A new report by the Workplace Research Centre has been released that includes an examination of the effect of Workchoices over the past year. Australia@Work finds that workers on AWAs average $106 per week less than those on collective agreements.
Of course as soon as the results hit the press, Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey is arguing that the results are flawed due to the study being partly union funded.
The study was funded by the Federal Government through the Australian Research Council along with a collective of unions via Unions NSW. As Hockey’s tried to whip up anti-union hysteria he forgot to reveal which parts of the report are valid due to the Federal Government funding.
Hockey’s Chicken Littlish bleatings will have little traction with those already experiencing (or likely to experience) the adverse effects of AWAs. The anti-union card is a relic of past battles and carries little resonance with those votes the Liberal party needs to have any hope in November.
Hockey’s attempt at spin will be greeted with a shrug of “He would say that, wouldn’t he.” The message out there that scares the Liberals is that AWAs make you a $100 worse off a week especially if you are young and unskilled.
The hypocrisy is particularly glaring when compared to the Econtech report, which was unadulterated garbage.
The retort from the reports authors.
And it’s a tough message to get around.
Workchoices, for all its full-employment and small business benefits, has been a another Howard Government implementation disaster – you’d think they would have learned from the BAS form. If they’d put as much up-front effort into fairness tests as they’re scrambling to do now this policy wouldn’t have been an issue. If (OK, when) they lose the election – it will be this policy that did it.
Hockey’s fanciful “People on AWAs earn DOUBLE!” crap doesn’t help to add credibility to his rantings, either…
Can’t understand why they aren’t wheeling out all those true stories of real people that go something like: “I used to be on a collective agreement and now that I’m on an AWA I earn twice as much! Thanks workchoices!” Ready-made “Government Information Campaign(TM)”, you’d think…
Wrong. That message doesnt scare the Liberals at all, because the policy was designed to do precisely that. It is a wages policy designed to ensure that (skilled) labour shortages don’t turn into wage increases for those selling that commodity in demand, and is a social policy designed to ensure that everybody, especially those who still have a habit of wanting the government or someone to do something for them,(unskilled or labour with little market traction), gets a clear message about who has rights and who gets to exercise them. It is incidentally only, a political policy designed to drain the swamp of liquidity likely to end up in the pockets of their foes.
The ‘problem’ facing the Liberals and their supporters, is that everybody understands exactly what the policy is designed to achieve. Since there are more people who are adversely effected by it, than those who will benefit by it, the electoral maths are simply ‘killing’ both the product and the sales team.
From the start, it was, and continues to be, electoral poison, green kool-aid for the numbskulls who gambled that people were as stupid as the think tank denizens really believe. Their bad.
Idiots. Make those bullshit ads with mates at the pub rolling in newfound cash look like the illegal propaganda they are.
Workhousechoices is generally hated and the hatred is locked in. No figures or studies positive or negative are going to change any minds now. It wouldn’t help Hockey if a study came out today and said those on workhouse agreements earned infinity dollars more than union thug negotiated agreements. This one is over.
We should only accept the findings from wages studies that are conducted by employers. They understand workers because they own them.
It is also clear to me now that studies into the effects of smoking are also invalid, as those studies are conducted by doctors, who are a bunch of rabid anti-smoking ideologues.
I wonder how much of the “independent research” cited by the business-funded pro-Workchoice ads should then be discounted on the basis of business funding (or govt funding for that matter).
It’s all reminiscent of the reaction to thye Lancet report on the Iraqi death rate. Howard said that the Lancet figure was clearly too high because…well it just was. Bush said that the death toll was only 30,000 based on…well nothing really. Maybe he multiplied Cheney’s remaining hair follicles by the number of his old frat buddies.
Line of the week, Mercurius. BTW, it’s true that militant doctors waged a campaign of property damage in the 1980s.
