A few days ago I couldn't help but marvel at the hypocrisy of Mark Vaile who stated that holding a high office in Australia carried a "great expectation of total transparency". His statement was of course right in principle, but how sincere is the belief of the Howard government in transparent and open government?
The Westminster system is based on the principle of the government accountable to parliament and the parliament accountable to the people. Party discipline has had an impact on that principle, but not on the basic notion that the government must be accountable, transparent and open. Look at it from the starting point of democracy - if democracy is about people making a choice by casting their vote, they must have adequate information to make it an informed choice, otherwise there's little point in having a choice in the first place.
Howard government has not been accountable, transparent and open. Yesterday, Kevin Rudd moved to censure the government for failing to disclose how much (tax-payer) money the government intends to spend on "climate change" advertising campaign (no doubt designed to explain away the government's lack of action). The failure to disclose the spending to parliament is consistent with past conduct of the Howard government - it failed to disclose such information when requested by a Senate Committee. Non-disclosure to parliament certainly demonstrates contempt for the Westminster principles of government accountability, however there are other means of gaining information that exist, or are supposed to.
One of the great modern inventions, theoretically designed to improve openness and transparency in government are the Freedom of Information Acts, which exist at both the State and Federal levels. Less than a month ago, Howard criticised the apparent lack of transparency of the Victorian government, citing an example where a newspaper had to spend some $40,000 in legal costs in an attempt to obtain access to certain government school documents under FOI. Yep, that's bad.
But what the Howard government does itself is much worse. Yesterday, it was revealed that the government attempted to charge a union almost half a million dollars and said it would take 12 years to produce less than 400 documents under FOI.
The National Tertiary Education Union sought documents relating to industrial changes in universities which forced the universities to put all its staff on AWAs, with some $450 million in funding tied to compliance with this government directive (anyone still think that the government intends for employers or employees have a choice over AWAs?)
The Government wanted $455,000 to fulfil the request and said that it would take more than 12 years to locate and peruse the 347 relevant files. Now either the government has a really, really bad filing system or transparency and accountability are not on their agenda.
A SMH journalist didn't have much more luck with trying to obtain a copy of "market research" the government did into its workplace advertising, on which the government spent almost 2 million dollars of tax payer money. One might think that if our money is being used, we might have the right to know what's in the report. Not so, according to the Howard government. The journalist was told that he could have the report, but only after the election for "public interest" reasons. That's right, it is in public interest for the public to be kept in the dark about what is being done with their money.
The trend towards closed government was highlighted in a 2004 speech by Jack Herman of the Australian Press Council. Herman noted that the Howard government was becoming increasingly more secretive and obstructionist in its approach to FOI applications, especially on controversial matters.
The fees quoted for non-personal FOI applications had increased more than three-fold between 1998 and 2001, with a quoted fee of over $600,000 on one occasion. Some departments had an average asking price of more than $10,000 per application.
When this practice is viewed in light of the fact that it is applied only to the more controversial applications, lengthy delays in processing the applications (although the 12 years quoted for the NTEU must be a record!) and the increasing use of "conclusive certificates" to bar access to documents altogether, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the government has been doing its best to avoid transparency and accountability.
And without an accountable and open government, can there be a true democracy?
May 30th, 2007
Posted by
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Australian politics, Howard government, Media, Freedom of speech |
2 comments
What do you do if you have become unpopular, your policies are unpopular, you can't convince the voters that taking away their rights is actually good for them and the billions you have spent on advertising yourself can't seem to lift your approval ratings? Resort to the tried and true way of winning elections - scare the hell out of the electorate! If you can just convince the voters that the other guy is a bogeyman in disguise, well, then half the battle is won.
Over the last four terms in office Howard has become an expert in this technique.
Remember the panic the government created when Tampa conveniently showed up shortly before an election, carrying a few hundred desperate refugees and providing Howard with the perfect means of scaring the voters into supporting his government. Vote for me or these nasty queue-jumpers will flood the entire country, steal your children and throw them overboard!
