After being forced by the pandemic to put aside politics as usual for much of 2020, and facing a government throwing around hundreds of billions in deficit spending, Anthony Albanese now has an opportunity to inflict serious damage on Scott Morrison.
If he’s up to it.
Australian workers need him to, for their financial security and for Australia’s economic recovery.
The government’s proposed “worse off overall test” to enable agreements that will see workers’ pay cut under a nebulous “public interest test” requirement for at least two years will further reduce already weak wages growth, undermine the recovery, and accelerate the shift of national income to business away from workers.
Having broken faith and produced this WorkChoices-style idea from his back pocket after keeping it secret during consultations with unions earlier in the year, Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter is trying to argue it will be extremely limited in its use.
You can believe that about as much as you could believe Peter Costello claiming WorkChoices would lift labour productivity.
The Coalition couldn’t help itself. After a pretence of consulting with unions, it has let ideology and the desires of its business donors take over again to further weaken the bargaining power of workers after years of wage stagnation. So much for “we’re all in this together”.
There are high stakes over this — which are completely absent from just about any press gallery coverage. “Public Bar” Porter’s proposal would cut wages growth and undermine household spending at the exact moment the economy needs households to keep lifting spending.
Albanese has deployed some acute attack points on Morrison in recent months — especially the entirely correct point that Morrison is primarily a salesman interested in the photo opportunity but not in the delivery.
Albanese’s childcare policy in response to an anti-women budget was smart. But a government mired in sleaze and scandal, the most corrupt in postwar history, should be living in fear of the opposition.
Plainly it isn’t.
For a leader who professes to love fighting tories, Albanese has had to play nice for much of the year rather than, as he puts it, “throw the toys out of the cot”.
No opposition leader — either those playing nice or those who have politicised the pandemic — has prospered during the pandemic in Australia. But both Albanese’s polling and Labor’s numbers — to the extent they can be believed — have held up better than any state opposition.
Nonetheless, the persistent criticism is that, unexpectedly, he lacks mongrel and cut-through. The press gallery is already running leadership stories.
Porter’s “worse off overall test” should be the perfect opportunity. Labor should spend every day between now and the next election talking about Morrison’s pay cut. If the government baulks now, it indicates it will try again after the next election. It plainly can’t help itself.
That the government is mulling an attack on superannuation as well should strengthen Labor’s hand in portraying it as an ideological outfit hell-bent on cutting workers’ pay and super.
The Australian Financial Review, News Corp, business lobby groups and much of the press gallery will denounce it, but that applied to the campaign against WorkChoices too.
And if Labor under Albanese can’t turn this into a vote-winning issue — protecting workers’ super and pay, and supporting the economic recovery — it should just give up.
I an not aware of the specifics of the legislation but feel that there may be a way forward that gives employers in difficulty some flexibility to TEMPORARILY cut wages but only after:
Labor should run with this as a way of countering the government’s arguments that companies need flexibility in difficult times.
Not bad as a way of sharing the pain with management and shareholders if the staff are going to take pay cuts.
Might need some more work to cover the rather common situation where those at the top of the company dodge income tax by taking their rewards in other forms. Their declared income is therefore a relatively unimportant part of their deal.
You are monkeying with large tracts of Company law and a good deal of legal precedent.
Which is, of course, what Porter’s IR bill does.
Not bad ideas but we’ve never had lower wages growth, lower days lost to industrial action, or a higher % of profits going to owners of capital. we don’t need more flexibility
A business that knows and has the trust of its employees doesn’t need legislation to do this. Intrepid Travel twice (SARS and GFC) negotiated temporary pay cuts balanced by a promise (delivered on) to repay with bonus once revenue returned to normal. With employee trust this legislation isn’t needed; without it, it’s exploitation.
It is quite puzzling why the beating up of Labor is so prevalent when we have the most disastrous Federal Government and PM ever. They have shown themselves to be shonks, bullies, rapacious in their pursuit of the poor in our community, without mercy , care for our environment, for the future in terms of climate change abd the destruction of far too many jobs in our economy. Yet the media focuses on and continues to blame Labor
Puzzling? Not at all, it’s obvious. Seldom has an opposition had clearer more vulnerable targets. Even less seldom has an opposition so utterly failed to stir itself.
Not really, it is the nature of herd/mob mentality to turn on the weakest and I cannot, in 50yrs of watching politics, recall a weaker “Labor” opposition than the current space wasters.
I made a similar comment yesterday Kris. Whatever happened, it’s Labor’s fault.
Consider the counter factual. If Labor was in government with no idea, running all manner of grant rorts, propping up dying industries that happen to be donors, refusing to make any commitments, making announcements every second day and never following through with actual money, Ministers making new lows in competence on a daily basis, would all the media be saying it’s the LNPs fault for being such poor opposition?
I don’t think so.
Which brings us to the role of the shadow ministry – does it not?
Which thinks “role” means ‘roll‘ – as in over.
Oh, so there is consistency there after all!
“….. As they both started sinking, the frog, in it’s dying breath, asked in astonishment why the scorpion stung him? To which the scorpion shrugged and said “I can’t help it. It’s in my nature.””
What public interest is served by cutting people’s wages?
As if the public interest matters! A connection between the public interest and the policies of the Coalition may have existed in some instances long ago, but the Coalition now only concerns itself with certain private, partisan, sectional or class interests. It sees this as a zero sum game where harming those it does not serve is just as important as benefitting those it does. And sometimes it takes pleasure in inflicting harm on others just because it can, out of simple badness.
When has “public interest” ever been a criterion for this shower?
The Labor Party are the Ruling Rabblement’s 2nd Eleven side . They get invited to Annual Balls and receive invites to welcome foreign dignitaries onto our shores . They’re even found inside News Corpse Publications , earnestly scribbling away an supportive narrative of the Ruling Rabblement’s policy agenda .If one does find the 2nd Eleven a tad elusive , a trip to the House of Reps’ will see this threatened sub species snuggly ensconced into the corrupt bosom of its owner . At first , a bit disconcerting to see a member on chamber floor , hoisting up upon it’s hind legs to interject , only to perceive a Hominid with apparently , four arms , two heads , four legs , two quivering , heaving bellies and only half the intellect of standard Cretinoid Hominid Australis . An unnerving experience .