No it should be discounted on the basis of the ridiculous assumptions about “re-regulation of the IR system” that were its premises. It may represent an accurate projection of what would happen if there was a hypothetical party contending for power proposing “to wind back the clock”, but the fix isn’t in the funding but in the assumptions given to the tenderer.
…. The message out there that scares the Liberals is….. they will lose votes. They are politicians, and like all of their breed, votes matter. More than good governance, more than well being of the nation, more than… well, more than everything else.
Put a circle around today’s date. Now courtesy of the Mad Monk the election is surely lost for the Tories. We now have the scariest proposal since Workchoices which is called Healthchoices.
If they can’t get you because you aren’t employed or get sick occasionally, then this is pure genius on behalf of the Howard Liberals. Thank you, Mad Monk, you are brilliant! Enemies could not have dreamt up such a damaging piece of propaganda to turn against the Howard Liberals.
I just would like to ask Hockey to release the governments own findings on WorkChoices. But then again, this is how he responded to a question on the 26th March in the house:
So it really is quite simple Mr Hockey, release the findings and then let us decide.zu
Liam – didn’t realise they had a website, that’s cool!
I still remember helping my dad and his brother fill emptied-out eggs with housepaint as a kiddy. Our house was targetted in a revenge attack after they got busted and went to court [spent conviction].
I shit you not, shadowy Big Tobacco thugs actually spraypainted obscenities and pro-smoking slogans on the walls, smashed windows and glued up our locks while we were away for the weekend. Nice.
Hockey was wrong to argue the report was biased because it was funded by union lackeys. But the report is still foolish.
It is not up to employers to provide a social wage and to limit working hours. It is the responsibility of governments to do this via tax transfer mechanisms.
Charging a high wage to a low skilled worker will only restrict employment. Loosening these restrictions – starting with Paul Keatings moves and continuing through to the current government has increased employment.
With near full employment the security of worker conditions is protected by market forces.
Unskilled workers who suffer wage cuts in an effective labour market because they shift to AWAs were originally being overpaid.
Allow markets to determine wages – dump all the union bullies – and use government to engineer a socially acceptible minimum wage.
This report heads things in the wrong direction yet again – it sounds like a boring apology for unnecessary unions.
Soon the survey results of a recent Newspoll conducted on behalf of the Department of Work Place Relations will appear. I was phoned to participate in the survey a couple of weeks ago and I have not seen anything mentioned in the press so far about that survey.
I found myself at several junctures having to say to the canvasser that I disliked the phrases used in some of the questions as they struck me as being very manipulative and aimed at eliciting very favourable impressions of Work Choices. Much of the poll was concerned with discovering what the public grasped based on the ads featuring Barbara the departmental head, the awareness of the website, awareness of print-ads etc.
Peter Costello has also hit out on the ABC radio today about the Sydney Uni survey damning the union bias. No doubt once the newspoll results are released the Government spin-doctors will be touting the authoritative and independent nature of the research.
I, for one, exercise domestic censorship and use the mute button on the remote control when the advertisements are broadcasted.
I think the main issue is not wages but job security.
I don’t know whether the ‘Fairness test’ has changed things substantially, but I wonder whether change of hours and job insecurity is more of an issue.
I cannot agree with hc that market forces will protect workers.
There may be more jobs around which are paid less, but this creates havoc in family life and lots of these unskilled workers are female..
PJ, I doubt that poll will ever be released. It’s probably internal government polling to enable them to refine their “informational” message.
Hockey has severely damaged his credibility with this accusation, because Buchanan is highly regarded as a solid researcher. People in this field, on the employer side as well as the union side, are marking Hockey down severely because of this unsubtantiated accusation.
Also, it was an ARC-funded study, and thus passed the normal ARC funding criteria, imperfect though they may be. To criticise this study is to criticise all Australian research.
Even worse, it seems to have been a Linkage study, where the government has required the researchers to find an industry partner to ensure findings are relevant. So Hockey’s accusation attacks his own government’s efforts to make research relevant.
