Red Rag

• More evidence from New Zealand shows that radical individualist IR reform hurts the economy. Paul Dalziel’s paper in the Review of Political Economy shows that “the New Zealand economy lost almost two full points of gross domestic productivity growth between 1987 and 1998, while from 1990 to 1998 Australian productivity rose by 21.9 per cent compared with just 5.2 per cent in New Zealand.” Remember — New Zealand is the model for Howard’s proposals.

• Graeme Orr and Joo-Cheong Tham put this debate in the context of two competing products, one offered by the unions and the other by business. They wonder how you’d feel if “the federal government shelled out $20 million in taxpayer’s money to advertise your competitor’s product, even though it was still on the drawing board.” Kim Beazley says the Government’s spending is “a national tragedy” given “the opportunities missed to train young Australians”. He says Labor will introduce a Private Members Bill to ensure all such advertising is approved as non-political by the Auditor-General.

• Shadow Attorney-General Nicola Roxon wants to know where the money is coming from. She said in a media release, “Under the Australian Constitution, the Government can only spend money that has been validly appropriated by Parliament. Major advertising is already underway, but serious questions remain unanswered about the legal basis for such Government expenditure.” The ALP and the ACTU have engaged Maurice Blackburn Cashman to advise them on this issue, and the firm has written to Kevin Andrews for answers (pdf). They are still waiting for a response.

• NSW Premier Bob Carr is worried that public holidays will be effectively abolished by the IR changes: “Workers are going to have to scrabble around negotiating the holidays that today can be taken for granted.” Kevin Andrews says public holidays are a State matter, which is true — but he has also said he expects the States to cede their residual IR powers when the new regime is in place. And Kim Beazley points out that employers will be able to use AWAs to make their staff work on public holidays without any compensatory loading.

• The Australian Institute for Social Research’s John Spoehr sets out the Government’s true motive: “The prime minister and his inner circle, particularly Peter Costello and Tony Abbott, are staunchly anti-union, harbouring anti-socialist fears born of cold war paranoia with a maniacal desire to decimate their political adversaries. The cold war might be over but they remain on an ideological mission to undermine the foundations of organised labour in Australia.” Spoehr also explains the detrimental effects of the proposals.

• The NSW Fabian Society recently held a debate between the ACTU’s Greg Combet and the Australian Industry Group’s Heather Ridout. You can read blog reports from Liam and Guy, and Greg Combet’s speech is also worth reading.

• Writing in the Canberra Times, Greg Barns and Howard Glenn argue that the human rights of workers will be undermined by the Howard regime. They cite Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen, who says people are entitled “to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security, and human dignity.” If Australia had a bill of rights, the new laws “would not see the light of day because the courts would strike them down”. Barns and Glenn point to the Scandanavian countries as evidence that a strong commitment to workers’ rights can produce “solid economies and high standards of living, coupled with a high degree of social cohesion.”

• On Lateline last night, Peter Costello said he thought the Queensland Nationals would toe the line on industrial relations: “I’d be astounded if they needed persuasion.” But while Barnaby Joyce has been sworn in as a senator, he is not ready to cave in just yet. “If we keep on divesting the rights of the states, then the point of having a state becomes purposeless,” he told ABC radio. “But if you believe in states then you must give them a job to do.” The leader of the Queensland Nationals, Laurence Springborg, agrees. It looks like the states-rights fight will be tougher than the Feds predicted.

• Given that John Howard has strong support from a section of the working class, you’d expect Kim Beazley to be heckled now and then while campaigning against Howard’s agenda. And sure enough, he was “briefly heckled by a security worker who claimed Labor is not doing enough to fight federal industrial changes.”

Sam Ward is in Japan doing some… er… scientific research…

In a post ridiculing the term “devil effect,” Chris Clark points out this bizarre and decidedly antifeminist explanation of the “halo effect”:

In marketing, the term describes how the positive features of a single product can extend to the broader brand.

For instance, the iPod has had positive effects on the perceptions of Apple’s other products…

I suppose you might say I can see Apple’s halo. Horrible, horrible experiences with the Macintosh computers in my school maths lab led me to curse the brand, and the iMacs I encountered at uni did nothing to change my mind.

But then my brother bought an iPod, and some time later so did I — after hearing people like Chris, Richard and Anthony extol the gadget’s virtues.

Rosa (my iPod) broke my resistance to Apple, and the three Mac evangelists at the blog meetups showed off with their beautiful Powerbooks.

Now I have one of my own.

