional overlords.
Perhaps John Black could remind us again how Australia lost 30 years of IR reform and ended up with Fair Work Australia? Union funded scare campaign, Labor the 50% controlled political arm of the unions installed with the help of the Greens, the new socialist hard Left.
Then they get thrown out and the country tries to recover the lost ground.
H B Bear
21 Feb 12 at 2:20 pm
No. You couldn’t.
C.L.
21 Feb 12 at 2:26 pm
I suspect it has more to do with implementing their policy, and afterwards realising it doesn’t work with two possible reactions 1) Black’s to blame his own party for its political idiocy and 2) the usual reaction by maintaining the inherent correctness of the policy and to blame, as Shorten recently did, the employers for not allowing it to work.
This is the general reaction of the left when their policies go pear-shaped – blame everything and anyone else save the original policy itself.
Black seems to have realised that it’s the policy which is at fault, and writes so when the possibility of a political kneecapping has been removed.
Louis Hissink
21 Feb 12 at 2:30 pm
Two personal favourites from the Black article
“leaving Gillard with a rump of supporters on welfare or various forms of industry assistance who only vote Labor because it pays them more money than the other lot.”
Very true, sadly everyone else has to pay for it.
“Abbott would be replaced by a Liberal leader who could beat Rudd”
Tony Abbott is probably the reason the Liberals didn’t win the last election. His conservatism on social issues and his negativity counted against him with large blocks of swinging voters. Turnbull is not the answer, so i’m pondering who else could be the right person…
AB
21 Feb 12 at 2:46 pm
Baloney.
It was the greatest election result for an Opposition against a first term government since the era of Phar Lap.
C.L.
21 Feb 12 at 2:49 pm
True. I remember during the election debate he said
“…and as sure as night follows day Labor will implement a carbon tax”.
It’s the negativity wot done him in.
Gab
21 Feb 12 at 2:51 pm
Gillard also said she would ‘stop the boats’. Abbott, being all negative and such, said her policies would ensure more boats.
Damn him for his negativity.
Gab
21 Feb 12 at 2:57 pm
Tony Abbott is the single reason the Libs were competitive. Under Turnbull they wouldn’t have had enough members for a footy team.
Fisky
21 Feb 12 at 3:22 pm
“Tony Abbott is probably the reason the Liberals didn’t win the last election.”
But he didn’t lose either it was a draw and the deciders Windsor, Oakshott and Wilkie declared the winner.
kelly liddle
21 Feb 12 at 3:31 pm
I blame the MAD MONK Tony Abbot and his relentless negativity.
.
21 Feb 12 at 3:36 pm
Why is there such a hard on for Turnbull?
Hes smart, self made, but on social issues extremely squishy.
Hed be a good cabinet member, but a fraser like leader.
Abbots problem is he says “no you cant all have free sweets, we cant afford it”. Labour then goes “hes a bad man not giving you free stuff”.
Which seems more responsible?
thefrollickingmole
21 Feb 12 at 3:38 pm
I get the impression that Turnbull instinctively favours the classic liberal line – low taxes, little regulation, etc. He gets the importance of freedom and speaks from the perspective of a man who’s had a long experience in business. Abbott, on the other hand, seems to be the sort who’d throw taxes at any old initiative he liked. His skills are as a political fighter, and sometimes as an old-school conservative statesman.
Abbott is a good leader of the Lib/Nat coalition because the alternative, the ALP, under either Gillard or Rudd, is so irredeemably awful. But on the whole I think I’d prefer Turnbull.
On the other hand, Godwin Grech, awful f*k up, etc. So who knows.
TimT
21 Feb 12 at 3:53 pm
Responsible? How dull.
Humans don’t want responsible. Or rather they have a surfeit of responsibility in their daily lives.
No. We want to fly, soar alongside visionaries (preferably good-looking and sexy) who are rich, have a GSOH and are not fawners. Rudd and Turnbull are their own men.
Bob
21 Feb 12 at 3:55 pm
Yes, Dot. A definite stench of rancid olive in the air.
Gab
21 Feb 12 at 3:58 pm
For the love of God Jinmaro, please leave us alone with your transvestite homo eroticism.
Go and watch an old Steve Reeves movie. It might remove the cause, but not the symptom.
.
21 Feb 12 at 3:59 pm
Um???