Remember the interest rates that were supposed to sky-rocket the moment Labor won power? (Yep, its the same interest rates that Howard claimed to have no control over when they rose, but claimed credit for when they fell) Or the bogeyman L-plate Latham campaign?
Fear is such a great political tool! No need to have good policies, no need to have any policies at all. Fear is not about reason or rationality, it is just about making voters more scared of the other guy than they are of you.
Given that the politics of fear have been the Howard government trademark, it was surprising to read Joe Hockey's statement that the IR debate has "been characterised by ideology and fear rather than substance and considered thought." Wow, I though, does that mean that from now on the government will approach political discussions with considered thought and debate the substance of the issues? Alas, the next few lines of Hockey's article showed how misplaced this hope was. Considered thought, it seems, need not apply to the government. Same goes for "ideology" and "fear". The bogeywoman of the day is, of course, Julia Gillard who apparently forces Rudd "into an extreme position based on pro-union ideology" (extreme anti-worker ideology would be much more acceptable to Hockey). You see, any policy that would protect worker rights is "inflationary" and "job-destroying". Hockey doesn't actually give any evidence of that, but we already know that "considered thought" in political debate doesn't apply to the government, so no point complaining. There is an obligatory mention of Therese Rein, Hockey seems to think that the government's mud-slinging brought about "a sudden outbreak of considered caution" (if anyone saw any consideration or caution in that fiasco, please let me know, as I've obviously missed it).
Having finished demonising Gillard, the unions and the Labor party, Hockey complains that Gillard is "spending her every waking hour demonising AWAs" and calls for Labor and unions to read the new Bill before commenting on it. That may have been a good idea had the government actually drafted and tabled the Bill before advertising it. There is no doubt, says Hockey, that "unions are running a tricky and highly sophisticated fear campaign."
And it must be working, because Hockey is afraid, very afraid. Why else would he resort to such obvious hypocrisy and such weak arguments? Why else would he be denouncing tactics that the government successfully employed for the last decade? The Howard government loves politics of fear - but it only likes them when it is the voters that are afraid.
Thanks for reading
May 28th, 2007
Posted by
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Australian politics, Howard government, Industrial relations, Rudd and Labor |
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New figures provided to the Senate estimates committee suggest that Howard government spending on political advertising over its decade in power is reaching $2 billion dollars. It looks like I was too generous in my previous post, which refers to political advertising spending of "only" $1.7 billion.
Of this amount, over $550 million has been spent in the last two years (it is ever so convenient to control both Houses of Parliament). However, the full extent of the advertising expenditure is not yet known because the government has not provided details of all of its major campaigns. This is not surprising - when Howard's advertising spend was last examined by a Senate committee in 2005, that committee also had difficulties accessing the required information. So much for open government.
The $2 billion is not comprised of funds raised by the Liberal party for its political campaigns. This is public money, paid in taxes by us all, entrusted to the government to spend it for use in the interests of the electorate. Instead of spending these funds on promoting the welfare of the electorate (health, education, improvements in services, drought relief, etc), the government spent our money on promoting itself. Does a government that misuses our tax dollars deserve to stay in power?
May 28th, 2007
Posted by
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Australian politics, Howard government, Political advertising |
4 comments
Yesterday I wrote about the political attacks on Kevin Rudd's wife, Therese Rein. One of companies owned by Rein mistakenly underpaid 58 of its employees. When the error was discovered, the underpayment was rectified. The Howard government and its supporters took advantage of the issue in an attempt to undermine Rudd's position on industrial relations. They also sought to manipulate Rudd's statement that his wife was an independent human being an not his "appendage."
Last night Therese Rein decided to sell the Australian arm of her business, which she built up from scratch over the previous 18 years, in order to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest. She said she took full responsibility and apologised for the mistake made by her company. Whether or not this move was premature, it is sadly understandable in light of the shameless smear campaign by the government and its supporters.
