Tag Archive for 'Heather Ridout'

Corporatism redux?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Economics, Industrial Relations and Media
. 16 Comments

There’s a bit of chat around the shop today that one of the mooted new stimulus measures the Rudd government might undertake – bringing forward tax cuts and LITO changes for low income earners – could be a way of counterbalancing an anticipated small increase in the minimum wage from the Fair Pay Commission. The suggestion seems to have arisen from the eminently well-connected Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group.

The Australian characterised such a move as a “wage/tax tradeoff” – ala the Accord, and Simon Jackman alludes to “corporatism”. However, there are some significant differences from the Accord – the most important contrasts with the 80s in Australia are that the reach of wages policy is much smaller (because movements in the minimum wage are relevant really only for “award-only” workers who are a smallish minority, and there’s little chance of flow on increases) and it’s less well thought out because it’s more ad hoc and there really isn’t a “social partner” actually representing the low paid to negotiate with, or the quasi-institutional structures for concerted policy formulation which existed in the past.

Continue reading ‘Corporatism redux?’

Redundant Ridout

Published
by
dk.au
1 year, 3 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Howardia, Markets and Politics
. 16 Comments

Those coal eating surrender monkeys1 sure get defensive when cornered. The latest shrill squeaking comes from Heather Ridout of AIG with the plaintive request to cut carbon dioxide later. Ali Moore nailed this duplicitous bullshit argument in an interview, pointing out that we’ll have to deal with it at some point in the cycle. Ridout’s response is to start with a ‘dry run’:

Well a dry run can take a number of forms. One approach is just to require reporting without a carbon price. Another might be to set a fixed price. So there’s a variety of things that could be put in place. We would still say we have to have a definite transition set in place so that after that dry run we move into a freer market regime where we ratchet up the targets. Hopefully by then we’ll know what the rest of the world’s going to do.

Heather, it’s called NGER. The legislation passed in 2007. Continue reading ‘Redundant Ridout’

  1. Props to Tim and Lefty E [back]