Auspol: Not with a bang but with a whisper

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Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Did I hear the green shoots of a discussion about a housing bubble????

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 08:00

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 22:46

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

lmao abbott on the front bench

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 08:18

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Solemn Sloth posted:

@ABCNews24: Shorten: For people on $40-$60,000, #penaltyrates are the difference whether they can afford to send their kids to a private school. #auspol

lol

# ¿ Oct 5, 2015 03:03

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Amethyst posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-07/breast-cancer-gene-cant-be-patented-high-court-rules/6833232

This is a serious precedent. I'd like to hear what someone in the medical/pharma sector thinks about it, and the competing futures here. On the one hand we have expensive, R&D heavy drugs incentive by stacks of money. On the other, we have public, open research available to anyone who wants it.

I lean towards the latter, but I don't really know enough to make that judgement strongly.

I also find the idea of patenting a human gene philosophically repugnant.

Under our capitalist system, any business who "discovers" something like a gene and neglects to try and secure a patent over it is being derelect in their duty to shareholders.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 02:17

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

So there's movement on the penalty rates thing in Canberra, and one of the ideas floated about it is offering a tax adjustments to compensate for the reduction in penalty rates.

In principle, this means that the onus on providing more cash for working weekends, public holidays, long hours and shfit work shifts from the business itself to the state. If it is crafted properly, it means that we as a society, through the state, compensate people for working those hours, rather than the business or organisation itself.

One of the ideas mentioned is a tax credit, rebate or deduction, which means the worker who would normally get a penalty rate instead gets a reduction in the amount of tax they pay for working those hours. If the worker is below the tax free threshold, the only way this would work is if that were a tax rebate rather than a deduction or offset.

The devil is in the details obviously, but if it's crafted in a way that there's no short or long term net loss to the workers involved then shifting the social aspect of wages and compensation from business to "society" (as in the tax system) could in effect mean we are all subsidising weekend workers rather than just the organisations who operate at those times.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 03:46

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Doctor Spaceman posted:

E: Oops

The first issue is making sure it isn't received as a once-a-year thing at tax-time, since that doesn't really help the people who need it.

Yeah, the only way it would work (without inordinately loving the poor) is through the PAYE system, tax tables and some adjustments to the information reported by business, such as the number of hours or a percentage of time spent working "unsociable hours", subject to auditing of course.

open24hours posted:

Well why shouldn't everyone pitch in to help private businesses make more money? It's only fair. Just like compensating for increased GST through reduced stamp duty. Everyone buys houses, everyone owns a business, and everyone pays GST, so everyone benefits equally.

In the short term maybe, as businesses adjust, but long term you'd expect margins and profits to return back to where they are now as competition takes over. Those business owners will just find something else to complain about, like the award system or minimum wage.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 04:04

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

open24hours posted:

Of course they will, I'm sure they'll be angling for some other type of tax cut. The people who stand to benefit the most from this kind of thing are companies like Woolworths and Coles and McDonalds who will have managed to shift what is probably many billions of dollars of costs onto the government for absolutely no public benefit whatsoever.

Really the only way to justify this is if the expected increase in profit for these companies plus the increased (or unchanged) economic activity from the workers affected results in a comparable tax take because if not, yeah it's pretty counterproductive for the economy.

Crikey today has a piece about penalty rates and how if any changes lead to an overall suppression of wages then that will further dampen the economy because the vast majority of people on penalty rates spend their entire wage and recirculate it back into the economy.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 04:20

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Solemn Sloth posted:

In serious need of third party improvements.

MODS

# ¿ Oct 9, 2015 16:01

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Picture this scenario: the RBA drops rates a few times, the PM gets his knickers in a twist, sacks the head of the RBA and replaces him with somebody who jacks up rates just to appease the savers. End result? Mass unemployment and deflation. Dodged a loving bullet we did.

quote:

Why Glenn Stevens is breathing easier since Tony Abbott got rolled
One of the big winners of Malcolm Turnbull's rise looks to be the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Governor Glenn Stevens has already had three meetings with Turnbull and made himself available in the new prime minister's early days to address both cabinet and this month's mini "reform summit" between business, unions and welfare groups.

Images of Stevens sitting down with freshly-minted Treasurer Scott Morrison - both Protestant church-going residents of Sydney's Sutherland Shire - are symbolic of a broader mood of renewed hope that has accompanied the change of leadership.

At its most basic, the switch to a new team in Canberra, determined to make the pursuit of a positive economic message its raison d'�tre, meshes nicely with Stevens' often lonely and long-standing "glass half full" approach to the future.