• Kevin Andrews has been caught promising all things to all people. Labor’s Stephen Smith accused him of flip-flopping — first saying awards would be adjusted downwards to the new minimum conditions, then saying they wouldn’t. When The Age sought clarification, Andrews’s office issued a statement that “stood by comments that implied workers on basic awards could have penalty rates and leave entitlements slashed. But the statement contradicted itself immediately, insisting that workers on awards would keep all their entitlements.” This is a basic element of the reform package. How can you trust a government that changes its mind within the same media release?

• Labor is concerned that the predicted $20 000 000 cost of the Government’s IR propaganda campaign is a gross underestimate, now that Kevin Andrews wants the ads to run for twelve months or more. Stephen Smith wondered “just how outrageously they’re plundering the taxpayers’ purse,” calculating that “the GST campaign went on for three months at a cost of $44-million. So, on that basis if it’s on the same scale and goes for a year it’ll cost the Australian taxpayer $176-million.”

• In trying to portray his reforms as nothing new, Kevin Andrews quoted from a 1993 speech by Paul Keating about the importance of bargaining at the workplace level — but he ignored a key part of the speech, in which Keating affirmed the importance of collective bargaining. Enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) are made at the workplace level, while AWAs go further, pitting individual workers against each other — even those doing the same job at the same workplace. Keating responded with gusto:

  [P]eople who are pushed onto individual workplace agreements will ipso facto be taken out of the enterprise bargaining stream. And what’s more, they will not get the benefit of the safety net because the safety net adjustments are going to go to, now, this Fair Pay Commission. …

  They want to hop into some poor little character on six to eight bucks an hour. I mean, the stock market, the profit share and the economy are at a record high. The stock market is at a record. No. They still don’t want to pay someone $12 an hour. They want to take them down to eight.

• New Zealand’s Alliance party is calling on its government to explain the results of that nation’s radical IR experiments — “New Zealand disease” — to the Australian public. Paul Piesse said, “The New Zealand minimum wage of just A$345 per week versus the Australian minimum wage of A$484.40, is a result of the effects of the Employment Contracts Act. The fact is that pay rates in New Zealand are 30% lower than in Australia having started from a similar base 20 years ago.” John Howard cites the New Zealand experience in support of his proposals.

• As the ACTU took its campaign on the road, visiting Lismore to discuss the effects of the IR plan on regional areas, it received praise from an unlikely quarter — the head of Kevin Andrews’ Babysitters Club. Andrew Robb told the Daily Telegraph, “We’ve all been surprised by the extent of the ACTU campaign. They’ve mobilised people all over the country … they’re campaigning in a comprehensive way”.

As a general rule, people should not take the law into their own hands. Still, it’s hard to be angry with this vigilante:

An Israeli hacker tired of getting these spam messages … hacked to the server where the email database is stored. After he got access to the database he deleted all the data from the spammer’s database, deleted all user names and passwords to the database and changed the database’s admin password.

• Asked about the scope of his Government’s $20 000 000 industrial relations propaganda campaign, Kevin Andrews said, “We’re looking at something that will go on for possibly a year or so.” That’s about two years less than the unions have vowed to continue the fight.

• Queensland’s Premier, Peter Beattie, thinks the prospect of a successful High Court challenge to the IR laws is “a bit more encouraging, in fact a reasonable amount more encouraging than we first thought.” He said, “There is a growing view that this may not be a lay-down misere in the High Court should it be challenged there.” His government will legislate new industrial safeguards to help defeat the Commonwealth reforms by making it tougher to override State protections. NSW is considering a similar plan, but has not yet made a decision.

• Even Bob Katter — no friend of the worker — can’t support Howard’s IR extremism. He sees the proposed changes as a major regression: “[w]here they want to go … is 1860, where little children went down mines with steel collars with numbers and were actually owned by the mine owners.”

• Tasmanian workers yesterday received what could be their last minimum wage rise for quite some time. The so-called “Fair” Pay Commission is being established because the IRC has awarded wage increases above the Government’s preferred level — and if the Government had its way, Australia’s lowest paid workers would be worse off by $50 a week. They would have suffered a real wage cut since 1996. And there will be a wage freeze for at least nine months, before the new body makes its first decision.

• This week’s Green Left Weekly carries a decent rebuttal of the Government’s lies on industrial relations. They had to stop the list at twelve for want of space.

The latest news from Helsinki is that the Indonesian government has reached an agreement with the Acehnese rebels:

The Indonesian Government and the Free Aceh Movement rebels have initialled an eight page Memorandum of Understanding, a document which is due to be formally signed in Helsinki on August 15th.

Both sides aren’t expecting major changes between now and then, but what exactly is in the accord has not been made public. Only the bare guidelines have been given to reporters on the sidelines of the peace talks.

Under the deal, hostilities are due to end with the signing of the peace treaty next month and the Free Aceh movement or GAM rebels are expected to disarm within months. The Indonesian Military or TNI is also expected to reduce its troop numbers to a level seen in other areas of Indonesia.

