John Howard made news recently by putting a couple of dull speeches up on YouTube, and Kevin Rudd has launched a big site to sells bumper stickers. As Mark has pointed out, these token efforts don’t really take the online plunge, they just move the same old campaign from talkback and letters pages to a new venue: “the Young Liberal and Young Labor junior apparatchiks have moved on from the traditional talkback phone trees to being alerted via email to post comments on MSM ‘blogs’ and vote in online polls”.
A new CFMEU initiative looks far more interesting as a campaign tool. The union has sponsored the production of a documentary about the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the Gestapo-like outfit that treats union members as if they were terrorists. The 35-minute program is being publicised via a YouTube channel, and when it launches on 14 August, the whole documentary will be available for download at the Constructing Fear website.
The Howard Government’s union-busting ABCC released a report (pdf) today claiming that smashing unions is good for the economy. Needless to say, The Australian ran hard with the story, giving it the front page, an opinion piece (“analysis”), and the editorial.
The report was prepared by Econtech, a firm that is heavily invested in the WorkChoices project — it was paid by the business lobby to sing the legislation’s praises. It is also committed to the ABCC, after preparing a report in 2003 predicting that government-sponsored union-busting would boost the construction industry. Econtech has now been hired by the ABCC, to verify its own predictions and justify its client’s existence.
If you don’t like the official evidence, invent some new evidence
It is worth noting that the 2003 Econtech report was reviewed by the Employment Studies Centre at the University of Newcastle (pdf). That review found fundamental problems with the Econtech methodology and assumptions.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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