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The Forum > Article Comments > Here’s hoping ScoMo’s new consensus with the unions is not what it appears > Comments

Here’s hoping ScoMo’s new consensus with the unions is not what it appears : Comments

By Graham Young, published 28/5/2020

Is Scott Morrison's industrial reform agenda a serious attempt to make industrial change, or is it #ScottyfromMarketing looking for a mechanism which shifts blame away from him if the economy fails to recover quickly?

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It's impossible to take seriously the man who smashed so many people's jobs by over-reacting to the China virus and listening to 'experts' but is now talking up jobs. It is impossible to take seriously a man supposedly on the right of centre who has given into the unions. It is impossible to take seriously a man with a plan to spoon feed some more the already shockingly padded building industry. It is impossible to take seriously a man still using a 2010 'model' that says immigration of 160,000 - 200,000 is needed. It is impossible to take seriously a man who talks big, but allows a potential work force of 700,000 to remain permanently idle and untrained.

Scott Morrison is in a job he cannot do, and should never have had. We all have our ideas of the 'worst Prime Minister'. But this one is s real lulu, with a lot of damage to do yet - unless he is removed like all the other duds. The man who should have been PM is still available, as are some cabinet potentials to replace the scaredy cats Morrison keeps under his thumb.
Posted by ttbn, Thursday, 28 May 2020 10:10:36 AM
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Ttbn,

Funny you should write that - I was just thinking that Morrison may go down in posterity as one of our best Prime Ministers ever - certainly he could still be the PM in ten years or more. His prompt actions against the Covid-19 virus may have disrupted industry and employment, but it saved perhaps thousands of lives (if we compare Australia's experience to that of the US) and will get the country back in business far, far earlier than other countries (again, such as the US, about to fac3 its second wave).

Policy is always a risky business - we can't anticipate the future and all the uncertainties that it may bring. Taking the precautionary principle against the virus, it was surely better to crack down hard, increase testing and tracking, isolate clusters, etc., and save lives, even if (horrors !) we had such a lot of empty hospital beds.

Comparing Australia's progress against that of the US will surely provide us all with crucial lessons.

Joe
Posted by loudmouth2, Thursday, 28 May 2020 10:21:25 AM
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I used to have a poor opinion, but this year, and lately, Morrison is sounding like a potentially great leader.

The next few years will tell the story, but I am hopeful that Morrison can improve Australia's plight.

Go Sco Mo.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Thursday, 28 May 2020 10:36:18 AM
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I am with you Joe!
The coming months will see just how big a threat or how big a fraud the Chinese virus is.
My money is on the coming Australian flu season being converted into every death being a Covid death as the dishonesty is already breathtaking! So we will probably still be at loggerheads.
I would like to see all the billions we are currently wasting on our health and education professionals reduced year by year until we start seeing improvements.
An old man dreams, it's what we do.
Posted by JBowyer, Thursday, 28 May 2020 10:50:49 AM
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There's no way we can go back to what was the status quo and a service industry economy over dependant on students, tourists and an overcooked housing market for our debt-laden, debt dependant economy! And little else!

Scomo s damned if he does and damned if he doesn't!

There is a way forward that basically changes everything and needs a visionary leader with some very big ideas and no prohibitions on anything we might or need to do to implement them!

No naysayers sniping from the sidelines bagging anything and everything, given the big numbers that'll be necessary! But apart from the endless criticism, unable or unwilling to put up any positive suggestions or new ideas!?

Only able to fault find and little else except agonise over the money spent on those with the least! Least those with the most and the most privileged have to make do with a little less?

Any energy policy that does not include a nuclear option, proof of all the above!

And similarly, any recovery paradigm that does not have a massive public housing rollout incorporated along with the infrastructure to support the same, is just going to give the detractors even more ammunition than they are using now?

Albeit, most of it, for the moment are blanks and just noise, designed to cast aspersions, toe a particular ideological line?
And as unhelpful as possible!

Mutter, mutter, dutter,dutter nutter, nutter? Get the picture?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 28 May 2020 10:51:51 AM
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ScoMo's idea of consensus will be that everybody agrees with what he wants to do. I wish him good luck.

ttbn. Who is your pick for PM?
David
Posted by VK3AUU, Thursday, 28 May 2020 11:31:47 AM
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AlanB

I don't get that you put so much emphasis on public housing, when interest rates are historically low, and are destined to remain so for a considerable time..(highly debatable of course).

Would you agree, this is a ripe moment to help all Australians into owning their own home.
Home ownership is a much more positive step than building public housing, only to be handed over to NGO's to plunder the needy for more money they don't have.

Please explain.

Dan
Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 28 May 2020 1:03:55 PM
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There was once a popular saying:
Bob Hawke was the greatest liberal Prime Minister Australia ever had.

Evidence is accumulating, (if only on these pages), Scott Morrison is the greatest Labor Prime Minister Australia has ever had.

I'll go along with that.

Dan
Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 28 May 2020 1:56:57 PM
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I think this is a joke. The Union movement buddying up to Scott Morrison and his bunch would be like the battered wife who keeps going back inside the house.

The Australian economy is broken and the only thing that can fix it is the very thing that broke it: China.