If Rein thought that her decision and frank acceptance of responsibility for the error made would end the witch-hunt, she was mistaken. John Howard used Rein's predicament to claim that Labor should stop criticising businesses who engage in unfair work practices, such as forcing employees onto AWAs and Mark Vaile went a step further, suggesting that Labor should apologise to businesses they've criticised. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad - two Liberal party heavies claiming that a mistake made (and remedied) by a company owned by Mr Rudd's wife means that the Labor party should not be allowed to point to examples of employers using Mr Howard's IR laws to deprive employees of their rights. Of course identifying such employers is a simple way of rebutting Howard's disingenuous suggestions that employers will not abuse the almost unfettered power granted to them by his government, so Howard and Vaile's "concern" for the businesses criticised is not exactly selfless.
Vaile did not stop there. In what appears to be an attempt to justify the attacks on Rein which led to her decision to sell a part of her business he stated:
"We all make sacrifices to become a part of the political process and if you aspire to high office in this land, there is a great expectation of total transparency"
Lets leave aside the fact that the person who has had to make sacrifices is not a part of any political process and does not aspire to a political office, she's just married to someone who does, and consider the extraordinary hypocrisy of this statement.
"A great expectation of total transparency" - this coming from a deputy leader of a government that has been anything but transparent! Perhaps Mr Vaile has forgotten the government ministers failing to disclose company directorships or share portfolios, or the unknown intelligence received by the government regarding the existence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, or the children (not) overboard affair, or the repeated and increasing use of "conclusive certificates" to block the ability of the media to obtain documents under FOI (notably when those documents relate to politically sensitive or embarrassing matters), or abolition and/or stacking of Senate committees, preventing references to these committees, suppression of parliamentary debate, failure to answer questions on notice, or the refusal to reveal the full extent of government spending on political advertising (the government refused to provide the information to a Senate committee).
The government's hypocrisy is mirrored by conservative commentators, who have managed to find a few discontented former employees of Therese Rein to paint her as a boss from hell, who "does not practice what her husband preaches". Andrew Bolt has managed to dig up an advertisement from Germany where one of Rein's companies is advertising for engineering and mining experts on behalf of an Australian mining company. This is supposedly evidence that Rein is driving down the wages of Australians by "importing" workers (the fact that it is the mining company, not Rein, who is trying to employ foreign workers seems to escape Bolt, as does the simple truth that you don't get cheap labour from Germany, but you might get experts you can't find locally).
I don't know what sort of a boss Rein is or how she conducts her business. However, I do think that by acknowledging and taking responsibility for the error made she demonstrated more integrity than has been the norm with the Howard government, which has consistently blamed its shortfallings on departmental errors (responsible government be damned), or the commentators who laud Howard's anti-worker policies one day and pretend to be concerned with employee rights the next.
Almost as disturbing as the witch-hunt itself, is what it says about the position of women in Australian political scene. The underlying ideology appears to be that a politician's wife who does not stay home, unseen and unheard, is fair game, even if she does not venture into the political arena. Anything that she does do is a reflection on her husband and can be (mis)used as such. US and UK have had their Hillary Clinton and Cherie Booth, but Australian politicians are still struggling with the concept that a politician's wife is not the same person as her husband.
And of course there is the inevitable outcome that when the two careers come into (perceived) conflict, there is no question as to who makes the sacrifice. I am not suggesting that Therese Rein did not make her decision independently. Hopefully Kevin Rudd remembers that he owes her big time. And if her sacrifice improves Rudd's election chances, those of us who are hoping to see Howard government dislodged will probably owe her some thanks too.
Thanks for reading
May 27th, 2007
Posted by
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Australian politics, Howard government, Industrial relations, Women, Rudd and Labor |
one comment
Whatever I do these days I can't avoid the "Know where you stand" ads - they are on TV, they are in newspapers, they are everywhere. For a change there are no happy smiling faces (maybe they couldn't find anyone who was good enough an actor to pretend to be happy with the workplace relations laws). There are blackboards, white boards, loose sheets of paper and crumpled boxes with such informative phrases as "the workplace relations system", "rules and obligations", "required by law" and oblique promises that the "workplace ombudsman" will "investigate and prosecute" employers who breach the law. "Know where you stand" the ads urge.
So where do we stand? The ads say nothing about the content of the so called "rules and obligations" or what is "required by law". Obviously $4.1 million per week does not buy much informative value. But of course the government would not just waste $4.1 million - they must have something to tell us - right?
