Howard is now fighting to free up the working conditions of independent contractors so they can claim tax exemptions for costs incurred in earning their income. This will effect 600,000 to 1,9 million workers who range from IT consultants, owner drivers for Tooheys, building industry subcontractors to airline hostesses for Virgin and Jetstar. Now the advantages of being an independent contractor are that you have more tax deductions, you pay your tax 18 months after its earned, however you have to submit BAS statements and make provision for that tax bill.
Being an independent contractor when you are a high income earner is excellent as you can use the money before paying your tax.
However if you are earning about $30,000, want to buy a car, a flat, have a life then you are really going to struggle to pay your income tax. I suspect that the tax office declares many airline hostesses bankrupt when they fail to meet their tax obligations and they, poor girls, feel that their failure is totally their own fault for poor budgetting skills.

And I repeat that Australia doesn't need to compete with India and China and if we attempt to, we will lose. Have you read the latest management bumpf that says that the globalisation of labour effectively means that labour is an unlimited resource. Applying this to a bit of demand and supply analysis means that the costs of labour can be driven down. I think there are many reasons to restrict migration of guest workers into Australia, some reasons being

1. concern over qualifications of guest workers
2. ability to guest workers to communicate with existing workforce
3. ability of employers to avoid training up Australians for the job, remember that TXU, the new owners of Victoria's electricity grid, has trained 3 apprentices in the same time frame that Country West, NSW electricity grid west of dividing range, has had 800 apprentices

If you don't train Australians to do the job, and you aren't going to let them sit on the dole, what do you expect them to do?

Billie “According to Kenneth Davidson in The Age the latest OECD research indicates that full employment can be achieved through collective bargaining and creating an equitable society.”

That theory has been tried and failed. Keatings “recession we had to have” being a classic example and the loss of competitiveness in the UK throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when collective bargaining and “social engineering in pursuit of the nebulous and intangible” was all the rage. Although it is typical of the Age to fill their pretentious pages with such pontificating twaddle.

As for what Beazley thinks – does it matter? Beazley has been out of government and out of touch for more than a decade. He has “buckleys” chance of leading the labor party anywhere except further into the political wilderness and possibly (/hopefully) the abyss.

As for AWA’s, I recently negotiated an individual workplace agreement, much as I have done for the past 20 years. Why get trapped by being dragged down to the level of mediocrity in a union deal when you can do a lot better by being measured for your own merit? Merit of course is that distilled element of the individual which seems one of the first things to be burnt off by collectivisation, including collective bargaining and other like rubbish.

So Chris Monnox, when you have evolved through adolescence, come to terms with girls and puberty, you will likely, have also metamorphosed from a socialist to a conservative.
It has been often observed, not a socialist by 20, you have not developed a heart but not a conservative by 25, you have not developed an intellect.

Billie, we certainly need guest workers. Working in Australia is
basically optional for Australians. There are jobs (like in meatworks)
which more and more Aussies simply don't want to bother with.
These are key export industries, they need labour, from one place
or another.

The problem is not guest workers. Its that Aussies have it so good,
that they can ignore many jobs, if they don't feel like doing them.

Yabby, perhaps those companies and their jobs (meatworkers etc) have for too long been able to pick and choose, and to some extent exploit us aussie workers. Mainly because of previous higher unemployment and the lack of other industry opportunities.

Maybe they ought to be encouraged to improve their working conditions and wages, with employee incentives and benefits, instead of taking the easier and cheaper option of 'guest workers'.

The tide has turned and they're reaping what they've always sewn!

Socrates, conditions and pay are already pretty good. The real problem is that many Aussies won't work if the job is not where
they happen to live. They won't move to where the work is.
Alot of meatworks are in regional areas, not in Sydney or
Melbourne.

The other thing is, to work in the meat industry, you actually
have to get out of bed, go to work, and do a real days work all
day. You can't have drugs in your system either, (dangers with
knives etc) Many of the young ones would rather have a cushy
job or play video games. They think that a job in a meatworks
is below them.

In West Australia, where there is a real shortage of labour
due to the mining boom, foreign workers are the only option
that is available. Trucking sheep across Australia to
slaughter them, is not a viable option. If Aussies don't
want the work, so bring in foreign guest workers!

Col Rouge glad that you are a key worker who has been able to negotiate better employment conditions. I found that I was powerless in AWA negotiations and so did some infant welfare centre nurses who were denied a pay rise because a local councillor could and did to prove he could stop their pay rise. I was shocked to discover that the only complete copy of the AWA was held by the employer – I had signed an abbreviated AWA – all very legal.

Can you imagine a state government wanting to negotiate individual contracts with 100,000 teachers, I think not. The workplace reforms of the 1980s reduced the number of awards covering each workplace because no employer wants to negotiate more than 20 contracts. Effectively AWAs will be written so all employees are on the same conditions but its illegal to talk about payrates or have a union involved.

Yabby I can remember in 1978 the western Australian meat workers conditions being eroded and workers being laid off because of live sheep exports. Today the abattoir operators live in Melbourne and contract to run the Derby, Wyndham and Alice Springs abattoirs during the dry season. Where do the slaughtermen live, not Broome, Derby or Wyndham. What do slaughtermen do during the wet season, not collect the dole in northern Australia, nor work for tourist operations.

Northern Australia has a great shortage of skilled workers for seasonal industries because there is no income support for these workers in the off season. Solutions could include training locals for these skilled jobs, providing government support during the wet season, government subsidised airfares to the worksites. Shipping in guest workers is the cheapest solution but does nothing to improve the social fabric of northern Australian communities or build a permanent population adjacent to East Timor