QUEENSLANDER Kevin Rudd painted himself as Australia’s man of the future as he unveiled key election themes aimed at catapulting Labor into power.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21630144-952,00.html

The Curious-Snail headline for tomorrow is framed by a huge picture of Rudd, and the headline reads something like “This man will help you”. The Queensland branch of the Murdoch Empire has obviously got the message.

Dunno about you lot, but I’ve had a gut-full of the Coconut’s Double Speak over the last 11 years.

Christ, Kev, give it a rest.

I heard Ms Gillard being worked over by a rather sulky ABC interviewer on PM. He was being wonderfully surly to her about the gutting of the right to strike, but on the constitutionality of FWA, Ms Gillard was effective.

Her line was that she has advice that if the legislation is ‘drafted carefully’ then the constitutional problems raised by the Boilermakers’ case can be avoided.

This is enough to neutralise the issue before the election. If people are in fact deserting Mr Howard because they dislike Workchoices, grey areas of constitutional law won’t stop them.

Boilermakers’ case links:

(Lecture by Justice Kirby :http://tinyurl.com/23z2ro and set-piece ‘primer’ speech by then Attorney-General Daryl Williams on separation of judicial and administrative powers http://tinyurl.com/2hmuu7)

My latest post might be of interest. Another company, Vopak, has used “operational reasons” to sack long-term employees.

The trouble is, the company is highly profitable and is in fact expanding that workplace. It looks like the real reason they were sacked is that they were about to take (protected) industrial action — in other words, “operational reasons” means “union busting”.

Why not just create a federal system under the familiar AIRC?

Trevor Cormack seems to think it’s a neat way of disposing of all of the Business Council types that Howard has installed at the AIRC. Makes sense.