The Australian governments, bureaucracies and businesses will just have to bite the bullet and open the international borders virtually immediately to large scale Chinese migration and capital and probably follow Victoria in signing up to China's Belt and Road Initiative. The CCP is anxious to partner with leading Australians like Andrew Forrest as well as being able to send tens of millions of its nationals to reunite with their family members in Australia.

Over the past 30 years Australia's politicians, bureaucrats and business people have locked us into a Chinese future and If Australia is not willing to do this then it will just have to be satisfied with being a failed Third World nation.

It's good for Australia, it's good for jobs!
Posted by Mr Opinion, Thursday, 28 May 2020 1:59:57 PM
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Obviously, and as sarcastic as he sounds, Mr Opinion is exactly on the mark.

It's difficult to imagine how Australia can perform an abrupt "U" turn in its cultural and economic development now.

The horse has long bolted. And so too are the self serving political class who engineered it all. Not to be seen.

Of course, Hawke is dead thankfully.

Speaking of Hawke: an edit correction from above. Bob Hawke was the greatest LNP Prime Minister Australia ever had. ( not small "l" liberal. He was hardly that!

Dan.
Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 28 May 2020 2:13:57 PM
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diver dan,

Sarcastic! Moi?

DD, I don't think there is a contributor to The Forum who would disagree with me.
Posted by Mr Opinion, Thursday, 28 May 2020 2:18:50 PM
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seems to me everyone on 'safe' Government funded money have wrecked numerous small business's and are now going to have numerous talk fests about how bad the situation is. I am sure the pollies, union officials, abc, and corporates will still keep their huge salaries and benefits while the deplorables are left begging.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 28 May 2020 3:13:43 PM
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Runner,

More than one hundred thousand deaths in the US, so far, as sacrifices on the altar of 'open it all up'. Forty-odd thousand in the UK. Getting close to four hundred thousand world-wide, of god's children ?

Australia, under Morrison, with barely a hundred - what are we doing so wrong ?

Joe
Posted by loudmouth2, Thursday, 28 May 2020 3:48:54 PM
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Hi Joe

never thought I will see you go all irrational. Seems very much like the states that locked down in the US did no better than those who remained more or less open and in some cases the opposite. Don't let facts get in the way of your narrative. You are in good company with the lying liberal left media. And your point as far as this new accord? Personally I would love to think it does something towards restoring something to all those small business's ruined by the shutdown. Seeing the way the Premiers have carried on over the last few weeks I doubt whether they really give a stuff. They just loved riding high on popularity at a time when they really thought it was their genius that prevented thousands of deaths here in Australia. When even the State and Federal Chief medico's can't agree on policy I doubt whether we will ever know to what extent our draconian measures saved lives. You can be sure the many that have had their livelyhoods shattered will see a spike in depression, suicide etc. Personally I think the National cabinet is showing huge cracks. Do a deal with devils and it comes back to bite you. You can work out who you think the 'devils' are.,
Posted by runner, Thursday, 28 May 2020 4:05:18 PM
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Antony Forsyth, a Professor at RMIT's graduate
school of business and law stated that the
government's priorities are :

"Pretty much a pro-business reform wish-list".

He said compliance and enforcement was one of the
few reform areas "better from a union or worker
perspectives" but largely picks up on work already
conducted by the attorney general, Christian Porter, to
criminalize serious and systematic underpayment.

"The arguments about reducing the complexity of
awards... I don't think they'll get far with
unions on that, it inevitably means reducing
protections for people," he said.
Posted by Foxy, Thursday, 28 May 2020 4:20:58 PM
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Foxy,

I wouldn't trust Scott Morrison as far as I could throw him.

I think he is most cunning Australian politician I have ever seen.

Did you see the news today where thousands of Indian and Chinese troops are massing in the contested areas along the Himalayan borders. This plus the CCP crackdown on HK and Xi's instructions to the PLA to step up war preparedness ain't looking so good.

Your Chinese name might come in handy soon. I tried to get a Chinese name for myself but someone has already taken 'Andrew Forrest'.
Posted by Mr Opinion, Thursday, 28 May 2020 5:15:00 PM
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Mr O,

I think the name "Bingwen" (master of arts)
would suit you better.
Posted by Foxy, Thursday, 28 May 2020 5:36:32 PM
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Foxy,

You're a lifesaver!

Though better make it Bigwen Bigwen given that I have two MAs. Let's call it my Pidgeon Chinese name.

Just in time too because I just saw a news release that China's Parliament has voted to incorporate HK totally within the PRC polity, taking aware its almost polis-like status as a self-governing financial entrepot.

I understand the US has pre-empted China's action in that it will declare HK as having no status as a financial hub which I understand will turn HK into a virtual economic ghost town being of no benefit to the CCP.

I expect to see some pretty dramatic scenes coming out of HK. Will the West open its international borders to a probable flood of HK refugees?
Posted by Mr Opinion, Thursday, 28 May 2020 6:34:46 PM
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My first thought, the instinctive one, when I first heard about this latest IR thing, was that sounds a bit opportunistic.

