One request for tender seeks a consultant to model what it calls “the economic benefits” of the Coalition’s agenda, while the other seeks a consultant to model what in that case is called “the economic costs” of Labor’s program.

The process was exposed by Julia Gillard in Question Time. Jo Hockey confirmed the documents Gillard used were genuine.

As the CT notes: “The document dealing with the Coalition’s program asks the tenderer to include in the modelling the impact of a higher working age labour force participation rate – 78 per cent instead of the present 76 per cent – apparently on the assumption that is what the Coalition’s program would bring about.

“The document dealing with Labor’s program asks the tenderer to include a lower partipation rate – 74 per cent as opposed to the present 76 per cent – again on the apparent assumption that that is what Labor’s program would do.”

Economics Editor Peter Martin notes that that approach would as good as guarantee that the modelling would conclude the Coalition’s program would boost employment and Labor’s harm it.

Even worse, the document dealing with Labor’s policy asks the tenderer to assume it brings on an explosion in pattern bargaining and/or industry wide bargaining as opposed to having collective and individual agreements that are able to take account of firm-specific circumstances.

Yet as Martin notes, neither pattern nor industry-wide bargaining feature in the ALP’s approach.

The Coalition Government disgusts me and always has, but to find public servants colluding with them on this kind of deception fills me with heartache and despair.

Albury’s The Border Mail reports:

“Labor says it has no problem with business putting across its point of view.

“It’s a free society, if they want to run some ads they can,� Opposition treasury spokesman Wayne Swan said.

Labor had not, and would not, lobby the business groups in a bid to convince them not to proceed with the ads, he said.”

Had Labor not taken this position, I would have seriously started to question how fit they are to fight this upcoming federal election.

Especially when it’s already been a struggle to evaluate the very mixed message put out by Labor over Industrial Relations.

Note an important reference point as a way of reflecting on Labor’s recent declining performance in the IR debate:

On 1st of March 2007, employment minister Joe Hockey said in the House of Representatives:

“I note that the Labor Party has had, to the best of my knowledge, seven different policies on unfair dismissal laws in seven months. They are not only walking both sides of the street on unfair dismissal laws; they are stuck on a Canberra roundabout and they cannot get off.”

These words may yet come back to haunt Kevin Rudd because the detail of Labor’s policy risks pleasing no one critical to a successful outcome(walking both sides of the street), while their struggle to move from policy detail to policy detail indicates Labor lacks a “roundabout concept” they can keep refering to, such as the way the Howard Government keep guiding all debate back to “economic management”.

To quote Edward de Bono:

“It is impossible to move sideways from detail to detail. You need to go back to a concept and find a way forward out of that concept.” [1]

It shouldn’t be that difficult to grasp that Joe Hockey at least knows how to “keep it simple, stupid!”.

Which constrasts with Peter Martin’s argument that Hockey was last week
stuck in FantasyLand playing Shrek, while “SBS TV broadcasts real programs featuring real people”.

“The reality” is that Channel Nine rates higher than SBS ever will, no matter what peaks in the ratings on SBS. Such comments only build evidence to the claim by Ed from The Australian this week that the Leftist commentariat causes “a class divide between an elite on one side and the mass of ordinary people on the other” (no matter how true or untrue you think this comment is).

Given Labor’s “reality” of needing to win 17 seats from the Government, without going backwards to lose its own seats, Hockey’s critics on the Left would be wiser to observe Mr. Hockey’s tactics with grit teeth, rather than leap to using his Shrek moment as a reference to compare “reality” with

A much important point Peter Martin makes is that “the proportion of national income going to wages has fallen to an all time low”.

It’s on this precise point the conservatives are at their most arrogrant, as demonstrated by Ed from The Australian today:

“More fundamental than rights at work is the right to work at all”

This is a conservative world view only too happy to support the statistical definition of employment, counting anyone who undertakes paid work for one hour as effectively being “productive”.

Labor need to attack the silly conservative subtext extracted from low unemployment figures that “there’s no disadvantage – we’re all aspirational now”.

An effective “roundabout concept” for Labor may yet be Brian Howe’s concept of “anticipating risks people confront across their lifetime”, similar to the concept I’m trying to send around the thinking roundabout
for road testing: the concept of “personal development”.

…From Justin

[1] De Bono, Edward. Simplicity. 1998 Viking. Page 285.

He’s razor sharp, not like some others around these here parts.

That is, it relies on the same right that supports arguments against compulsory unionism.

Cant have it both ways dude.

If collective bargaining is a human right, then I’ve also got a human right to be stinking rich.

Dear me,
So it’s the right to be rich now is it? You orta get an International Convention drafted on that one. Everyone will sign up to that! Why didn’t someone think of that before?

Meh, obviously the unions’ anti-WorkChoices ad campaign is going to be more effective. It’s easy to scare people;

But they are just amateurs at the scare game, having nothing on the master of fear. Howard has not gone into a single campaign and barely makes a single media appearance without raising a scare of one kind or another.

Along with the economy, Howard is thought of by the electorate as being better at security, but like his credibility on the economy this is an absolute myth, and if anyone (and many professionals have) looks in detail at his so called security (and economic) credentials they find lots of holes being covered with a veneer of spin.

Also, the Peter Martin post that Mark highlights really skewers Hockey’s avoidance of the debate. For example, Hockey staff claimed he needed to spend time in his electorate, but he has a 10 percent margin. More importantly, the Insight studio is actually in his electorate, and not far from his morning appearances at Channel 9.

As Martin points out, perhaps Uncle Joe didn’t think it would be a good look to be talking about Fairness Tests with young people who had actually been sacked.