What this shows is that Hockey thinks we’re all stupid.
Absolutely! Now that’s the kind of social engineering we can all agree with! One that ensures wage earners pay for wages via taxation that would otherwise just have to be paid by business! And the best thing is, we can then have a campaign to engineer a tax scale that has a ‘3′ in front of it, for the hard working highly paid. I think I have got the latest tax campaign right? That will ensure that the hard working and barely ‘rewarded’ battling on 2x awe, are encouraged to work even harder, while the indigent, the ingrates and simply feckless will just have to contend with hassling their fellow no-hopers for a little more ‘tax’ to top up their wages which are low because they deserve to be. I mean, if they want to earn more, they should work harder, right? Yeah, that should fix it! Oh, I forgot, they already are.
Wonder why the polls are so terrible?
You know, hc, you ought to be advising the government. If only they had listened to you.
Oh, I forgot. There were.
The speed with which the Government attacked the findings shows that they never read the report. I’d love to hear Hockey’s methodological quibbles.
At least Howard’s response was just to confuse things by suggesting the ABS disagrees with the findings, which is patently untrue but a better tactic than screaming “UNIONS!!!!” as loudly as possible.
Oh well calloo callay Harry, and what, pray tell, happens when those glorious, ubermensch free-market forces turn down, and the economy goes to shit?
What’s going to be securing worker conditions then? Oh, right. Nothing. We have already seen unskilled workers (getting paid too low, eh, Harry? How low should they be paid?) getting shafted by companies, and this in the so-called best of times.
Well whoopee and bring on the worst of times! That way, it won’t just be kids, hospitality workers and low paid wage-slaves getting screwed, we can all rejoice in the shafting! Maybe _you’re_ getting paid too much Harry.
I love it. You defended WorkChoices to the hilt. When information comes along that irrefutably proves that manna didn’t rain from heaven as a result of AWA’s, and in fact it makes people poorer, you then say that’s the whole point. Talk about a zero sum game dude.
Just sayin’
Workchoices II
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Not zero sum game , dude. The whole game. hc and his mates always knew the score. They just hoped no-one else would notice or understand. But the problem for harry is, you can prattle all you like about ‘interest rates at historic lows’ and the ‘war on terror’ and how ‘they won’t accept Ostrayan values unless we are in power’, but one thing you can never ever fool people about, is the terms on which they work, and how they compare to others in the same boat. Never ever.
So now we are all invited to be ‘grown up’ and accept that ’sh*t happens’ only to people who deserve it, but not of course to people ‘like us’.
It’s delicious.
Patrickg, The economy has much less chance of ‘going to shit’ as you so eloquently put it if you have flexible labour markets where wages can respond to demand and productivity shocks.
I was arguing that minimum wage conditions should be met by the government not firms. Treating the latter as social welfare agencies damages the unskilled and those having problems getting jobs.
The whole thrust of the Austrralia@Work report I have seen reported in the press (and many of the borderline moronic comments on this blog) are that WorkChoices has led to a cut in wages. That suggests the original wage levels were not excessive. Its not obvious that is true.
The best defence for low income, low skilled vworkers is an economy operating at close to full employment with plenty of competition for labour. That’s pretty well what you have got.
Harry you’ve dodged the point: What happens when the economy goes downhill? That’s fabulous about flexible labour markets etc. (which is really just code for “wages can go down”) But there will be another recession, sometimes. Unless you are saying the economy isn’t going to go downhill again?
And more importantly: What do you think will happen then? Wages will go up?
Well that’s a pretty shit defence, in my opinion, and a highly mercurial and temporary one.
The best defence for low income, low skilled workers is in fact a set of laws detailing their conditions. An award, if you will.
The vicissitudes of the market are no protection at all. It’s like saying the best protection against a storm is a sunny day. They can’t all be sunny.