Ponzi failing. What's left smashed with the latest episode of big nanna. Everyone talking about the need to change.
Then what happens is we hear about UN agreements, pinwheels roofglass and e scooters, and of course, IR reform.
My how things change..

Also thought there might be a bit of strategic positioning in it.
Now that'd be a change from the usual wouldn't it. A real indicator to those former small business owners their plight is at the front of the mind.
Posted by jamo, Friday, 29 May 2020 12:46:33 AM
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I always see IR refom as AKA for workers being left worse off, but I have to admit that some reform is needed.

As i said once on OLO, why should i gwet 250% for working on a public holiday.

Having read our EBA, some of the conditions we have defy logic.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Friday, 29 May 2020 6:26:27 AM
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Weekend trading's killing the family. Killed some would argue.
That's what penalty rates are about.
We seem to have forgotten that it has to be about real quality of life.
If it's only about numbers then we're all just economic units, like parts of a machine.
If we're reduced to that then what is the point of it all.
If that's the case then we might as well go raw and start killing others to take their stuff until the strongest one ends up ruling over everyone for himself.
Posted by jamo, Friday, 29 May 2020 2:46:36 PM
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jamo,

Don't worry, we're going to be Chinese soon now that Victoria has signed up for the Belt and Road Initiative, meaning that the US won't be able to trust us as an ally any more and will not want us as part of the inner circle of allies any longer. Exactly what China was hoping for.

I just got my Chinese name off Foxy. Ask her if she has one for you. I wanted 'Andrew Forrest' but someone got in there before me.
Posted by Mr Opinion, Friday, 29 May 2020 3:11:23 PM
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Mr Opinion you wrote
Foxy,

You're a lifesaver!

Though better make it Bigwen Bigwen given that I have two MAs. Let's call it my Pidgeon Chinese name.

Just in time too because I just saw a news release that China's Parliament has voted to incorporate HK totally within the PRC polity, taking aware its almost polis-like status as a self-governing financial entrepot.

I understand the US has pre-empted China's action in that it will declare HK as having no status as a financial hub which I understand will turn HK into a virtual economic ghost town being of no benefit to the CCP.

I expect to see some pretty dramatic scenes coming out of HK. Will the West open its international borders to a probable flood of HK refugees?

I respond - Seriously all you speak of an "influx" of Chinese refugees into Australia/now Hong Kong refugees?

You have previously spoken about Australia not interested in entertaining "Yellow" people.

Who are you?

Your "biased" opinions are not of Australians..... or do you have an a biased agenda of your own?
Posted by SAINTS, Saturday, 30 May 2020 6:06:01 PM
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SAINTS,

I have never used "Chinese refugees" and "Yellow" in any context. You are saying this in order to twist the argument in your favour, which tells me you are an ignorant person such as an engineer, lawyer, or some other person of that ilk.

You ask "Who are you?". I am Bigwen Bigwen.

If you have been following the news you will have seen that people in HK are starting to seek refuge in UK, which has increased its visa numbers to people in HK.

It looks like you belong to the pro-China camp like LOUDmouth.

Your name doesn't happen to be Andrew by any chance?
Posted by Mr Opinion, Sunday, 31 May 2020 10:10:31 AM
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Misopinionated,

Either-or - is that it ? Manicheanism ? Either black or white ? Either up or down ? Either good or bad ? It's interesting that Manichaean monasteries might have been set up by Christian refugees across Central Asia and Western China after 400 AC, and a thousand years later influenced the new Ming Dynasty which overthrew Mongol rule.

Yes, I'm very pro- Chinese people - over sixty years, I have met and known and loved many Chinese people, best mates, the most beautiful and sweet girls, hard workers, none who ever done me down.

And yes, I was a Maoist for maybe twenty years until I found out about the ghastly activities of Mao and the Cultural revolutionists, which coincided anyway with a complete disillusion with socialism, around the mid-eighties.

But no, I do not in any way support the current Chinese regime, in its aggressions against Vietnam and other south and south-east Asian countries, in the south Seas and the North Japanese Sea and against India; in its oppression of the Tibetans and Uighurs and other minorities; in its insidious undermining of governments across central Asia; and of course, in its oppression of its own people. Under the guise of communism and socialism, they have merely reproduced a totalitarian system which benefits its party members.

Perhaps you're too young and/or thick to understand the differentiation between Chinese people and the current Chinese government. Give yourself time, a few decades :)

Joe
Posted by loudmouth2, Sunday, 31 May 2020 11:18:58 AM
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LOUDmouth,

What are you going on about? Looks like I might have said something that brought on an epiphany for you. Has your little imaginary world evaporated before your eyes? Well, your Grade 6 education can only take you so far.

Don't worry, you'll be right! Just keep pitching for your premier to sign up to China's Belt and Road Initiative like Victoria has done. Just think, China will be able to reunite tens of millions of its nationals with their family members already in Australia. And they'll have you to thank for it.

You just have to put your hopes in Scott Morrison not overriding Victoria's decision to sign up to the BRI. Good Luck! and a big Aussie "Ni Hao Cobber!" to you and your pro-China camp.
Posted by Mr Opinion, Sunday, 31 May 2020 12:49:43 PM
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