The Red-Capped Prophet

From the Dave Letterman Late Show....

Top Ten George W. Bush Solutions For Global Warming
10. NASA mission to turn down the sun's thermostat
9. Federal subsidies to boost production of Cool Ranch Doritos
8. Fast track Rumsfeld's "Colonize Neptune" proposal
7. Convene Blue-Ribbon Committee to explore innovative ways of ignoring the problem
6. Let Hillary worry about it when she takes over
5. I dunno---tax cuts for the rich?
4. Give the boys at Halliburton 90-billion dollar contract to patch hole in ozone
3. Switch to celsius so scorching 98 becomes frosty 37
2. Keep plenty of Bud on ice
1. Invade Antartica

Saw this on Enough Rope (ABC) on Monday night. I really, really, liked this exchange between Denton and Father Bob Maguire... (emphases are mine)

"ANDREW DENTON: I've always imagined that one of the most difficult things for a priest is when they're the new priest on the block, in a new parish, starting over. How do you make yourself known, find a flock?

FATHER BOB MAGUIRE: I went on the streets. You see, that's when I decided that I was obviously going to have to work more with people who had nothing to do with church. That's when we started discovering the terrible damage that drugs had done. Because other places I'd been in, suburban parishes, it was rare that even one of the kids was a drunk. But four years later a whole generation had been obliterated. By the 80s I lost - I'm taking it personally because I want to - I lost 40 local young men under the age of 20.

ANDREW DENTON: ...40, or more, people you know personally have died.

FATHER BOB MAGUIRE: Yes.

ANDREW DENTON: This gets back to a question of faith. Does that test your faith? Do you wonder what God wants?

FATHER BOB MAGUIRE: I'm not worried about God in this because, you see, God handed all this over to us. I'm worried about us.

ANDREW DENTON: Your faith is never tested?

FATHER BOB MAGUIRE: No, not about God. God's alright. Once he's got - look, once he...

ANDREW DENTON: Why is he letting kids die?

FATHER BOB MAGUIRE: It's got nothing to do with him letting kids die. It's you and me that let kids die. They die while we're sleeping. It's got nothing to do with God. I mean, once he got up onto that cross and was executed, that's good enough for me. His father got a hell of a fright because he thought this son was going to be a success, and have a look at it."

Found this old phunny foto from a while back......after the love-fest that was Howard's jaunt to the US, perhaps some suggestions on a caption....??

In response to a comment on an earlier post, I've had a look at these ramblings from Slate.com regarding the 1996 welfare reforms in the USA, and their impact on people who previously were on welfare benefits.

At the outset, althought this post is less polemical than my usual foam-mouthed efforts, I still would suggest for anyone interested in the welfare/work subject, and poverty generally, to check out (among others) John Quiggin, Larvartus Prodeo and Troppo Armadillo. Whereas I indulge in self-importance, you might find some generally well-credentialled writers writing intelligent things on those blogs. By contrast, I'm just going to pick the eyes out of the correspondence at Slate; partly because I don't have the time to do it exhaustively and partly because not all of the discussion is relevant to the Australian situation. So I'm going to give an overview of my personal views, with reference to the points made in the Slate discussion.

The first point to note is the difference with regard to minimum wage conditions. The minimum wage conditions in the US are so low that they have created a class of working poor, people who may well work 60+ hours a week yet still live below the poverty line. It can be cogently argued that much of the American middle class’ prosperity (which far outstrips that of Australia’s middle class) is based upon the low-paid labour of blue-collar and menial employees, these working poor.

Often these workers are black or Hispanic, which is economically neither here nor there, but socially contributes to the dislocation and alienation of many “ethnic” communities.

So with such a low minimum wage, several results can be seen. These include a lack of ability to escape the “poverty cycle” (because education at a tertiary level is mostly predicated on ability to pay, meaning that children from low-income families will most likely only be able to gain low-paid employment, thus repeating the process for their own families), concentration of poverty and crime within certain geographic areas (the “projects”, etc etc), and others. Most saliently to this discussion, there is little incentive for people to move from welfare to work.

There is, in the welfare reform of the US model, a distinctly punitive approach. That is to say that while welfare and the provision of economic support was reduced, there was little or no increase in the incentive model. The minimum wage was not raised, education was not commensurately funded, health insurance was not provided, and so the positive side of the equation was not supplied. The entire initiative was based on the stick, rather than the carrot.