In Harry’s world view, there are no recessions, because flexibly downward wages ensure that if the economy hits any recessionary tendencies, those tendecies get snuffed out immediately.
It is a world view that was shown to be wrong in the 1930s.
Low skilled workers should pay’t mill owner for’t privilege o’ goin’ to work. They’ve had it soft for too long.
Well you got the first part of the first sentence nearly right, but the problem for that part of the ‘labour market’ is two fold-First, the competition ‘for their services’ has been undercut somewhat, by competition ‘offering for service’ from two sources-imported indentured labour in construction and meat slaughtering, (s451 visa temporary labour permits) and from temporary/roaming labour (backpackers) in hospitality and to a lesser extent, retail. In the latter sector, low paid youth are being squeezed out of the market by needy part time work seeking students (who wouldn’t prefer a young uni student or HSC candidate to a rough nut), and by labour ‘churn’ which is ‘pulling’ in persons hitherto on the pension (as opposed to workstart payments) as a result of ‘welfare to workfare’. Secondly, despite this golden, ‘full employment economy’ whose virtues are endlessly parroted by people who should know better, there remains considerable labour ’slack’ in the form of high youth unemployment and underemployment, in categories having few skills, and among part time workers who would like to work more hours.
The other problem I have with the prescriptions put forward by you and the rest of the ‘let ‘em eat their social capital’ daleks, is that once a low wage economy takes hold, it is very difficult to shake off. Just ask New Zealand. The economic ’shock and awe’ of the ECA in 1991, has never been overcome, and it remains a low wage economy, which struggles to fill many essential jobs, since a large part of those who were the ’special objects’ of the social sadism known as the ‘free market in labour’, simply upped sticks and came to Australia. All 200,000 of them. And now they are wanted back. But guess what? As we all know and agree, markets know no sentiment. 30% higher wages ain’t no chicken feed, and no-one I know is going back, until they reckon they have had their fill of earning more than they could in NZ. Still, if you get your way harry, maybe when our wages are at a level you and others feel is appropriate, they might decide that it is better to be low paid and at home, than low paid abroad.
It’s interesting to see Hockey gradually self destruct since taking on the Industrial Poisoned Chalice Relations portfolio. I always thought of him as one of the less offensive government members, but he has morphed into a personification of the worst of Howard’s excesses – witness his mantra-like repeating of ‘union bosses’.
I hope he enjoys life in opposition (assuming he retains his seat). If so, at least he’ll have a job, unlike Barbara (‘it’s the lawah’) Bennett.
Spiros, You are caricaturing what I wrote and you know it. I don’t believe that wage cuts will move an economy back from recession – you might need monetary and fiscal policies to do that. But having a flexible labour market helps keeps the economy bouyant.
Amused, There is fiull employment. Half the shops I pass are advertising for shop assistants, my kids quit one part-time job and immediately can get another. There are labour shortages throughout the economy even at the unskilled clevel. What’s wrong with people goimng off welfare and what’s wrong with firms trying to cut costs by substituting cheap low payed part time workers for expensive full time workers. Business isn’t a social welfare agency – that is the job of government.
We are not moving into a low wage economy — to the contrary wages are growing and unemployment is falling – don’t delude yourself with adolescent leftwing fantasies.
I don’t decide what level wages should be – markets do. You really should learn some basic economics.
Patrickg, Your view of the world is wrong and will damage the welfare of those you like to pretend to support. I assume you don’t know how markets work because you have spent too much time listening to trade union drones and no time at all studying economics.
“I assume you don’t know how markets work because you have spent too much time listening to trade union drones and no time at all studying economics.”
And you give the market far too much credit. Probably because you have spent too much time listening to management school drones who parrot the ‘free-market’ good mantra without understanding the limitations of the assumptions underlying free-market theory.
