- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Why do we have such an antagonistic relationship with East Timor anyway? I know we want to steal their resources, but aren't there more subtle ways to do it? Seems like a wasted opportunity to set up a client state.
[Edit: after reading the Wikipedia page it appears that's what we're trying to do, but we're not that good at it.]
open24hours fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jun 4, 2017
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2017 06:36
|
|
- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2024 21:17
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Sorry for the odd request but does anyone know if there's a print article anywhere that summaries the extent of the human rights abuses in the overseas detention camps? Searching for information on the topic brings up a lot of different articles that each focus on one awful element of it at a time but none that I can find that give a big-picture overview and the more specific articles require some understanding of what is happening already.
I have some non-australian friends who have no exposure to this issue at all and I'm having difficulty communicating the entire scope.
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/publications/forgotten-children-national-inquiry-children
The Forgotten Children Report details a lot of it in relation to children.
http://www.border.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/Documents/reviews-and-inquiries/review-robert-cornall.pdf
This discusses conditions on Manus but is a bit out of date (and helpfully published as an unsearchable PDF).
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13642987.2016.1196903
There's a brief discussion of some of the issues at the end of this article as well.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2017 00:42
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Hack discovers there's money in telling conservative men what they want to hear.
I bet she becomes more extreme as she becomes less relevant, like our own Anne Coulter or Katie Hopkins.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2017 01:43
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
One of the smartest people in Australian universities weighs in.
quote:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...27efc81f9eb9eaa
After the jihadist attack on Britain’s children in Manchester, Islamic State warned: “What comes next will be more severe on the worshippers of the Cross.”
Islamists incited jihadis to “hunt prey” in Britain. Whitehall confessed there are 23,000 suspected jihadis in Britain — 20,000 more than it had admitted previously. On Saturday night, the terrorists went hunting. They drove a van into innocents on London Bridge before stabbing dozens more in Borough Market.
The British government responded to the enemy combatants by declaring war on the enemies of the Cross and killers of British children. It invoked war powers.
It closed the borders to states that fund terrorist propaganda and combatants. It shut down the mosques where treason is preached as divine Islamist destiny. It classified the 23,000 people sworn to jihad as aliens and enemies of the commonwealth.
In a time of crisis, Britain recovered its resolve and snatched freedom from the fangs of tyranny.
I write from a thinning vein of hope. Britain did none of the above. It did not recover its resolve by battling the foot soldiers of Islamist tyranny where they stand. Instead of fighting jihad, the police tweeted official advice from the UK government: “What you should do in a terror attack: Run, Hide and Tell.” If that’s reverse psychology, it’s working.
The political class is committed to running and hiding from the Islamist threat within — perhaps because its members can hide.
After the Manchester bombing, the police force amassed to protect the anti-Brexit, politically correct heart of London where cosmopolites still toast the illusion that porous borders and multicultural ideology are the measure of free society.
Yet all the while, the West is forced to sacrifice the liberal order as our freedoms are surrendered one by one to accommodate the Islamist menace within: The surveillance state, the deployment of paramilitary forces, the erosion of free speech, the attack on public reason, the defence of sharia over secular law, of barbarity over civilisation.
How many more innocents must die, how many more freedoms must we lose before politicians admit the failure of Western accommodationist policy in the face of Islamist aggression?
In response to the latest jihadist attack on London, One Nation senator Pauline Hanson lashed out at the Liberals, Labor and the Greens for “their campaign that Islam is good for Australia”.
Labor leader Bill Shorten took the bait and channelled Barack Obama by claiming that terrorists win when “communities start to fray and become suspicious of one another”. It sounds rather like blaming the victim.
Should Britain not act against jihad when 23,000 suspected terrorists are harboured within?
The PC class is protecting ideology over Western innocents. The jihadist army in Britain is an imported problem utterly alien to the West. It entered by non-discriminatory border policy. It took root in the collective Western guilt cultivated by multicultural zealots. Its propagandists were protected by the ideology of minority supremacy codified in racial discrimination law. Its foot soldiers were milked on the teat of Western welfare.