Robert Hill has welcomed the plan. He says Australia has not been asked to provide troops to supervise the agreement. The European Union has announced it is prepared to send peace observors when the agreement is signed, apparently with the consent of both sides.

That kind of involvement is essential if the deal is going to last any length of time. The University of Sydney’s Dr Edward Aspinall points out that the change will lead to fresh tension:

Various legislative changes will have to take place, the Free Aceh Movement will have to disarm, there will be the gradual removal of troops from the province, this will take many months I think.

And in fact it’s likely that in the transitional phase there might even be a slight increase in vilolence. I don’t think this will translate directly or immediately into a cease of violence.

There is a risk that this short term friction as each party pushes the boundaries of the agreement will derail the whole process — indeed, the TNI is threatening to return in large numbers if it deems it necessary. An international presence will help prevent the conflict sliding back to square one.

• The new Anglican Archbishop of Perth, Roger Herft, has backed Howard’s IR laws, pointing out that his church is “a big business, a major employer”. Peter Costello will no doubt remind us that a theological qualification is no help in the IR debate: Unlike Brisbane’s Anglican Archbishop, who opposes the reforms, Herft does not have a business degree.

• The WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry has announced its intention to mount its own propaganda campaign in favour of Howard’s changes. UnionsWA secretary Dave Robinson said the labour movement could not hope to win a spending war, but “I don’t know that we have to match dollar for dollar.” He told the West Australian (p4) that unions will target Coalition-held marginal seats continuously until the next election.

• A new study suggests that young people will be hard hit by the push towards individualisation of the workforce. For example, when “[a]sked ‘have you ever asked for a pay rise?’, the majority of young people said they felt ‘terrified’ or ‘horrified’, and didn’t know how to go about it.” These people rely on awards and collective agreements to protect them against unscrupulous employers, but the new system will pull the rug out from under them.

• Australia’s model employer, DEWR, has again revealed the Government’s true intentions. The $20 000 000 propaganda campaign says people will still be protected by the IRC — but DEWR reveals they will only be protected if their employer agrees! CPSU organiser Lisa Newman wondered, “If this is how they treat their own staff, what kind of example are they setting for the rest of the community?” This type of clause will fast become a standard inclusion in AWAs, and employees will have no choice but to kiss the independent umpire goodbye.

It looks like Australia’s going to have a national ID card. Last week Philip Ruddock said the Government was “not about establishing a national identity card,” but that was before he knew John Howard wanted one. Peter Costello is thinking about it, and Peter Beattie is keen.

It seems to be causing some tension within the Coalition ranks, which suggests that the debate will be a lively one — especially as it’s not really a debate about facts, but about interpretation. Amanda Vanstone thinks the inclusion of biometric data, like fingerprints, will make the card harder to steal. A backbencher thinks it could make any theft more problematic: “You can always change your password but if I nick your fingerprint or your DNA, you’ve got a real problem there.”

My initial view is that the card itself is not a big deal — after all, most people have drivers’ licenses. The real issue is the extent to which personal information is attached to the card. Information that is obviously meant to be public (such as organ donor status) is not problematic, but if it includes everything from your criminal and medical records to your shopping history, then I think it poses a serious privacy risk.

It’s also quite difficult to see how an ID card would make a significant difference to anti-terrorism efforts. After all, one of the recent London bombers had been investigated by MI5, but he was given the all-clear. I don’t see how an ID card would have made a difference.

But I’m not committed one way or the other. If people want to put forward their own position in the comments, I’d be interested to hear what you all think.

Elsewhere: The British have been wrestling with the concept for some time. White Rose, a libertarian group blog, has covered the issue since May 2003. It’s an excellent resource for the arguments against introducing the scheme, though I haven’t worked my way through it all yet.

In a guest post at Larvatus Prodeo, Phil Gomez raises his concerns. He asks, “Is it really the way the world is going? And do we really want to go this way?”

• The Government’s radio advertisements, part of its $20 000 000 propaganda campaign, hit airwaves this weekend. As I suspected, they’re attempting to get people to read the newspaper ads that were roundly ignored last weekend. I think the unions would be well advised to run some print ads of their own — with much less text than Howard’s, and maybe with a couple of photographs so that people actually take notice. They should say exactly what Greg Combet said in response to the radio ads: “[I]t’s true that 3.6 million people will lose unfair dismissal protection and it’s true that, under the new laws, employers will be able to put people on individual contracts that could cut take-home pay.”

• This cartoon is worth a look.