The search for real information takes me to the http://www.workplace.gov.au website. The ads in the online newspapers link straight to this site - it must be the repository of the important information that the government is trying to convey.
The site helpfully informs us that:
"On Saturday 19 May 2007, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Hon Joe Hockey MP, announced a straight-forward advertising campaign to tell people how the workplace relations laws affect them and where they stand.
Read more about the workplace relations system.
For more information call the Workplace Infoline on 1300 363 264."
Hmm, advertising campaign to "tell people how the workplace relations laws affect them and where they stand"? I must have missed that information in the advertisements. Fortunately, the website contains electronic copies of the television, radio and newspaper advertisements. Another look at them confirms the obvious - they don't actually tell us anything about the content of any laws.
It is time to read further in an attempt to find out the promised information. However, the information on offer is only marginally more useful that the ads themselves.
Its first bit of advice "No one can be forced to sign an agreement". Really, you don't say?! An employer can't hold a gun to your head and force you to sign an agreement? They can of course sack you or not offer you a job, but you have the right to chose between signing an unfair agreement and selling Big Issue on the streets - don't you feel empowered already?
The next bit of advice is:
"…obligations include:
- Minimum wages
- Working hours
- Four weeks paid annual leave
- Ten days paid sick leave
- One year unpaid maternity leave."
A $4.1 million per week campaign to tell us about five obligations? What is the content of these obligations anyway? Does "working hours" obligation mean that an employer can't force you to work unpaid overtime? Of course not, just ignore that bit of mis-information. Does "four weeks paid annual leave" mean that the employer has to pay you a leave loading? No, wrong again. Thanks, Mr Hockey, we are all informed now.
Reading on one encounters the following:
"The Fairness Test applies to employees covered by an Australian Workplace Agreement and earning under $75 000 a year who have had protected award conditions removed or changed in an agreement" and "The Fairness Test also applies to all collective agreements which remove or change protected award conditions."
Hang on a second - the Fairness Test applies? How can it possibly "apply" if the legislation has not even been drafted yet? Has government advertising acquired the power to change the law without the legislation needing to pass through Parliament?
Having learned nothing from the website except that it is designed to withhold correct information, I decided to try a different tack - talking to a friend who works at the Workplace Authority (and who will remain anonymous, for obvious reasons).
"There are all these ads that tell you to call the Workplace Authority to find out where you stand" I tell my friend, "but what can the Authority tell us?".
The answer:
Because the Fairness Test legislation has not even been drafted, those answering the phone have been instructed not to give any particular information on the test (well, that's sensible) and have just been told to say general positive things about it.
Enough said, I think.
Thanks for reading
May 26th, 2007
Posted by
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Howard government, Industrial relations, Political advertising |
one comment
It would be a mundane story. A company underpays its employees. It carries out an audit, discovers the underpayment and repays the arrears. Worse things happen every day - workers on AWAs lose some or all of their "protected" award conditions, employers sack sex-attack victims for assisting the police. The government passed legislation specifically to allow such things to happen.
Yes, it would be a boring story, if it wasn't an election year, if the government was not desperate for anything that could boost its falling popularity ratings and if the woman who owned the company was not married to the Leader of the Opposition, who has been successful in raising awareness of the fatal flaws in the government's industrial relations laws.
Unable to mount a successful defence to Labor's attack on WorkChoices or to convince the voters that being deprived of their rights is a good thing, the government and its supporters adopted the tried and true approach to defending the indefensible - divert attention by attacking an easy and convenient target.
Therese Rein is the convenient target. A successful business woman, she started her own recruitment business in 1989 and grew it from a one-person company to an international operation with over a thousand employees and more than 60 offices in Australia and overseas. She's the sort of woman that conservatives love to hate - not the traditional stay at home politician's wife, she's a Cherie Booth rather than a Janette Howard.
