There are two points that the economic liberalist argument is overlooking. The first is fairly obvious and well discussed.

The greater efficiencies afforded to business by a more "flexible" and casualised workforce are not achieved by simply taking away costs that needn't have existed - it is a shift of the cost burden from business to individuals and hence families. Longer and more irregular working hours, less pay, less sick leave, holiday pay, etc means fewer families sitting down to shared meal times, more kids in child care or otherwise away from their parents a times that are convenient to business and inconvenient to families.

Of course, some employees will always be offered better conditions if their skills are in demand, but the overall effect will be hidden and long term. Long term, because the main cost will be burden will be on children, and as a society we may not having to start paying these costs until these children reach teenage and adulthood.

What is the cost attributed to this? The answer: nobody knows because there has been no official effort so far to measure it.

Secondly, workplace and other neoliberal reforms have so far been working from a very large base of governmental infrastructure. Over the last 25 years it has been easy to achieve some "quick wins" with privatisations and liberalisation of social and governmental institutions. These reforms, however, have been supported by the vestiges of strong social welfare, education and health infrastructure. As public institutions are further eroded there will be little protection for individuals who fall foul of the liberalised workplace. The costs of this will not be absorbed by social infrastructure waiting to be privatised or disembodied because it will already be gone. These costs will be passed on directly us and our own inter-relationships that are hidden from the neoliberalist balance sheet.

Richard Blandy should be charged immediately with 'sedition' by the Australian public & placed in a small dark place, where he may ponder the following-
That he is not acting in the interest of the majority.
That the proposed IR changes are a politically regressive move on
the part of the government, in defiance of the basic tenets of
democracy.
That he will live to regret his support of this
idealogically-driven, hipocrisy-laden, almost 'fascist' move on the
part of John Howard & his business cronies.
That he is either an as-h-le or extremely gullible.
As has been said, we need a strong opposition to the IR changes. Support all public, non-violent demonstration & dissent over this matter.
Do what you can.

Indeed Swilkie,
How will Blandly explain his own redundancy in a few years time?

Being a non-economist, I have a couple of what might be stupid qeustions:

Shouldn't workers receive greater benefits to offset the increased risk of being fired?

And, if the risk of losing one's job increases, how will this affect the worker's ability to obtain credit? Why won't banks up their interest rates to cover increased risk for these individuals?

Hopefully the prices of goods and services will drop due to competition if wages fall.

This may seem a bit optimistic but if an employer and employee can both agree then surely it must be an agreement that benefits both parties.