Employers – listen up: Even if you want to be fair to your employees, the government is going to make it illegal for you to spell it out in the contract
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1596564.htm
Broadcast: 20/03/2006IR laws 'Communist-like controls'
Reporter: Dana Robertson
TONY JONES: The battle lines are again being drawn between the Government and the union movement over changes to industrial relations laws. Over the weekend, the Government released the regulations which detail how its new workplace relations system will operate when it comes into effect in a week's time. Under the new rules, the industrial relations commission will have to supply the Government with weekly reports on industrial disputes, and the Minister will be able to intervene if he believes strikes are threatening the economy. It's a move the unions have compared to communist-style control.
Oh my, what a surprise! A long standing body of review - the Industrial Relations Commission - has had its sovereignty usurped by a Howard government minister through new legislation. Even if an industrial action is considered legal - after going through a barrage of obligatory government requirements, designed to be as obstructive as possible - the minister will be able to force the workers back to work.
Dana Robertson reports from Canberra.
DANA ROBERTSON: The ACTU says it's 400 pages of detail even it didn't expect.
GREG COMBET, ACTU SECRETARY: The extent of the regulation of some of these prohibited matters has surprised us.
DANA ROBERTSON: The regulations outline exactly how the new workplace relations system will work. From next Monday, it'll be illegal for employment agreements to contain a range of outcomes, even if they're negotiated between employers and their staff. The so-called "prohibited content" includes: Payroll deductions of union fees. The right of entry for union officials to work sites. Leave to attend union run training. Protections against unfair dismissal.
STEPHEN SMITH, OPPOSITION INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SPOKESMAN: The Minister determines that no unfair dismissal rights will apply even is an employer and employee agree as part of their employment arrangements.
KEVIN ANDREWS, WORKPLACE RELATIONS MINISTER: The Government's view is that the employment arrangement should relate to employment conditions and terms and conditions of employment itself - not to a whole range of extraneous matters.
DANA ROBERTSON: Union officials who defy the new laws face fines of up $33,000. Greg Combet says he won't pay.
GREG COMBET: I will ask for people to be treated fairly and I'm not going to pay a fine for doing it.
Right... extraneous matters. The worker has gone, cap in hand, into negotiations for their job. They happen to be blessed with an employer with a social conscience who allows them to be a member of a union and is willing to facilitate that. Nevertheless, the minister dictates that this is illegal.
DANA ROBERTSON: The regulations also reveal that the Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, will receive a weekly report on industrial disputes around the country. The union movement says it smacks of Communist-style control.
BILL SHORTEN, AUSTRALIAN WORKERS' UNION: We've got the Minister who's going to become the new commissar, or secret policeman, of workplace relations. I mean, I'd have thought he'd have more important things to do.
KEVIN ANDREWS: What the Minister can do under these provisions is end the bargaining period and get the parties off to the IRC so the matter can be resolved - that's eminently sensible.
DANA ROBERTSON: Kim Beazley's labelled the regulations "400 pages of infamy".
KIM BEAZLEY, OPPOSITION LEADER: It's hitting the most vulnerable workers and making it harder for them.
DANA ROBERTSON: With the new laws set to come into force in a week's time, the Government's been accused of not giving enough notice of the start date. The unions and the opposition say it kept the regulations secret until the middle of the Commonwealth Games and after the South Australia Tasmanian elections.
John Howard's flatly rejected any suggestion the Government's deliberately stalled.
JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: If we hadn't released it we'd have been attacked, but it's not the detail, it's the regulations. The detail was contained in legislation that passed the Parliament at the end of last year.
DANA ROBERTSON: Business can't wait for the new laws to take effect.
PETER HENDY, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY: There'll be more control in the work place where employees and employers together can make their own decisions rather government heavy-handed ... the heavy-handed government telling businesses and employees what to do.
DANA ROBERTSON: But unions are vowing that the fight against the changes has only just begun.
GREG COMBET: This will be, if we're successful in our campaign, a defining point in Australian political history.
DANA ROBERTSON: Kevin Andrews maintains unions will still have a whole range of rights.
Oh... I forgot to mention... when I was talking about the understanding employer with the social conscience... that word picture was from fantasy land where they hang out at the chocolate fountain with Santa and the Easter Bunny. Back here on planet Earth, business can't wait for the new laws to take effect.
A Pandora’s box of possible abuses
By Fergus Shiel
March 21, 2006Australia was among the Western powers to have financially backed terrorist regimes, and its tough new sedition laws leant towards autocracy, former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld said last night.
