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Issue No. 265 | 27 May 2005 |
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Hit and Myth
Interview: Fortress NSW Unions: Fashions Afield Industrial: Pay Dirt Politics: Infrastructure Blues History: Big Day Out International: Making History Economics: The Fear Factor Review: The Robots Revolt Poetry: The Corporation's Power
The Soapbox The Locker Room Parliament
 LETTERS LIVE AGAIN! One Hell Of A JobUS Fan Mail
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Tool Shed The End
***** When John Howard was Malcolm Fraser's Treasurer he visited a steelworks in Newcastle. While he was there a worker desperately wanted to shake Howard's hand. Howard asked why, and the worker explained that he'd always wanted to shake Howard's hand - as it had been in his pocket for the last two years. Howard was at it again this week, trying to grab more dosh out of workers pockets. This time it was on behalf of those charming people who live on a planet where no one believes in fairness, the economic Frankensteins and Deficit Daleks who miss the days of sending ten year olds down mine shafts. It was good to see that Howard got to meet a worker all those years ago, as he doesn't seem to want to meet them anymore. Within hours of announcing that he was going to reform the workplace in much the same way that a semi trailer is liable to reform a stray cat on the M4, Howard hastily shifted a press conference so that he didn't have to meet any of those nasty working class types. "This is the end!" Howard had crowed the day before, and one thing's for sure, it probably is. When you have a policy that is about as popular as rabies and you try to introduce it at a time when most people are drowning, not waving (in the economic sense) - your brilliant dreams of spending your entire public life hiding your incompetence are liable to come unstuck. "My guarantee is my record," Mr Howard told parliament this week, and what a record it is. Howard's record shows that, as the friend of the Australian worker, lowest paid workers would be $2300 a year worse off under his regime. Howard's opposed every pay rise since Judas struck for twenty pieces of silver. The only difference between Howard and Judas though is that at least Judas had the decency to hang himself after betraying his community - Howard just keeps on bullshitting them to keep in their good books "We provide people with the choice of remaining under the existing award system or entering into workplace agreements," says the Lying Rodent, knowing full well that the choice is actually between his delightfully Orwellian "workplace agreements " and starving on the dole. The King Canute of Conservatism plans to legalise unfairness, justifying it by saying that the inability to treat people like a dried up piece of dog turd is hindering small business. Apparently sacking people creates jobs. This is the sort of economist porn that treats workers and consumers and entirely separate beings. It is right up there with his next piece of subtle logic. "Mr Speaker," said the Prime Miniature with a straight face. "The era of the select few making decisions for the many in Australian industrial relations is over." It won't be a select few, just the few he selects. Still, at least he didn't try to describe the nineteenth century industrial relations system that would have done Micawber proud as being a twenty-first century reform! It was the select few who said that: The Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Notional Farmers Federation. And they should know - they've put the bullets in the gun that our Tool Of The Week is going to shoot himself politically with.
Nominate a Tool!
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