"Humans are both selfish, greedy, and opportunistic on the one hand, and altruistic, sharing, and long-sighted on the other hand. I think we need to encourage the so called virtues rather than reward the less admirable qualities."

qft

Rhian

If you care to look at the figures real wages started to fall in 3rd quarter 2005 and have not kept up with inflation since then.

I could give you the link to the data but that would be too easy, use your brain and find out the truth.

Also our net public debt is $90 billion dollars, due to Costello cost shifting to the states, paying off Labor's debt is toad poo.

11 years of a lazy govt fudging the figures is disgraceful.

Ruawake

I have used my brain and found out the truth. Guess what, I was right.

These are my estimates (deflating seasonally adjusted full time ordinary time earnings by the all-groups CPI). The occasional quarter of declining AWE is not uncommon, but the only significant drop was in the June quarter 2006, reflecting the sharp rise in the CPI caused by a spike in food prices that quarter. As that blip unwinds from the data real wages will trend up again, as started in the December quarter 2006.

The real question is not these short-term variations but the longer term trends. Between December 2001 and December 2006 full time ordinary time earnings rose by 26.4% and the CPI rose by 15.9%, yielding 9.1% real growth.

If you use original or trend data or one of the other average weekly earnings measures you’ll get slightly different results, but the same basic pattern.

________________ Earnings _____ ________ CPI _____ _____ "Real" Earnings _____
_____________ $pw _____ % Ch _____ Index _____ % Ch ___ Dec-06 Prices __% Ch

Dec-01 ______ $849.00 _____ 1.4% _____ 135.4 _____ 0.9% _____ $975.03 _____ 0.5%

Jun-05 _____ $1,008.70 _____ 1.7% _____ 148.4 _____ 0.6% _____ $1,056.96 _____ 1.1%
Sep-05 _____ $1,022.00 _____ 1.3% _____ 149.8 _____ 0.9% _____ $1,060.89 _____ 0.4%
Dec-05 _____ $1,026.00 _____ 0.4% _____ 150.6 _____ 0.5% _____ $1,059.38 ____ -0.1%
Mar-06 _____ $1,036.20 _____ 1.0% _____ 151.9 _____ 0.9% _____ $1,060.76 _____ 0.1%
Jun-06 _____ $1,043.80 _____ 0.7% _____ 154.3 _____ 1.6% _____ $1,051.92 ____ -0.8%
Sep-06 _____ $1,051.80 _____ 0.8% _____ 155.7 _____ 0.9% _____ $1,050.45 ____ -0.1%
Dec-06 _____ $1,058.80 _____ 0.7% _____ 155.5 _____ -0.1% _____ $1,058.80 _____ 0.8

The terms "left" and "right" need to be rethought.

For one, we have a "right" government, that runs a trade libralisation agenda (once associated with the left), has massivly expanded middle class welfare (old-left), yet still manages to implement protectionist economic policies (old right).

Their "left" opposition pushes the same trade libralisation and protectionism, talks about work/family balance, and introduced a refugee policy back in the 1990's that favours locking asylum seekers up (very old-right).

While both parties are quite happy to accept huge donations from large corporrations, sit side by side with shock-jocks, remove the process of candidate pre-selection from the grass-roots to the offices of party officals. Both parties have been known to gang up on minor parties (particularly the Greens, but to a lesser extent, the Dems and Family First) and outspoken independants, be they "left" or "right".

The distinction between left and right has changed. Both "sides" of politics (as though there are two sides to every issue!) need to realise this, least the duo-opoly of political power lose touch with the needs of the punter on the street.

Personally, I believe that the concentration of political power has in part led to the blurd line line between the old left and right. I think, for alternative views to enter mainstream politics, it is important to reduce this concentration of power.

The Hijacking of society by the professionals and white collar workers

The labour party candidate in my electorate is the manager of Mcdonalds, a company known to pay their young workers as little as possible. Hardly an old time true labour party man to my way of thinking. Kevin Rudds wife is a successful business woman (all credit to her) but she must say to Kevin Rudd that she rather finds the new IR laws to her benefit.

Isnt peter Beattie a lawyer and his wife a doctor or the other way around(again they are to be admired for this) but they hardly seem to be of the old time labour party ilk. This country has a shortage of tradesmen and skilled workers because the country has been hijacked by the professionals and business people because ordinary working class people have been sending their children to university. And governments also being university pen pushers in a lot of cases have favoured businesses and haven’t insisted on the training of apprentices because they had no understanding that it is the people who work physically who really keep the wheels of industry and business running.

These people are only administrative pen pushers.
And so we have a shortage of real workers like tradesmen and skilled workers who work physically by the sweat of their hands and bodies to build all the homes and buildings and maintains the electricity grids and all the machines and transport etc that REALLY keep a society running.
The white collars workers never needed to strike for wages and conditions because the public service always granted them the best wages and conditions and the business people mostly put their own pockets ahead of wages and training, So the true labour movement is dead along with all the never trained trainsmen and skilled workers that the country so badly needs. But this will all be handed to cheap foreign labour, again for the benefit of the professionals and administrators and business people who are selling their grandchildrens future ownership of this land to ethnic groups.

Dr Scott, This is the highest taxing, biggest spending and largest government in our history. We have all manners of middle class welfare by way of subsidies, handouts and tax concessions. Private health is subsidised, child care is subsidised, LPG conversions too. Not to mention first home owner's grant, Family tax benefit part A and B, baby bonus and private schools. Where did you ever get the idea that this was a conservative government.