We are at war. Does any Western leader have the courage to declare it?
Makes a number of good points. Why aren't Western secular nations calling for a holy war?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2017 04:26
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
That was presumably in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2017 05:06
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Andrews has to do some poo poo or he won't get reelected and we will end up with chucklefuck liberals again, so if he needs to do this poo poo to keep making other good policies and not gently caress up the state then whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2017 02:56
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
It's not like he can so something and leave it at that. Whatever he does he'll be accused of not doing enough and the opposition will promise to do more.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2017 03:03
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Are they getting their ideas from Ali G?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHD1N9vtPlE&t=30s
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2017 03:07
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
If they can get illegal guns I'm sure they can get illegal body armour, but even if they couldn't you can make your own.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2017 06:44
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Labor: true leftists!
"We have means tested welfare but we certainly can't have a means tested UBI"
L
M
A
O
A means tested UBI wouldn't be universal though?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2017 02:02
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
I think we have too much party discipline in Australia to have a real Corbyn analogue. Anyone approaching it would get booted out.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2017 03:56
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
In some parts of Japan they'll give you a house and land for free if you promise to live there, not that that's much use if you're not Japanese or at least married to someone who is.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2017 06:52
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2017 08:00
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
It's only legit if it's part of an actual training program with a corresponding qualification.
I'd make a complaint to Centrelink about your JSA and tell them that they pressured you into accepting illegal work.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2017 04:46
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
quote:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-13/lord-howe-islands-plans-for-wind-turbines-denied/8613506
A controversial plan to build wind turbines on Lord Howe Island off the New South Wales north coast has been rejected by the Federal Government.
Only a few hundred people live on Lord Howe Island, boosted by about 400 tourists at any one time. They all rely on a diesel generator for power.
The plan was to build two wind turbines to replace the generator. As a World Heritage-listed site, it had to be approved by federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg.
But he has rejected the proposal, which he said would "have clearly unacceptable impacts".
A spokesman for Mr Fydenberg said the "Government considered the proposed wind turbines would create a considerable, intrusive visual impact".
[...]
Mr Murray says a survey of locals' opinion suggested that 92pc supported the plan
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2017 06:00
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
If the $70m number that's on Twitter is accurate that's a bit less than $37k per claim. Government got off pretty easy.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2017 02:46
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Complain to Centrelink directly and mention the forklift etc.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2017 03:56
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Something I've always wondered about is why TV broadcasting licenses were (are, although it doesn't matter so much anymore) so restricted? Is it just to protect the existing channels from competition, or is there more to it?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2017 01:46
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Yeah but it's more than five channels.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2017 01:58
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Its to protect against one person/group owning all the media outlets in one city/state, because a free and fearless media is an important part of an open democracy and if one person owns it all then they would have too much power to shape public discourse.
Which is yet another thing we have completely hosed up in australia.
I understand the rationale behind the ownership restrictions, but I don't understand why there's such a high barrier to entry for TV. Surely it isn't that there are only five companies interested in running a TV station in Australia? I guess it's all academic now that internet speeds are fast enough for streaming video.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2017 02:32
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
I hope the brioche bun thing dies out soon. So over sweet burgers.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2017 04:21
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
quote:
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jun/16/a-shoebox-that-feels-bigger-than-it-is-tiny-homes-for-the-homeless
When pious architects choose to direct their talents toward a higher calling, they tend to do so in the form of towering cathedral spires, awe-inspiring sermon halls and grandiose vaulted ceilings.
Derek Mah, an associate at NBRS Architecture, went for something a little more humble.
At a Sunday sermon about two years ago at Community Church Hornsby, on the northern fringes of Sydney, he was approached about using his skills not to devise great big buildings in the name of God, but tiny houses for the homeless.
The suggestion came from a friend in the congregation – David Woolridge, who, as Mah put it “has always been passionate about trying to get guys off the street and helping them out. He came up to me and said he’d gotten an idea about how to solve homelessness”.