Such a role is hard to grasp for those whose social perceptions are still stuck firmly in the last century. Their difficulty was illustrated by the reaction to Rudd's statement that "This is the age of professional women who run their own companies, who have their own lives and are not simply appendages of middle-aged men". It was a reasonable response to the ridiculous suggestion that a mistake made by Rein's company somehow undermined Rudd's attack on government policy (if anything it points to the need for more regulation of employers' conduct). Rudd simply confirmed what most of us should already know - Therese Rein is not the same person as her husband, what she does is not a reflection of his policy and vice versa.
But conservative politicians and commentators were quick off the mark with some more twisted logic - Rudd "insulted" stay-at-home mums, they screamed. Peter Dutton (Assistant Treasurer) took charge. "That's an offence to all stay-at-home mums" he claimed, Rudd has just implied that they are all "worthless". It is not that Rudd was pointing out that Dutton and his ilk have are unable to escape the outdated assumptions that whatever Therese Rein did must have been approved by her husband. No, simply by stating that his wife is an independent human being Rudd must have been insulting every woman who is not a "professional woman".
The suggestion is of course arrant nonsense. It defies logic. Let me illustrate:
I have a pen. The pen is made of plastic. The pen does not have blue ink in it. If you have a pen, that is not made of plastic, does it mean that it does have blue ink in it? (did I hear "of course not, stop asking stupid questions?")
Let's apply the same logic to the present situation:
Mr Rudd has a wife. She is a business woman. She is not an appendage of her husband. If Mr Dutton has a wife, who is not a business woman, does it mean that she is an appendage of her husband?
But of course Howard and his supporters don't have to make sense, they don't have to be right and they don't have to be fair. These concepts are foreign to the politics of desperation. They just have to create a distraction. Make the voters think about something other than their rapidly vanishing rights, make them forget about the hundreds of millions of dollars the government has wasted to keep itself in power, make them think about something other than the lies the government has told and the promises it has broken. Attacking Rudd's wife is consistent with this approach - who cares if its a cheap shot. Who cares if it is unfair, bordering on sleazy. Twisting Rudd's words to suggest that he, rather than the stereotype-clinging conservatives, undervalues Australian women is an added benefit - who cares if it doesn't make any sense.
After all, there is no fairness test in pre-election politics.
May 26th, 2007
Posted by
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Australian politics, Howard government, Industrial relations, Women, Rudd and Labor |
one comment
There is an interesting article by Kenneth Davidson in today's Age. Its titled Blame the High Court, not the pollies, for partisan ads. Davidson argues that through two decisions, one in 1992 (the famous ACTV implied rights case) and one in 2005 (the WorkChoices advertising case), the High Court opened the floodgates to the abuse of democratic process in the form of excessive political advertising.
Whether those cases were correctly decided is not the subject of this post (in case anyone is curious, I think the first one was sound and the second one was not, for the reasons outlined by Justices McHugh and Kirby). The subject of this post is the following sentence:
"But the Government is no more responsible for this abuse of democratic process than a lion in a zoo is responsible for eating a drunken idiot who climbs over the fence."
This is quite surprising coming from a commentator as sensible as Davidson. It suggests that a government which abuses its power, simply because it can, is morally blameless. One might think that our elected representatives should be held to higher standards than wild animals acting on their natural instincts.
Being in parliament and especially being in government ought to carry with it a lot of of responsibility. A government will always have a great amount of power, a government which has control of both houses of parliament will have even more. However, it does not follow that it is not responsible or blameworthy if it choses to abuse that power to the greatest extent allowable by law. It is also worth mentioning that the High Court in the ACTV case did not grant the government any "rights" to advertise - it merely struck down a far-reaching law banning political advertising. Even if the legislation was not struck down, it could have later been repealed by any government which wished to advertise.
The simple point is that a government which abuses its power, which cannot act with integrity and in the interests of those it is supposed to represent, does not deserve to be in power. It is responsible for its own actions, it is blameworthy and it is our responsibility as voters to ensure that a government that behaves in that way pays for its sins at election time.
Of course we can chose to keep such a government, but then we have only ourselves to blame, just like the drunken idiot climbing over the fence into the den of a hungry lion.
Thanks for reading.