In an address on the war on terror and civil liberties at the University of Western Sydney, Mr Einfeld said there was plenty of evidence that sponsors of state terrorism, such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Peru and Guatemala had been backed and financed by Western powers, including Australia.
Mr Einfeld said: "What very few people know or understand, even though the evidence is plain and plentiful, is that many of these countries have been backed and financed by the US and other Western powers, including Australia, whose own very personal contribution to terrorist regimes via the Australian Wheat Board is now believed by every taxi driver in the country to have been known to and at least facility-approved by our Government.
"Apparently political transparency is a democratic ideal to which we only pay lip service these days.
"What makes this brazen corruption all the worse is the incapacity of these powers to apologise . . . Instead we, the Australian public, are treated to wanton attacks on the cultural framework of our fellow citizens - both Muslim and Christian."
Mr Einfeld said the Cronulla riots were the result of a veil of misinformation and apathy, wrought by the cultural polarisation that had infected the world since September 11.
He said terrorism was an age-old phenomenon that was to be condemned in all its guises, and that too often went unpunished.
At the same time, he said, we have to ask how far we can allow ourselves to be led away from fundamental liberal and democratic tenets in the name of the fight against terrorism.
The anti-terrorism bill - in particular its anti-sedition laws - was, "a Pandora's box of possible abuses if used incorrectly".
He added: "This is the hallmark of a society leaning towards an autocratic framework, one in which nationalism, homogeneity and a warped and misinformed concept of 'the other' are thrown together into a heady and volatile cocktail."
I remember a time when the Australian federal government was representative of the Australian electorate and worked for us. How has it become a body that attacks its people and passes legislation that opens up avenues of massive abuse of its citizens?
Of course the legislation that was rammed through parliament late last year is full of horrifying potential powers. The Attorney-General acknowledged that at the time. But did they take a moment to allow parliament to properly examine the bill and recommend amendments? No. In fact, they did everything they could to minimise the opportunity for MPs to peruse the proposed ligislation, so as to prevent it from any scrutiny before it was passed on party lines.
The lunacy of the A-G's suggestion that the details be examined and adjusted after the bill was passed was let to stand by members of the government. Since the vote, there hasn't been another peep from the government looking to review it before it becomes law later this year. I wonder how many Queen's Counsels and Senior Counsels and other upstanding members of the community will need to follow the lead of Justice Marcus Einfeld before this severe impingement of human rights is amended. I wonder if it will be enough to stop this insult to human decency in a free society to come into law. Probably not, if I'm any judge of the actions of the Howard government.
My Island Police State #2
On reflection, this is perhaps a little more on the nanny state side rather than the police state side of things, though the jack-booted denouement I think just tips it in...
A friend of mine owns a cafe. I wandered in there yesterday and noticed there were A4 copies of posters I'd seen around on bus and tram stops recently - the ones that make up the Commonwealth Games anti-litter campaign - "Let's get in training for the games", with a picture of someone hurdling over a park bench, litter in hand, towards the rubbish bin finish line - that kinda stuff.
These posters were in the windows on the doors into the cafe. I asked my friend about it and he told me he'd had a visit from the council. The council woman had come in and told him that the posters had to be put up on the doors into the place as part of the campaign in the lead up to the games. She then informed him that there would be a visit from a couple of health department inspectors to make sure that he had, in fact, stuck them up and if they weren't there'd be trouble.
Since when has providing free advertising space for the local council been part of health department food handling requirements? And what justification could there be to pay health inspectors to roam around the municipality, policing such a stupid requirement?
I know it's just a small thing but it's not an isolated example of the insanity that's sweeping into Melbourne on the pre-text of making a good impression for all the visitors to the games. Fuck the games! Fuck the waste of money that's accompanied them.
The other thing that's bugged me about them is the big 'crack-down' on graffiti, including stencilling, with threats to building owners with fines if they don't clean up any graffiti that appears on their properties.
It all just smacks of being something we're not, just to try and impress a bunch of meathead sports nuts. Tagging is one thing but stencil graffiti is a valid form of artistic and political expression and is part of the culture of Melbourne. Screw the wowsers in our govern-mental institutions. Screw Ron Walker.
And if litter's such a problem, conduct a sustained education programme rather than paying lip service to a lame games event, with posters all over the place accomanied with threats to business owners. It gives me a good mind to break my own habit of a lifetime, gather as much litter as possible over the next month and dump it in high profile venues once the meatheads get here.