It is a vision about to be realised in Gosford, on the NSW central coast, where three to four “tiny homes” that each take up just 14 square metres will be completed next month as the first project of Woolridge’s Tiny Homes Foundation, designed in partnership with NBRS Architecture.
“Think of the house as a shoebox,” Mah suggests.
“Down one end a small toilet and shower, the other end a bed, and in the middle a little kitchenette which opens up through glass doors onto a deck, which can be open in the morning and means the back garden becomes the living room - it feels bigger than it is, integrating the outdoors.”
The word “shoebox” isn’t usually a selling point in real estate parlance, but Mah uses it in this case with pride, given the long-term objective of the project is to enable housing to be provided to as many of Australia’s estimated 105,000 homeless people as possible in a country where building isn’t cheap, and land is eye-wateringly expensive.
Each tiny house costs less than $30,000 to deliver, and the small size of the building means it can be squeezed onto excess council-owned land not suitable for conventional housing, at potentially no cost.
“The land for the Gosford project had no direct driveway access, only pedestrian access, and was long and skinny so didn’t lend itself to other uses,” Mah says.
He adds that the houses are appropriate for a single person, with the potential for guests, and that residents will also have access to an additional community facility, kitchen and laundry.
Wooldridge tells the Guardian that as “an Australian and a Christian” helping the less fortunate is a privilege, not an obligation.
He says the project is sourcing tenants through Pacific Link Housing, and those living in the houses will participate in an “equity participation arrangement” in which “agreed amounts of their rent payments not utilised for maintenance and other direct costs of their tiny home will be credited to a notional future housing account that, subject to some equitable and simple terms, can be made available for any future housing-related costs.”
The Tiny Homes Foundation has a “replicator program” on its website for parties interested in undertaking a similar project in other neighbourhoods around Australia, and is open to its model being used for anyone keen to avoid splurging too much on house and land.
Construction will be undertaken by unemployed people through training services provider the Skills Generator, which works with various programs including work-for-the-dole.
The Tiny Homes Foundation say this is so the project can deliver an added dividend of helping those in need develop further skills. This is despite the fact that the work-for-the-dole scheme in general has attracted plenty of controversy, such as in April when the St Vincent de Paul Society described it as a “punitive” scheme that risks creating “a class of working poor”.
Tiny house projects for the homeless overseas have also prompted concerns – such ventures in the US have been criticised for housing people in substandard conditions, lacking access to water and electricity and provoking fears that they will lead to the creation of slums.
Katherine McKernan, the chief executive of Homelessness NSW, does not buy the comparison, saying that the Tiny Homes Foundation is delivering “houses in every sense of the word”.
In contrast to some US projects, the Gosford homes will feature full connectivity to energy and water mains and quality insulation.
She says any project aimed at helping the homeless is welcome at a time when more than 60,000 people sit on NSW public housing waiting lists and Anglicare estimates that just 1% of available properties are affordable for low-income families around Sydney.
McKernan notes, however, that tiny homes are by no means the solution for all homeless people.
“For some it is suitable – we’ve done research on older women and they’ve agreed they could live in smaller places, but they need to be designed really well,” she says.
“But the majority of people in need are women and children experiencing domestic violence issues at home, so the houses required are family homes.”
“Tiny houses are a really good thing, but only useful for small number of people – circumstances need to be thought through.”
Wooldridge concedes that his project “is not the only solution”, but believes it will be “more than a tiny part of the total answer”.
“Our model is innovative, holistic, scaleable, flexible, zoning compliant and cost effective, even cost-neutral after considering the broader community/social costs already being incurred.”
The solution to homelessness: get welfare slaves to build a shanty town.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2017 00:55
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
None of it means anything, it's just celebrity gossip. Pick a side, argue about it on Twitter, refine your personal brand.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2017 06:24
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Like old irrelevant guy has extremely poo poo opinions in hot take shocker
I honestly missed the whole Mia thing but I'm completely shocked that a white feminist has really poo poo opinions
Line between red pillers and woke bros getting thinner.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2017 02:53
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Drug taking at festivals is about as normalised as it's possible for something to be.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2017 02:25
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
I'm surprised none of the companies have rebranded them as 'incontinence pads', which apparently are GST free. The advertising campaign writes itself.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2017 03:56
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Your mistake is that assuming greens give a poo poo about the working class.