May 24th, 2007
Posted by
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Australian politics, Law, Political advertising |
no comments
The Libs have shown their backwardness yet again. They just can't seem to be able to get over the fact that Julia Gillard is a woman and a politician in one package. First it was the "socially barren" remarks by Senator Heffernan. Given that Heffernan suffers from chronic "foot in mouth" disease, they may have been chalked down to an accidental slip of the tongue. But then it was Gillard's hairstyle. Now Joe Hockey insists that Julia Gillard is more popular than him because she's more pretty.
True, Joe's not exactly a looker. But his comments (ironically made after addressing a conference on advancement of women) are yet another incidence of senior members of the Liberal party showing their disdain for women in the political arena. They seem quite unable to see Julia Gillard as a politician rather than or as well as a woman - to them the two concepts are mutually exclusive.
We have not and will never hear the Libs accusing a male politician of being "socially barren" if he choses not to have children or to remain single. His "maleness" and his capacity to lead the country will not brought into question because of such private choices. The Libs have not and will not comment on hairstyles or appearance of a male politician - it is not something that anyone in their right mind would consider relevant to his capacity to do his job. And Hockey would never say that a male politician is more popular than him because he's better looking.
There is a profound ugliness in these remarks. Such statements dismiss Gillard's ability to function as a political actor (which she has been doing admirably well). In doing so, they show the utmost disrespect for Australian women. The Libs have clearly not grasped the idea that in our society women can and do function as more than sexed objects characterised by their fertility and looks, rather than their competence and intelligence.
They also fail to appreciate that some voters may have adequate mental capacity to actually consider and favour Julia Gillard's policies, not just her face. Just because the Libs aren't capable of it doesn't mean the rest of us are equally incapacitated.
May 23rd, 2007
Posted by
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Australian politics, Howard government, Women |
2 comments
The legal system has never been great at dealing with the crime of rape, so a story like that about the horrific ordeal suffered by Miss C at the hands of the legal system comes as no surprise. Rather it is a dreadful reminder of how long there is still to go before the law is able to adequately address gendered crimes.
As Miss C recounted how she screamed when raped 25 times by 14 men, the defence counsel reportedly asked her "No, you were moaning in pleasure, weren't you?"
It is not the aim of this post to levy accusations at the particular defence lawyer. He was doing his job. He was required, within ethical and legal constraints, to present the best possible defence for his client, who was charged with extremely serious offences. The aim of this post is to critique the system which makes it legitimate to put to a woman that she enjoyed being violated 25 times by 14 men, that makes it legitimate to violate the victim again and again and again, to do verbally and mentally what the rapists did physically.
What is the purpose of a question like that?
Stephen Odgers SC, chair of the NSW Bar Association's criminal law committee reportedly explained it as follows:
"...at the end of the day, if the accused says the woman consented … the defence has to be given a reasonable opportunity to test the complainant's account"
Consent is an integral part of the law of rape. If there was consent, or if the alleged rapist believed there was consent (even if that belief was unreasonable), the law says there was no rape. It is presumed that the woman consented - that is part and parcel of the presumption of innocence. The prosecution (or rather the victim), has to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that she did not consent to what was done to her. Then she has to prove that the man did not believe she was consenting. Should she fail on either of those tests, in the eyes of the law, what was done to her is not rape. Its sex, its legal, no harm done, its just what men and women do.
The principle works in reverse too - if what happened was sex, then it can't be rape. In the eyes of the law the two are mutually exclusive. As Catherine MacKinnon eloquently put it in Towards a Feminist Jurisprudence: "sex itself cannot be an injury. Women consent to sex every day. Sex makes a woman a woman. Sex is what women are for."
If a woman was "moaning with pleasure" she must have been having sex, not being raped. Isn't that what women do during sex? Isn't that what sex is about? If the jury can be made to believe that there were moans of pleasure rather than (or maybe mixed with) shrieks of fear and pain as this woman was gang-raped 25 times by 14 men, well, then the job's half done.
Does this sound grotesque? It is!