DeParle’s book comments on these factors much more than the Slate.com piece has space to elaborate on, but it is a major concern of his.

This punitive approach is something I personally am very critical of. I believe it “blames the victim”. It is rooted in the assumption that people are poor, or are recipients of government welfare, because they choose to be. It says that the only reason people are dependent on the government is because they are lazy, and because the government allows them to be lazy. Thus the thinking goes that if you remove the government’s support for lazy people, they will then be forced to work. Problem solved – more people are working, the government expenditure on welfare benefits is less, and everybody is happy.

Not surprisingly, this view is mainly pushed by small-government conservatives. They would have the government play as small a role as possible, believing that government intervention stifles the free market. As the free market is the most efficient allocatur of resources, so goes this mantra, any impediment to it is negative, and must be reduced.

There is, of course, the added factor that most economic conservatives are wealthy, and do not wish to pay taxes. Furthermore, they do not benefit from low-income support schemes. So there is some pain and no gain for the top sections of society within a welfare-heavy system. There is a distinct self-interest for most conservatives in removing welfare support, which must be recognised. That is not to disparage self-interest; merely to acknowledge it.

Commonly cited in the arguments in favour of the free market is the concept of choice. The welfare recipient, it is argued, has chosen to remove himself or herself from the workforce voluntarily. What is more, the negative aspects of the lives of these people, for want of a better phrase, are held to be the direct result of their own poor choices. Examples cited in the linked post include domestic violence (choice of partner), self-destructive behaviour (including substance abuse, petty theft, violence, pregnancy, and poor financial decisions.

It follows then, in this reasoning, that welfare support merely rewards bad choices. The taxpayers are subsiding bad decisions made by others, which would be avoided if welfare were removed.

Not surprisingly, I am profoundly critical of this view, for a number of reasons. I believe the underlying assumptions of this view are flawed, which lead to flawed conclusions. And I believe it to be also, underneath all the supposedly economic arguments and rhetoric about improving the lot of the poor, to be motivated primarily by the self-interest of the wealthier sections of society. The US-Canadian economist JK Galbraith has written “the modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest searches – of that for a justification for selfishness”. It is a sentiment with which I agree.

(Lest I be accused of setting up a strawman to conveniently then demolish, if I have significantly misrepresented the views of the anti-welfarites, I invite them to comment and set me straight as to their true reasoning. However, I have tried to do nothing but replicate many of the arguments I have heard proceed from both American and Australian conservatives on the subject, in order to give a considered response).

Firstly, a word on the idea of the “free market”. The completely unrestricted free market is a load of bollocks. It advantages the sections of the market with existing capital; it does not provide a level playing field. On the other hand, socialism does not create wealth. So we operate within a mixed market economy, which irons out the inequities inherent in completely lassiez-faire capitalism without removing incentive to succeed.

Even conservatives will not defend a completely free market. The free market, as Daily Flute’s Paul Batey points out, allows me to run up to someone in a wheelchair, kick him over and pinch his wallet. Horrible, you cry! Call the police! Well, you just interfered in the free market.
Or take airlines. Even the most right-wing of folk will support the Air Safety people poking about in planes and airlines. They travel in planes occasionally, and they know that not all decisions are best left to market forces.

This leads to the second point. While the validity of Keynesian theory is challenged in some quarters today, the broad thrust of his thesis as regards macro-economic behaviour today still remains. If those who were unemployed received no benefits, the drag on the economy would become substantial, as those people contributed no money to the economy. This then shrinks the economy, impacting further jobs, meaning yet less income to spend, causing yet more negative growth in employment. The spiral downwards becomes vicious and deep.

So unemployment benefits moderate the effects of joblessness, not only for the directly affected but also for those in the indirect firing line. In the pure free market, such brakes would not be applied to the macro-economic situation.

This leaves us with acknowledging the necessity of government activity within the economy. How and where that should occur is the subject of another post entirely. Suffice to say that there exists no empirical data to support the assertion that tax cuts to the wealthy serve to grow the economy, primarily because of an increased marginal propensity to save among higher wage earners. Tax cuts to the poor are more effective in releasing the flow of money to the economy; however, they do little to impact the situation of those who are left unemployed. Hence the primary support for a basic level of economic activity, and for the stimulation of macro-economic growth during a recession, would be direct and targeted government support to the poorest sections of society – welfare.