I get so frustrated that most work carried out, in the main, by women and/or other poor wretches, has been historically lowly paid, if paid at all, i.e. childcare, aged care, cleaning, hospitality work, factory work, sewing, serving in shops etc. etc. That such work is also described as ‘unskilled’, when it is often highly skilled and necessary work, appears to be more of a sop to the traditionaly highly paid or employers – and thus the story goes . Especially when researchers, reporters and commentators, such as bloggers here (even when they are sympathetic to such workers) repeat it as mantra.
I remember Marx and Engels’ explanation was that any work done by women, by their very position in society, made it under-valued, and therefore worthy of little monetary compensation; not that I am aware that they dubbed it ‘unskilled’. Though they acknowleged that it was essential, and hard/long worked.
Now, however, with WorkChoices, many other jobs, including those mainly owned by men and ordinarily labelled or considered skilled, are being de-valued, de-conditioned, and being lumped in with ‘unskilled’. It would appear that if you are in charge of changing the lexican, you can spin a new story to suit the politics of the moment. And we all kowtow, nodding wisely, and discuss it as read.
All the while paying Howard and Co’s. licence (especially disgusting allowing for their particularly uncouth and mendacious shannigans of late), to write out any amount cheques to whomever, including themselves, they feel need paying off, or for their vote. And so it goes…..
Legislation allowing employers to hack into low-skilled peoples wages is just another form of protectionism.
Means our industry doesnt need to innovate in line with relevant high-wage competitors. In the long run, we fall behind in terms of technology, managerial practice etc.
Its a dead end route.
Harry, nice little attack on my knowledge of economics, of which I’m sure you have a very in-depth perspective.
I have a little attack for you on arguing. How about you answer my (simple) question – so simple a great economist like you should surely be able to answer with your sage understanding and many years of erudition.
I repeat myself, for the third time:
Hockey was interviewed on the 7:30 Report tonight. He gave the impression of being out of his depth, and of being caught making kneejerk responses that are clearly not justified in this case.
He wasn’t able to identify any specific problems in the Workplace Research Centre report, nor the methodology used, apart from the fact that subjects were asked their experiences a year after the introduction of Workchoices.
Then he tried to justify his response on the grounds that Rudd had attacked Peter Hendy.
It was a very poor performance for a Minister.
Looks like Hockey can spend his post election time defending himself against probable legal action from the report writers.
I notice that the academics that wrote the report are now thinking of taking legal action against Hockey for his comments. [link]
hc: “I don’t decide what level wages should be – markets do.”
I don’t agree with letting markets set wages because the market is imperfect.
1. There is a huge power imbalance because relatively small numbers of employers are recruiting from a large pool of often interchangeable workers.
2. There is a huge power imbalance because employers have far greater expertise and resources than most employees.
3. There is a huge power imbalance because each AWA negotiation is between a worker whose livelihood is at stake and an employer for whom each negotiation is one of many.
When unions are operating as intended, they provide the necessary counterbalance to ensure the market provides a little more fairness. And because they act against the imperfections of the natural market they also improve the efficiency of the market place.
And a final point. Most individual employers would like their workers employed under conditions that are as close as possible to contract labour. Yet if the majority of the workforce is employed under contract then there is less certainty, less saving, less investment and a probable downturn in the economy. What works for individual employers doesn’t work for an economy. It’s actually in employers’ longterm interest that employee conditions include a living wage and reasonable certainty of continuing employment.
Yes Mick, the mother of all union scare campaigns might be an expensive personal cost for Government Ministers as courts might not see things in the same way as Government cheersquad members.
It has been a haulmark of the last eleven years that Government Ministers will say anything to get reelected, that era might be coming to an end.
Hockey was a total embarrassment on the 7 30 Report. I don’t know why they bother having him on. Would have been far more productive to get Buchanan on to talk about the report. Though Hockey made a complete goose of himself, it’s obvious that neither he nor Kerry O’Brien understand the meaning of the term “methodology”.
