Most of the dirt the Libs are going to be dishing out at each other on Four Corners tonight is already in the public domain. There was a rush to the papers over the Christmas break as ex-Ministers leaked their little hearts out trying to one-up each other on who really knew Ratty was the problem first, and who bravely told him so (answer = very few of these stouthearted souls). But letting all their dirty laundry hang out on tv is going to be an awful look. Just ask a previous generation of nongs who bragged to Four Corners way back in 1989 about how they knifed John Howard (sounding familiar?)… Jeff Kennett is almost certainly right that they’ll only be doing themselves and the Liberal party damage, even as they try to stake out their ego-driven places in political history.
But, if unlike Jeff, you’re going to be watching, here’s the place to comment. Some won’t want to miss it - as the Liberal party morphs into the comedy gift that keeps on giving.
Elsewhere: Both An Onymous Lefty and Andrew Bartlett pick up on one bit of news from the program - Joe Hockey’s revelation that his Cabinet colleagues had no idea WorkChoices was forcing down wages and stripping conditions. Lefty:
Who were these morons? Why did they THINK the Business Council of Australia was pushing for it? A love of paying higher salaries to their employees?
Bartlett:
Those who are worse off as result of Work Choices (or other measures like Welfare to Work) will not feel any better to know that so many of the people who made the decision to adopt the measures which caused them hardship didn’t even bother to understand what they were doing.
Makes one ponder in the worst way,as to where we would be, had not the voters done the right thing.Thank goodness they/we did. Looking back, they really were a shabby lot.And may well still be if I think 4Corners may reveal.
That doesn’t make sense. I mean it does in terms of the annals of folly but surely the point of removing regulations like this in a cooking economy is to create downward pressure on prices or at the very least not let ‘em rise too quickly.
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That and fucking the unions.
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John Howard must’ve known what he was doing surely.
Of course they knew. It just less damaging to paint as unforseen folly what was actually the unpopular but expected outcome of policy. A single example: ‘How did the security agencies ‘fail’ in the assessment of the threat posed by pre-invation Iraq? The question imediately frames the discussion as an issue of poor execution rather than contemptable design.
While I’ll relish tonights program, I can’t imageine it will dish the real dirt. I shudder to think what was actually know and expressed within the Liberal Party during the lead up to the 07 election.
“John Howard must’ve known what he was doing surely.”
Adrien, John Howard knew exactly what he was doing. It’s just that he made a few errors of judgment (like, he thought he could walk on water!).
Got a bottle of Chardonnay chilling in the fridge and the makings of a latte for afters, unfortunately no popcorn available for during.
What’s that German word for delighting in the discomfort of others?
“Who were these morons? Why did they THINK the Business Council of Australia was pushing for it? A love of paying higher salaries to their employees?”
Umm, the flexibility and less-red-tape aspects? As SATP has been describing on another thread, employers are not exactly in love with situations where they’ve got staff on a variety of different awards with different conditions. IR complexity is not a small business owner’s best friend.
And before you all jump me on this one, I’m merely suggesting why WC may have seemed appealing to Coalition MPs, even if it didn’t work out brilliantly in practice.
No, it wasn’t because they didn’t believe there was an inflation problem at the time. It was to remove upward pressures on wages and protect profit share at a time when the labour market was very tight. And “removing regulations” was a joke. WorkChoices the Act is over 600 pages long with 600 more pages of regulations and explanatory memoranda. Things like making bargaining for something the Minister prohibits by regulation a criminal offence are hardly either deregulatory or reflective of any real desire to create or move towards a free market. It was all about skewing the balance and John Howard’s obsession with crucifying the unions.
Schadenfreude.
Paulus, at 6, we crossed.
But your red tape concerns can be answered here. The text of the Workplace Relations Act as amended by WorkChoices:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/wra1996220/
Prepare for a long scroll down to the bottom.
And the most common complaint from business was its complexity and the regulatory burden it laid.
However, I don’t want to have yet another thread about WorkChoices. As you note, we’ve done it to death on another thread. Please focus on the main point of the post.
Err, what exactly IS the main point of the post?
Oh, that the Libs are nongs. Well, we knew that already, didn’t we?
By deliberately exckludig all views an information that ran contrary to the fantasies of Donald Rumsfeld.