The eternal struggle of the middle class socialist: reconciling the love of the working class and the contempt for its members.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2017 01:54
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
the concept of 'middle class' has been so watered down over time by everyone in the comfortable working class saying they're 'middle class' it's just now more FYGM class warfare.
Unless you're a consulting surgeon or are a partner of a law firm or own a chain of malls, and you can play golf all week and maybe take a few business calls stop calling yourself 'Middle class' and start hating the people with real money who continue pitting us all upon each other
It's as much a pejorative for snobby Guardian readers as it is a reference to an actual class.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2017 03:36
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Only the philosopher kings.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2017 05:35
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
The managerial class might be above the political class in terms of snobbery (the only time when looking down on a class is correct and good) but I'm not sure they have the power to give them orders.
Why do you think they're so against donation reform?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2017 06:32
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
I know he's insane and it's pointless to try to understand him, but what is trying to say? It almost sounds like an argument for alternative schools for people who don't do well in a normal classroom setting, but that can't be it, surely?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2017 07:04
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
That doesn't really explain the reference to children aged four to 18 though.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2017 07:32
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
I can see why Getup would be worried.
quote:
http://thefairgo.com/whos-your-grand-daddy/
We can’t be the only ones who remember that brief, disturbing time in which Australia declared the newly-minted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to be “daddy”.
We were curious how UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and US Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders would stack up in the daddy stakes. Corbyn got a huge slice of the youth vote and Sanders didn’t make it through the primary but still commands the hearts, minds and Twitter feeds of voters craving a political quality which has been thin on the ground.
It’s The Fair Go’s considered opinion that this quality is Daddiness. Or maybe more like grand-daddiness. Hear us out.
At first glance, you’d have to say that these old white leaders (OWLs) are unlikely heroes for a woke generation. But the young, white and wealthy just can’t get enough of them.
Grand-Daddy Corbyn and Sanders are scruffier and less sex than a daddy. But they’re still likely to offer you cash. Shuffling, slipper-wearing, above the workaday fray, they slobber fondly on your cheek and push a C-note into your hand whenever you pop by to see them. Free money. What’s not to love.
The other charm of the OWLs is that they tell you fairytales about a better time – a time when everyone banded together to build a better world. It’s all sharey-carey communes, protests and Woodstock. Although…actually women were treated very poorly in these communes, so don’t talk to grandma about pop’s fairytales. She was expected to cook, clean and perform the traditional roles, as well as hooking up with the great unwashed in the name of sexual freedom.
The sharing thing didn’t work so well either. Everyone who’s ever lived in a share house knows that there are those housemates who pull their weight – and those that don’t. Over time, everyone’s standard sinks to the level of the housemate who contributes least. Because why TF should you do a better bathroom clean than the guy before? And why TF would you keep stocking the fridge with decent edibles when your bludger flatmate eats it all before you get home from work at night.
Still, what the OWLs wanted was a better world. They say they want people to all be awesome to each other. And that’s kind of a nice sentiment. Definitely worth endorsing.
We’re all about people being awesome to each other. We believe in a world in which people can live any way that works for them AS WELL AS contributing to society and building a better future. Because we know that, when people get to decide what’s important to them and exactly HOW important it is to them, we all end up better off.
But it’s not just us. If you put envy aside, the stats speak for themselves. Where the OWLs have been in control, everyone is worse off – poorer, unhealthier and with less personal choice. Turns out grand-daddy mostly filches the C-note out of your pocket on the way out the door so he can bestow it on you again next time.
Where individuals – you, me, family, strangers, all colours and creeds – have been free to work together in any way that suits them, the poor have become richer and we all live longer, healthier lives.
