A MAJOR new push to tackle the nation’s skills crisis by training stay-at-home mums and disabled people will be unveiled in next week’s Federal Budget.

The program, worth at least $250 million over four years, is designed to ensure there are no hurdles in the way of people locked out of employment returning to the workforce.

The revelation comes amid growing signs Treasurer Peter Costello will announce major tax relief for low and middle income earners in his Budget speech on Tuesday.

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,21673259-949,00.html

There is also expected to be significant spending announcements on roads, schools, health programs and services for war veterans – all funded by a Budget said to be well in surplus

My dim understanding is that the further (and radically incomplete) round of award rationalisation was meant to collapse a lot of industry and other awards into each other. Presumably in that process some awards could lose aspects of previous penalty rates (eg the actual rate or incidence) but the intention was not to strip them.

With the media reports today suggesting Howard has done it more as a way of triggering a government ad campaign, it is hard to see what positives he wil gain from it. The first lot of “workchoices” ads were so successful they pulled them early, so it is hard to say how he can change the perception of his legislation that is probably even more entrenched now than it was it was back then.

I certainly can’t figure his motives out, but with the polls about as bad as they can get for a government in Australia you just wonder where he goes from here. Maybe he is losing his political touch.

The “fairness test� is essentially the revival of the no-disadvantage test which applied to AWAs before WorkChoices, and had its origins in Keating’s IR laws.

That was my first reaction too because I couldn’t believe they’d be so inept as to acknowledge that WorkChoices was unfair without doing anything sensible to fix it. However as detail emerges it looks like Howard’s got himself in the worst of all possible worlds and taken the spotlight off Labor’s IR problems to boot.

More thoughts in my update to this post which you were kind enough to mention.

So the old no disadvantage test operated by reference to the wide-ranging and complex web of minimum conditions set by the relevant industry award. the new system effectively puts in place instead a two tier baseline: the five minimalist conditions in the Australian Fair Pay and Classification Standard, which can’t be traded away, and a second tier of conditions around things like award entitlements to penalty rates and public holidays etc, which can be traded away, as long as there’s a genuine trade.

The ‘genuine trade’ notion raises the same difficulties we saw with regard to the no disadvantage test. First, it’s hard to tell what’s a genuine trade when comparing apples with oranges: to what extent can, say, higher pay compensate for the loss of conditions which go to a workers control over their job. Secondly, ensuring there’s a genuine trade can be adminsitratively a hard slog, and there was some evidence with the no disadvantage test that the office of the Employment Advocate (in the case of AWAs) and the AIRC (in the case of collective agreements) weren’t always that diligent in making sure agreements met the test

2. Of course I’ll respect you in the morning.

3. No I won’t come in you mouth.

4. It has to be something reasonable in exchange. That’s a fair return.

Workers will now have to be “fairly and adequately” compensated by employers if they trade away penalty rates, shift allowances or other entitlements in signing up to an AWA.

“Prime Minister, I refer you to your statement that workers will now have to be ‘fairly and adequately” compensated for rights that are traded away.

Don’t your words prove that, up till now, workers have not been ‘fairly and adequately’ compensated under your unfair WorkChoices policy?”

Rinse and repeat until the election.

Not that I think the ALP will be much better at all for workers, (right to strike – who needs it?) but Mr Howard has made a very dangerous decision indeed. I’m still very happy about my $130 on Mr Rudd to win – at $1.80.

BTW, the Oz is largely irrelevant to the election. Watch the mass-circulation tabloids to work out who Mr Murdoch is backing. The Oz is merely playing to its right-wing audience.

http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/05/04/ir-reform-noooo-thats-the-other-john-howard/

I’m astonished at the amateurism of Howard’s announcement. Business get ONE working day’s notice that AWAs about to be signed – but also those ALREADY signed but in the mail to the registry office – will have to be re-written. Then, he is unable to explain what the new test is, other than a vague ‘fairness’ thing. Apparently, you can lose penalty rates for working anti-social hours, and be compensated by … flexible, ‘family friendly’ hours!

Desperate political tactics. But this is not just policy on the run, it is LAW on the run. And what is Parliament’s role in all this??

Not at all. Every time there has been a major development in the IR debate we have had to put up with at least a week of tooth-gnashing and lunacy from the Oz.

I think you’ll agree – thats outrageous.

Instead, by returning to the collective bargaining mantra, all Gillard has managed to do is convince already suspicious employers that the Labor changes are really about reinserting unions into the bargaining equation

Sorry Gareth, but fuck you. Why shouldn’t Australian unionists in workplaces where they are a majority have the same or similar collective bargaining rights as their counterparts in the US or Canada?