What this entire episode has highlighted is the debasement of intellectual debate by an unwillingness to engage with issues and the substance of the evidence.
Postmodernism has become the refuge of the neo-con social warriors.
7.30 report link
Doug,
How is ‘attacking the messenger’ postmodernist?
And how is Hockey a neo-conservative?
The classic moment was (more or less as follows)
Shrek: “The main flaw was that they asked them what their wages and conditions were a year before!”
Red Kezza: “You mean, what they were as of March 2006″
Shrek: “Yes”
Red Kezza: “when Workchoices was introduced…?”
Jeebus. Wouldnt that be the point? Assessing serial IR regimes? before and after? Seems methodologically sound to me, Joe.
Why do they impose such naked cretinry on us?
Steve (@ 9.21 pm)
you cannot possibly believe this? The only people who will say anything to get elected/re-elected are ministers in the Howard government?
Lefty E, 6.24pm:
When wages are fixed (award rates, minimum wage, etc) is protectionism, or perhaps rent-seeking. As unpalatable as it may be to say so, when workers compete on price as well as performance, it is the opposite of protectionism.
SATB, try reading for meaning, rather than assuming every comment is a chance to score cheap points.
Steve was suggesting that the Howard Government is shooting itself in the foot, and is no longer saying what it takes to get re-elected.
In the standard economic textbooks, yes, SATP.
Im making an argument at another level, about innovation. Many of our relevant competitors, particularly in hi-value tertiary industries have given low wage strategies away eg Singapore. They compete by innovating in production with new tech processes.
If we allow our industries to go low-wage instead of innovating, they will eventually become fall behind international practice, and international competitors.
In that sense, a national Workchoices framework in effect ‘protects’ local industry against the useful rigours of international competition.
But hey, fine, if we just want to be coal exporting schmos forever.
We’ll be coal (& iron, & gas) exporting schmos right up until there is none left to dig. Then I suppose we’ll just have to make some more, & dig it up and export it.
funny view
Looks like Howard might have been a bit loose with the truth of his ABS claims yesterday.
More Howard lies this time on ABS. Surprise, surprise!
Is it possible Sydney Uni will fund the academics’ defamation case against Hockey and now, Costello? One would hope so.
On a broader level, does this particular debate mean we are seeing a beginning of a roll-back of the Howard Government’s 11 year attack on so called “leftish” cultural elites? Could it be JWH’s attempted dumbing down of Australia might also be coming to an end? Or is that too much to hope for.
I actually feel sorry for Hockey, strange as it may sound. He didn’t deserve to have to try and sell this terrible policy, and it’s going to break him. They should have given it to Tony Abbott, who’d be like a pig in mud.
Their fanatical hatred of trade unions is eating the government alive.
Forgive me if this has been posted, but the view from an economist across the pacific.
Not all economists are so easily influenced by 80s fantasy as our friend HC.
Dr Buchanan and Dr Van Wanrooy were attacked by both Hockey and Costello. Dr Buchanan said he will not go ahead with legal action if either Hockey or Costello retract their criticisms of him and his team’s work.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/071001/2/14kjs.html
With Howard also entering the fray because of his untruthful comments about ABS statistics, it’s hard to know who in the government will blink first, though you can be sure that any decision to placate or inflame the situation will come from Howard. But given the current state of the polls, who knows which way he will go?
The link kymbos posted is worth reading. Via Mark Thoma, it links to discussion by well known Harvard labour economist Richard Freeman:
Hockey is pure Goebbels on steroids: keep repeating the message ad infinitum in the hope that everybody believes it in the end. Never mind the truth or empirical evidence. And shoot the messenger: it’s what tyrants have always done….
Choked with laughter and spilled my coffee when I heard Joe Hockey’s rant.
Went paralytic with mirth when I saw that he might find himself defending a defamation action.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke!
Workchoices [Joy through Work] Amendment Act 2008.
