Don't attack the poor bastards on the minimum wage or welfare payments. Attack the unionised bludgers who are paid too much. That includes government employees at all levels including Statutory Authorities and Government sponsered organisations or enterprises.
Bring the inflated salaries down and scrap the red tape (esp climate change and whs) that they endlessly produce then we would become much more efficient, productive , and more of us would become wealthier. Especially the poor.

the election cycle gives unions much punching wait. Every State election nurses, police, teachers, child care workers scream that the State next door earns more than them. The unionist line their pockets and the grossly overpaid ABC staff report on the poor teacher who can't live on $80000 a year despite at times being totally incompetent. We are going to find out the hard way that you can't play this game forvever. Many more will not have jobs and they won't be happy despite gaining degrees from the education industry (really how many economist who can't predict anything do we need?)

For long time problem for unemployed was not minimum wage level, rather they were punitive cut-off deduction points and rates imposed by Centrelink (Social Security).

Eventually the start point for deductions was raised, and the % deduction rates reduced.

Eventually allowing work credits to accumulate influenced the start points.

In order to consider lowering employment wage rates essential is to review these deduction rates, how they impacts on potential employees.

Minimum wage rate influences some employers decisions to employ.

Many employers, mostly in small business act mostly in hope nothing goes wrong as aware they currently break the law.

Those who employ people short term off the books, some partly to avoid pay-rates, some partly to avoid age restrictions.

Many employ off-the-books paying cash-in-hand to avoid needs to satisfy what they regard as encyclopedia volumes of legal requirements they struggle to understand and complete.

What stats for those who work cash-in-hand, how many actually earn enough to lose most to Centrelink ?

Dear Nancy,

Your arguments are of an economic nature.

As I said, I am not an economist, nor a capitalist, nor responsible for whatever economic reasonings other people give for lowering/removing the minimum wage or otherwise. Frankly, I don't even care about economics and the economy or about undermining the basis of capitalism.

So if you want to discuss economic reasons for-or-against the minimum wage, then please go ahead and discuss these, but not with me.

My case is simple: two people, of free will, fully informed and acting in good faith want to make a deal between them (note that if the deal is not in good faith, then it is a case of fraud and/or coercion and there already sufficient laws in place to cover that). None owes the other anything, they just freely choose to relate between them in a certain way. Neither of them calls themselves an 'employer' or an 'employee' or their deal 'employment' - just two individuals who want to conduct their life privately, without hurting anybody else and without being under anyone else's umbrella. Then out of the blue, or rather out of the black, comes government and tells them that they are not allowed to make that deal, that if they proceed it will take one or both to jail. That is violence and that is completely unacceptable. So basic and simple that it must come way before and override any economic considerations.

Sometimes I despair at the stupidity of so many. Repeat a lie often enough and the mob will believe it. The earth is flat, the minimum wage causes unemployment...

".. businesses would be willing to take a chance on these job seekers and pay them more than the $5 to $10 an hour they currently receive on welfare." And this is sooo incredibly generous! Unless of course you know that the welfare rates in Australia are so low that no adult can actually survive on them. (Do you know what dumpster diving is?) So paying more (but less than $16 an hour) is supposed to help them? If this author thinks so, I think he should be prepared to tell us what his hourly rate is.

Worse, some casuals get "over $20 an hour". How extraordinary! A person who gets no sick pay, no holiday pay, no security of tenure should get $20 per hour! What happened to the concept that society was supposed to "improve" the lives of people. This author urges we go backward. And somehow that is not surprising. On-line opinion gets more reactionary all the time.

The only comment worth repeating:

"..the article obviously haven't done a simple comparison of how the minimum wage levels in various countries correlate with their unemployment levels.

Countries like Mexico, with one of the world's lowest minimum wages (US$0.58), has the same unemployment level as Australia (about 5%), which has the world's highest minimum wage. In fact, countries with the highest minimum wage levels also have among the lowest unemployment levels.

Until the GFC, high minimum-wage countries like Ireland and Greece had low unemployment levels. The sharp rise in unemployment in recent years had nothing whatever to do with the level of their minimum wage and everything to do with the hyper-salaried CEOs, politicians and banksters who ran their countries into bankruptcy to pay for their own mistakes.

It's the MAXIMUM wage that has done so much damage to the world economy, not the minimum wage.
Posted by Killarney, Friday, 13 December"

Almost a decade ago, I published a study which concluded that increases in the West Australian minimum wages led to some job losses. This result should not have been a surprise to anyone: I doubt there’s a person in the country who believes that we could double the minimum wage tomorrow without some job shedding.

But what David Leyonhjelm’s article misses is that the employment effect of raising the minimum wage is only half the picture. To know whether raising the minimum wage is a good idea, we also need to look at its impact on earnings.

While the evidence is somewhat mixed, it seems likely on balance that raising the minimum wage delivers a considerable pay increase to the working poor. Shop assistants and hairdressers, early childhood workers and cleaners are among the workers who rely on minimum wages.

To pretend their pay packets are irrelevant is like complaining that Australia lost 9 wickets in the first innings of the Adelaide test. If you can’t also acknowledge that we made 570 runs and won the test, you’ve kinda missed the point.

Our nation’s anti-poverty toolkit shouldn’t just contain one instrument. To address disadvantage, we also need quality early childhood services, school resources targeted where they are needed the most, a great TAFE system and fair superannuation taxes. On all of these fronts, the Abbott Government is slipping backwards.
But minimum wages matter too. Like most Australians, I don’t want to live in a nation where adults can be paid as little as $5 an hour for their labour.

In January 2004, shortly after my study was released, I wrote an op-ed for the AFR which concluded ‘The evidence from the West Australian minimum wage experiment appears to provide support for regular, moderate increases in the federal minimum wage.’ I haven’t changed my view since then.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser and the Shadow Assistant Treasurer.