Me at dinnertime: “I’m watching Four Corners at 8:30, that OK with everyone?”
(I’m sure it’ll clash with some new vacuous LA teenage must-see)
Spouse: “Having a gloat, are we?”
Interpret this as you will.
Me on phone to close friend who is ‘politically aware’.
“Make sure you you watch “4 Corners’ on TV tonight to watch the Libs kick shit out of each other”.
He, “Cool, what channel is it on?”
Why dont you access this again historically from as many sources that are possible with the two types of reliable,and see what sustains as the embellishments of finer moments of reasoning to the now not quite fully employed as was.The latest statistics on unemployment employment remain somewhat strange,and the ABC summary of the facts as were,wouldnt pe-ass any type of test normally associated with the range of words that compare with positive and negative.So Many part-time jobs were created,so many full time jobs lost.So say if 35,ooo, part time and 78,oo full time jobs lost is the number positive or negative!?.So 78 multiplied by number of full time days in thousands for numbers of days at work,and pay,and costs to both employees and employers before during and after,correlated, with the same for part-time work,does the then comparison in round figures have any significant positive value!?
One remember dissecting rats in Biology I at the Carslaw Building. But the hapless little mammals had well and truly carked it.
Tonight’s 4 Corners is going to be more like a vivisection.
Prof. Charlie Birch would never have approved of such gut-spilling, he was a very moral sort of bloke. However, Charlie’s common human decency didn’t rub off too well on degenerates like me. With less than an hour to Showtime, my twitching is already beyond volition.
Never knew drooling anticipation could be so sweet!
“Jeff Kennett is almost certainly right that they’ll only be doing themselves and the Liberal party damage, even as they try to stake out their ego-driven places in political history.”
Whenever Jeff opens his mouth he does the Liberal party damage and long may it last. People in states, other than Victoria, will probably never understand why he got the boot, but he was John Howards’ template man. Jeff was the mad idiot who kicked off ‘no choice at work’ and is now hell bent on charity work for a wealthy football club and depression for people who find it hard to make a living because his visionary laws casualised them.
That Howard stared them all down is a fact. None of them had backbones, not one!
Perhaps he selected them for that reason.
“Umm, the flexibility and less-red-tape aspects?”
WorkChoices created even more red-tape, particularly with the introduction of the Fairness Test. It also gave employers unfair power to force workers onto contracts with lower pay and fewer conditions and entitlements.
Gawd, I’m having an organism! Not a single spine amongst them……and the same spineless lot are expected to form a good opposition?
I think Howard thought WorkChoices would be a rerun of the GST - that people would begin by hating it but in the long run would realise it was in their best interests and that JWH always knew best after all.
The timing of the extension of ‘mutual obligation’ to single mothers and dependant spouses I believe was built on that belief - soften up the electorate for a year, and then, when they accept that WC is good, dump all these inexperienced, unskilled and unempowered people into the workforce.
Whaddaya mean, “Perhaps”? I think the word you want is “Indubitably”.
All the time he was lying to us I thought his mob all knew. Now after hearing how often he lied to them and they believed him, I can only agree that they are indeed a useless crew the likes of which I hope we never have to put up with again.
The continuing thread running through the whole programme was that none of those big boofy hairy-chested political head-kickers (Downer..weeell he’s the token kewpie doll
) had the balls to take on the mean and tricky Rodent in his den.
Even that wily arch-strategist Arthur Sinodinos scampered away before the proverbial and predictable excrement hit the Brinsmead.
Just what dirt did/does Howard have on them?
Who were these morons? I reckon Nelson was one, Vaile another. Probably McGauran too.
Hell, the thing for all of them was that life had become so easy and none of them wanted to put out the ratsak.
Bottom line: Liberal Party Nobs hated Costello more than they hated defeat.
None of them were prepared to knife Ratty if the legatee was $mirker.
And hasn’t $mirker put on weight since 24 Nov 2007? Wonder what his comfort food is — Dollar Sweets?
Gee, what a misleading post.
They didn’t dump on each other - it was fairly gracious with most emphasising the strength of John Howard and the fact that there was no better candidate. The linen was not very dirty.
Hockey said that some of his Cabinet colleagues didn’t know. An unfortunate slip that changed meaning more than a bit.
So what anyway if wages and conditions deteriorate. If an excess supply of workers is associated with excessive wages then a wage cut is what is called for. There was the lowest unemployment for 34 years under John Howard - soon set to soar I am sure.