The third point to make is that the concept of choice is not as clear-cut as many on the political and economic Right would imagine. In illustration of that, I’d like to deal with the concept raised in the Slate piece about the life choices of those women who were studied by DeParle. He cites family planning, or a lack thereof, drug and alcohol abuse, poor financial decision-making and other factors as contributors to socio-economic status. And in one sense, he is right. Yet he is also wrong.

While those choices were indeed made by the women in the study, and by many others, it is a fact that you can only make the choices which you are presented with, or indeed, are aware that you have.

If, for example, you have been born and raised into a socioeconomic environment, for example, where none of your classmates or your family have attended university, many have had children out of wedlock, and very few of your family have had stable personal relationships, it informs your worldview that such things are indeed the norm. If your school is under funded, if your family has had only a low level of education, if most of your community places a low value on learning, then you are not likely to see the value in education yourself. Your worldview becomes very limited. So the information that some people may have in making their choices, and the choices that they are aware may exist, are not as extensive as they would be for other sections of society.

While working in a very economically depressed part of Adelaide several years ago, I was shocked to learn in conversation with some people that they had one family trip per year. To the Adelaide Royal Show. That was it! They never left their own suburb at any other time. For anything. And this was usual for their community.

The differing values and backgrounds and experiences of people in low socio-economic groupings have a massive impact on their knowledge of what their life choices are, and their ability to make those choices. So “choice” in this sense is a bit of a furphy.

If you throw in the perpetuation of class such as I referred to before, the problem becomes exacerbated even further. So when certain people make “bad choices”, the situation is never as simple as it may appear.

And now we come to my major issue with the approach taken by the Clinton Administration in 1996. As well as adopting punitive measures (based on this erroneous “choice” bollocks), there were no carrots for those leaving welfare. If for example, welfare payments had been cut while raising minimum wages, programs put in place to handle substance abuse and other health problems and properly supporting education to ensure a sufficient minimum standard of service delivery to every child had been included, I would have looked with some favour on the proposals.

Personally, I see education as the key. There is no situation I am aware of, anywhere in the world, where a well-educated people is really poor. The comprehensive provision of education enables society to become more of a meritocracy then a plutocracy. At present, does the child of a successful merchant banker have the same opportunity as the child of a laid-off metalworker? Not at all. Which is where this “choice” nonsense is truly exposed.

The suburbs are full of people whose parents sent them to a good school, gave them good values, gave them a solid home in which to grow up, gave them their first car, gave them (in the US, at least) a tertiary education – and then who like to claim they are self-made. Crap. Such a world-view is wilfully ignorant of social disadvantage, not to mention self-serving.

I am not in favour of punishing the wealthy, not at all. I am in favour, however, of not rewarding the rich to detriment of the poor. And if the rich are asked to contribute to society (and therefore, incidentally, to their own well-being) through taxes that are spent on welfare as well as on workforce preparation and re-training (Job skilling as opposed to Work for the Dole nonsense), then I will defend that, and passionately.

The ultimate goal of any welfare system should be to return as many people as possible to work. This is thru macro-economic support, active incentive and if necessary, punitive measures, But the conservative viewpoint, which relies solely on punitive measures, does nothing but blame the victim, and certainly nothing to facilitate a return to the workforce on the part of the unemployed. Blaming the victims might keep the talkback callers happy, but I reckon if they’ve got that much time on their hands during the day, hell, they should get off their arse and get a job, the bludgers.

This is rather becoming a theme.

Apparently, says Amanda Vanstone, the two kids wrongly jailed by the Department of Immigration "weren't technically detained", and in fact were responsible for their own detention and attempted deportation.

Fucking reprehensible, this government is.

Elsewhere, Machine Gun Keyboard picks up on the Rau and Solon/Alvarez cases I commented on a while back, as well as the latest outrage.

John Howard must be the only person in Australia unable to see that Amanda Vanstone wouldn't know if her arse was on fire even if you bought her some stirrups, a mirror and a rectal thermometer.

At least, former National Party senator John Stone doesn't.

He apparently think that if you substitute "culture" for "race", it's ok to discriminate against people.

What a crock of shit.