Having cut official interest rates by 275 basis points since late 2011 to a record-low 2 per cent in May, the only real ingredient missing from Stevens' world is the one he can't do much about � confidence.

Tony Abbott failed badly on this front and it was a big part of why he had to go.

Early signs abound that Turnbull and his Treasurer may deliver where Abbott did not. Sentiment has rebounded solidly. Talk to almost any business person and there's both relief and expectation.

For Stevens it's a badly needed reboot that complements his central view, expressed again last month, that Australia's economy has coped remarkably well with the rise and fall of the resources boom � "literally the biggest thing since the gold rush".

"The chances are good that we are going to come out of this � not unscathed, not without a bit of pain � but we are not going to come out of it remotely as badly as we did the previous three or four times we had these things. I think it is an underappreciated success."

Lurking behind Stevens' pleasure at the regime change lies another more important issue, one that goes to the Reserve Bank's future.

Under Abbott there was a real fear the Reserve Bank might suffer the same fate that befell Treasury and its secretary, Martin Parkinson.

Abbott effectively dumped Parkinson in the first days of his prime ministership, overturning decades of convention that prizes institutional succession over cheap short-term politics.

It also had the effect of alienating the new government in its early days from one of the most important assets of high office � a powerful and supportive Treasury.

By pushing out a respected and high-performing secretary, Abbott sent a message that the department's advice wasn't worth listening to; a serious miscalculation.

The whole episode created a perception across the central banking community that Abbott's team was more than capable of "doing a Parkinson" to the Reserve Bank and replacing Stevens when his term expires in September next year with "one of their own".

That fear looks to have been well placed. More than a year ago, a visiting senior team from a major global investment bank was doing the rounds of Australia's economic policy makers � including the Reserve Bank and Treasury, as well as Abbott's office.

What struck the visitors was how openly hostile the PMO was about the Reserve Bank's performance.

The office was particularly angry about the fact that the Australian dollar had rallied back to just shy of US94� from US86� in early 2014.

Only months earlier the Reserve Bank had embedded in its regular statements language about how interest rates were in for a "period of stability".

Markets took that as a sign that rate cuts were a thing of the past, removing one of the downward forces on the currency.

The stance made sense because of a very genuine concern that more interest rate cuts would further fuel property prices and drive up household debt.

That caution has since been borne out, with a chart published this week by the Reserve Bank showing household debt-to-GDP is around 180 per cent � a staggering level.

Yet the investment bankers were told in no uncertain terms that the Reserve Bank had "f--ked up" its communication and that the government would have to "fix" the institution.

The ham-fisted bluster and aggression that characterised so much of Abbott's two-year prime ministership was being turned on the Reserve Bank, despite it having a global and local reputation as one of the world's out-performing central banks.

With remarkably few missteps, the Reserve Bank has � for well over two decades � helped steer the economy through the 1998 Asian financial crisis, the 2000 dot-com bust, the early 2000s property bubble in Sydney, the 2008 global financial crisis and the severe dislocation caused by the biggest terms-of-trade boom in 150 years.

Throughout the tumult, Australians have enjoyed stable inflation, high employment, unprecedented living standards growth, and most important � life without recession.

Unlike other central banks around the world � most notably the Bank of England, which was subjected to the humiliation of having a foreigner installed as its chief after being seen to have failed its mandate to ensure financial stability in the lead-up to the crisis � there is no case for punishment at the Reserve Bank.

Yet despite that scorecard, Abbott's people were openly telling offshore visitors about the need to put an outsider in charge of the bank � a potentially devastating move that would cast a serious shadow over what is without doubt Australia's most credible economic institution.

That it would potentially occur during the tumult of the 2016 election campaign � rather than be addressed well ahead of next year's September handover � only added to tension within the central bank.

One of Stevens' main objectives during his final years in the job is to manage a succession to the man widely considered the best candidate, his deputy governor, Phil Lowe.

Lauded by many market economists as the finest central banker of his generation, Lowe forewarned by a decade the dangers of overleverage that caused the 2008 meltdown. He is deeply enmeshed into the global central banking community, and earned his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where staff included Ben Bernanke and Stanley Fischer, now vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve.

In other words, he has an outstanding pedigree.