It seems to be doing Hockey a lot of good too. There has been a huge swing against him in latest polling.
Richard B Freeman
HC wrote:
“Allow markets to determine wages – dump all the union bullies – and use government to engineer a socially acceptible minimum wage.”
Oh, I see!
So in order for a majority to enjoy the benefit of small government, you impose “Bigger Government determination” on a minority of people.
You define it “a socially acceptible minimum wage” ?
Socially acceptable with who exactly?
The actual people affected by it or those that most benefit from a deregulated labor supply?
…From Justin
The Liberals and Nationals really have only themselves to blame for Joe Hockey’s struggle to hold his own seat. Let’s briefly revisit their “dumb decision” to pressure both Kevin Rudd and Joe Hockey to end their weekly guest apperances on the Sunrise program:
I wrote here on the 16th of April:
“Glenn Milne reveals that Joe Hockey’s role on the Sunrise program is being challenged by his own party: Wrote Milne:
“The internal bitterness over Hockey’s Sunrise performance emphasises other colleagues’ doubts about him: whether he has what it takes to convince the electorate at the end of this year�.
Did these other colleagues even stop to consider that for most of Hockey’s tenure on the program, his primary objective wasn’t to sell what is described in The Age today as the Howard Government’s “most unpopular policy”?
I argued here in April that the segment also presented Hockey with an opportunity to act as a less regimented member of the Conservative federation – enjoying the benefits of what I branded “The Arnold Schwarzenegger Factorâ€?.
In support of my argument, I quoted Ed from The Australian as he wrote on 14 November 2006:
“As the US election result shows, the race is on for the centre. California’s republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, provides the stand-out example of political survival through reinvention. He ditched unpopular policies and captured the centre, and with it almost 80 per cent of the vote.�
A voter’s decision-making can be as emotional, if not more emotional than it can be rational. My first reaction to the opponents of that Sunrise segment – both in the elite end of the Mainstream Media and the internal dividers within the Coalition – was that they were actually going to regiment Hockey rather than allow him to be himself.
To quote one dumb decision maker within the Coalition:
“Every Friday it’s just a free kick for Rudd. Joe’s always wanted to be Big Happy Joe. Well, that’s not enough.�
So, in other words, any objectives Hockey might have had for the segment outside the immediate “percieved” needs of the Party were suddenly regarded as irrelevant.
Months later, journalist Mike Stekettee admits on behalf of The Australian newspaper today that an ironic challenge for the Liberals if they lose the next election is that they’ll need to become “less conservative and more pragmatic”.
Oh really? How do you propose that will happen?
Specifically, would you restore that Sunrise segment after the next election with Alex Hawke as the Coalition representative in the event Joe Hockey is no longer available in parliament?
Since the end of that Sunrise segment, one that was so popular because it engaged the “very general public” in matters political, one could compare the subsequent career directions of Rudd and Hockey with the “post-ESPECIALLY FOR YOU” careers of Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan
For the benefit of “democracy in general”, I hope it is not too late for the next-term configuration of the Liberal Party’s “broad church” to contain its needed share of moderates as the proof is already evident in the recent NSW State Election that a “pure conservative” party only does appeal to a minority.
One thing is for sure: If Howard loses, expect much parallel analysis between what’s happening to Conservative politics here and in the United Kingdom.
…From Justin
Hockey seems determined that the academics will win an olympic sized swimming pool rather than a wading pool with this blatant display of arrogance.
Courts love displays of remorse, Liberals love displays of madness.
Mr Hockey may yet learn that while it’s standard fare for a politician to impugn another politician’s reputation, impugning a professional–in this case academic–reputation may well have serious legal consequences.
The unbridled lust for power knows no sense of propriety, decency nor morality.
The end always justifies the means in the world of Howardista machinations.
Bear Cave, I’m seeing it more as Kylie and Danii Minogue.
Today’s Government Gazette carries on the private attack on public work by academics.