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The Forum > Article Comments > Praise workers who strive for balance too > Comments

Praise workers who strive for balance too : Comments

By Russell Marks, published 10/1/2013

Instead of whingeing about politicians, Ms Vanstone wants us to get out there and work harder than our competitors. But we already are.

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Excellent point in a very well written piece. Work-Life Balance should be our aim, a healthy workforce is a productive workforce - no question.

But Vanstone's own whinging about "she complains that normal Australians seem to have developed a reputation as "whingers", at least in their attitudes toward parliamentarians." Maybe because we have genuine complaints about our leaders, or lack there of. Purhaps if any parlimentarians are reading this they should take a good long hard look at themselves before crying 'Nobody loves me'. The public are sick of the mud slinging, anything to win 'no matter the cost' politics that Australia is being subjected to at the moment. I would say that if they cleaned up their act we would have a lot less complaints about their antics.
Posted by Arthur N, Thursday, 10 January 2013 9:53:43 AM
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Yes it was great for a morning chuckle. One of the comments I liked was 'La Dolce Vita in Rome hey Amanda. Whats stop whingeing in Italian ?.'

"Amanda Vanstone Has Had Just About Enough of Your Bullsh1t

Someone at Fairfax needs to be taught the difference between an opinion piece and the baffling meanderings of someone in a sh1tty mood. "

http://abafflingordeal.com/2013/01/07/amanda-vanstone-is-pretty-annoyed-with-you/

It wasn't the best of the day though, I liked the one about feral cat haters being racists...

'The feral cat looks perilously like a metaphor for the universal unwanted asylum seeker and migrant'

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/hatred-of-feral-cats-hides-a-sinister-truth-20130107-2ccqu.html#ixzz2HWr0YOGR
Posted by Houellebecq, Thursday, 10 January 2013 10:54:57 AM
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We all know there are lies, damn lies & statistics.

Academics write most of the stuff, so know just how much bull is used in compiling, & how often they are used to hide, rather than illuminate the truth. So when an academic, or in this case an apprentice academic, starts spouting statistics you have a pretty good idea they are using them to support some argument, that is unsupportable with actual facts.

Statistics are all too often used to pull the wool over unsuspecting eyes, just as has been done here. The left are particularly good at making blindfolds out of words on a screen.

No consideration is given to our falling productivity, & our growing inability to compete in this world. No, just a look at the time clock, as if that has much to do with work undertaken, & completed in a given time.

Even our last remaining large industry employer, the mining industry is feeling the effects of poor productivity, but when you look at our really large employers, federal, state, & local government bureaucracies, & academia, we find a truly horrifying lack of productivity.

So sorry Russell, merely stating the number of hours in the building won't hack it in the real world. That is really academic, in the scheme of things. Perhaps if folk actually worked a bit more of the time in the building, they could go home earlier.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 10 January 2013 11:44:21 AM
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If only hasBeen.

You work harder, you get more work to do.

The hours are set in stone, and the deadlines are based on unpaid overtime.

I am most productive working from say about 4PM to 10PM at night. I could easily get a whole 'day' of work done that way, without all the distractions. My boss would rather have the warm and fuzzy feeling that I'm there in 'business hours', just in case, even though we only speak once a week or so.

The bosses create the lack of productivity by their short shortsightedness. They'll be damned if they will let people work their own hours, or in their pajamas at home, even if their work is of superior quality and quantity that way. They simple don't trust them, and they actually prefer a facade of bums on seats rather than widgets produced.

So what could be a win-win, ends up a lose lose, all because of the adversarial attitude exhibited by the likes of Vandstone here.
Posted by Houellebecq, Thursday, 10 January 2013 12:47:53 PM
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In the original article Amanda Vanstone says, "The answer is simple. Just do not look to the parliament as an example what is good in Australia."

Which is precisely the problem...

Let's do a deal. We'll all stop whingeing as soon as we can say,

'The answer is simple. Just look to the parliament as an example what is good in Australia.'

I'm not holding my breath and in the meantime I'll look for a feral cat to kick in the guts.
Posted by WmTrevor, Thursday, 10 January 2013 1:41:32 PM
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The author says:

"According to official OECD statistics, Australians have among the strongest work ethics of all the developed economies. In 2011, each worker worked an average of 1,693 hours (or 32.5 hours per week), which is more than workers in Britain, Sweden, Ireland, France, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands"

The myth of the overburdened Australian toiling ever-longer hours has overtaken the myth of idle the idle Aussie in the “land of the long weekend” that it was crafted to supplant. Both are wrong. Australians do not work exceptionally long or exceptionally short hours by OECD standards, we are about in the middle of the pack – working fewer hours than Britain Sweden etc. but more hours than the USA, Italy, New Zealand, Japan and Canada. In 2011, Australia’s average annual hours worked of 1,693 was about 5% less than the average across the OECD of 1,774 hours:

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS

And, the long-term trend is for average hours worked to decline, not for us to work “ever longer” hours:

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/latestmf/1393.0~5

Comparing Vanstone’s rather bland and formulaic conservative homage to the hard work of ordinary folk with the imprisonment of absconding workers in the 1830s takes the art of drawing a long bow to a whole new level.

And no employer group I know of argues that we must adopt Asian wages and working conditions in order to compete. We compete on productivity, not unit costs.
Posted by Rhian, Thursday, 10 January 2013 2:59:24 PM
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