Luckily for him, his chances of being sidelined by a "captain's pick" curve ball coming out of Abbott's brain have been hugely reduced.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2015 16:12

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Huh, turns out pet ownership is ridiculously ostenatious. Especially cat ownership, given they're not even able to be trained to work like a Kelpie or a Guide dog. I guess that means owning a cat puts a person in league with the blue bloods. Shame, really.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 07:46

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Zenithe posted:

What based on that article makes you think all pet ownership should be banned?

There are individual people in the world who use far less resources than individual pets with owners in the developed world. The argument is that by choosing to distribute those finite resources to pets, we are depriving them from poorer countries.

Basically pet ownership is bourgeois as hell unless those pets are providing a useful function to society, such as working dogs, and even then if they're being fed food from resource-intensive industries there's a strong argument that they shouldn't be.

So, again:
- cats are useless, therefore they should be banned
- feed your pets food that is not resource intensive such as fish or chicken.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 08:05

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Zenithe posted:

....Did you guys read it? Or just the title?

So make sure your pet is eating food that would otherwise not have been eaten.

As for cats being useless:

There are good arguments for making sure that pet food is ecologically sustainable and ethical in the article, as well as making sure that your pet isn't killing native wildlife, but I'm surprised you would skip to pet genocide so quicly based on such poor evidence

Woah woah woah slow down there pal, you're the first person to bring up cat genocide. I think it's a win just to recognise that pet ownership, especially cat ownership, is bourgeois as hell. How about we just go from there first, shall we?

Sure you could feed pets food that is not fit for human consumption, but you could also recycle it back into the production chain to produce human-suitable food for feeding the third world. The fact that we don't just drives another stake into the capitalist system of infinite resource consumption and excess, and the hammer driving it is being held by cat owners (and to a significantly lesser extent poodle owners).

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 08:16

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

SynthOrange posted:

You cant keep dogs in an apartment. My cats keep me sane.

Also infest my brain with toxoplasmosis.

Feed/water/house a cat 24/7, or use the same resources to sustain a therapist who you see once a week to discuss things with.

Really the choice is obvious, especially if you're asleep and at work for 12-16 hours a day.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 08:19

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Pickled Tink posted:

Cats provide companionship, comfort, entertainment, and are a valuable source of cuteonium. You shouldn't let them outside though, unless you have built up an enclosed area that can actually contain them where they can't harm wildlife, and you should definitely spay or neuter them.

Should bike helmets be compulsory? Lessons from Seattle and Amsterdam

How is this anything unlike a court jester? The King doesn't spend all of his time watching him juggle, he is only called in when beckoned out of boredom (or when he wants somebody to execute).

The rest of the time the jester is waiting to be beckoned. How do you consider this an efficient or even worthwhile use of finite resources?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 08:31

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Zenithe posted:

Yes, you clearly know lots about cats and your opinion on them should be valued.

Granted the author of the article did say that it made a lot of pet owners uncomfortable. It's not nice to have to consider these things.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 08:35

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

something 2 think about

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 01:45

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Mithranderp posted:

So, how badly is an interest rate increase going to gently caress up a lot of people? I'm assuming that the other three big banks will follow Westpac's suit, AND that if the RBA increases rates again, they'll do another rate hike. I know a lot of people are living in the margins of affordability with their mortgages, and unless (and probably even if) you've just taken on a five year fixed rate mortgage (assuming interest rates will continue to increase over the next 5 years), even a small increase can be horrible. And I wonder how many people with investment properties will pass on the increase to renters.

In what possible world would the RBA increase rates beyond the next 12-18 months?

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 03:58

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Mithranderp posted:

Interest rates have been, at least in historical terms, incredibly low recently. They've either stayed the same or decreased for the past 4 years or so. When I said "assuming interest rates will continue to increase over the next 5 years" I basically meant "assuming interest rates will be higher in 5 years than they are now" because in my very limited understanding of how interest rates work, that is almost a certainty.

So yes, in the next 5 years there is a high chance rates will be higher than they are now, but how much higher? That depends on a ridiculously large number of factors. The RBA doesn't increase rates in a vacuum, they do it taking into account an enormous amount of data about the economy.

Westpac are no different. They would be looking at their balance sheet and their loan book and working out how tolerant their mortgage customers (and other loans admittedly) will be to a rate hike and making a judgment based on that. The marginal will either endure mortgage stress, or eventually sell or downsize. However, I think from memory a lot of the latest tightening by APRA and Basel has included doing regular stress tests, using an assumed 7% interest rate of mortgages. So even though rates are low now, a lot of mortgages that the banks have been taking have been forced to do so assuming the rates are a lot higher than they are now.

