Every time Howard attacks the ALP on these issues, he makes it plain that he intends to retain both the Work Choices approach and to reject any form of unfair dismissal laws.

The combination leaves every employee at the mercy of their employers. (Starving men are not free, as the House of Lords declared in the early 1900s.) Apart from fear of death, the greatest fear of most employees of of losing their jobs. It is hardly surprising that the electorate rejects them. And none of the nonsense of this article or similar bits of spin will help.

ginx, there is a choice. my master plan to bring democracy to oz goes like this: 1000's of would-be citizens send emails to each party office, saying: "will only vote for party that will institute cir and direct election of ministers. if none, will write 'democracy' on otherwise blank ballot."

can't fail, easy to do, but will need many thousands to choose democracy. so far, there's you, me, and a couple of my mates.

courage, mon brave!

Haycroft, what a parasite. A man who makes his living out of screwing working mum's and dad's. What self serving piffle this article is. There are no workers who willingly reduced thier wages under WorkChoices. They had no choice , and smarmy Haycroft knows it.
What makes me laugh is the reqirement for the compulsory "Workplace Relations Fact Sheet" Your rights and obligations. Many workers at the lower end of the scale will all of a sudden find out they have rights, and may just have the courage to pursue them.Thats not good new's for Mr Haycroft and his trade in human labour.

Yes I am ALP, yet in Howard's early time as leader my contempt for him was balanced by understanding.
Howard without reserve is a Bob Menzies look alike, he molded his whole life on his idol.
And stealing Labors policy's and following what voters wanted was his ace in the hole.
Labors failure to consider voters much at all helped.
Workchoices that beat Howard, not yet but it will,those who sit adoringly at this mans feet today will remember this mans act of war on workplace fairness.
It will for a time destroy his party.
Yet so very many who he hurt so badly have never voted other than for his team.
ALL who work can be victims of workchoices, not just unionists.
Not just one in five.
Our economic place is not via workchoices but if it fails? workchoices will make the Australian workplace a disaster area.
Kev are you out there Mr Rudd?
Keep your promises mate, please, workers are Australians after all.
That wage packet is the oil our country runs on.

Haycroft is wrong to include all small business as anti Australian. Australian small business people would find it offensive to be labelled as a mindless support base for an increasingly dinosaur party.

Howards problem is that he pandered to unions - business unions when he forced his ridiculous personal work place agenda onto the Australian people.
Haycroft and Howard both forget (or do not know) that Howard has a job to do , to work for the Australian people and not pander to fringe minority business groups.

As far as the benifits of AWA's , reality contradicts Haycroft. For astute consumers, tax payers and skilled workers AWA's serve as smoke and where there is smoke there is fire. In this case fire being business incompetence and/or low quality product and service and /or corruption.

In a democracy the concept of loyal support for a party or candidate runs counter to the integrity of the system.

If the Coalition sold out its supporters then so what ? There is no honour amongst theives.