That’s the future we stand for. A future in which individuality and social good can co-exist. In which we all become better off, however we each define it. And instead of passing that c-note back and forth with grand-daddy OWL, we enjoy his stories for what they are: fairytales.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2017 03:49
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Weird, hey?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2017 04:05
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
It seems like a bad idea to even consider negotiating with the Libs on anything. Any negative outcome will be blamed on the Greens and any positive attributed to the Libs. Gonna end up negotiating themselves into irrelevance.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2017 23:16
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
quote:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-26/great-barrier-reef-valued-56b-deloitte/8649936
The Great Barrier Reef has a total asset value of $56 billion and is "too big to fail", according to a new report.
Deloitte Access Economics has calculated the economic, social and iconic value of the world heritage site in a report commissioned by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
Tourism is the biggest contributor to the total asset value making up $29 billion.
The Great Barrier Reef generates 64,000 jobs in Australia and contributes $6.4 billion dollars to the national economy, the report said.
It states the brand value, or Australians that have not yet visited the Reef but value knowing it exists, as $24 billion.
Recreational users including divers and boaters make up $3 billion.
The report does not include quantified estimates of the value traditional owners place on the Great Barrier Reef and it said governments should consider doing more to protect it.
It also references the back to back coral bleaching events which have devastated the reef and says climate change remains the most serious threat to the entire structure.
"We have already lost around 50 per cent of the corals on the GBR in the last 30 years. Severe changes in the ocean will see a continued decline ahead of us," the report states.
"Today, our Reef is under threat like never before. Two consecutive years of global coral bleaching are unprecedented, while increasingly frequent extreme weather events and water quality issues continue to affect reef health," said Dr John Schubert AO, Chair of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators executive director Col McKenzie said the reef is crucial to the industry.
"We don't have an industry without the Barrier Reef being in good condition."
He said the negative coverage of the reef relating to the destruction caused by Cyclone Debbie earlier this year and the bleaching event is having an impact on visitor numbers.
Mr McKenzie said tourist figures are down 50 per cent in the Whitsundays and it is being felt along the Queensland coast.
The Deloitte Access Economics report will be released on Hamilton Island today.
Great barrier reef worth about the same as a high speed rail line or two Snapchats.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2017 02:08
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
What would be the difference between a formal split and what there is now? The states are already independent, aren't they?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2017 02:44
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
Now if you're going to argue it wasn't her decision, that you bound her and Lee is a poor puppet being bound by her party because of the NSW rules (written in because the NSW Greens always wanted to be a special snowflake compared to literally oevery other state, this constitution isn't normalised) then maybe she should've said at some point "hey guys the state bound me" but she didn't, nor did you tell the party you had bound her. This was all done behind closed doors and to cause as much silent problems as possible. Stop trying to play the moral idealistic high ground here, you're bullshitting your rear end off because you feel righteousness in your union, but to argue your hands are clean and "everything we did we were allowed to but we did it in such a way to follow the Greens line of not showing outward disunity" is such bollocks and university socialist alternative dogma that its dumb as balls. Not to mention everytime you keep saying "they need us more than we need them" just reinforces good, leave, nothing is stopping you.
I don't know what actually happened, but if we assume that the party did bind her then isn't it quite a good thing that she didn't go against their wishes? Preferable to a situation where the elected representative can do whatever they want with no input from the party anyway?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2017 04:14
|
|
- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2024 21:17
|
|
- open24hours
- Jan 7, 2001
-
|
One thing that cabinet did give us is plenty of Hockey getting owned by Wayne Swan on Twitter. Speaking of which:
quote:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/26/wayne-swan-says-labor-must-boost-workers-power-and-rein-in-corporate-excess
Labor must increase the bargaining power of Australian workers, make the tax system more progressive and erode the largesse and political clout of the wealthy elite, former treasurer Wayne Swan says.
Swan will use a major speech to the ACTU on Monday to float what he is characterising as the four pillars of Laborism: reducing the unemployment rate to 3% or less; rewriting industrial law to boost the power of workers; taming corporate excess – from tackling market concentration and the closed culture of corporate boards to inflated executive pay; and making the tax system more progressive.
