There’s a very comprehensive rebuttal of the biz “Workplace Reform” ads over at Talk It Out. Not a lot to add, except two quick points. The ads appear to be targetted to people hoping corporate profits will keep rising, and they’ll be getting fat dividend cheques. That’s odd, because as the Crosby/Textor leaked polling shows, the segments of the electorate who’ve moved against the government are, unsurprisingly, those you’d expect to have been most affected or most worried about WorkChoices:
And it tracked groups – including the so-called aspirational voters who helped elect Mr Howard in 1996 – who have shifted to Labor.
Nationally, the defections have been led by what the report calls “new Labor” – voters aged 18 to 24 whose numbers rapidly increased when Kevin Rudd took over from Kim Beazley as labor leader.
Part-time workers, voters aged 35 to 49 and “lower white/upper blue” collar workers – the middle income bracket – also were moving to Labor.
In NSW, voters who had dumped the Government included those aged 35 to 49, part-time workers, and the critical “lower white/upper blue” sector.
Any sort of advertising, political or otherwise, has to effectively target particular segments of the population. Given that the initial impetus from the ads was said to come from disgust among biz leaders at the ACTU ads that showed board members cackling over their pay rises while plotting to cut workers’ wages, I suspect the audience is actually the people who commissioned the ads. It’s feel good stuff. For them. If I were a shareholder in one of the companies indirectly funding this ineffective and self-indulgent propaganda, I’d be asking some questions.
Thanks Mark,
Its good to know I’m not the only one who thinks the ads are pompus and “speak down” to the viewer. They remind me of the parternalistic documentries from the 40′s & 50′s.
At the very least they need to sack the “creative consultant” – wonder if s/he is on an AWA
Ooops – that should read “paternalistic”
The bit I really love is the low frequency rumbling during the second half of the advertisements. It’s a cheap technique to make you feel uneasy, but unless you’ve got a subwoofer you’ll likely not perceive it quite as loudly as I did when the ad first came on. My first instinct was to change the channel
“I suspect the audience is actually the people who commissioned the ads”
They are being played on Fox News over & over again. I couldn’t watch long enough to count how many per hour.
Mark,
One of the ads that I’ve seen isn’t aimed at corporate profits, but at union standover tactics and coercion. This line at least has the potential to be effective, wouldn’t you agree? Fear of unions is hardly a key component of the Australian political landscape, but it’s probably not a good idea to concede the moral high ground to the ACTU and their acolytes.
We need more talk about the unions being scared about losing political power, their willingness to destroy wealth and lives in this country to keep that power and how job security is fundamentally underpinned by the commercial health of businesses.
Cheers
BBB
Much like the mechanical humming sound in ‘Eraserhead‘.
Fear of unions is hardly a key component of the Australian political landscape
HA!
The level of exposure these ads have received strongly suggests the media organisations are donating air time to the campaign.
Possibly some of the major advertisers are also using their leverage to get free or subsidised air time for the ads too.
There are plenty of young media planners at the agencies and TV networks who could identify those corporations, should Labor win.
Worker Unions bad- Employer Unions good. Yeah right!
Really barry? You think Australians intuitively respond to scare campaigns about the unions? I don’t think they do. I doubt that there is widespread visceral hatred or distrust of unionists. Maybe this is a misreading of the electorate.
Cheers
BBB
The whole ad smacks of a ‘nya nya na nya nya’ thumb gesture from the bright young things at commerce central, looking for kudos from the people who pay big bucks. If those prosperity ruining louts at the ACTU can do ads, so can we! Watch this people! I love the ads. They illustrate a number of points that take too long to do face to face. Hope they keep them on. The only people who will be impressed is the Liberal heartland, big business, and the small business turkeys whose Christmas has been delayed by the ‘Collective bargaining’ laws so conveniently arranged for them by that nice Mr Costello person. It’s hilarious.
Well, according to Malcom Farr these ads are working.
[link]
Dunno BBB, the boutique bit made me think of a butched-up Queer Eye promo.