It's an appalling article. He lists six things he thinks would "handle our growing, self-created Muslim problem". I wonder if Andrew Bolt will be pissed off at Stone for pinching his turf. There's only room for so many ignorant, deranged polemicists peddling lies and illogical claptrap. Or so we hope.

Quite apart from the fact that he makes the assumption that we even have a "Muslim problem", which is a false assertion, Stone's six points are such utter bollocks it barely seems worth the trouble to refute them. But you can't rely on someone else to expose his tripe, so I'll do it here, and if somebody wants to do it more thoroughly, good luck to you.

1. "Official multiculturalism policies must be abandoned outright."

So explain to me how abolishing SBS contributes to preventing some fanatic setting off a bomb at the Sydney Opera House. What horseshite. This does nothing except disadvantage those of non-white backgrounds. If Stone can explain to me how denying us all our French film fix and banning Deutchse Journal TV keeps au safe at night, I'm a Dutchman.

2. "we must sharply reduce, indeed virtually halt, Muslim immigrant inflow. "

Why? The bombs in London were set off by British citizens. Stopping immigrant inflow wouldn;t do jack about that. But even more pertinently, how do you decide if somebody is a Muslim? See, this is where Stone's piece falls down - for him, I suspect that "Muslim" is code for "Arab".

This is where all discrimination falls down, because instead of judging each person, and in this case, each application, on its merits, you start setting up ridiculous arbitary boundaries based on things like religion.

Lastly, this point relies on the logic that "all Muslims are terrorists, and all terrorists are Muslims". Which is such crap I hardly need to say anything. Suffice to say, when the Oklahoma bombings went off in the 90s, I didn't hear Stonie Baby suggesting that we should halt all Christian immigration from the US.

3. "...the precious gift of Australian citizenship must be harder to obtain...".

So how does this change jackshit? In fact, if it's HARDER to become an Aussie citizen, won't that lead to even more of the social dislocation and disenchantment among migrant communities, that Stone purports to want to address?

Of course, any redneck dickhead can still be an Aussie and not appreciate it, just by being born here. Once again, it's a matter of birth and race for Stone - nothing else.

4. "citizenship should be conditional on reasonable fluency, appropriately tested, in English. If ethnic ghettos are to be avoided, newcomers must learn our language".

How fluent are you in the local Aboriginal language of your area, John?

I would suggest that if ethnic "ghettos" are to be avoided, some social intergration policies, might be in order. A dearth of racist viewpoints in the community might help too.

5. "citizenship applicants should also have to pass a reasonable written test of citizenship's meaning: parliamentary democracy, respect for others' rights, the rule of law and a general understanding of the Australian values to which they swear commitment".

Once again, this only applies to foreigners. The fact that most Year 12 graduates don't know our national anthem is of no concern to John, he just wants to keep the foreigners out.

And just what "national values" is he referring to? The ones which lock up kids in detention centres? The ones that disposess Aboriginal people of their land? The ones that invade countries half a world away on a pretext, because a foreign power asks us too?

Or does he mean a fair go, equality, and decency? Perhaps, if it's the latter, he should write another article next week explaining the IR changes the Government proposes.

6 "emphasis on English in our immigration policy should be enhanced. Today, English-language proficiency earns points towards an applicant's overall score. It should be made an absolute requirement (including, in other than exceptional cases, for our humanitarian intake)".

Which is basically what he said before, except for the part about wanting reugees to be able to speak English. Which is great, really....are you fleeing for your life? Looking to escape death and persecution here in Australia? Well, only if you can speak-a da English, my friend.

This is nothing but the racist rantings of a senile, foolish old man. For me, the real worry is not that people think such things. You come to expect that after a while. It's more that people seem to see events like the London bombings as an excuse to let their racism off the leash. Adn what's more, the fact that this drivel got published is scary.

Imagine the flip-side scenario - could you imagine the Imam of Australia getting into print with an op-ed piece about how we need to increase Muslim immigration, and be nicer to Mohammedans?

There's an almost funny side to Stone's whole piece, though. He doesn't like foreigners...they're out to get us, he says. They don't speak our language, they're as like as not the dregs of the earth, and they have no right to come here.