The age old left wing fallacy that you address poverty via the wage system. You don’t - trying to do this just creates unemployment since employers are not social welfare agencies - they employ to the point where productivity matches wages.
You sensibly address poverty via the tax and transfer mechanisms of government. By taxing the rich and giving to those poorer. Not by charging employers more than a worker’s marginal product which creates unemployment and misery.
But you guys have a strange way with the truth. Phil Travers - most of the jobs created were full-time jobs. Not sure what you are trying to say. Your free-association rave suggests you were probably just confused.
Oh, what a quality viewing event. I could have handled three hours of former Ministers taking a public dump on Howard. 10/10!
Highlights for me:
1. Costello effectively admitting he has no spine(did anyone else hear Keating say ‘low-altitude flyer’ every time he came on?)
2. Hockey still bullsh*tting about Dorkchoices. Bahah! As if they didnt know it would rob punters blind. That was the whole point. Do you STILL think we’re stoopid put here?
3. Sino’s blunt assessments. Note that the smart one left at the right time.
4. Pyne: his presence confirmed that electability problems are not just part of the near past for the LNP, but also the future.
BTW interesting Kim how you interpret a TV show before you have seen it. But what does it matter - ha, ha - when you couldn’t give a stuff about whether the views you express accord with reality or not.
As if to confirm that they were/are/will always be a ethics free zone, all we saw tonight is theat they continue to lie about their lies. They lied to the Public, each other, themselves and posterity. Has anybody seen hide or hair of the Corpse who Walked?
I must say if we had to have a Liberal leader for eleven and a half years I’m actually glad it was Howard if the only alternative was Cap’n Smirk, who came across as utterly, utterly insufferable. I thought Judith Troeth’s observation about his behaviour — that he’d cultivated a chosen few in the party and treated the rest with disdain — was particularly telling.
Odd how most of them were behaving as cagily and evasively as though they still had something to lose. Only Robb and Hockey seemed (relatively) realistic, relaxed and frank. Except of course for Christopher Pyne, doing his little I-Told-You-So Dance.
I wonder whether we’ve all aged as much as that lot in the last eleven years.
Hehehe, have you ever seen so much malice in a person’s eyes as that whenever captain smirk mentioned Howards name? Creepy, almost homicidal looking.
And if he ends up recieving the order of the garter………….well, he might just end up being the second PM to mysteriously vanish.
The ‘Howard-refused-to-leave narrative’ conflicts with the ‘We-wuz-gunna-lose, but dinnae wanna be reduced-to-a-rump-under-Smirker’ one. At least Minchin and Abbott were honest about this: after Minchin’s plan to replace Howard early 2006 fell through, he and Abbott couldn’t see Costello doing any better.
I find it hard to believe that the Downer-convened ‘Soundings’ group (Bishop, Turnbull, Macfarlane, Andrew, Ruddock, Hockey, Nelson and Robb?),who met around the 2007 APEC, to decide whether or not Howard should go, weren’t fully versed in what their private polling was telling them: Costello was a poor prospect. If Howard refused to fall on his sword, then the Soundings group, who it seems were authorised by Howard to replace him, choose not to because Costello was the only contender and he was widely disliked.
The Smirker - is he seriously hurt by Howard reneging on their ‘undertaking’ to hand over the leadership? I can’t tell.
Judith Troeth’s observation, that Costello cultivated a small core of supporters and treated others within the party-room with disdain, would explain why he never did a Keating, by forcing a losing spill and garnering the numbers from the backbench. The wasn’t a base on which to build.
It was interesting that Joe Hockey had a starring role on the programme. While Hockey trumpeted his courage in telling Howard that he should probably stand down after the Soundings group met, Hockey’s not telling the Australian public that Workchoices needed a fairness test because it had an egalitarian design flaw (as he admitted he knew), but needed tinkering with because the Unions had run an expensive scare campaign, indicates Hockey is not courageous when it comes to the weak and vulnerable in the labour market.
I found it ironic that after years of bashing the ABC they ran to it in order to use the cachet of 4 Corners to attempt to shape the first rounds of recriminations. Round one - goes to the ABC!
I think, as always, PJKs role is understated. If my memory serves me correctly, he released a well-time statement just as the rumours were moving at APEC.