I read that today, and laughed because if anything it’s the personal (individual) that has a huge impact on perceptions, the singlemost reason that the Govt is in the position it is in now. WorkChoices hurts individuals who try to bargain with the boss and those individuals know it.
Just OT for a moment. Interestingly reading Farr and Hartcher/SMH today it’s looks like a rearguard action is being fought by the columnists to find anything which can frame Liberal fortunes positively despite the obvious depth of trouble they are in.
I thought we had moved on. But I guess the Gallery types just can’t help themselves when it comes to horse races.
“look the old glue factory ready swayback has made up a couple of furlongs on the in form favourite with 1000 to go!”
You think Australians intuitively respond to scare campaigns about the unions
no. but that’s not what you said, you said
Fear of unions is hardly a key component of the Australian political landscape
which, I would argue, is wrong. It’s certainly a key component of the Liberal Party’s campaigning, and it’s what’s driving Rudd’s rapid disassociation from the Labor movement.
and this: how job security is fundamentally underpinned by the commercial health of businesses
oh, my sides, how they ache. If that is the case, why do businesses keep pushing for deregulation of workers rights? Oh wait, that’s right, because keeping people underpaid and overworked is good for business. The commercial health of business is dependent on job insecurity. It keeps wages low.
“We need more talk about the unions being scared about losing political power, their willingness to destroy wealth and lives in this country to keep that power and how job security is fundamentally underpinned by the commercial health of businesses.”
Jesus, Mary, and fucking Joseph, I have read some shite from right wingers on this blog but even an STAP or Razor would be embarrassed with that diatribe.Did you have a straight face? are you trying to wind people up?(worked for me) or did someone have a colt 45 to your temple.?Out of the mouths of babes,you really don’t get it do you? you wouldn’t have a clue would you? Here’s a hot flash for you,the “Unions” are the Labor movement,and as much as Rudd,,or any other of the so called “New Labor” leaders try to distance themselves from the unions they are wasting the sweet chardonnay smelling breath.
The Unions lost their power a long time before Rudd came on the scene,it started under a man called Hawke, of course he was about as left wing as Howard.So the unions are scared of losing their power are they?as against what?Corparations like Halliburton losing theirs.? A worse case scenario is a union can cause a company a little grief getting what they think is FAIR as against corrupt company’s who have cost thousands of people to lose their life savings. Of course that great crook Alan Bond who cost thousands of retirees their life savings was probably a member of a union.
barry,
I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. I meant the overall Australian political landscape, not the ups and downs of one election campaign. That is why I said ‘key component’. Fear of unions doesn’t even come close to defining modern Australian politics. It’s a second- or third-order issue. Now don’t try and wiggle out of that, barry.
Hence why real wages growth stops when labour markets are deregulated. And why wages tanked in small business as soon as unfair dismissal laws were abolished. Oh wait… See, it’s your kind of mildly plausible but economically illiterate thinking that causes some real damage. Have you ever asked why we weren’t all put on the minimum wage after enterprise bargaining, after the WRA in ’96, after WorkChoices? Probably not. Why? Because those lines of questioning lead down some unpalatable and inconvenient paths. The logical extension of your argument is that if only we can get job security up, you know make it impossible to sack someone, then we can also get wages up and keep generating new jobs. By now you are probably figuring out how to backpedal out of this one.
Christ you are a caricature, Gaz. You think WorkChoices doesn’t affect the role of unions in the workplace and by extension the political environment? If so, you’re all alone.
Is my heart meant to bleed for big-business shareholders now? Get your f*cking story straight.
Cheers
BBB
‘Christ you are a caricature, Gaz. You think WorkChoices doesn’t affect the role of unions in the workplace and by extension the political environment? If so, you’re all alone.”
Is that statement to be funny? of course it is going affect the political environment,with a bit of luck people will vote Howard out, Duh.
My caricature, your words not mine, as far as being an exaggeration,unfortunately is the reality.
“Is my heart meant to bleed for big-business shareholders now? Get your f*cking story straight.”
