Yeah, you know I miss the old ALP Warhorse. Here's his latest serving in the Herald.Work Choices happened only because the unexpected control of the Senate gave Howard his lifetime chance to break the back of trade unions. The same trade unions which, by 2005, had given him nine years of moderate wage outcomes consistent with an inflation rate of 2.5 per cent.
But not good enough for him. He attacked anything that was decent around him to push down further the interests of lower-paid people. As if the profit share in the economy, and the sharemarket with it, wasn't high enough, going from one record to another.
And to oversee his wilful system, he put in Kevin Andrews and Joe Hockey, both in political short pants when I had comprehensively deregulated the system in 1993. Hockey was not even in the Parliament. I could name a thousand people who have forgotten more about the wages system than either of them knows.
But now all of us have to put up with Hockey's infantile claims, while that refugee from the Dollar Sweets case, Costello, looks forward as prime minister to putting the boot into working people even further.
This is the reality of the industrial relations system in Australia today.
Only 5 per cent of employees are covered by the Goebbelsian-titled Work Choices legislation. The other 95 per cent live every day of their working lives under the Keating Labor government's industrial laws.
Howard's and Costello's vicious assault on Kevin Rudd's and Julia Gillard's industrial relations proposals, claiming that they will see a return to centralised wage fixing, is based on nothing more than a lie. What Rudd and Gillard are proposing is the maintenance of the existing enterprise bargaining-cum-safety net model set up by Labor in 1993, with modifications to take account of the continuing and evolving needs of the economy and its workplaces.
You get the gist.
That's our old Paul letting it rip. I worry about him coming out of the woodwork now, but I guess he's feeling confident about the polls.
Joe Hockey is spewing chips.Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey says he's upset about the attention given to a joke he made about his wife's pregnancy.
Mr Hockey was last night named as a contender at the annual Ernie awards for sexist remarks.
"Well, it's exhausting for me, her being pregnant," Mr Hockey told the Seven Network earlier this year.
"I don't know why, during the birth process, they only focus on the women."
Mr Hockey said today he had been targeted by 'deceitful, left-wing groups'.
"You know why I'm upset about that?" Mr Hockey told Southern Cross Broadcasting today.
"Because I said that on (the Seven Network's) Sunrise with absolute irony.
"We were talking about - are you going to be at the birth of your second child - and I was joking.
"We were all laughing, including Kevin Rudd, we were all laughing about it and I said, 'oh yeah I don't know why, you know, it's going to be tormenting for me, torturous for me to be at the birth'.
"And we were joking about it.
"This deceitful, left-wing, bloody feminist groups have completely taken it out of context and tried to make me out to be a misogynist pig, and I really hate that sort of thing."
You reap what you sow, Joe; and what Socrates said is indeed true.
He took his hemlock, you can take your Ernie nomination on the chin. ...but it is a little rough. :)
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