He said Howard leaving would be an act of political cowardice.
Howard would have known he was right.
And it gets Worse for the LKibs with Newspoll showing Labor leading 57-43 Two Party Preferred, but the Sting in the tail is the Preferred PM - Rudd 70%, Nelson……9%
Ouch
Four Corners confirmed for me that most of the gutless wonders inside the rope knew that they were cactus no matter who held the helm, but believed the then El Rodente, now Little Johnny Stableford, was the best “core” around which to Build a Better Firewall. Think Possum was first in Oz blogdom to jerry to this and called it after linking the leaked Croby-Textor “bombshell” to events unfolding “on the ground”.
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/of-sydney-lines-and-firewalls/
I am thinking that PJK and JWH will join together eventually.
In terms of thanking the taxpayer for the lifestyle they both enjoy.
Bench-warmer Hits Single Digits:
Holy Toledo, Frankman! The Honourable Member for Wentworth must be going quietly ape with those “Nine Percent Nelson” figures.
Harry Clarke Says:
What a load of dishonest crap.
“excess supply of workers” simultaneously with “lowest unemployment for 34 years”.
Maybe you have some deeper point to make, Harry, but at the moment you have shown us any stats that would indicate that you’re not, in fact, a total loon.
Well, Harry, presumably yours won’t (I know this because I used to be a cosy tenured academic myself) so why should you care?
I can’t believe you’ve actually said that in public and don’t appear to be ashamed of it; have you got any human sense of other people’s lives at all? If you went down my workin’-cluss suburb’s Coles and said it to Joe Blow in the dog food aisle who’s just lost his job at Mitsubishi, he would give you a vicious smack upside the head. At the very least.
Costello comes across as the biggest loser in the program. His colleagues knew Howard wasn’t the answer, but they (aside from the inconsequential Pyne) weren’t convinced that was Costello was the answer. That’s why they didn’t press Howard to resign (that and their spinelessness).
Costello thought he’d get the job on the Buggins Turn principle. After all, he’d been the deputy leader since before Howard was leader. He didn’t want to have to work for it. He could have asked Howard for a different portfolio after the 2004 election to broaden his appeal - defence, foreign affairs, health or education. But that would have meant mastering a new set of briefs, which was too much work. It was much easier to say on in the familiar role of Treasurer. Or he could have gone to the back bench and hunted down Howard, as Keating had hunted down Hawke. Howard was popular and won 4 elections running? So what. Hawke had also won four elections running, but that didn’t stop Keating.
Every on this program repeated the line that Howard stayed on too long as PM. We already knew that. Liz Jackson should have asked them, including Costello himself, whether Costello stayed on too long as Treasurer.
Shorter Liberal Party Cabinet:
None of us had the Precious. The Prime Minister had the Precious. None of us dared take the Precious. Oh, the Precious, the Precious! how we wants it! how we desired it!
Seriously - what a bunch of whingers. You imposed idiotic policies that you now claim you didn’t even understand, so you lost.
Personally I’d be more interested in the story of how Workchoices was conceived, drafted and implemented than in the show we got tonight. That’s where the disconnect with the population set in. All this backroom negotiation was a reaction to events.
Costello. The final bleat. It’s the one thing I thank John Howard for. He saved the country from Costello. Narcissism on a schtick.
More from John Quiggin:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/02/18/howard-haters/
Spot on.
The show was boring as batshit IMHO. No disrespect to Liz Jackson who did a good job. But as Kim said, it was all so predictable. All this blaming/positioning/self-exculpation was already on the public record. It only reinforced how well we’ve done to be rid of this spineless mob. But not much else.
and here comes the Shamaham.
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/dennisshanahan/index.php/theaustralian/comments/memo_wayne_stay_out_of_cupboards
Pavlov, Did you get an C- for coming bottom of your class in English comprehension? If you read the comment (r-e-a-d, slowly now and think) you would see that I said wages should be boosted via the tax-transfer mechanism not by forcing employers to pay wages that did not match productivity - this only creates unemployment and misery.
The contrary view that wages should reflect what a bunch of latte lefties believe is just is close to the Labor Party’s ‘no production’ option - we should all be millionaires and work should be abolished.