The RBA has said repeatedly in past statements over the last few years that australian mortgage holders are paying off their debt faster than necessary, which has been part of the reason why growth has slowed - people are saving more than spending, just because they haven't reset the regular payment into their mortgage account. If/when rates go up, they'll start eating into this before a significant amount of mortgagees undergo mortgage stress.

The other banks have already increased rates on investor and interest-only loans, they did so a while back when the new APRA rules came into effect forcing them to get a lot more money and a lot less leverage.

i guess to answer your question about mortgage stress and "life being horrible after a small increase", this really depends moreso on lovely lending practises that some of the smaller banks like BoQ were doing prior to the APRA tightening, but also on how dodgy your mortgage broker is, and how far you're willing to bend the rules to get a mortgage without having adequate safeguards behind you. I don't think that situation is very widespread here, because we had the advantage of time and hindsight after the GFC where we saw how much this hosed the USA housing market in that process.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 04:22

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Beetphyxious posted:

lol nice title.

cheers, i have no idea who would argue against feeding poor people

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 04:24

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Dude McAwesome posted:

It'd be nice to earn interest on cash that's actually above the rate of inflation. gently caress, what a dream!

Maybe you'll have to invest that money into productive enterprises instead. Have you considered venture capital?

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 05:02

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

PaletteSwappedNinja posted:

Why are Australian politicians so uptight about voting along party lines compared to the UK, US, etc?

Because Australians learned early on the power of solidarity, particularly the labour movement. The tories just followed suit really.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2015 12:04

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

My last assignment ever was a few months ago and the international students in my group were excellent. Intelligent, analytical and insightful. They just had crap English. So we divided and conquered, I volunteered to edit and proof read the ~80ish parts of the assignment and we each agreed to split the assignment up into several parts that we all researched and put together separately. Where there was an issue with communicating an idea, we went back and forth until we had clarity and consensus. There was a point where we thought there was a copy/paste from an article there, went back and clarified and it was a miscommunication and rectified.

I compare that to one of the other groups who all had perfect english but were full of alpha-personalities and spent most of their time debating what to do and how to do it that they ran short of time. Another group just ran out of time because they were poo poo at planning - again, with perfect English.

It is difficult to tease apart the issues in this case. Of course there is pressure on our universities to admit and pass international students, but that pressure could easily be solved by more rigorous pre-university education on ethics and expectations of university life. Perhaps the universities can make that a prerequisite of their courses (and of course charge for the privilege). Hooman is right, this isn't an issue with international students, it's an issue with lovely students and there are multiple ways of ensuring lovely students are either prepared for the workload and expectations, or quite rightly flunked when they don't perform.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 02:37

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

In different news, the natural rate of unemployment (ie NAIRU) is up to 5.7% from 4.8% in 2007. Even though these are only estimates, the natural rate of unemployment going up isn't good.

To explain, it's well known in this thread (i hope) that our system allows for a certain level of unemployment, as capitalism does. Let's not have that discussion again.

What NAIRU tries to estimate is what level of unemployment will allow for inflation to remain at a stable base. The assumption is that if unemployment lowers below that level, inflation will start to rise. What isn't so obvious is why.

The reason why is that the "natural" level of unemployment is based upon the assumption that businesses will eventually stop taking people from the unemployment queue and start poaching employees from other firms. This poaching is expensive, because to do so they have to offer better wages and/or conditions in the process. The alternative of hiring somebody who has been unemployed (perhaps long term) is that they can pay them an amount less than they would from poaching, but the firm has to be confident that the person will perform to the same or better level.

If it is true that our natural rate of unemployment is up another 0.9% of the workforce, that's hundreds of thousands of workers who organisations now see as unemployable except in a very heated economy.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 02:56

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

open24hours posted:

Isn't the NAIRU hypothesis demonstrably false, as economies with full employment and low inflation exist?

I'd be interested in reading about this if you have examples, NAIRU is a very curious measurement to me for exactly that reason.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 03:07

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

I think the issue with NAIRU is that it tries to be a predictive measure that can inform monetary policy. If unemployment is above what economists think NAIRU is, the argument is that lower interest rates will bring unemployment down without increasing inflation, whereas if NAIRU is at or above the current unemployment level, stable or lower interest rates relative to today would increase inflation, perhaps above the desired 3% target band.

The question is, what happens if low interest rates push unemployment down through the predicted NAIRU without inflation taking off? Aside from being a good outcome (both deflation and hyperinflation are bad news), it means NAIRU is much lower than calculated/predicted.

