As long as employers hands are tied, they will find ways around the laws.

I agree Indi, it's time again for Gov'ts that take a real interest in the welfare of the people they represent, the taxpayer, the man on the street, not the companies, not the corporations, and particularly in this country after the scales have been weighted by pure faulty ideology.

We had unique opportunity in this country to deliver power to the people, then we voted for John Howard and the deterioration toward corporate slavery began.

The purest principle in the Australian psyche was that of a fair go. Why then did we abandon the principal that a fair price is one, that reflects the cost of the item.
For example , why do we pay the same price now (in a retail store) for a product made in a sweatshop from companies that stoop as far as child labour, for something that we used to make ourselves ?. (The difference being the quality, the ethics, and the profit margin for someone in the chain).

Answer "because thats the path that business minded people have chosen for us". Given the opportunity Australian business leaders have taken advantage of a dis-regulated business environment, and not delivered the mythical advantage of competition.

My Telco now tells me that they have been charging me a substantial fee to retain my email address, so now my email, doesn't work while they sort it out. It's my original email address that I have had from the start that we are talking about here.

Now that we have noticed this charge, it is not clear how much money we are owed over years or whether we will ever recover it, if we are. Thats service for you, some operator in another country attempts to placate your concerns in a very strong accent, then asks for grading. Meanwhile your still in never never land, not really knowing how you have fared. During this problem, the only thing we knew for certain at the end of our attempts to deal with this, was that my email wouldn't work for a while. It was either that or pay the ransom.

cont....

Truth is, it is not clear, who's fault this is, but the deliberate dis-regulation ( I don't mean deregulation) has made it convenient for my major telco to operate with relative impunity towards me the consumer, and there is little effective recourse I have to pursue the matter at the end of the day. As is the case in most consumer matters now days, it may end up a case of caveat emptor. Regardless there is absolutely no justification either morally or attached to cost of providing my email address for my provider, but they still see fit to charge me rent for something that was mine when I originally signed up with them. (I mean many years ago).

It's a long story. My point is, that along with issues like casualisation, financial uncertainty, job security, wages have been falling way behind the cost of living for years now, due to the absence of indexed to inflation wage increases, funded by business (that were once a regulated right for Australian working people), living standards have declined for the majority of people.

Along with all that, the price of things have no rhyme or reason, or attachment to the cost too suppliers of goods or services they provide anymore. In effect we have no effective tools left to control the economic betterment of the average person against rorting, exploitation of the gullible, or for people like me, whom still have some misbegotten hope that the Aussie sense of a fair go, still exists somewhere.

T2, consumers have caused the furious discounting you are now seeing and, because they all know the item is imported, costing local jobs, causing sweat shop labor, it is they who are as much to blame as any retailer.

Online shopping is another huge cause of discounting, again gaining momentum each and every day.

Most people think one way, but react another, as they think with their hearts, but buy with their wallets.

Not all consumers think that way Rehctub and, in fact my wife downloaded an app on her phone that helps to identify the ethical or lack of ethical behaviour of the parent and connected companies of producers of items on our supermarket shelves, allowing a thinking consumer to purchase from suppliers that are not the worst offenders in terms of business practices, such as child labour.

So the internet has an upside so long as it remains free of Corporate or Gov't control.

The app I mentioned earlier would quickly disappear from the airwaves should people like Rupert and Gina gain control of the Internet.

No doubt not all employers are satisfied only when exploiting others either Rehctub, I'm not suggesting that, but regardless we live in a representative democracy, so therefore it is the Gov'ts role to ensure that consumers are not being ripped off through collusion or price fixing and to also ensure (and in conjunction), that working people are not being exploited.

In both of these area's regulation was smashed by the Howard Govt and replaced with a free for all, heading for the lowest common denominator. It is almost impossible to police or detect wrongdoing through over charging or underpaying people. We descend to subsistence employment for the lowest paid workers whom cant pay their bills even if they work full time. Combine that with unfathomable increases in charges for privatised essential services like power, fuel, communications etc and so on. And this recipe will culminate in serfdom in the end with a privileged few basking in the glory of their own personal wealth. As we already see with Rhinehardt, Palmer, Forrest, Packer, Murdoch, and co, today as we speak, they publicly trumpet their unmitigated power, as do the banks.

T2, I say bravo for your wife, but the reality is, she is the minority.

Now as for low paid being able to live on a full time wage, they can, but they choose not to.

Take away the mobile phone, the plasma and any other form of lux and they may have a chance.

However, when I was younger, if you were not in a high paid Job, you had to work 60 hours a week if you wanted to have your cake and eat it. This is where the system has fallen down.

As for Howard, just remember, the country was flat when he arrived, boomed when he changed IR, so much so that when he left, we had HAD money in the bank.

Now he's gone, and we are back to square one.

Labors IR policies simply make the worst workers, the new benchmark, because it become harder to reward the better worker.

Casual employment will remain while ever you have UFD laws as they are.

They (labor and the unions) pushed, so this is the result.