Friday May 27, 2005
Your Say

Millions of Australians will face new conditions of employment as the Prime Minister realises his vision for industrial relations reform, the culmination of a two-decade-long campaign for changes to Australia's workplace laws.

How will these changes affect you? Are they good for the country?  


This topic is now closed - this is what you said.

Progress? It's back to the master/servant relationship of the 1800s. I can hardly wait.

Raymond C


If America is full of poverty then gimme some poverty!

Bring it on Johnny, the real workers are with you.

Ronnie H

Julia W: All too often, the reward for hard work is a pink slip 5 or 10 years before your employer would have had to pay out pension benefits for you. After all, some young buck will be wanting your job and they don't cost as much!

If you want to get rich here in America, you need to connive a large sum of money by knowing the right people, and then invest it, making huger sums of money while doing no work whatsoever besides sitting in the spa and drinking champagne.

Disaffected American

Reading through them all the IR changes sound fine.

Maybe there is view of Australia that is held by the minority that is under threat - but this version of Australia is a dinosaur.

I'm sure these changes will further fuel the bitter Howard Haters! But I'm confident that once again what he touches will turn to gold... Aussie gold!

Stacey W

Have any of you people even been to the US? It is a brilliant country where hard work is rewarded. You probably don't like the hard work bit!

The sky is falling and conspiracy theories....
I'll have a giggle tonight over that while I sit in the spa drinking champagne and watching the D's win.

Julia W

I find it alarming that in a time when ALL media attention is focused on the Corby case, the government uses such a distraction to herald in huge reforms. It almost reeks of consipiracy. Are the two related? Could the government be capable of CREATING a public distraction at the expense of a poor girl for the specific purpose of sneaking something in under the noses of the masses?

Citizen Sheep

MDL - if you think America is the greatest nation on earth, can you please explain to me why they are also the greatest war mongers on the planet? Rather than slagging off about my "anti american rhetoric" why dont we put the good old USA under a microscope for their own internal politcs?

My firm belief is that America is corrupt and run by evil Greedy Men. Their form of economic rationalism and corruption is nausiating. They peddle "freedom for the world" yet behind the magic curtin, lays the treadmill of poverty for all who fall for the spell of the spin-doctors.

Anyone who thinks the free-trade agreement we recently signed has nothing to do with the current round of Johhn Gecko industrial reforms is deluded. FTA = loss of culture, loss of community and becoming the next interned state of USA.

Wake up MDL, and wake up Australia, we DONT and I repeat it DONT want to end up like the USA, sliding down the slippery slope of economic rationalism into the drain pipes of poverty.


MDL: "We are becoming as successful as Americans where our economy is striving in areas of technology and medical innovation."

Don't know if you've been paying attention, but America has been increasingly worrying about a little thing called "outsourcing." Not only are jobs (including many tech jobs) finding their way overseas, but increasingly foreigners who come here for advanced degrees don't feel inclined to stay in America. Not that the American education system top-to-bottom is that stellar, which is only feeding the problem.... Case in point: let's label evolution as a "controversial, unproven theory" and teach creationism in public schools!

The primary medical innovation coming out of America these days is new and more aggressive marketing schemes, not to mention ways to extract more money from the hideous sprawling bloat that is the private medical insurance system here.

Disaffected American

To 'ML'

I'm a senior manager in a well known foreign bank, material items are extremely affordable to me though i dont get off on them and they dont rule my life. What i'm saying is the lemmings have voted this doofus back in on a whim and will now pay for it long term as they are transported back in time where low pay, no O.T and threats from bosses daily are the norm. I wont be affected in the slightest, though i still despise little johnny howard.

Anna G

And another thing,

Howard cites 14% wage increases in real terms as proof no-one will be worse off. It's only that good because the unions pushed for decent increases in the national wage cases held in that time. If we'd been given what the employers and the libs wanted, I'd suggest there'd have been a net loss in real terms. So you can't have it both ways Johnnie.

The World bank recognises the inportance of free trade unions in the standard of living and ecomomic performance of western countries. But as many contibutors have said, this is an ideologically driven plan, and has nothing at all to do with productivity!

Brenton W

I hope that the members of the Tasmanian branch of the CFMEU enjoy the proposed IR changes.


Gee thanks MDL - you just supported my argument in my first post - we're becoming more like the US. With its 11.8% pay decrease over the past five years, and its total lack of job creation. The latest job creation numbers, about 200,000 won't even take up those leaving college and school. Oh yes, and teenage employment is the lowest since the federal government started compiling figures on it. In 1948. God bless the US, hey. Can't wait till we're as good as they are.


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