My story is some what straighter than yours,most of the people were not shareholders by choice.do you know where most of your super is going?spare me the bollicks.
add/ meant
Guido – malcolm Farr thinks it’s working – well, he would wouldn’t he? copyright Mandy Rice-Davies.
Reminds me of a bumper sticker which I DON’T think was meant to be ironic “No environment without a strong economy”
read ‘social justice’ or what ever your particulary huggy bear is for environment.
Let “us” keep Workplace Reform and Let “them” Eat Cake
Kevin’07 versus Let them Eat Cake in ’08
I’ve seen those ads too. (Or is it ‘adds to’?) They will backfire. Those THREE STOOGES playing thugs are Howard-hugging actors employed by the Howard-hugging ad agencies, and they are telling the electorate, “Vote Liberal or else.”
Yeah, which is quite different from the ‘Vote ALP or else’ campaign being run by the ACTU, isn’t it? Like I’ve said before: the unions are now the real masters of the politics of fear in this country. I won’t expect much comment about how that kind of a campaign is a threat to our democracy, though. That kind of talk is reserved almost exclusively for the Coalition’s electioneering.
Cheers
BBB
Bingo Bango Boingo wrote:
The unions are paying for all those re-hashed “be alert, not alarmed” ads turning up on the TV again? The scoundrels!
Seriously, if WorkChoices was so good for everybody, if the legislation really meant we’d all be on a one way ticket to employment nirvana, why didn’t the business council build an advertisement around that? Where’s all the talk of workplace flexibility? Where’s Dad home with the kiddies before dinner time? Where’s the extra money in your pocket?
But they didn’t do that. They chose to push the hoary old trickle down bullshit they’ve been pushing since Maggie Thatcher was still menstruating. It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now.
Hence why real wages growth stops when labour markets are deregulated.
yep. That’s right.
The logical extension of your argument is that if only we can get job security up, you know make it impossible to sack someone,
yeah, see, that’s just wrong. Job security is about making it impossible to sack someone without reason. This is why people aren’t scared of unions in Australia (or at least as scared as you seem to want them to be) – because the people who come out and make scary noises are, well, lying.
Well actually BBB it is very different. In case you hadn’t noticed the government has a fair bit more power, influence and money that the ACTU because they are, well, the government. Sort of comes with the territory unfortunately.
Here’s Peter MArtin on the Econtech report.
Even its authors note that its terms of reference make the report irrelevant – as no party is proposing to take us back to pre-Keating compulsory arbitration.
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your+say&subclass=general&story_id=1036748&category=opinion
adrian, the ads we are talking about are not government ads. They are ads paid for by small and big business. Have you been paying the least bit of attention? You seem to be saying that it is OK to lie and frighten people into voting a certain way as long as you are not the government. I am not surprised.
barry, get with it. Trying to argue that real wages growth stopped after we got rid of full-blown arbitration, after we brought in EBAs, after the WRA in ’96 and after WorkChoices is not just wrong, it’s tragic. You need to stop reading the ACTU press releases and the ABC radio spots and get to the data: the ABS’ Wage Price Index for the year to March 2007 showed a rise of 4.1, so it clearly continued to run ahead of inflation post-WorkChoices. So you’re wrong on the wages front. Now let’s go further and look beyond wages to get to household income. Mark B made the good point in another thread that this is a better measure of the prosperity of ordinary workers, since it takes into account wealth redistribution from the welfare system and tax cuts: “The median household income range in 2006 was $1000 to $1199 per week. Ten years ago the equivalent median in 2006 dollars was $778 to $906 per week. Real household incomes have increased by around 30 per cent.” That’s based on 2006 Census data. Note it’s a measure at the median, so we’ve avoided letting the incomes of MacBank executives, etc. skew the numbers.
Cheers
BBB
Now BBB, it is you dear fellow, who is not paying attention. If you believe that the ads do not have an input from the government, or are not influenced by the government, then I’ve got some Nigerian friend who would love to contact you.
For example.
Sure Econtech are covering their backsides. But that won’t worry the govt – they’ll just leave out from their ads the subtlety that the report’s results are relevant to a completely bullshit counterfactual.