We can be thankful though that the RBA doesn't use it as the sole guiding factor in setting monetary policy though.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 03:40

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

If the actual NAIRU is in fact far lower than what is predicted by the IMF (5.7%) then theoretically we could keep interest rates at or near zero in the medium term and not have to worry about an outburst of inflation, and the overall effect would be us getting far closer to "full employment" of around 2%. The people who would be pissed off with this idea would be rent-seeking savers who have all their money in bank accounts earning a few percentage points above inflation, because it would force them to put their money to work and take a risk, or to invest it in ventures that do it for them.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 03:57

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Why don't the international students bear some responsibility for these problems. No one makes them attend a university that teaches in a language they don't understand.

Because it's a confusion of the role of the university. We either expect the university to provide a set curriculum and test participants on their performance to that curriculum, or we expect the university to do its best to produce high quality graduates wherever they can.

If the former, give them a fixed curriculum in a fixed timespace for a fixed cost and then fail/pass them accordingly. If the latter, the course should run for as long as it needs to to ensure that by the time they graduate they have "got it".

From what I've seen, students increasingly think that its just time commitment = meeting quality expectations, when in reality it's both time and hard work.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 04:27

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

open24hours posted:

In some countries (like Japan), outside of the elite universities they're pretty much just daycare for young adults. Show up, get your degree, go get a job as a salaryman somewhere.

Which highlights an interesting paradox: send your kid overseas to a high quality university that does not act like a daycare, but then demand they pass regardless of effort or merit because of the money you've spent.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 04:42

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Actually in a business degree working in groups is critical to understanding and overcoming group psychology.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 04:57

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Negligent posted:

You can cover that as part of psych 101, you don't have to have everything you do be group work.

Well yes, unless you subscribe to the view that practise makes perfect.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 05:10

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Depending on the class size and the topic we had some pretty creative ways of doing assessments. Finance had this online portal with multiple tests, one for each week. The tests were pretty much all finance maths, a few dozen questions per week, and you could take the tests an unlimited number of times. The only limit was therefore your own effort versus the time you dedicated to getting it 100% right. A few weeks in, "getting it perfect" was substituted for "getting it mostly there", due to the time commitment. Each of the questions was unique during every run, different numbers and permutations of the formulas, so the end result of spending that much time on it was that you got pretty loving good at finance math. You also ended up hating the subject _{_{and im pretty sure the lecturer too}}.

Another one used a series of three tests online over the weekend and they were worded in such a way that you couldn't get anywhere more than 50% unless you either guessed really well, or had read the accompanying textbook. 60% of the questions in each test were purely finishing the sentence of some passage in the textbook, the rest were analytical.

I'm of the view that if lecturers and teachers are focused on group assignments to deliver learning, they could facilitate the process by helping the groups plan, execute and be accountable as a team and individuals. One way to do this would be for groups to form in week 1 and by week 2 have a fleshed out plan of execution submitted to the lecturer on roles, responsibilites, timelines, etc. This way by the time the assignment is submitted, it is easier to track who has lifted their weight and there would be less complaints from individuals, and the lecturers don't have to worry so much about marking dozens (hundreds?) of individual assignments.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 07:10

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Negligent posted:

This happened at law school and it owns.

The faculty are remarkably open about telling people to get hosed if they don't like as well, passive aggressively suggesting people may be entering the wrong profession.

Law schools can get away with this because it's in the interests of the legal profession to put up as many barriers to entry as possible. Same as with medical school. They maintain their income through exclusivity so it's only right for them to set whatever assessments they choose to meet this end.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 08:11

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Negligent posted:

I don't agree with that characterisation.

If filtering out the bads is a side effect of grading each person individually on their merit then I'm not complaining.

Surely you agree that a harsher, more gruelly assessment criteria has the effect of reducing overall successful graduate numbers, which by providing a limited supply of graduates into the system, has the convenient side effect of controlling supply in the profession and therefore controlling any threats to income growth?

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 08:39

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

I think just about every exam we had in the masters program was open book. Memory be damned, if you can't remember the model, look it up. The book won't help beyond that.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 09:09

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Doctor Spaceman posted:

You run into problems in some science subjects where there are a really finite number of problems that can be answered in the time an exam takes, so letting people bring notes / textbooks in is tantamount to just letting them bring in all the answers.

E: Alternatively, they can end up ball-breakingly hard.