Wouldn't it be great if you could go back in time 217 years.... and introduce John to the Aboriginal people of the day. 'Cos I don't think we spoke their language, we were certainly out to ge them, we were the crims and the scum of English society, and by any reading of it, we had no right at all to be here. So pop your racism back in it's box, John, and slink off back to whatever rock you crawled out from under, lest ye be judged yerself, you great oxygen thief.

Naughty, naughty, naughty.

That silly boy, Steve Vizard, seems to have been caught with his hand in several cookie jars all at once. And quite blatantly at that.

The Australian reports that Stevie Baby faces a $600,000 fine and a ban on being a director. Oh my hat. Whatever will he do now? He would be shaking in his shoes, wouldn't he?

Lets see. Vizard's accused of insider trading, on an investment of about $850,000. That's what he put in. A quck estimate of how he was hoping that was going to turn out is here.

So he's made $1.1m, definitely. What happens? A ban and a fine.

Compared to this character, who got 18 months in the clink for pinching cattle. Or this man, who copped 7 years in the big house - for emigrating without a passport, presumably because he thought staying alive was more important.

This isn't a politcal post. The courts are separate from the politcians (unless you live in South Australia), and that's how it should be. And no, I'm not saying that Howard and Vanstone got Vizard off or any rubbish of the sort.

I'm just saying that sometimes, just sometimes, this country is fucked.

Well, so we're going to be there indefinitely...

...but the Australian people, according to the Prime Miniature, "don't want an open-ended commitment".

So which is it, Johnny Boy?

Well, now I've heard it all. I thought it would be difficult for the Department of Immigration, MultiCultural and Indigenous Affairs, and it's current and former Ministers, to top themselves after their wonderful performances of the past few years, but they've worked hard and managed to do it.

Apparently, according to Phillip Ruddock, the wrongful detention and deportation of Australian citizens was the fault of....*drumroll*.....the people who were wrongfully detained and deported.

Yes that's right folks, if only those bloody mentally ill people had had their wits about them, they would have been alright. You can't expect the Department to do it's job, and actually determine whether or not people are citizens. That would just be unfair.

"Identification of people depends very much upon a high level of cooperation from those who are asked to prove their identity, and if that is not forthcoming, the task is always more difficult," says Philthy Phil.

I am, however, not surprised. Remember, this is a Conservative government, very much so, which has extreme right wing tendencies. And in their world, it's always the victims' fault. Are you poor? Well, it must be because you're a lazy git. Have you been sacked? You must have been a shit worker. So it's no big step to go blaming the victim, really.

(The only surprise is that the same rightwingers who are voluntary apologists for this sort of shit, are the ones who reckon the Left are traitors and self-loathers for pointing out that terrorism has at least some of it's causes rooted in the actions of the West).

Don't ever expect anything from these people. These are the people who, by and large, were born into wealthy families, were given good educations, good family homes, good jobs, good safe seats in Parliament, and then like to claim they're self-made. So it's all your fault if society gave you a shit hand to sit at the table with. This view suits them well, because they can then claim that their position in life is deserved, when in reality they just took the good fortune that popping out of the right uterus gave them in life and ran with it.

But it gets even better. Ruddock was (and possibly still is) a member of Amnesty International. Bit like Goebbels being a member of the Zionist society. They weren't any too happy about it either, and said so. But things like criticism, reviews and facts aren't of much interest to Phillip, or the Government generally.

Because not content with it all being somebody else's fault, they go one better. The Department's done so well, it's Head gets posted off to Indonesia as our Ambassador. That's despite presiding over the sort of culture at DIMIA that produces these completely incompetent results.

So the victim gets blamed, the incompetent department Head gets a reward (and a gong too, remember he was in the Honours list earlier this year), and the former and current Ministers just sit there doing fuck-all. This is Government that is totally, utterly and completely without shame.

Will Vanstone get sacked? No. Will Phil get censured by anybody for remarking that mentally ill people deserve all the deportation they get, particularly if they look all funny and foreign? No. Will Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau get any bloody justice? No.

Hooray for democracy? Hooray for bloody hell.

Two and half years more of this shit, and worse. But hey, interest rates are low. Aren't they?

What a surprise.

Peter Jensen is carrying on again, because apparently he didn't get his way. If only people would realise he's got a direct line to Jesus, and just listen to him, everything would be alright, wouldn't it Pete?

Where Peter comes from, apparently, men are men and women should be delighted about it.