SJ, You are a loon yourself. Getting wages of unskilled workers to the point where they match productivity creates jobs. This occurs naturally in free labour markets (m-a-r-k-e-t-s again very slowly) where employers pay workers the opportunity value of their labour. There was excess supply of labour at the unskilled end of the market and the Howard government cleared most of it.
I notice, Mark, that John Quiggin agrees with me that the exchange on Four Corners was much more civil than Kim suggested in her forecast of program content. He waited until he saw the show to draw conclusions. What a spoilsport!
Harry, WorkChoices allows the Minister to personally veto what goes into AWAs, along with 57632 other regulations..
Tell us again what WorkChoices had to do with free markets.
Incidentally, while the Liberals are being petulant and blocking the Government’s IR bills in the Senate, the Minister who holds all that regulatory power is Julia Gillard.
If you want to see deregulation of the labour market, you should urge the Liberal Party to stop being obstructionist. Otherwise, the Government may have to resort to plan B, which will involve Gillard regulating the labour market as she sees fit, using the power she inherited from Joe Hockey.
Nelson09 (%). I like it.
There was nothing much surprising in 4Corners. The Coalition backbench (front bench too for that matter) has long been known in my household as ‘Howards Cowards’. They’ll just need some time to figure out who to hide behind now.
“There was excess supply of labour at the unskilled end of the market and the Howard government cleared most of it.”
It was the work wot set them free, right Harry?
How long is it going to take you to twig that it’s not ALL about the economy? Community, society and common human decency still count for something, as Little Johnny Stableford’s flogging at the last election clearly demonstrated.
I think the Liberals in retrospect were reasonably honest and answered the questions without too much spin. So, at 27, HC, you are right in saying they were gracious and reasonable. A devastating election loss is good for politics. It clears the air. Pity JWH wasn’t there to answer some questions and come clean (if that were possible).
Still, Harry, “Hockey said that some of his Cabinet colleagues didn’t know” is incredible. It is either a lie, or one of the most amazing revelations of modern politics. Either way it’s damning. This was the CABINET. It was their job to know. This is the Marie Antoinette defence. The Liberal Party needs to get rid of the whole lot of this useless, public purse bludging rabble and start again. From scratch.
hc
out of interest, could you please point me to a free labor market in operation, so that I can see how one works for myself?
Was under the impression that all labor markets in industrialised world were regulated to some extent, but would take it that this is not the case.
Please advise.
Cleared it via what mechanism? You’ve acknowledged elsewhere that the reduction in unemployment predated workchoices:
So I guess “dishonest crap” is the correct conclusion.
Well Mr nine percent Nelson has proven that the more people get to know him, the lower his popularity falls.
I can’t wait for the real story of Howard and Costello. I hope Howard comes out and speaks eventually. I agree with Costello that Howard was never going to let go, but Costello never had the balls (or put in the groundwork) to take it.
But being annointed by Honest John as the successor for a party completely destroyed was just poetic.
And finally, I love seeing our Harry Clarke getting his knickers in a twist on labour market reform, again. Yes Harry - we need more flexibility to lower unemployment… um, inflation. Oh, whatever - free markets, huzzah!
Just to add my 2c to the WorkChoices thing, there is a semi-plausible argument to suggest that pushing down wages at the low end might see more people employed - something like the USA, where the local McDonalds is way overstaffed by Australian standards.
The further argument is that if you’re worried about the living standards of those low-paid, their income can be supplemented through the taxation and welfare systems.
As others have pointed out, the problem with this argument is that through either ignorance (or more likely) unconcern, the Liberals didn’t compensate the low-paid. Furthermore, the problems with WorkChoices went far beyond money. It’s about dignity, too.
In any case, Harry, John Howard, by the sheer ham-fistedness of WorkChoices, just cruelled the chances of the kind of change you’re proposing - cuts to low-paid workers’ pay, compensated by government transfers - happening for a generation. So you can thank him for that too.
I suspect that the transcipt of “Howard’s End” will come in handy over the next few years. There are so many quotable quotes from the truly stupid.
In this attempt to rewrite their parts in Liberal Party and Australian history, Abbott, Costello, Hockey, Downer et al failed dismally.
Sorry, Harry, lecturer in English Dept at Melbourne U for 17 years (and I know you know how hard it is to get an academic job, especially there, so no cheap jokes please) and now making a living as a literary critic and reviewer, ie through comprehending what I read, so perhaps your sarcam is just a tad misdirected. If only through sheer long experience, perhaps I can read between the lines of what you write.