• Paul Withington’s sacking (mentioned in this digest) has been reported in the Sun-Herald. Withington had been working as a carpenter for Masterton Homes for 26 years, on a collective agreement, when he was told to sign an AWA that cut his working conditions — but “[s]oon after telling his employer that he would not sign, Mr Withington was made redundant, effective immediately.” It is unlawful to sack someone for refusing to sign an AWA, but it is okay to make them redundant “due to a downturn in the building industry”. It doesn’t matter how often the woman on the radio says, “I read it in the paper” — when unfair dismissal protections are scrapped, bosses will have no trouble sidestepping their few remaining obligations.

• Sydneysiders, pencil in The Last Weekend for 7 August — and take free public transport to get there. The Howard Government thinks it’s quite alright to spend $20 000 000 on a misleading propaganda campaign aimed at stripping workers’ rights, but is outraged when Bob Carr helps people take their families to a community picnic including “free rides and performances by artists including Tim Freedman and The Hooley Dooleys”. The NSW transport minister said his government “supports the families and is supporting the last weekend event on August 7.” Good on them.

If you search Google Maps for “white trash” ottawa, you get the US Embassy. (Via.)

• The Babysitters Club appointed to help out Kevin Andrews has been dismissed by the ACTU, who say “no amount of like-minded friends of the Prime Minister can sell something that tears up basic rights of work.” Certainly the group’s chairman, Andrew Robb, did nothing to suggest his communications campaign would be effective:

  ALEXANDRA KIRK: So the Prime Minister said back then, the industrial relations changes would not see workers worse off. Why not do it again?

  ANDREW ROBB: Well, he is guaranteeing… he’s putting… he’s putting his record on the line. If we start to get into, you know, individual… you cannot work on the hypothetical. You know…

• The Government’s $20 000 000 propaganda campaign will step up a notch this weekend, with radio ads broadcast around the country. They will refer directly to the ACTU’s campaign, and will encourage people to refer to last week’s misleading newspaper ads. This tells us two things — that the Government is still on the back foot, and that nobody read its first hopeless efforts.

• Brad Norington points out that under Howard’s plan, unions could visit workplaces “only twice a year at the request of signed-up members and at a place chosen by the employer”. This is designed to “severely affect [unions'] ability to recruit and organise members” — it’s freedom of choice but without a real opportunity to be informed of the choices available to you. The fact that employers will nominate the time and place of workplace visits will also have serious consequences for occupational health and safety — government watchdogs simply don’t have the inspectors necessary to do their job, and they rely on union organisers who raise concerns. Union sites are safer sites, and unduly restricting rights of entry will lead to injuries and even deaths.

• Did anyone else notice a letter in Friday’s Australian that regurgitated Coalition talking points on industrial relations, concluding that we should “be grateful that at last the Government can move the economy and Australia’s wellbeing forward”? It was signed by Bill Hartigan of Mermaid Waters in Queensland — but there was no mention of the fact that he’s a former Liberal MP, and current chairman of the party’s McPherson FEC. Naughty, naughty.

• The mistreatment of Isaac Nakhla by his boss, a Pizza Hut franchisee, shows how workers are bullied onto AWAs that strip away their pay and conditions. By transferring employees to another corporate entity, the boss was able to treat them as if they were new starters (even though they were doing exactly the same job in exactly the same restaurant) and the workers were “presented with a take it, or leave contract that purported to cash out their annual leave entitlements and removed public holiday rates.” This is happening now. It will be even worse when those AWAs don’t have to satisfy the “no disadvantage” test.

• The ACTU is calling for people to join an email campaign in support of workers’ rights. Please link to the campaign on your blogs, and circulate the address to your contact lists.

Fox News is stupid:

LEEDS, England — New evidence suggests four bombers blew themselves up on the London transportation system last week, killing at least 52 in what could be the first homicide attacks in Western Europe, officials said Tuesday.

The first homicide attacks? Like, ever?

(Via.)

Can’t think what to blog about? You need Tony’s inspirational die…

Talks between Indonesia and Acehnese rebels appear to have made significant “surprising” headway. GAM says it will not push for independence, as long as the region’s current “special autonomy” is abandoned in favour of real self-government.

The next sticking point is how the rebel organisation should make the transition from armed struggle to parliamentary democracy. GAM wants to form its own local political party, but Indonesian electoral law says all parties must have their headquarters in Jakarta, and branches in at least half of the nation’s 33 provinces — an arrangement designed to thwart peaceful separatist movements. The Government does not want to make an exception for GAM, and would prefer that rebels run for office under the auspices of other, existing political parties.

Indonesia says this is the only remaining point of contention, but I’m guessing they won’t agree to GAM’s call for a war crimes tribunal. Still, both sides seem to have been negotiating in good faith, and there is a real chance of a breakthrough.