it's your money ralph

Now I know where the fifty million dollars – or maybe even 100 million dollars of your money -- is going to sell John Howard’s new, radical, Industrial Relations policies. We’ve all seen the plethora of TV commercials featuring so many “happy little Vegemities”.

But today the hard sell got under in earnest. An example: The Herald Sun has a Government advertisement that covers four full pages. Four pages!  How many thousands and thousands of dollars would that have cost? And it was repeated in newspaper all over the country. Stamped all over it – seven times – was an official looking message in red ink that said “protected by law”.

And you plough through the pages of spin and a lot of it is bureaucratic, governmental hogwash.

Lines like: “By encouraging people to work together and by continuing the improvement in our workplaces. WorkChoices will also help continue the improvement in our living standards and quality of life. And that’s something worth working for.”

And another crafty line:  It will “better balance”  the unfair dismissal laws. No it won’t. For companies with less than 100 employees it will get rid of them altogether and, as I said the other day what’s to stop a cunning employer of 1000 workers breaking up his or her business into subsidiaries employing 99 people each?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not opposed to much of this overdue reform. I believe union demands have crushed some small businesses. I believe in voluntary union membership and I believe in secret ballots.

But the Prime Minister and his ministers have been telling porkies. Two months ago John Howard said that the prospect of employers demand their workers negotiate and accept working on Public Holidays was “absolute nonsense”.  Overnight Workplace Minister Kevin Andrews confirmed that Public Holidays and meal breaks would be up for negotiation.

How can you negotiate mealbreaks for heaven’s sake?  I mean that is Dark Ages stuff. If an individual wants to work on a Public Holiday  -- for more money – then that is fine.

But getting back to the TV commercials and the newspaper ads which may cost you, taxpayers, up to one hundred million dollars. Who don’t the Prime Minister and the appropriate ministers hold a series of press conferences and journos will report their wqords for nothing.

Why not have a series of the old-fashioned Town Hall meetings ? Why not visit factories and put their message across and answer questions. The PM did that in Tasmania during the logging dispute in the last days of the last federal election.

The ads are just Government spin. It is an appalling waste of money. Your money.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005