A very good article accurately exsposing the spin of the shameless Lib Govt.
Remember posters, your rights at work are worth voting for. Tell your friends.

To Kevin
you failed to say that some of the people you are forcing off welfare into low paid work are elderly and quite unwell. But centrelink is using their own assesors who by the way arent doctors to override independant doctors reports. Centrelink does have their own doctors but you have to be pretty dam near dead or blind to see them .

Genetics arent equal at 60years of age and if you read the funerals in the local papers every day, yes, there are a lot of people who make it to eighty and over but there are also as many people dying in their 50s,60s and early 70s every week

It is government propaganda and also superannuations funds propoganda that we are all now livng to 79years for women and 77years for men. ALL? Judging by the huge percentage of people who die much earlier than that in the funeral pages all year, 77years and 79years is more like a maximum and not an average. It's my guess that the average life span is around 73years and you get people dying 10 to 15years earlier and people living 5, 10, 15years later.

It was noted in biblical times that the average lifespan for humans was 3score years and ten and I think the average is probably still around that age.

Of course everybody wishes to live until they are ninety and so they are quite happy to be told that we are ALL? going to live much longer.

Some people at late fifty or sixty are exeriencing a lot of body meltdown whereas some people wont experience or understand this for another decade or more.

“Job security” is a myth. It has always been a myth and will always be a myth.

“Job Security”, the notion that someone cannot be “de-employed”, suffers or reflects a single problem, Private industry is based on an economic model in which there is a critical need to pay for the capital needed to fund the speculative venture being undertaken. That being a fact, private industry has never and will never offer absolute “job security” to anyone, at the expense of return on capital.

That leaves public or nationalized industry. Well what happens there, any inspection of the post WWII industrial and commercial environment will expose inefficiency and incompetence throughout the nationalised industries of western economies and even greater incompetence, inefficiency and corruption throughout the “institutionalized” countries of the former communist block, where “job security” was mandated by decree.

The only form of “work-security” anyone can ever expect, is to focus on the continued development of skills, hence, brain surgeons tend to have good work-security and opportunity to move with shifting demand, not because they are brain surgeons but because they have an attitude and commitment to continuous professional development.

Such “attitudes” of "continuous development" are common among many professions, my own included.

So anyone who looks to government to legislate for wanna-be notions of job security I guess, to use the vernacular, “Just don’t get it”.

Develop your own skills and market those skills to possible user / clients, that works for me.

Oh and “mass-sackings”, with even a rudimentary comprehension of economics, anyone will understand, removing the economic potential from consumers in a “consumer-economy” will cause a general recession, hardly the actions of a liberal government, more the sort of negative outflow of the previous Keating model, the one which brought us the “recession we had to have”

relda “"Happy" workers are only affordable when there isn’t enough labour to go around.”

And with unemployment at record lows, it suggests there is “less labour to go around” than there was under Hawke /Keating when unemployment was in double digits.

Col R,
Currently we're experiencing good economic times - consumer spending and inflation are still at the point where the RBA will raise interest rates yet another notch. Workers, generally, have never had it so good - the current resources boom is carrying us, with China basically paying our way.

My point is, as has been mentioned elsewhere, we need to underwrite our basic wage and bargaining structure - before a downward free-fall and inevitable tightening of the economy.

Job security, true enough, is a myth - no one is owed employment in a meritocracy. Puritan economics suggests, however, "let the market forces reign" - perhaps merely a perfect lever for the powerful to exploit the weak? Capitalism is a proven horse but, where is it shown our corporate 'masters' and their CEO's will exercise fair conscience? Our Global economy means less profit will remain in Australia - shareholdings are increasingly foreign. Shareholders are paid from profit - those providing the profit are as deserving and not to be merely delegated a second class stakeholder.

Hey Col, we know 'your allright Jack' no need to tell us once again.
How about commenting on the article itself? Are your political heroes engaging in outrageous 'spin' or not

Relda “we need to underwrite our basic wage and bargaining structure - before a downward free-fall and inevitable tightening of the economy.”

Before I reply let me assure you, I find no comfort in the export of jobs to India and China. However, the world can work in one of two ways, either the “rollercoaster” and potential “freefall” of a free-trade, non-interventionist system or the tariff protected, embargo and quota system of a protected economy – but not both ways at the same time.

The risk of the free trade model is “job-migration”, however, that works in both directions and should ultimately result in better overall economic performance for everyone around the world.

The risk of protectionist models - higher consumer prices, inferior products and services due to protected local producers who are sheltered from the realities of free trade and competition.

The benefits of freetrade – cheaper, better products

The benefits of protectionism – apparently more secure jobs. I say “apparently”, apparitions are only “apparitions”.

Having been privileged to have lived through both styles of “economic model” and seen, the disaster of supposed “regulated economies”, I support the free trade (and potentially freefall) model.

The only thing which can underwrite any “bargaining structure” is the market and the ability to accept and accommodate “Change”. That applies not only to employees but also (and possibly more so) to employers.

As for “corporate masters and their CEO’s”, a minority of people actually work for big corporations. Like USA, Japan and most other western economies, most people work for small to medium enterprises where the CEO / corporate master is on first name terms with the other people who “work” there.

The point with increasing corporate executive incomes is another “myth” where, with the possible exception of Sol Trujillo, most executives are earning what they are probably worth. That what they are worth might be a huge amount just does not matter, private companies are not ruled by the workforce or the union movement and are free to negotiate what they want.

Hedgehog, the debate is obviously beyond your reasoning skills.