BOAZ,David, if you can't run a profitable business, either take a course, or give it away. The main point of your business seems to be a negative point of view that all small businessmen adopt, I have never met a wealthy small business man yet in my 50 years, they are all crying poor, but manage to own luxury houses, luxury cars, luxury boats, have overseas trips, and go on about their competitors using Bgrade potato's. Hypocricy makes me sick, you have as much chance of getting to heaven, as a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

One of the extraordinary things that advocates of free markets and flexible workplaces (and other "reforms") do is make statements that are just plain wrong. The following is an example from the present article: "There has also been a big turnaround in New Zealand’s economic outcomes following its liberal economic reforms."

Yes there was a big turnaround! It was in the direction of down! Here is the relevant comment by someone who actually knows something:

"New Zealand passed the Employment Contracts Act in the early 90s. As a result employers pushed individual contracts in 1991 and productivity and wages fell. Productivity rose by 5.2 per cent between 1987 and 1998 compared with Australia’s 21.9 per cent growth from 1990 to 1998." (This is a partial summary of an article by Nick O'Malley, Sydney Morning Herald, July 21, 2005, reporting on a study by Paul Dalziel.)

Blandy makes other comments concerning the European Union, for instance, which would benefit from contemplation of the evidence, in this case the comments made by John Buchanan of acirrt (Sydney University) gave on ABC Radio National’s The National Interest op July 24, 2005. Comments which baldly assert economic failure of western Europe are mostly American rhetoric.

Why do people like Richard Blandy keep trotting out these pieces of nonsense. It isn't quite as bad as the incomprehensible tosh spoken by Peter Hendy who recently asserted that with these IR reforms Australia was at last entering the 21st century!

One of the really significant trends in the behaviour of the Australian government is to completely ignore the views of anyone who actually knows anything, in this case, academic researchers on industrial relations, economists and the judiciary, and simply trot out rhetoric. To believe that good public policy can be developed in this way is an absolute disgrace. No, more than that. It is grossly irresponsible. And that is putting it mildy.

Hello all. This is an extract from a previous post when I seemed to be far less disgusted by the moves by JH & cronies -
>>Employers, not employees will initiate the changes progressively after the start date. Employers with less than approx 50 workers usually do not run a dedicated ‘HR’ dept & will probably do nothing proactively. The legal changes will only be apparent when disputes are triggered by individual employees (whatever the reason). It will not be feasible for employers to walk up to workers & say ‘$2 less/hr or your gone’. It will cost them too much time & money.
Conditions for employees in small biz will be eroded by the proactive changes set in forth by the HR heavies usually contracted to companies >100 employees. Workers in these medium-to-large businesses are presently employed under collective agreements (usually Union represented). One by one they will be converted to individual agreements (rendering the Union pointless) & will be offered only what benefits the employer. Only those closest to the decision makers may be in the position to ‘trade’. The average, predominantly ‘powerless’ individual employee will be just that, powerless.
Changes to the ‘award’ system are likely to have little impact, given that awards offered are already nearly always exceeded now. Impact is likely to be felt by junior & unskilled, those already working close to their relevant award.
Social unrest will increase as personal security is generally reduced. Greater load will be placed on charities, govt departments – unemployment (true unemployment, not the bull-hit govt statistics) will increase, probably resulting in a tightening of social security provisions.
(continued) -

(continued)-
All democratic political organisations understand the terms ‘progressive’ & ‘regressive’ in the social sense. This change falls well & truly in the regressive class, & therefore is undemocratic in its implementation. <<
This government(sic) obviously refuses to listen. From my perspective, it’s the time for action. Words & dialectic (argument) are important but we need to match the ideas with positive, non-violent demonstration. We must ‘show’ our disapproval as a first measure. Do we have another choice?
I’ll be demonstrating on 15/11. I hope the rest of Australia will be too….

http://www.humanisten.ch/hi/front/index.php?lang=en
http://www.humanistparty.org.uk/links.htm
http://www.humanistmovement.org/

On Tuesday November 15th tell john Howard what you think of the IR legislation.
Attend your local rally. There are rallies all over Australia.

for details see http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/

Put in a senate submission tonight!

GR
firstly... thanx for not responding to my rather critical post with 'abuse'(Which I often get). I very much appreciate that. My goal is as much to stimulate reflection and thinking as anything.

Your question was "so should we 'become' a developing country"?

There is no simple answer to this. What I will say though, is that

1/ we have to RADICALLY extricate ourselves from the accumulated myths of 'rights' which self interested power hungry ideologically driven Union reps have placed on us, and get back to some realities. Having said that,

2/we also need the 'top' end of business to also do a major turnaround from the obscene 'packages' they seem to feel are justified for them to increase profits of major corporations (by outsourcing to Asia the now too expensive labor from point 1/

The problem we face now, is that many many manufacturing jobs will dissappear bit by bit, (not overnight, and this is the danger.. we don't feel it as a 'shock' just a slow trend)

The other myth that 'value adding' will save us, was aptly illustrated by a company discussed on a forum the other night. They began losing its 'low end high volume' product to China, who then, year by year improved their quality and value adding until one by one, the quality/value added levels of that companies product were taken. Now they are importers.
What about their workers ? Where are they ? gone to other (soon to go) manufacturing jobs ? possibly, and each time this happens, they have less choice. More 'beggers can't be choosers' syndrome.

What will happen to our social fabric when the vast majority of low skilled manufacturing workers are a)Unemployed, and b)Unhappy c) a Liability to the rest in social welfare.

If it ended there its one thing, but banks, back office, IT.. its all going....

The social implications of this are staggering and mind blowing.
We need a national think tank on this from all sides.

SHONGA I am a manufacturer, I live in a 7m x 9m shed, I don't have luxury anything.