Two things worry me here, first of all in small business it too hard to find good employees and a long and expensive process to train them. Why on earth would a small business dismiss them unfairly? Seems a HUGE amount of red tape is created that succeeds in little but creating loopholes for expensive vexatious claims.

Secondly, I have a great fear of the government when it says it is going to "simplify" things. Our "simplfied" tax system has blown the tax act out to four times the Melbourne phone book. My Business interests now require 20 tax returns per year instead of 4. They must have a different dictionary to me.

Skipper,totally agree.Perhaps we should protect the ducks,and have open season on lawyers.

Doesn't seem very smart to set your sights on lawyers. It's the legislators (voted in by Australians who imagined they'd be in better hands under PM Howard), who got us all into this godforsaken deluded state - in which everyone is asked to accept that:

* 20 is less than 4
* people who do just 1 hour of paid work in a week should not be (and aren't!) counted as unemployed
* refugee detention at the cost of $100,000 per person per year is better value than community placement, and
* sorry is to hard and too pointless to say.

And people vote for this man, his party and coalition partners. Unbelievable!

So Fiona ,what do you prepose?An open border policy whereby illegal immigrants can come here and reduce basic wages to that of third world countries from which they are escaping?It is happening in the USA and they are lamenting the social disentergration that reduces human beings to the lowest common denominator and the end result is creating humans who are in constant survival mode,with no time for learning,creativity or family interaction.

It is a recipe for for poverty and violence.Your wealth is in your people who want to be both autonomous and creative in securing their own futures.

Our small population cannot solve the world's ills,and the best we can do is to care for those in our own realm of responsibility,and realise the limitations our our own power and influence.

Arjay, fortunately neither you and I, or even our politicians get to call people "illegal" without trial. Not validly or truthfully at least, this being one of the civilised aspects of our system (well, of those parts that operate with integrity and consistently with our founding principles).

Refugees and migrants who end up living in Australia ADD to our economy as workers, consumers, taxpayers and by growing the population. Consider how much the Vietnamese (like, the old 'boat people') have contributed in the last couple of decades.

Anyway, the biggest fan of USA style social order is here already, in the person of our very own PM - whose IR platform is pure, ancien regime Darwinism dressed up in new clothes, and ready to drive social disintegration. (Not that some would notice or care - not until the economy gets shaky. Perhaps it'll start with the housing sector - after all, the banks are already reluctant or refuse to give loans to people in casual employment and jobbing contracts - you know, those 'flexible' employment arrangements).....

Well Fiona,we are sick to death of lawyers selling us our rights.We have a symbotic relationship between lawyers and insurance companies.The lawyers create the need for public liability through rampant and unbridled litigation.They have created the victim mentality of "poor me,how can I get a free ride?"They have appealled to the most base of human motivation and live in denial by pretending to save the oppressed.

Lawyers create the need for insurance and feed off it like parisites.They deserve all the public derision they receive.