For a start I was not commenting not on your fifth paragraph, but on your third. I read the whole comment, as I always do, and am fully aware that you were arguing that abstract, impersonal “misery” might be assuaged, eventually, if only governments had the good sense to follow your economic model — an argument I note not everyone agrees with.
But my point was that to be able to write a sentence like ‘So what anyway if wages and conditions deteriorate’ at all, you would have to be completely unaware of what actual real individual people’s inability to pay their bills, and I mean this morning, is like. I wasn’t engaging with your economics, a subject about which you know infinitely more than I; I was engaging with your prose style and what it reveals. And for a man still adhering blindly to the notion that John Howard is a noble fallen hero, You Would Do Well to be a little more careful about the way you sling round aspersions on various other people’s intelligence.
I was thinking last night while watching Four Corners that it’s like a Greek tragedy for them. All that hubris coming home to roost.
Oh, what a HERD the parliamentary Libs must have become under Howard. Peter Costello said as much, if Joe Hockey’s comments weren’t enough, although Costello’s gripe was probably more along the lines that it should have been HIS herd. It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, kind of thing.
I look forward to the mini series.
Hockey actually impressed me, more honest than the rest. Could he be a future opposition leader after Malcolm blows it. Which he will. Don’t think its in the man’s stars to be a political winner.If Hockey stays round long enough he could become a real threat to Labor. Who else on the Opposition side knows how Rudd ticks? That said, apart from some of Hockey’s revelations not much knew. All it really achieved was to remind the electorate of how cagey (dishonest?) and out of touch they all were.A bit ho-hum, really.If the forthcoming doco on the Liberals is going to be like this, it’ll be bloody boring.
PC, Didn’t you study comprehension in your lengthy stint? In a short note you can’t pick out one para, ignore the rest and then claim to have understood the text. And sorry, that’s exactly what you did.
My point remains and it is absolutely sound. You do not meet social objectives by setting wages. You do it by the tax and transfer mechanism. This has the advantage of not creating huge unemployment.
Robert Merkel, What you say is not true. The opposition to liberalising labour markets was based entirely on the misconceived notions of the left and the ludicrous view that employers should operate as social welfare agencies. This erroneous theory permeates the left in Australia like some insidious brain disease. A sophomore economics student knows it is wrong.
There is nothing inappropriate at all in arguing for reduced real wages for unemployed unskilled workers and substantially increased transfers to them. Indeed I have been a strong supporter of negative income taxes - and a strong opponent of ham-fisted trade unionism - for 20 years.
hc
if you transfer tax revenue raised from richer workers to subsidising poorer workers, all you are doing is changing buckets.
I assume that the employer still pays, indirectly, through higher taxes.
Effectively, what you are proposing simply provides a wage subsidy to employers - they don’t have to pay a living wage, because the government takes up the slack, meaning they get cheaper labour at taxpayers’ expense.
I can’t see that this equals a deregulated workforce, and any benefits it appears to have would appear to be (IMHO) illusory.
I’m sure it would also create resentment amongst those paying higher taxes, and ultimately lead to either widespread tax evasion, demands for higher wages to compensate for higher taxes and/or a brain drain.
Michael Kroger has some interesting ideas about how the Liberals can reorganise themselves in today’s Australian. However I’m not taking odds on the prospects of Kroger’s proposals avoiding the usual fate of bold proposals for structural reform of political organisations.
mckenzie: the argument goes that if, indeed, more people end up in work, that this subsidization is a good thing because (a) it’s better for those who would otherwise not be working to have a job for a whole variety of reasons, and (b) it’s better for the overall economy, because it means that those people who are employed who otherwise wouldn’t are contributing something employers are prepared to pay for, even if it’s not very much.
I’m not convinced that a) the pool of workers to whom this would apply is all that big, b) that the people pushing it would actually go for the quid pro quo of the cross-subsidy, given that the trend of the last 20 years has been for the top 1% to cream off an ever-bigger slice of the pie for themselves, and c) that, again, it’s not just about money.
Didn’t mind the show at all. Seeing Liberal Pollies talking honestly is such a novelty.
