WHILE the Federal Government has attacked academics whose study of WorkChoices it disagrees with, it has also stopped researchers from getting crucial information to study the effects of the industrial relations system.

Workplace Authority chief Barbara Bennett has written to two researchers in recent months denying access to samples of people’s individual contracts — Australian Workplace Agreements — citing privacy.

Before WorkChoices, her predecessors allowed access to AWAs, protecting privacy by blacking out names and addresses. But Ms Bennett has said she “would need to seek the agreement of both parties to an AWA” before releasing any.

Ms Bennett’s predecessor, Peter McIlwain, gave evidence to a Senate committee last year that 40 per cent of WorkChoices’ AWAs stripped entitlements to public holidays; 52 per cent reduced shift loadings and 63 per cent cut penalty rates.

No more figures have been released, but 11 months later, the Government introduced the fairness test to combat bad publicity.

Academics, even those previously sympathetic to the Government’s IR policies, say the non-disclosure policy has left the public, and the politicians who formulate policy, flying blind.

“It’s disappointing when people try to stop research because they are insecure about what the outcome might bring,” said Macquarie University academic Dr Paul Gollan.

Associate Professor Gollan co-wrote a study in 2001 with another of Ms Bennett’s predecessors, former Peter Reith staffer Jonathan Hamberger, which argued against the proposition that AWAs were harming workers.

Professor Gollan said the Federal Government should invest much more in research. “Probably 95 per cent of people WorkChoices doesn’t negatively affect … But today, you can’t even find out who they are because you just don’t know how people are disadvantaged.”

Gary Rothville, a lawyer who has argued the employers’ side for 30 years, most recently for Collins Street firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, said access to information was a “fundamental principle” in industrial relations.

“Lawyers have a professional duty to reveal all relevant facts to the court. It would be interesting if politicians would adhere to the same stricture,” he said.

Monash University academic Professor Richard Mitchell said he believed the Government was “worried about what research could uncover, but they are trying to obscure that by talking about privacy issues”.

And Melbourne University’s Colin Fenwick said it was “striking that the Government puts so much emphasis on this policy instrument, but does not seem to have carried out research that would support its central tenets”.

But Ms Bennett defended her decision, saying all AWAs were now lodged electronically, making it more difficult to mask who the parties were.

Asked if the authority should simply print out the agreements and use a black marker to obscure names and addresses, she said, “It isn’t a conspiracy.” Saying that “we’re listing information as much as possible”, she admitted that her “ability to get information will improve”.

The link to the David Barnet gobsmackery is [link].

It’s a love letter, the purest expression of Howard Huggery you’re likely to see, if you’ve ever wondered about what makes the species tick, their wiring.

eg In case you thought Hawke and Keating were originals, not so: David disabuses us of the notion, sets us straight that they actually just took over JHo’s economic agenda. The piece has a surreal “Black Knight” quality to it.

No kidding, he actually writes: “(JHo) faces oblivion at the hands of Stalinist historians”.

David clearly thinks his hero deserves purple robes, and the least he can do is give him a wrap with some pretty purple prose. Sounds like they’re working their way through the 58 dozen of the good ones that got put down in 2001, under professional advice, and having a right old laugh as they dream this stuff up.
I think we know when the election will be called: when the good gear runs out.

One’s a dialectical …., the other’s a …… material.

Danny, I understand there’ll be more contributors to Unleashed in due course.

Interesting mix of contributors tere.

Bruce Hawker will be close to labor’s market intelligence since it’s his firm that 07Kev was effectively outsourced to. Trevor Cook’s firm had Graham Morris, the famous jwh confidant, as a partner at one stage, so he’s prolly worth listening up to for that reason alone. Watching these two PR pros shape up, 2.0 style, could be amusing and instructive.

There’s the obligatory boffin ( term not used pejoritively here btw) -”director of the Australian Election Study since 1987 and chair of the 50-nation Comparative Study of Electoral Systems since 2003″.

And there’s some funsters, like the proto-laboratchick with the soul of an inspired copywriter -”Liberals on Drugs” is her piece. But most fun is the odd couple, the tory tosspots, one ancienne and one nouveau, who show how not to write for the 2.0 platform.

Looking at the comments score tells a story: the other sensible thoughtful contributors, capable of nuance, get a few, generally considered, and in some cases they reply, setting up a genuine discourse, as befits the paradigm.

On the other hand the crude hagiography and bowdlerism of the liberatchicks, snr and jnr, is given long shrift. They attract nearly 5 times the number of comments, mostly unkind, as the other 5 contributors combined.

It’s a bit sad and unsporting really: one would have thought the Cons could have found someone a bit more worthy to front for them. Perhaps it’s another Luvvy plot, a la the Great GW swindle after-show debate, to invite only Cons on that make them look silly?

The saddest part was Barnett not being able to resist having a pathetic dig at his rival, more successful in terms of impact, jwh biographers. It’s as if he’d just found a cuckoo in his nest.

I think the blogosphere provides a really important democratic function, by providing a forum for discussion and exchange of views - views possibly not canvassed by the MSM. If it facilitates public discourse, how can it be a bad thing? I’m baffled.