It's quite true, as Rhian points out, that no employer group argues that we must adopt Asian wages and working conditions in order to compete. It's merely that while Australian wages and working conditions remain above those in the Prison Republic of China important sponsors of the Opposition are not happy. Work Choices was all about reducing that gap to be more "internationally competitive".

The Labor Government has been a mild and unreliable impediment to the transfer of remuneration from those who produce the goods to those who profit from them. Hence the near frenzy, which has reduced parliament to probably its worst level of behaviour in history, with trumped up scandal after trumped up scandal over the last couple of years to get rid of the government not at the scheduled election time, not now, but YESTERDAY. Former Work Choices Minister Peter Reith has recently been quite outspoken about why (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/make-ir-an-election-focus-says-peter-reith/story-fn59noo3-1226142154475).

EmperorJulian

Ah, of course, it’s a conspiracy! Businesses might say they want skilled, productive, well-paid employees (after all, they make the best customers as well as the best workers). But what they really want is miserable impoverished wages slaves earning $20 for a 50-hour week. And the Coalition is determined to give it to them!

The evidence for this being - Peter Reith’s nostalgia for WorkChoices (under which, incidentally, real average weekly earnings in Australia rose, while average weekly hours worked fell).

And the government that tried it on got dumped so decisively that its leader lost his blue-ribbon seat, and the two following leaders of whose party have busted a gut trying to convince the electorate they wouldn't dream of trying it again. But still the takers dream of getting a bigger slice of the company income at the expense of those whose production earns it, and they urgently want a government they can rely on to deliver it to them. Hence the endless muckraking making the parliament a bad joke

EmperorJulian

I agree that Workchoices was unpopular, and that unpopularity was a significant factor in the defeat of the Howard government.

That’s not the same, however, as contending that the opposition intends to drive down Australian wages and raise hours to match China.

My point is that there is neither direct nor indirect evidence for this claim. It is not in any of the arguments for deregulation propounded by government or business groups, and it is the opposite of what actually happened after Workchoices was introduced.

In fact, during the whole post-war era, there has only been one period which saw either a sustained and significant decrease in real wages, or a sustained and significant increase in average hours worked – and that was under the Hawke-Keating Labor governments of the 1980s and early 1990s. The reasons for that are interesting, but a whole other story.

If the Liberals really do have a secret agenda to drive down wages and raise working hours, I’m happy to report they have a 100% failure rate.

That's an issue I have with the majority of these articles, they always need to turn it into a binary proposition, praise workers/scorn employers.

Similarly, the Union movement has never turned from being combative over the decades. Case in point, look to the recent stupidity with the MUA and automatic ship loaders. The apparatchik in the Union movement must have seen it coming but instead of years ago working with business to discover ways they could set up manufacturing industry here to make the loaders and then export them to the ports in SE Asia, their answer is to try and find a way to stop them and somehow halt progress. Now Patricks will import the auto loaders from Finland. Capital will always be used to replace high wages where it can, that's a good thing, it improves productivity.

Deregulating the labour market DOES NOT EQUAL LOWERING WAGES except as a clarion call by myopic Unions. It should be seen as a good thing and yet many, including the author, see it as nothing more than a race to the bottom rather then a way to help increase productivity, benefiting the nation. We don't need more regulation, that just equates to more regulators, more HR Staff, more lawyers all of these people increase GDP, make the current account worse, lower productivity and make it harder to compete on an already competitive international stage.

Good article, sound and well argued.

Re Hasbeen comment

The fact that statistics and data can be distorted doesn't mean they arn't essential. Your argument seems to be that since something can be mistreated, anyone using that something must be mistreating it. You provide no argument at all, you just ridicule a person based on their profession.

You just want people to donate their labour to their employer you crazy man. Workers, like employers, are not charities. How have you got time to be writing this, shouldn't you be working overtime for free?