re: this is what john howard will do to our kids
Even Glen Milne is putting the boot into Howie...the beginning of the end...LOL
Glenn Milne: Arrogance rules the IR debate
November 07, 2005 ARROGANT? Anxious to close down debate and curb dissent? What, this Government? You betcha. We had another example of the creeping hubris that may yet consume the federal Coalition late on Thursday. Labor's chief whip, Roger Price, was informed by the Government the parliamentary debate on its contentious industrial relations reform package was going to be shut down early. No ifs. No buts. No beg your pardons. That's what you can do when you have the numbers in both houses.
The debate in the reps was meant to have continued this week, through to Thursday. But the Government has apparently had enough. And the reason the cut-off will be Wednesday afternoon? Well, Price was told it was because the architect of the laws, the man whose crowning ambition has been to fundamentally change Australia's industrial relations landscape, the Prime Minister, had an interstate function to go to on Wednesday night. And because he wanted to be in the chamber for the historic vote, it had to be held on Wednesday afternoon.
Labor's line of political attack is obvious: "So there you have it, debate on the most wide-ranging changes in the workplaces of Australia in the past 100 years guillotined to fit in with John Howard's schedule."
The Government defends the decision, saying the house sat late on Monday and Tuesday, increasing the time for the debate, but it's necessary this week to get the Prime Minister's anti-terrorism bills into the parliament. Twenty-three hours, they say, compared with only 14 hours of debate on the GST. Which only goes to show they rammed that through too.
Whatever the Government's explanation, it won't stop Labor making Howard's convenience an issue. The symbolism is just too tempting. It all adds to the impression you get in Canberra these days that the Government is in a headlong rush. But replete with complete power it has forgotten to bother to tell voters why the haste is necessary. New terror laws negotiated with the premiers against an artificially tight timetable. The urgent recall of the Senate to give increased powers to anti-terrorist agencies against the backdrop of an imminent attack. But so far no arrests or raids to justify that urgency.
And now debate on the industrial relations laws that John Howard says he is so proud of, steamrollered through the lower house. Remember the Prime Minister scoffing -- rightly -- at the idea that he had drummed up a terrorist scare to take attention away from his IR package?
No Prime Minister worth the office would do that. And Howard is worth the office. But if he is so proud of his final ideological vindication why not let debate in the parliament run?
Despite being omnipotent in both houses, one sniffs weakness here, not strength. Having outraged more people than it convinced with its $55million publicly funded advertising campaign, the Government's response indicates a recognition that so long as the debate over IR is dominating the six o'clock news and the front pages of the nation's newspapers, the more damage it is doing to its own cause.
And on this it would be right. The uncertainty generated by that debate can only feed the natural fears of employees about what this dramatic shift in industrial power to the employer means for their job. Labor deliberately used its parliamentary tactics last week to reinforce these apprehensions. The sight of 18 MPs being ejected in a rowdy confrontation would have done nothing to soothe voters' nerves. The message was: this is dangerous and radical stuff. The Government was robbed of its "announcement effect".
The solution, from the Coalition's point of view, appears to be: get the bills through the parliament as quickly as possible, batten down, take the issue off the front pages and hope the continuing good performance of the economy will mask any bad side effects of the changes. Because the Government knows that when growth turns down, and the skills shortage eases, that's when employers will begin to use their new-found power to wind back wages and conditions.
The risk for Labor is that, on past performance, Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello will be able to maintain high growth right up to the 2007 election and beyond. But when the downturn does come -- and it will inevitably come -- it is then that workers will feel the lash of the harsher provisions contained in these reforms.
And there are harsh provisions. Labor has been poring over the more than 1000 pages of the legislation and its accompanying memorandum over the weekend. And unlike the advertising happy snaps of workers and bosses cheerily determining their futures by mutual agreement, there are elements of this bill that are ruthlessly proscriptive.
Most notable among them is the notion of so-called "prohibited content". Prohibited content are employment conditions and allowances that are not allowed to be part of any employment agreement. But here's the rub: the relevant section 101D does not set out "prohibited content" but rather gives the minister the ability to declare such content under regulation.
Neither does the explanatory memorandum provide a list of prohibited content. Rather it advises that there is to be a "non-exhaustive" definition of proscribed content or potentially several such definitions. But get this. Despite the lack of a list of regulated prohibited content, both the bill and the explanatory memorandum state that an attempt to include prohibited content in an agreement will lead to "a civil remedy provision".
The explanatory memorandum describes it thus: "Under these provisions the court may order a pecuniary penalty of up to 60 penalty units for seeking to include prohibited content in a workplace agreement or variation to a workplace agreement."
Oh, and by the way 60 penalty points potentially amounts to a $33,000 fine. So while the $55 million advertising campaign depicts a new era of freedom of choice, in reality the minister has the capacity to step into any workplace agreement and strike it down. Doesn't sound like de-regulation and flexibility to me.
Just as an aside, you wonder if the Government has considered how an incoming Labor workplace relations minister might use this power. Without controlling the Senate and working through regulation he or she could potentially wind back much of the thrust of Howard's reforms.
Two other examples of the proscriptive nature of the bill: even if workplaces with fewer than 100 employees were to come to a mutual agreement to retain protections against unfair dismissals, under the Howard legislation this would be illegal.
And while employers have the right to refuse a job to an applicant who won't accept an Australian Workplace Agreement, if the same employee and employer come to an agreement that includes a decision to explicitly not use AWAs, that too would be against the law. And that's not duress.
Labor's industrial relations spokesman Stephen Smith gave Howard a few more definitions in the parliament last week. They included coerce, compel, force, threaten, intimidate, menace and bully.
Flexibility, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.