The irony is that I reckon Workchoices probably has boosted employment a little simply by delivering a straightforward wage cut; a boom of this magnitude would otherwise have led to more real wage growth (ie a wider sharing of the benefits of the boom). But that’s not a line the government (as distinct from employer associations appealing to their own members) can easily run.
Way to miss the point, adrian.
But let’s look at that piece anyway: the source for the article says that it was not an accepted view within VECCI that VECCI was obliged to help fund the campaign because it had previously received money from the Government. The source goes on to say: “We have a good relationship across the political spectrum … for us to slip back into this automatic assumption that we’re a Liberal organisation is not in VECCI’s best interest.” So much for the power, influence and money of the Government. Do you even read this stuff before linking to it?
Shorter adrian: “ACTU scare campaign OK, small and big business scare campaign not OK.” Difference? The latter agrees philosophically with the Government and the former does not. Again, no surprises here.
Cheers
BBB
Maybe you’d be interested in a second hand bridge, BBB. Incidentally I never stated that the ACTU ‘scare campaign’ was OK, because I wouldn’t class it as a scare campaign. More an information campaign.
I hope that you read the whole article, because you inadvertently left out the key paragraphs:
Doesn’t take a genius to join the dots.
Yes, it would seem the taxcpayer is at least passively subsidising the ads.
Very dodgy.
The misleading econtech report will blow over – but in order for that to happen the ALP needs to runj simple IR ads
ie We will take return the IR system pre-Workchoices, to the flexible collective bargaining system which gave us the boom, and which protected employee entitlements.
In the last 18 months since Workchoices, we have seen conditions slashed yada yada…
Another entirely deceptive campaign from the government. If their record is so good, why do they need to to bullshit us like this?
Don’t you guys get it?
He is a flying squad troll, not a discourser. He knows what he says is lies, but is out to hammer pointless responses into you.
Didn’t you see the dickhead from the mining council last week on Jeff Mullet’s ABC show and don’t you ever watch Milne, Blair or Pyne at work. It’s not discourse, its brainwashing!
BBB, if you want to make a legitimate comment as to sources of investment, talk of getting the likes of Trujillo to show a bit of leadership-by-example by giving up some of their tens of millions for the good of the enterprise, instead of always squeezing it out of the poor proles.
Hi paul walter,
Feel free to get stuck into the ABS numbers. I tend to trust them, though.
If the shareholders of Telstra, or any other company, want to sack their board and bring in one that doesn’t pay the CEO, etc. all those millions, I’d be all for it. It’s their cash. But second-guessing them is about as bright as second-guessing an electrician who pays one of his workers $x per hour as opposed to another who gets paid $y per hour.
I’m not sure what you mean about the ‘sources of investment’, but if you want to go down the investment path: are you in favour of getting rid of capital gains tax and dropping company tax down a few notches? You know, keeping money in the hands of the entrepreneurs so that they can up the capital stock and the marginal productivity of labour? Even the ALP knows that this is the only way to improve living standards for ordinary workers. I won’t wait for you lot to support Rudd and Swan when they begin to implement the right agenda, though (as they inevitably will). No, we’ll get all the old rubbish about earned and unearned income, greedy corporations not pulling their weight, the profit share of the economy, blah blah blah. And the average punter will be none the wiser because the Liberal Party refuses to do the hard yards on selling the right policies. Instead, it tried to sell WorkChoices on the basis of significant effects on productivity, an argument which any idiot can dismantle in about 30 seconds. Thankfully we’re staring to overcome that diversion and we’re getting to the employment effects and allocative efficiencies, which should have always been the main game.
Cheers
BBB
“Thankfully we’re staring to overcome that diversion and we’re getting to the employment effects and allocative efficiencies, which should have always been the main game.”
It a bit out of context for you Bingo Bongo,but that’s the only thing you have said with any merit.Because ol chum you see that is why Howard is going to get the bums rush. “Work Choices” did you really think all the great un-washed was going to buy that pile of horseshit? Oh well from previous comments of yours you have.
