If you’re expecting wages to rise anytime soon — given the government’s economic management and the muting of Treasury’s influence — then you might be waiting a long time, readers suspect. If the economic downturn doesn’t convince you, then the Coalition’s attacks on industrial relations will. Elsewhere, readers discussed the Coalition’s newly solidified power in the Senate, and the lack of balance in school funding.
On the economic slump
Robert Garnett writes: Why anyone would expect that wages would rise under any circumstances now is beyond me. The corporate coup detat of Australia is complete. The economic, political and industrial environment is a guarantee of low wages. Unionism now stands at below 20% of the work force; strikes are virtually illegal; outsourcing, offshoring and privatisations have further weakened workers’ bargaining power; the industrial commission has been stacked with employer friendly judges; the constant propaganda from the mostly private media always favours bosses’ rights over workers’; and legislation that enables the government to use the armed forces against any workers or dissidents who decide that it is time that democracy in Australia was reinstated.
On Senate preferences
Lesley Graham writes: The crazy Senate preference system that exists in this country really needs to be fixed, whether the current incumbents like it or not. This I think is the reason why so many people didn’t vote as they are completely and utterly disgusted by the whole political system that is so broken, knowing that those in power wont take steps to fix it as it works to their advantage.
Gwen Clark writes: The left (if the ALP still has a left) is indeed in tatters having lost an election that should never have been lost. Senate preferences simply reflect Labor’s low vote for the senate. The senate reforms only make sure that obscure parties will have great difficulty now accidentally getting a senate quota. The only blame for the ALP loss has to fall to the ALP itself.
On school funding
Richard Pennycuick writes: It has always annoyed me that non-Catholic private schools style themselves as independent while happily taking the increasing largesse that conservative governments have given them since Menzies introduced what was then called “state aid” back in 1962 or thereabouts. Perhaps “taxpayer-assisted” would be a more accurate name.
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“Independent private school” is just as ironic as “self-funded retiree”.
It is very depressing, not to say scary, that so many commenters here are unable to grasp the simple facts of Senate voting, even to the extent of traducing the Greens.
Their crepuscular Black W(r)iggler is dumb as and so eager to play with the big boyz that he would have agreed to selling his first born.
Fortunately popular revolt and the cerebral Antony Green forced that to be fixed after the notorious 40 Minute Senate Committee review and now it could not be simpler, fairer or more representative.
The iniquitous LINE was only introduced in 1984 because, according to PJK (the class traitor’s Class Traitor) “… ALP voters have to take off their hoes to count beyond 10” which is why our elections tend to be held in the warmer months.
Anyone who finds PR/STV difficult really should not be allowed to vote.
In the face of Robert Garnett’s contribution, why is it that union membership is at just 20%?
That wouldn’t happen in Hong Kong.
Wages will not rise under the Coalition, says the heading. Then resentment and public sentiment will turn against the Government. And there will be division and a split between government and the people. The lower classes are hurting in that there are more homeless, more Domestic Violence and is rising and there are more bashings in hotels and drug taking will also rise. Dissatisfaction says the public are not happy.
The Labor campaign was all wrong because the ALP has turned so far to the Right they are disconnected to the voters. The voters on the bottom of the heap are all hurt and hurting. This difference was seen in the memorial for Bob Hawke, with so much love and devotion and the outpourings it was not seen inside the ALP and for the present ALP that it is now a different ALP. The people and the ALP, what is said to be the true representative Party of the people in 2019 are on different planets so the people in despair vote for the Government. Whatever the ALP said in the election campaign under Bill Shorten was not believed, and was wasted on deaf ears. Labor is not serious about Climate Change when it plumps for coal mining at Adani, and the coal in loading onto ships at Abbot Point and pollutes the Great Barrier Reef. The ALP are not serious. They want to talk mumbo jumbo in words and phrases without practical results. The people rejected the ALP. They rejected Bill Shorten. He was never popular.
And now we have what seems to be a rotten Scot Morrison government for a good Government rules for All Australians from the very bottom to the top. The Liberal Coalition government does not do that as this article says that wages will not rise. There is no trickle-down affect. There is no helping hand up to the ones that need it and there is no real and true Penalty Rates for those that have the courage to work on weekends to gain extra money. There is no fair division of funds to the Public schools against Private schools. The Private schools are still privileged and there is no fairness in university education. More and more universities are gaining incomes by educating, not Australians but overseas students especially from Asia. There is extra money in it. And last but not least which shows the white Australia is still white where the Indigenous are discriminated against and they are not mentioned in the Australian Constitution. After the Uluru Statement will the Government please give them a Voice. Just to make an Indigenous politician a Minister for the Aborigines is just whitewashing the issue. The Government is not Fair Dinkum. Oh dear, I said that about the Australian Labor Party. And the people leave both the two major Parties and have little belief in them any more.
Its the core policy agenda for conservative governments, beat the stupid workers down by destroying their unions, take away their penalty rates stack the wage authorities and stack the federal police with conservative lackeys and make them an arm of the government, always applying downward pressure on wages and the unemployment benefits and pensions, reward the rich and punish the poor, its always been the same, my generation unionised and fought these bastards tooth and nail and won wages and conditions the rest of the world dreamt of, but now the whingers and the whiners and the weak take whatever is dished and vote their masters in time after time, serve the fools right they are simply getting what they vote for.
Quite right, braddybear, I agree with everything that you have written in your post.i am 80, I joined the ALP when I was 17 and didn’t renew my memebership after they knifed Bill Hayden and then privatised those two pillars of the ALP, the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas.of course I still vote Labor because I can’t abide the alternative.when I was growing up one of the best accolades my parents would give to a particular person was,”He’s a good Labor man”.that meant he was honest, fair and could be relied upon in a crisis.i think that Kim Beasley Sr. Was close to the mark when he said,”when I joined the Labor Party we had the cream of the working class, now we have the dregs of the middle class”.I am very much afraid that too many of our Labor representatives don’t believe in anything anymore other than themselves.i can only hope that Anthony Albanese will put us on the right track, he seems genuine to me.