Monday’s intervention follows a trip last week to the United States, where Swan met the Democratic presidential aspirant Bernie Sanders, the progressive caucus, the Centre for American Progress and members of the International Monetary Fund – and it follows a series of public appeals in recent months for Labor to adopt a more muscular economic platform in the lead-up to the next election.
The former treasurer will tell the ACTU on Monday the world stands on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution, with technological change driving increased automation, at a time of “record underemployment”.
Swan says as a consequence of these inexorable trends, governments will need to accept that the ideal size of the public sector in the 21st century is likely to be larger than it was in the 20th century.
He says Labor will also have to look at both workplace law and changes beyond the industrial framework to ensure that the voices of workers are dealt in to major public and private institutions.
“Restoring the bargaining power of workers isn’t just something we can declare in policy platforms,” Swan will say. “It should also be spelled out in the rules and institutions that govern us.
“It’s no coincidence that both union membership and workers’ share of income are at their lowest levels in at least 60 years.
“Now everyone from the Reserve Bank governor to Scott Morrison, to the head of the Business Council, are pleading for a wage rise to simply materialise – as if the only thing that historically marginalised and underemployed workers have been lacking is the gumption to ask their bosses for higher wages.
“Of course, what is needed is a fundamental rewriting of the rules that underpin this structural trend.”
The ACTU has been pushing federal Labor to campaign on workplace relations reform at the next election as an antidote to stagnant wages growth and, in May, the shadow workplace minister, Brendan O’Connor, signalled Labor would propose changes to the legislation that stopped employers terminating enterprise agreements as a tactic to reduce take-home pay.
Swan says Labor needs to look not only at the current bargaining framework but also at board culture.
He says the Reserve Bank should again have ACTU representation at the board level and private companies should also break up the closed culture of their boards with representation from workers.
Swan says corporate board nomination committees currently “shut out workers, they largely exclude women and elevate the old boys’ club”.
“Given the prominence and dominance on company boards of corporate and financial elites, we should have an active debate about a broader representation of workers and shareholders on these boards,” Swan will say. “Giving workers a voice on boards is a sensible proposition.”
As well as giving workers representation, Swan suggests opening up board culture could help restore damaged trust.
“Trust in big business is at an all-time low as reckless behaviour and misconduct is exposed, particularly in the financial sector,” he will say. “More broadly the culture of some Australian boardrooms seems to be dominated by a sick race to the bottom where each is competing to minimise tax, suppress wages and casualise their workforce.
“A distinct lack of competitiveness and stagnation has taken hold in some boardrooms around the country.”
He argues the reform should not stop with cultural change. Swan says the “grotesque enlargement of executive pay and packages over past decades has fuelled the rightful resentment of working people towards the business community”.
“Surging worker productivity has not only been captured by business owners, it’s also bankrolled soaring executive salaries”.
On executive pay, Swan says Labor needs to intervene to stop wealth concentration.
He says Labor could consider removing the tax deductibility of executive pay once it exceeds $1m a year, or changing regulations to force a binding vote on executive pay “where shareholders approve in advance a policy and total budget that the company can pay out in each year to the top five executives – no largesse beyond that approved could be awarded”.
And he will again defy Bill Shorten and the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, by calling for a “Buffett rule”, where high-income earners would be forced to pay a minimum effective rate of tax. Both Bowen and Shorten have said a “Buffett rule” won’t be Labor policy for the next election.
Swan will tell the ACTU that Labor is not anti-wealth creation – “we are anti-wealth concentration”.
He says sending that message strongly to workers will help Labor avoid the same fate as the US Democrats, who lost the White House to Donald Trump.
“We need a clear and bold message about how we strengthen growth and spread opportunity,” he will say. “If we cannot make the economic case that good wages and working conditions for low and middle-income earners will promote economic growth and match our argument with policy, we will suffer the same fate as the Democrats in America.
“We have to make the case that middle-income consumers, not just rich people, are job creators.
“A broad range of middle-income earners is a source of prosperity and wealth creation, not a consequence of it.”
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2017 06:50
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2017 06:36
