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.

I’d also question how effective tax cuts for the low paid will be given that the low paid aren’t paying an enormous amount of tax already, with the restructuring of the thresholds and LITO that’s already been done. Whatever the merits of this proposal (and that’s all it is at this stage, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were adopted), I think we’re seeing another instance of policy making on the run from the Rudd government. Economic summits, Hawke and Keating style, might be talkfests, as Lindsay Tanner recently claimed, but some actual public debate about important tax and wages policy measures wouldn’t go astray, as opposed to their advocacy through a nod and a wink from business groups and in the pages of the press.

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. Any business who hasn’t already prepared for various carbon prices by now really doesn’t deserve to survive. A few cent movements in the Aussie Dollar dwarf the impact of a carbon price for most industries, yet strangely we don’t see the AIG calling for an unfloating of the currency.

Meanwhile in Poznan, Australia is doing its darndest to shift the goalposts on any effective global agreement taking shape by pushing for various landuse and forestry activities to allow us to keep digging up, shipping and burning coal into eternity. Anna Rose, Erwin Jackson and John Hepburn have details. The AYCC also notes that this comes at the expensive of the ratification of Labour’s promise to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.