Minchin was right … the rodent should’ve retired gracefully in 2006 but the Milne article ended that (a cornered rat is vicious). And Sept 2007 was no time to change leaders. And the only alternative was Co$tello.
In hindsight, Co$tello should have quit politics in 2003 when he must surely have realised that his colleagues were never going to support him (which is why the rodent, wisely, did not honour his undertaking)
Longevity was not the problem… control of the Senate was. If workchoices had been put through a decent committee review with broad community input, the problems would have been identified and the legislation modified. Howard and Minchin knew exactly what Workchoices was about and wanted even further deregulation of the labour market.
IMHO
The Liberal’s “70 per cent of Labor’s front bench are ex-union bosses” billboard on the corner of Annerley Road and Crown Street, Woolloongabba has finally been removed. Just sayin’
I have to agree with Mark - very boring. I learnt very little new from that story. The really big news was Glen Milne’s scoop a while back.
I think there is a bigger issue here relating to journalistic tactics and method though. I haven’t seen a decent expose on the Liberal party for years. With this particular story, the problem was Liz Jackson. While I know and appreciate that she can be a very fine journalist, very few Liberals will ever fully open up to her. Her daughter is a very prominent ALP figure in Sydney and even ran Newhouse’s failed campaign. While you can’t judge the mother by the daughter, I would be very surprised if given the family history that many senior Libs at all let their guard down with Liz Jackson. Chris Masters would have been able to extract more I think.
The other element lacking from the story was the total absence of the factional background behind the individuals involved. Note especially that Ruddock was totally absent - who whilst being a nominal moderate has become a very close personal friend and confidant of Howard in recent years. Hockey is a NSW Mod and would naturally be averse to Howard but is even more skeptical of Costello who many moderates believe led them round the garden path. Minchin was pissed off at Howard’s appeasement of Costello supporter Pyne (SA Mod) in the penultimate cabinet reshuffle. Downer just wanted to be the Godfather Kingmaker. Judith Troeth has always hated the Costello faction as part of the whole Victorian thing. Abbott was unsurprising. Andrew Robb was broadly associated with the Kroger/Costello people in Victoria. Note the absence of any Queenslander (Brough told Howard to stay) or West Australian in the story. McDonald always felt Howard wasted him in useless spots in the ministry - so no surprises there either. Costello lacked the toughness to test his numbers in 2006 and paid the price. Sure he might have lost the first time but it would have showed bottle. It took Keating a few goes to blast Hawke out.
All in all a yawn hour followed up by a mildly more interesting Media Watch. Next time they should interview or at least get some backgrounding from Andrew Elder, Peter van Onselen or Christian Kerr. A journalist without identifiable ALP links would be good too - if they want to actually extract some new information.
The “70%” billboard on Fairfield Rd near the Tennyson turnoff was still there on the weekend however.
The significance of the Four Corners program was simply that it writes those positions into history, and in that it was a good piece of journalism. That was also probably the incentive the program offered to the participants.
Fatso Hockey’s sudden discovery that many of his colleagues didn’t understand Workchoices is rich. Let’s not forget this is the clown who tried to besmirch the reputation of Buchanan and others who published research highlighting the effects of Workchoices.
With this saga Hockey has revealed himself to have no backbone, which his mates won’t forget. His political career is over.
Pavlov’s Cat said “If you went down my workin’-cluss suburb’s Coles and said it to Joe Blow in the dog food aisle who’s just lost his job at Mitsubishi, he would give you a vicious smack upside the head. At the very least.”
No, in HC’s universe said man would know his place and respectfully doff his cap. Just like they do in Dickens.
He who gives a vicious smack “upside the head” first has to be faster than the intended recipient, or to catch the intended recipient unawares.
It is my experience that this smack-upside-the-head “hair trigger” response curiously goes missing and is never attempted if the intended recipient exihibts a manner which indicates they won’t be harmed much by the smack, but will deliver a return clout (or series of return clouts) that may shake the smacker’s fillings loose. Just sayin’.
That aside I am prepared to comment on the show without watching it. A bunch of spineless monday morning quarterbacks.
This is all quite funny.
Harry Clarke says in one breath that m-a-r-k-e-t-s (in his pathetically condescending way) clear excess labour supply when allowed to operate at a level free enough that employers can pay workers “the opportunity value of their labour” (Duh!), but in the next breath ignores the long term trend of economic expansion and associated falling unemployment that was happening before Workchoices, and states that it was g-o-v-e-r-n-m-e-n-t ( of the Howard variety) that cleared the excess labour surplus.
