Hi Corin,

I must say I do enjoy reading your articles in The Australian because they make a lot of sense.

I do however disagree with you on the subject of awards. Whilst Labor has acknowledged that the award system is rigid, prescriptive and very complicated, the process of "award modernisation" is merely a band-aid solution. Whilst there will be fewer awards at the end of the process, the rigidity and prescriptiveness will remain. Furthermore, some workers will be worse off whilst many pharmacies are not expected to be open on evenings as a result of the exhorbitant penalty rates they will have to pay their employees.

Certified agreements and AWAs were ways of overcoming this, but Labor has abolished the latter. So there's no way past the award system unless there is a union in your workplace or your employer wants to bargain collectively. Flexibility is still killed under Labor's 'Fair Work' and award modernisation.

The solution is instead to allow for individual agreements which vary award conditions and having only one standard safety net for all workers across all enterprises and industries, with a view to phasing out the relic known as the award system.

The Australian people decided at the last election that the Workchoices safety net was too low. Perhaps allowing for standard penalty rates and overtime for lower paid workers would be the right bargain.

Thanks for the comment about the articles in the Oz. It is quite hard coming up with pieces that 'push the envelope' without being too far outside of the mainstream. I think I do ok on that front.

I think removal of the award conditions would help. I also consider that a no-disadvantage test is a reasonable policy for Abbott on penalty rates (and unlike some I don't think it's political suicide).

For Labor, they simply can't get to that position, so what I have proposed is a good solution for them, probably for the next Parliament. I think they are stuck until the election on a whole range of fronts.

The policy debates in Australia are being run by the forces of industry welfare, in both the Libs and Labor. Climate change (especially the Libs policy) is appalling. There is an across the board move away from elegant solutions from the reform point of view.

Don't worry, everything old will be new again in about 4 or 5 years, including pro-market, pro-competition views.

Tristan, explaining the difference between socialism and social democracy is usually the stuff for long theses. There's a limit on the length of posts on this site!

Essentially, socialism is about government ownership of stuff. Social democracy doesn't give a toss who owns it, just that the service is delivered as efficiently and as broadly as possible - so they tend to use agreements of various kinds to lock the service provider into delivering to the poor, the remote etc.

Socialism is about government micromanaging our lives and is based on the presumption we are idiots who can't manage ourselves. Liberalism is about minimal government intervention in our lives (so not like a lot of the "liberalism" in the Liberal Party). It assumes we are all rational and responsible people. Social democracy is in the middle of these two world views.

I note you claim the right to organise and I accept you have that right. But it does not include a right for you, or anyone else in a union, to organise me. It does not include a right for a union to presume to represent me in (and thereby exclude me from) discussions with an employer. Your right to withhold your labour does not include a right to hassle me to do the same.

The overwheleming majority of workers (and I am one of them) reject the unions. For much the same reason most people reject organised religion these days. Unions did some good in the distant past and that's about it - just like churches, temperance leagues and so on. We are much better educated these days and most of us see right through the claptrap of socialism, unionism, organised religion and so on.

Modern Labour has no reason to remain linked to the neanderthals, even if that link is little more than tokenism these days. Now some advice for the Liberal Party. It's high time you ditched your relationship with the loopy religious right.......for essentially the same reasons as outlined above !

I sent a letter to the editor of The Age in response to Dean Mighell’s article:

‘If Dean Mighell genuinely believed that unions should not be affiliated with the ALP (“Unions must leave Labor”, 11/2), he would move to disaffiliate his own union, the ETU. Given his union’s support for Greens, ALP members would be very pleased.

‘The ALP does not need to break its connection with the union movement, which actually keeps the party in touch with reality. It needs to strengthen it. It could do this by restoring the right of rank and file unionists to vote in ALP pre-selections for Lower House seats, but that is something that will not happen until ordinary party members and ordinary unionists use their internal electoral processes to make it happen.

‘Yours sincerely,

‘Chris Curtis

‘Emailed to letters@theage.com.au
As Green Dean can find the door’

It was not published.

Huonian:

Just quickly - your description of socialism is an obivious 'straw man': and your understanding of social democracy is radically at odds with the dominant historical understanding of that tradition. I include here both radical interpretations - and the relatively moderate and dominant interpretations that were 'mainstream' - especially in the post-war context.

Bringing all traditions "under the neo-liberal umbrella" - is in reality destroying the substance and practice of those traditions.

That's why attempts to do this must be resisted vigorously.

Corin,

I agree that reintroducing the no disadvantage test is astute politics from Tony Abbott. Both sides will be contesting for the middle ground on IR, which is somewhere between Workhoices and Dean Mighell's ideal world.

Where Abbott might be unstuck is in his proposal to exempt small businesses from unfair dismissal. I suspect many people will feel uncomfortable with that idea.

I must say that I have found Rudd Labor to be disappointing. At the last election, Rudd and his senior colleagues all said that they were "economic conservatives." Since then we have had industrial relations rollback to the 80's/ early 90's, increased protectionism to the car industry, government installing insulation and broadband Soviet-style, excessive and inefficient spending, essays condemning economic rationalism etc etc. In short, all the failed policies of the Whitlam era.

Kevin Rudd has effectively been a Trojan horse for old left ideas in Australian politics.