These changes will do the following things

Shift more wealth away from middle and low income Australians to the high end of town. This will eventually create a two class system instead of three, therefore making the ladder harder to climb.

Have people working more hours to the neglect of family, having a major impact on relationships and increase family law court hearings.

Increase crime due to more people living on the poverty line (in line with what happened in the US)

Further increase exploitation of the young and people of none English speaking background.

People will resort to stealing other employees payslips to see how much they are on. This will create must angst and unrest in the workplace. How many times do you hear on the news of a shooting in the workplace in the US?

Howard knows he has people against the wall with the population currently in debt more than ever thereby rendering them unable to fight these laws. You can be fined for going on strike while corporate greed is on the increase. These laws are immoral, unjust and would have many people who fought in 2 world wars for this country turning in there graves. Australia used to be unique and gave everyone a fair go and that’s what made this country special. We need to be innovative like some of the smaller European countries and not try to compete with low paid countries.

Gruen says that the most reliable statistics say that full time employment is one third of previous levels. The only workers protected by the proposed IR legislation are full-time employees. Casual employees will be exposed to the arbitary conditions imposed by AWA's.

AWA's, for those of you who haven't already had the pleasure are secretive and offer no protection to the employee from abuse.

Another disturbing aspect of the new legislation is that hiring employees will become more complex for small employers.

Already small employers are supposed to offer their employees a choice of super fund, but if you have looked at the required paperwork you will realise that its beyond the capacity of most accountants.

Most small businesses will be daunted by the prospect of reaching individual agreements with each employee and will either cease to hire or engage a labour hire company like ADDECO to hire workers on their behalf for the length of the contract.

Well done Mr Howard for supporting multinational big business yet again.

As MechEngineer stated a fair go is now not available.
Fairgo,RIP.

Apart from Greens, Democrats and Family First are there any other Political Parties in Opposition?

We used to have a Labor Party, it must have been completely snuffed out at the last election? Otherwise, the only other conclusion is that Labor is totally in accord wih the Coalition Government.

One would have thought that IR is an issue Labor would be arguing hard and fast about.

Can anyone truely think the ALP is runing dead on this issue?
Then its time to come out of the cave,just read all threads on this issue and see its split the country.
Really? just wait and see how very much it has split us in 2 years.
Howards place in history is asured he miss used his present from Latham the senate control to harm our country not help it.