The only problem being, of course, that markets were chugging along clearing that excess labour through a combination of productivity growth, basic labour demand growth and reduction in the levels of structural unemployment associated with long booms anyway via the 14 years of economic expansion that had occured before Workchoices was ever implimented, and which has continued through the 2 intervening years since - yet with not a single piece of econometric analysis worth a pinch of shit ever having been produced that even remotely suggests that Workchoices had any effect whatsoever.
When Harry says “There was excess supply of labour at the unskilled end of the market and the Howard government cleared most of it” regarding Workchoices, I call bullshit and until I see someone produce the evidence that many before have tried and failed to do, I’ll keep calling bullshit.
“In any case, Harry, John Howard, by the sheer ham-fistedness of WorkChoices, just cruelled the chances of the kind of change you’re proposing - cuts to low-paid workers’ pay, compensated by government transfers - happening for a generation. So you can thank him for that too.”
Another area where cutting minimum wages will be less attractive in the future is the result of increases to the LITO (low income tax offset) increased in previous and upcoming budgets, leading to a tax free threshold of $20,000, which reduces much scope for a tax trade-off, particularly when many of the people affected by cuts to minimum wage may not be earning that much over this figure. And that is not even taking in people working part-time or people who have been in a job for a couple of months, who aren’t going to see any upside.
An enhanced low income tax offset (LITO) that will mean that low income earners will have an effective tax free threshold of $20,000.
In response to Mckenzies theory, the real deal is of course you’d have what’s happening in the US where the government is subsidizing the lower paid to an extent, however what is happening (or will happen) is that subsidization is being removed with limits placed on welfare and calls to reward those at the top by reducing or negating their tax load. (After all, tax is theft.)
And that’s why you find those on the bottom working two or three jobs to make ends meet. A triumph in market effiency (hey look! the carbon resource units are working three times as hard for min input.) great for machines, not so great for people.
that’s why it needs to be followed up with social programs reminding everyone that those on the bottom are lazy and could fly if only they had the guts to lift themselves up by the bootstraps.)
I thought I read in one of the Christmas holidays exposes, Antonio, that Brough was saying he told Howard to go.
Nelson and Bishop have lost the battle to fight for AWAs.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/nelson-and-bishop-rolled-on-awas/2008/02/19/1203190792661.html
I stand corrected. Good pickup Mark!
Paul Kelly has a good article in the OZ about the sordid affair: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23232263-5013947,00.html
And obviously above I meant (Ian) McLachlan not (Ian) McDonald! (Never drinking decaf again…)
Decaf bad!
Peter Co$tello opined that new Liberal MPs arriving in 1996 or at subsequent elections, knew only JWH as Leader, and couldn’t conceive of any other leader. What condescending twaddle, as if they’d been raised in Brave New World test tubes, and transported to Canberra to be JWH robots, with no other life experiences. All of them presumasbly were aware of leadership contests and leadership ‘coups’ within their State branches, etc.; or Federal political history, littered with knifed corpses.
He was telling the viewers that many of his colleagues were idiots. No wonder they spurned him. Senator Troeth’s remarks rang true.
BTW, it looks likely the next two months in the Victorian Liberals will be bumpy, with State leader Baillieu, Kennett, Costello, Michael Kroger, Judith Troeth et al jockeying for influence…..
Possum - “When narcissism collides with entitlement”:
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/when-narcissism-collides-with-entitlement/
Dr 9 per cent and his deputy Madame Twin Set are in deep trouble, having been rolled on such a fundamental issue.
I wonder if last night’s revelations might have spooked a few in the party room.
Despite Harry’s protestations, WorkChoices is now about as popular as rape. The Liberal Party will now shy away, for decades to come, from tilting bargaining power to employers. It’s a big moment in Australian politics.
A coalition that lied expecting to be believed for so long, spout the same old nonsense right up until the election, get tossed, still think somebody will believe them, then begin to realize they’ve been found out. So the finger pointing and denials start but Cossie gives us a whole new line [ Ambig 80 ] and still wants to be taken seriously! How out of touch is that?
I was disappointed in 4 Corners last night. It was just self-serving twaddle.