Rudd leeches off his megabucks wife. She’s Nathan Tinkler rich. Rudd couldn’t afford to live on the Northern Beaches sans Brookie if not for his missus. Ergo his station in life now is somewhere in Lyneham or Dickson, not Yarralumla.
.
21 Feb 12 at 4:08 pm
Yeah, that explains his lightbulb ban and emissions trading proposal.
Turnbull is a joke. Conroy has bested him at every opportunity. I would hang myself in the ladies lavatory with the maître d’s necktie if I was him.
Infidel Tiger
21 Feb 12 at 4:10 pm
Yeah people still love the NBN because it’s perceived as the government giving away free internet to millions of people right across the country. That’s an easy message to sell, and a hard one to counter.
The Oz at least has been running some stories about problems with the implementation of the NBN, anti-competitive agreements, cost blow outs, and this is partly to Turnbull’s credit – he’s been consistent and impressive in countering Conroy’s message. But opposition to the NBN is going to be a cumulative thing – as the costs continue to build, and there are more problems with contracts, and the construction times get longer, and as Conroy’s claims of it being delivered ‘on time, on budget’ are undercut by the reality.
Although hopefully it won’t get to that stage – if the Libs are elected next Federal election, hopefully they’ll dismantle the NBN.
TimT
21 Feb 12 at 4:21 pm
The NBN will cost $200 bn+ and never be completed.
.
21 Feb 12 at 4:26 pm
C.L,
Whilst the result was arguable impressive, I can’t but help imagine the result if there had been a different, more palatable candidate as the leader of the Liberal party.
Fisky,
As I said, Turnbull is not the answer. Though he might have won the election (Though we shall never know!)
Gab,
It’s fine to criticise, and Abbott was indeed correct on both those circumstances. What he failed to do was communicate a suitable alternative, to show what he would do to fix the situation beyond a lot of arm waving, shouting and resorting to short termism.
The opinion polls on him as preferred prime minister for the last few years would seem to support me on my assumptions. Whilst we don’t technically vote for the Prime Minister (unless they happen to be our member) a lot of the general public tend to vote against a party based on the leader of the time, rather than a like for their local member.
AB
21 Feb 12 at 4:35 pm
As a classical Liberal rather than a conservative, I should like Turnbull much more than Abbott, and I did initally. He’s clearly a smart guy, business savvy, and despite the brain farts of banning lightbulbs, is broadly a classical liberal. Yes he’s been sucked into the Gaia worshipping cult, but in the telco portfolio he should be able to ring rings around that idiot Conroy. But he was awful as leader, and while I thought Tony Abbott would be utterly unelectable, he proved me spectacularly wrong so credit where credit is due.
The fact that lefties who are sick of the Gillard/Rudd shambles keep having wet dreams about the white knight Turnbull starting his own political party has put me off him too.
papachango
21 Feb 12 at 4:53 pm
No fear Papa, In the (albeit unlikely at the moment) possibility that Turnbull actually lead the Liberal/National coalition to a victory, most of the lefties that like him at the moment would quickly start to hate him. Take the historical view – there once was a time when even Margo Kingston voted for John Howard. That didn’t last did it?
TimT
21 Feb 12 at 4:58 pm
Turnbull is a loser, I agree.
But he is a looker.
Bob
21 Feb 12 at 6:50 pm
His man does not need to be taken seriously. He is spinning for KRudd and making himself look ridiculous.
Johno
21 Feb 12 at 9:04 pm
Oops. The above quote is taken from John Black’s article in the AFR. I only got his far through when I gave up as he destroyed his credibility.
Johno
21 Feb 12 at 9:05 pm
I’ll second that middle statement in the original post:
The federal govt has made it so prohibitive to employ full time staff that I prefer to hamper the business’ operation than hire permanent staff.
The depredations of the Fair Work Act are not the only red tape we have to deal with. Just about every piece of legislation I encounter seems designed to hamper productivity.
More than half of my time is used up in dealing with pointless compliance issues originating in either the Fair Work Act, the Immigration Dept, or the Liquor Act. (That last is a corker, there is nothing like the Qld Labor Govt for pointless & costly red tape).
I empathise with Qantas, though I’ve never been on the receiving end of Industrial Action. (Though it has been talked about).
Steve at the pub
22 Feb 12 at 12:47 am