I wonder if anyone's asked Pete's wife what she thinks about all of this. I wonder too if his view of biblical family life extends to polygamy, arranged marriages, domestic abuse and the like. I wonder if old Uncle Peter kisses his male parishioers hello...I suspect not.*

It's all about biblical Christianity, says Pete. Which presumably means it's all about Pete's interpretation of the Bible. No-one else's, of course. I wonder how long it is before Syndey Anglicans are drinking the Kool-Aid?

What a frightening motherfucker.

*all supported by the Bible.

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Greg Combet gave a terrific speech to the National Press Club yesterday - you can read the transcript here.

Rather than add to it, I'll simply mention that this is the face of the union movement that needs to be presented; rational, urbane, measured. No good striking first and asking questions later, or marching with Molotov cocktails while chanting things about John Howard that rhyme with "shunt". Greg Combet deserves great credit for this speech, and his crafting of the ACTU's response to these changes.

The challenge will be to keep the more fractious and militant unions on-side during the process. Dickhead union leaders have done great harm to the labour movement before now.....I'm just gonna burn a candle and hope we can hang together.

This one, I confess, slipped under my radar until I saw it highlighted on ABC-TV's 'The Glass House' last night.

Briefly, the Government is redrawing the guidelines on which charities get the Federal dollar. In a very, very political way. In essence, charities which engage in activity which "seeks to change Government policy" can be denied funding.

The definitions proposed are so full of loopholes as to be ludicrous. I'm inclined to be cynical, and think that this is a pre-emptive strike against the disability services groups that are pretty jacked off about the latest Budget. Or is that just a little bit too 'conspiracy theory' of me?

I suggest you get interested in this Bill - fast.
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....is to do the same thing over and over again, and expect a different result.

This paper, entitled "Reform isn't working" by David Peetz, was published in the Courier Mail on Monday. Worth reprinting in full.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, normally a friend of the Government, has warned that Australian unit labour costs are likely to rise by about 5 per cent in 2005 – faster than in any other developed country.

It is a worrying sign for a Federal Government that is championing the economic benefits of its proposed industrial relations reforms. Unit labour costs are the cost of producing a given amount of output. They reflect wage costs and productivity.

So the rapid growth in unit labour costs is due to two things. One is an acceleration in wages growth, driven by the skills shortage. It already is clear that the industrial relations reform won't help that. But the bigger factor is a slowdown in productivity. As HSBC's chief economist John Edwards points out, the drop in trend productivity over the past four quarters is the "sharpest setback for two decades".

Even before the latest figures on the productivity slowdown, it was clear that Australia's current performance has been unimpressive. In the productivity cycle that began after the Workplace Relations Act started to have an effect, labour productivity growth has been about 2.3 per cent a year. This is weaker than it was under the traditional award system in the 1960s and 1970s (2.6 per cent).

The Government keeps on telling us that individual contracting, encouraged by the Workplace Relations Act and further encouraged by its latest proposals, is boosting productivity. Why isn't this happening?

The reality is, at the workplace level, individual contracting is no better for productivity than union-based collective bargaining. In some situations it can be worse. Several studies have used enterprise or workplace data to examine what factors influence productivity. One Melbourne University study found that workplaces with individual contracts had higher productivity than those without but workplaces with collective agreements also had higher productivity, and by a similar amount.

The Business Council of Australia the most important corporate lobby group pushing for the Government's reforms, co-funded three large academic studies in part to look for this relationship. One project was based at Flinders University, a second at Melbourne University, and a third at the University of New South Wales. None found the result the BCA would have wanted. The Flinders project showed that "unions apparently are good for productivity, but only at workplaces where unions are active". The Melbourne project showed that collective bargaining coverage was associated with higher claimed levels of productivity. The NSW project identified 15 "key drivers" for excellence but "working arrangements and representation" (individual versus collective bargaining) were not among them; indeed they were "points of indifference".

High-performing workplaces could be either individual or collective.

It's no surprise, really. British case studies also found that firms pursuing individualisation gained no flexibility advantage over those firms that retained collective bargaining.

This is what we've seen played out in the national statistics. The Government's attempts to shift workers from collective bargaining to individual contracting have done nothing good for productivity. And if you look across the Tasman, you can see the consequences of what is to come. From 1991 to 1996, after its radical Employment Contracts Act was passed, New Zealand's government pushed individual contracting, while Australia's favoured collective enterprise bargaining.

