A covenant is a two way street.
to put meat on Percy’s article both employer and employee need to act in their neighbour’s interest in their behaviour.

to put an example bludging would be unacceptable nor would no allowance for family problems.

Incidentally, surveys for several years now have found that Australians no longer think that unions have too much power.

Did not see Denton. Not surprised to hear the three priests were a joke. That’s the ABC’s take on Christianity.

A general comment: when I hear people rail about unions I am sometimes wary that they treat them as some monolithic group and usually in terms to conjure up images of thuggery, complete with picthers of building and construction unionists. However, when I have spoken to friends over the years the picture is much more variegated and different. For example, someone told my ages ago that the old closed shop policy in the banking sector was initiated by employers who wanted to lock in a very benign union and lock out any other unions likely to rock the boat. Someone else pointed out that Australian unions were the most regulated unions in the world. Another mentioned a survey where the average Aussie would think unions have too much power, but when the same person is asked, are you a member of a union and does your union have too much power, invariably the answer was that their own union was powerless. Another said many unions supported equal pay for work of equal value for women in the 70s partly out of fear that women would underut the men in the competition for jobs during a period of high unemployment and inflation. And so on and so on. Now I don’t know how much of what I have heard over the years is fair or true but I have gained an impression of a far more complex set of organisations and relationships which does not gel with some of the rhetoric in the public sphere. And which certainly doesn’t gel with the way the media seems to report IR issues. Just an observation.

There is a cost but also a benefit.

CL - loved your descriptions of the 3 clergy. I got the Uniting and Anglican guys wrong. I’m not all that impressed by McGuire. CL you are rapidly turning into my favourite grumpy old skool catholic. I’ll be asking for an autographed pic from you soon. In the form of a “Holy Card”. Keep up the good work.

I think the government is being foolish on this agenda. Unions aren’t going away and these reforms are probably one roll-back Big Kimbo Sysyphus will make good on. In other words, it’s not reform for the ages; its short-term ideological bollocks. That’s the flipside of my union criticisms above. As I implied, the immobilism and corporatist lethargy of unions over the past 20 years brought all this on.

Nevertheless, organising labour is a fundamental human right. At war just now with incivility writ very large and dangerous, we should be celebrating and strengthening our traditions, not vitiating them for the sake of Bert Kelly’s ghost.

C.L, a beautiful description of that Kris moment, thanks.

Denton: “The two boys were [something]…”
Kris: “…[*sniff*] two girls…”