Lower wages is good for the economy because the profit margin is increased for employers and so increases their income. Cheap labour allows employers to access cheap goods. Goods are no longer sold domestically they are exported. Australians won’t be able to afford our own produce soon. Just as well we have a drought, high inflation and import dumping from nations with an even lower income than us, our impending poverty is sure to be a great learning curve for us.

The Howard Government have forgotten most of the economy is constructed of our interaction with each other and Australia is not dependent on an export economy. We have seen employment market failure in skills shortages, family & life balance, wage deflation and social erosion. To avoid intellectual criticism the Howard government has even maintained a program of destroying our education systems with the result of both a brain drain and professional skills shortage. Further more this Government has demoralised the Commonwealth Public Service through interference and zero values policies. Talented professionals stay clear of CPS recruitment.

Howard’s economic program is not sustainable in any stretch of the imagination but it will help potential Liberal party sponsors get rich quick in the short term. Howard will have retired and Beazley will be PM by the time Howard’s IR laws hit the fan (and the rest of Howard’s bucket content with it ). It is why it is urgent for Peter Costello to become prime minister, the economy as will history will vilify this government, if Beazley wins all is lost for our self claiming glorious war time leader and his heir to his throne.

"Australia is not dependent on an export economy"

Hehe West, what do you think will happen to your Aussie Dollar,
if you don't have efficient export industries? How will you
pay for your imports? You will spiral downhill, as fast
as you can hang on to your trousers :)

Efficient labour benefits everyone, above all consumers.
Being a consumer, you in fact benefit by the efficient
use of labour in other industries. The more wasteful
that labour is used, the more your standard of living
will go down.

Lets take an example, so that the confused might understand
it. Lets say we ban imports of shirts. We will agree to
pay all employees who make shirts, 100K a year, for a
20 hour week. At the end of the day, business simply works
out the cost per unit, plus a margin of profit for risk of
capital. In groceries, thats say 2%. So on those terms
a shirt might cost you 200$. Would you be happy to
pay that? Would your standard of living go up or down,
if you had to pay 200$ for your shirts?

nationalist conservative,

I am not sure where you get your information from either. From a very wide variety of sources relating to the new zealand experience, yours is the first positive comment I have heard.

We may just have to agree to disagree. There is a lot of truth in the old saying that you can make statistics prove anything you like. I can deliver reams of information supporting my argument and no dbout you can do likewise.

How many people do you know who were actually there? I know a number of working class kiwis who have told very similar stories of falling wages and stagnant economic conditions, which is why they came here.
One of them is a hard working independent contractor who does not agree with all of my political veiws. He did, however, concede that the nz ir policy eventually ran his country into the ground.

If it was such a dazzling sucess, why was it repealed? If a previously untested economic theory worked much better than the old one for all the world to see(new zealand was globalism's poster boy), I do not believe the labour party would have removed it, just as I do not believe an incumbent labour government here will remove it if there is overwhelming evidence that it boosts the economy and does not disadvantage large numbers people. But it will not bring widespread prosperity and will hurt plenty of workers, especially those with little bargaining power and that is why it will sooner or later be gotten rid of.

Nationalist conservative I did not say Australia did not export. I was saying that the majority of economic activity in Australia is domestic activity. Australia has a low manufacturing and exportable service industry base. The grand experiment to sacrifice living standards and increase employee subsidy to production has already been trialled over and over again in our regional areas where depletion of income equates to economic and social breakdown.
Australia has already experienced Howard’s IR laws in the 19th century; because they are unsustainable those laws necessitated change.
Even in the late 20th Century labour prices did not reflect the true cost of labour. People’s time is worth far more than any business can afford. Employees subsidise business to form symbiosis in which relationship the employer has always been to an extent a parasite. This has to be because without employee charity no business can become wealthy.
Howard’s IR laws an exercise in employers biting the hand that feeds it. The propaganda says it supports mum and dad business people. If those people are so greedy and desire independence they should not employ anybody. The other rational for 19th century industrial relations is to appease those great communists, the share holders. Howard has proved incapable of learning from history and has made labour inefficient and thus set off a domino effect of making urban networks inefficient , energy consumption inefficient , social networks , Australian cultures and family organisation unsustainable.

As for your T’shirts no enterprise occurs in a vacuum but to humour you if workers cant afford to support the local grocer he in turn wont be able to afford to buy your T shirts. The cost of producing your T shirts is not only incurred by the company but is taken home by the workers.

A symbiosis has to be balanced or it will fail

"People’s time is worth far more than any business can afford."

In reality, peoples time is worth what somebody is prepared to
pay for it. Everyone has to make a living.

"As for your T’shirts no enterprise occurs in a vacuum A symbiosis has to be balanced or it will fail"

Similarly no country occurs in a vacuum. Australia has to pay its
way in the world, which it is not doing, but relying on overseas
bankers for its wellbeing. If they pull the plug, what then?

If our industries can't compete globally, long term down the
tube we go. We don't need cheap labour, but efficient and innovative
labour, to compete.

I certainly dont get paid for what I am worth and those under me certainly are not either. It is not only our time , we have families , it is their time too. Are you seriously suggesting when you have time off for illness your time suddenly is in real terms worth more? Are you saying that you would miss the birth of a child for a mere $60 an hour. Life is worth far more than what anybody is paid. The employee is donating great charity to the employer. There used to be benifits for working but AWA's is wiping those out. Under AWA's it is not economical to work. All AWA's can achieve is to make crime pay. Australians are hit by the out dated sorts of industrial systems that Howard has imposed onto the Australian people. First of all Australians Pay more charity to their employer and secondly they have to spend tax money on protecting us from the refugees and drug and arms trade the same sorts of industrial systems have created with our neighbours.