The "safety net" under individual contracts in New Zealand was very similar to what the Federal Government plans to introduce here. What happened? The two countries had enjoyed similar productivity growth for 14 years leading up to the ECA. But then, New Zealand slipped behind. By 1998, New Zealand's productivity was 14 per cent below what it would have been if it had kept pace with Australia. The ECA was a disaster for productivity.

Sure, you hear lots about individual success stories from individual contracting. But for each workplace that has higher productivity with individual contracting, there is another one down the road that ends up with lower productivity.

Why? If you use individual contracts to cut wages or conditions, then you don't need to introduce new processes or technologies. So productivity growth will slow.
Or, worse, you can damage relations with your workforce. So workers will be less willingly productive. You don't hear so much about the failures but they show up in the aggregate numbers.

Pretty soon the Government will to have to start changing its tune. It will need to stop saying "our reforms have brought great benefits – we need to build on these gains with more of the same". Instead it will probably need to say "our reforms have not gone far enough – we need to address these problems with more of the same".

Perhaps a more sensible approach, however, would be to question whether more of the same will do any good at all.

I'm a bit jacked off at the moment.....

...read this, and this.

I'm sick and tired of hearing how crappily the ALP is doing in the polls, how their message isn't getting through, how's theyr'e all crap performers, how Beazley's a dogturd of a leader and John Howard is simply extinguishing all opposition with the fire of his very being.

Absolute tosh.

Polls come and go, and yes, as Costello hinted on Lateline last night, the Government will throw $20million of your hard earned away on a propaganda campign that would do Goebbels proud over industrial relations, which could have an impact. But hell....a PM slapped in the face by his own Federal Council nine months a resounding win? Two poll results in 3 days that average out to a four point Labor lead. Howard's personal approval rating dipping below 50% for the first time in a long time?

Sounds like it's the Tories have got a few issues at the moment.

So if I read one more column about how irretrievably stuffed Labor is, and why we should all js lay down and scoop sand over our heads, I'll, I'll....well, I don't know what I'll do. Probably write a nasty post about Piers Akerman or something.

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Excuse the rather self-indulgent nature of this post....you can't save the world everyday, you know.

Went to Mass last night. It's not as common an occurence as it should be, but God loves an occasional giver as well as a cheerful one, doesn't he? Anyway, said the Our Father....and have been deeply troubled by it ever since.

The thing is, you should only say things if you mean them. Strange concept, I know, but true. And I struggle with saying and meaning it all, in a way I never did before Mass last night. Why? Follow me through...

Our Father, who art in Heaven

I can deal with this bit. God's in his heaven. Very nice. All very good so far.

Hallowed be thy name

All very good in theory....but how exactly do I "hallow" it in practice? I suspect it would mean not yelling "Christ Almighty" when someone cocks up at work, or being more punctual and urgent about Mass, or not allowing my faith to be reduced to a joke by others. Or by me.

Your kingdom come, you will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.

I really don't like this one. What if God took me seriously? His will be done? No way. I prefer to sin and be forgiven than live according to his will. It's nice to say, but I don't honestly want to do it. I want to enjoy the fruits of my own desires, not straighten up like a saint.

So on the off chance he actually answers that prayer, I'm not praying it anymore. Not for a while, anyway.

Give us this day our daily bread

No thanks. I'd rather go fight, scratch, kill others and die myself, in the pursuit of material ends, rather than rely on deity to fil my needs (as opposed to my wants).

And forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.

One out of two. Forgiveness is all very well, but righteously hating other people who ahev actually wronged me is a lot of fun. I don't actually have to forgive people when I'm in the right, do I?

Lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil.

This part's actually ok. It'd be a lot easier if the Lord just removed the temptations from me that I see. I mean, how fair is it to make women so attractive, and then tell me I can't do anything about it? All I want God to do is stop making me so damned human. That'd be nice occasionally.

But somehow I don't think that that's what these lines mean.....

Dammit. I want a Jesus who says I deserve that new car.....a Jesus who syas that as long as I stick up for poor people, and dispossessed people, that my personal morality isn't as important....a Jesus who says everything I want him to say, and who proves me right all the time.

Jesus voted Labor, didn't he?

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