We would be shocked if victims of torture had to prove that they did not consent to what was done to them. We would be bewildered if a victim of non-sexual assault had to prove that he did not consent to the violence. Yet, when it comes to rape, a woman gang-raped 25 times has to prove that she did not consent to her violation. Her consent is assumed until she proves otherwise.
That is the corner-stone of the law of rape. Within that system it is legitimate to suggest that a woman had an orgasm as she was raped by 14 men or to dig up her psychiatric records or to overturn a conviction because a judge failed to instruct the jury that a woman who was beaten, choked, shocked with a cattle prod and forced to have sex with a dog may have consented to this treatment (an actual case from UK, if anyone's wondering).
Compounding the problems with the notion of consent is the fact that the law of rape was not developed with the victim in mind. It was a variation on the law of criminal damage by one man to property of another. The woman (property of husband or father) was raped (damaged) by another man. Her feelings didn't come into the equation. They mattered so little in fact that occasionally the rapist was "punished" by being made to marry his victim (you break it, you buy it sort of thing). Some changes have been made, but they have been tinkering at the surface of the system that is stacked against treating the victim as a human being who has been terribly traumatised in a way that the male-centric legal system has never understood particularly well.
The law must protect the rights of the accused. It must allow 10 guilty men to go free rather than put one innocent man in jail. What it must not do is consent to rape and call it justice. Whether it means that further reform is necessary or whether it is time to admit that tinkering around the edges does not work and go back to the blue-prints, is not for me to decide. But lets hope that Ms C's horrific story will lead to change that will, in time, make rape trials a process of justice rather than of legally-sanctioned violation.
May 22nd, 2007
Posted by
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Law, Women |
3 comments
Ah, what wouldn't this government do to improve its electoral chances? They tried convincing us that being stripped of industrial rights was good for us. Now they are trying something new.
Earlier today Joe Hockey told the press that the government "got it wrong" when it underestimated what would happen when it created "a system that may lead to people trading away penality rates without fair compensation."
That's interesting - the government underestimated what would happen when you put all the power in the hands of employers, many of whom see their workers as dispensible commodities?
The Howard government knew exactly what would happen under WorkChoices. The policy was not an accidental re-formulation of Australia's industrial relations system - it was a very deliberate ideological choice, the pinnacle of Howard government's IR policy. The core aspect of Work Choices was the abolition of the no-disadvantage test, an emasculated version of which is supposedly incorporated in the "fairness test" that is now being introduced in an attempt to mislead the electorate into thinking that they are protected. So determined was the government to achieve its IR aims that it bided its time until it gained control of the Senate and could push through its policies unopposed.
So if Hockey is saying that the government "got it wrong" on WorkChoices, is he not admitting that the government's core ideological position is flawed, and was flawed from the beginning? That would be a sure sign of a government that has to go.
But the Howard government doesn't actually believe the got it wrong on Work Choices. How do we know? Well, lets take a look at what Howard said about Work Choices less than two months ago, as he was wishing his legislation a "happy birthday":
"WorkChoices has been beneficial. We've had more than 250,000 more jobs created, wages have continued to rise strongly, strikes are at their lowest level since 1913, so the score card is very, very strong."
Does that mean that the government does not think the legislation needs to be amended to include a "fairness" component? Well, just to avoid doubt, Mr Howard went on:
"If we roll back WorkChoices, which is what Labor will do if it wins at the end of this year, it will be the first time in a generation that a major economic reform in this country has been reversed and that will send a terrible signal to the business community in this country, to investors abroad. We'll be saying to the world, this country has lost the stomach for economic reform."
That's right, employees losing key entitlements is not a good enough reason for the Howard government to "roll back" its "major economic reforms". The prospect of losing the next election on the other hand seems like an adequate excuse.
Two months is an awfully short time for an about-face on your core policy, but those poll numbers are much more compelling than evidence of workplace exploitation.
So what is worse - a government hypocritically pretending to care about the unfair effects of its legislation in an attempt to scrape a few more votes or a government that has been proven wrong in its centrepiece policy after it has consistently and vociferously renounced all criticisms of that policy?
May 22nd, 2007
Posted by
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Howard government, Industrial relations |
no comments
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