I see from your last burst, you have been listening to question time?ECHO NOMICS Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Paul, we know he’s a troll. It’s just that since i stopped hanging out at student unions, there haven’t been many young liberals around to laugh at.
barry, barry, barry. It’s disappointing that because you can’t actually engage with the material you resort to name-calling. You got the real wages angle hopelessly wrong but you don’t seem to have the class to admit it. Even Gaz is showing you up. How long has it been since you left those student unions, anyway?
Cheers
BBB
Give us all a break BBB. When I find you ‘engaging with the material’ I will be pleasantly surprised.
Until then, even engaging with the imaterial would be a start for you.
adrian,
Tomorrow we’ll all have a chance to engage with some very relevant material: the June-quarter LPI figures from the ABS. We’ll have some real wages figures. Might be up, might be down. Now what do you reckon? Are you on the ‘WorkChoices = no real wages growth’ bandwagon with barry? Given the state of inflation at the moment, it might be worth jumping on.
Cheers
BBB
As I read the figures, WorkChoices has depressed wages growth beyond where one would expect it to be given labour market conditions. However, in some low paid occupations where AWAs are prevalent, wages growth has been negative or only very slightly positive. And women have done a lot worse than men.
I’d refer people to this analysis of a range of statistical data from Professors David Peetz and Alison Preston:
http://www.business.vic.gov.au/busvicwr/_assets/main/lib60013/awa-ca-earnings-paper.pdf
There’s a shorter discussion in less technical terms by the same authors at On Line Opinion:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6138
Please note also that because the changes have not been in effect for all that long, those already in the labour market who have not changed jobs are reasonably unlikely to have been touched by WorkChoices to date.
I’d also ask everyone to keep this discussion civil, please.
Thanks Mark. The main point is that the labour market deregulation process has absolutely failed to stop real wages growth. And why should it? It doesn’t detract from labour productivity because only capital consumption can do that in the long run. WorkChoices will be no different. That the Liberals used productivity to build the case for WorkChoices almost defies belief. They are now focussing almost exclusively on job creation but the horse has bolted and they’re in for a belting.
Mark you’ve probably inadvertently hit the nail on the head. As you imply, labour scarcity relative to capital is how you get increases in real wages (hence your ‘expectations’ arising from ‘labour market conditions’). The best thing that can be done for ordinary workers is to get rid of the things that get in the way of capital accumulation and resource allocation, like capital gains taxes, stamp duties, etc.
Cheers
BBB
Mark, in keeping with your request I will use less histrionics with the bongo,after all he does have his point of view,
Look Bongo me old mate I was a bit rough on ya,I know all those Lamington drives with the “Young Liberals” to help feed the needy of Africa,and hangin it out with the beau-monde can tend to give you a jaundiced view of the world.I know the young liberals have a solid tradition of making sure the working class get a fair shake,and “Work Choices” was not even on their agenda at all , well at least, not according to Raymondo a young man I met at the wine tasting event to raise money for the inner Sydney drug and homosexual rehabilitation centre.
But of course you are right Bingo,we should all wait until the figures come out and we can all make an educated analysis of the situation.
That’s very odd reasoning, BBB, as it ignores distributional issues both absolutely and relatively. It doesn’t make too much difference to someone working in retail whose real wages are static or going backwards. I mean, even Howard is too frightened and always has been to make the actual neo-liberal case for cutting wages.
Gaz old chum,
Here’s a hot flash for you: if the Young Liberals were smart it would have been on their agenda. I doubt they’ve got half a clue what WorkChoices is about, though.
Christ, out of the mouths of babes… I had to look ‘beau-monde’ up. Lay off the cones, Gaz.
Cheers
BBB
Hey Bing,the only cones I have at my age is ice cream cones,my wife warms it up slightly in her mouth first so she can feed me.I’m glad you have a sense of humour your gonna need one if you keep posting here some of them are a lot fucking crazier than me, and what’s worse is some of them are serious.
Cheers Gaz.
Look, I’ve had it with this. This is supposed to be a forum for intelligent debate not undergraduate insults.