Not ball breakingly hard, but written in such a way that the material brought into the exam can only realistically be used as a reference and not a cheat sheet, unless the student somehow magically prepped for that specific exam question

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 09:59

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Majestic posted:

We removed our compulsory work experience requirement for a couple of reasons. Amongst those reasons was the fact that we have a huge international student cohort, and these students found it very difficult to find work placements, due both to their lack of language competency and their lack of family/social networks within the country. Making their ability to graduate depend on them finding an internship was viewed by many as an unfair burden, which I agree with. Unfortunately while we still encourage people to do internships and work experience (and it certainly greatly aids their ability to find employment after graduation), there is no longer a requirement to do so.

There was a time many moons ago that firms accepted as par for the course that they would hire and train up new graduates and school leavers, but these days they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want all their new hires to arrive on day one with the skills and work ethic that will have them be productive, rather than accepting the need to train this themselves.

These firms quite happily will outsource the training requirement and demand that graduates be work-ready because the system allows them to do so. The end result is that they either institutionalise a training regime into their workplace voluntarily, or make a decision to pay more for experienced employees instead of graduates. The net effect being more poaching within the industry and leaving more grads to wither and wane in coffee shops.

It's not just in the engineering field this happens either.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 04:08

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Actually now that I think about it, industries where the graduates are not heavy on social skills would be more prone to trying to outsource training requirements because effective training requires a high degree of people skills. lmao

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 04:12

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

news corpse but still too good not to post:

quote:

We haven�t seen the back of Tony Abbott yet
AS Joe Hockey today waves goodbye to 19 years in Parliament, fellow Liberals are alerting each other: Don�t expect Tony Abbott to do the same any time soon.

The former PM remains angry after four weeks on the backbench and has not shed a belief he can get his old job back from Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Abbott is being encouraged by a small group of supporters and by the well-intentioned sympathy of a larger group of Liberals, who do not believe he has a chance of making a comeback, but don�t want to add to his alienation.

And he continues to talk almost daily with his politically aggressive former chief-of-staff Peta Credlin.

Mr Abbott�s former treasurer Joe Hockey is leaving to replace former Labor leader Kim Beazley as ambassador to Washington, Australia�s most important diplomatic post in terms of national security and the global economy.

His departure will require a by-election for the seat of North Sydney, possibly in the next month. Practice requires a quick ballot to ensure the locals are not left unrepresented, but the summer holidays are closing in and a vote might be put off until early next year.

And that would be more likely were Mr Abbott to quit his seat of Warringah. The two by-elections could be held on the same day to reduce the cost of an expensive double-barrelled democratic exercise.

Mr Abbott has said he will make a decision on his future by around Christmas. After a scattering of carefully selected interviews following his party room defeat by Mr Turnbull, he has kept a low public profile.

Since his initial burst of self-vindication, Mr Abbott has been an exemplary former leader, sharing a backbench spot with Mr Hockey.

However, he continues to discuss the leadership privately with colleagues who have told news.com.au the bitterness is still there, as is his belief he can again be prime minister.

There are some factors behind this.

The departure of Mr Hockey will leave behind his own support group � including Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who has his own long-term leadership ambitions.

They could swing behind Mr Abbott, giving him as many as 14 to 20 MPs as dedicated backers, plus a media squad of bolted-on supporters.

That�s not enough to directly challenge Mr Turnbull, but enough to cause mischief.

Prime Minister Turnbull is aware his hold on the post is not firmly cemented, and that is one reason why he has trod softly on three issues � same-sex marriage, the republic and climate change measures.

A misstep on these matters could upset the right of the party, now commonly referred to as �the base�, and excite more backing for an Abbott return.

The attention today is on Mr Hockey�s farewell speech, but as he takes his leave the dominant question will be: When will Tony take his?

Tee hee.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2015 01:41

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

open24hours posted:

Turnbull really should make him ambassador to Easter Island or something. I hope he's not silly enough to let him do what Rudd did.

Turnbull only has limited options available to him. There's been reports recently that the party has had great difficulty finding board positions for Abbott given everybody knows how he operates now, and so failing that it'd have to be a pretty sweet but safe posting to convince Abbott to jump ship. If he has few employable prospects after being a loving Prime Minister he'll be hanging on as long as possible and it will just fuel the desire to get back into the top job.

Gillard's main error was including him on the front bench as a sign of inclusiveness. Turnbull has kept Abbott on the backbench but can't do anything like expel him from parliament or the party.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2015 01:47

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 22:46

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Seagull posted:

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who has his own long-term leadership ambitions

this part made me scoff

# ¿ Oct 21, 2015 01:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Auspol: Not with a bang but with a whisper

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