BN, then the question becomes - how much has really changed since 100 years ago, when employers routinely exploited employees under conditions that today would most would consider shocking, and what happens when the next recession hits and it becomes an employer's market again? Accepted, most employers are little more enlightened, and there is something of an argument that a recession can be recovered from more quickly if employers have the freedom to offer lower wages and fewer conditions while times are tough, but what I've yet to see is a convincing case that extensively deregulating the labour market would actually have a net beneficial effect in the long run (and yes, in the long run we are all dead...but I wonder what Keynes would have thought of WorkChoices).

Ideologues can go on all they like about "glorious notions of Liberty" - but they don't put bread on the table, or roofs over heads. Any policy whose main claim to worth is its ideological purity isn't worth the paper it's written on. And of course as many economists and posters here have pointed out, WorkChoices in the end added a good deal of extra regulation and red-tape for businesses, so failed utterly in its claimed goal of increasing choice and liberty for anybody.

There is a philosophical saying that Love is Limited as Sex is Limited, just as Faith and Trust in our world is still very limited.

That is why the ancient Greeks invented the word Democracy, the ethics associated with democratic reasoning having given us the laws to deal with the problems associated with the above.

Happy Xmas from BB, WA.

THe author was essentially correct.

It was about liberty - but that ideology/concept, call it what you like - as with communism looks fine on paper - but can rarely be operationalised to the extent the aspirations of either model are achieved.

All people are equal and grown ups can freely negotiate a fair outcome - looks great on paper - to argue to the contrary even looks a bit patronising - bt while in essence all are equal in employment rekationships some a way more equal than others - and some are crooks.

"Halt the laissez faire policy trend and progress must stall".

Actually, keep going with the laissez faire policy trend and you end up with international anarchy. Follow the author's logic and the government would have no industrial relations laws and no laws or even opinions on how unions and businesses should operate. Secondary boycotts legislation would have to be dumped because that is government interference. The same goes for OH&S provisions or bailing out banks which lend to people who can't repay the money.

True, capitalism doesn't function well under command economies. Under libertarianism it wouldn't function at all.

No, not really.

A policy that seeks a free market in labour doesn't put onerous restrictions on an employee's ability to seek union representation. And it doesn't place restrictions on both employees and employers on what goes in a work contract. WorkChoices did both. It deliberately sought to prescribe how and what workers and bosses should negotiate.

All sensible people know a labour market without any regulation at all would be utter chaos. Ideologically, the political parties only differ on who that regulation should favour.

Further, DavidJS, the examples of the Nordic economies prove that capitalism is capable of flourishing even with quite extensive government involvement (Finland has been rated as the most competitive economy in the world recently, and is hardly laissez-faire, ranked by the Heritage foundation as having only 39% freedom from goverment). The ideals of libertarianism may be very attractive on the surface, but the proof it works in practice is very thin on the ground.