November 27, 2007

Workchoices.

The reason good economic policy often creates glaring losers is that it reverses previously bad decisions that have overwhelmingly benefited one group to the overall detriment of Australia, its people, and the economy.

The reason our unemployment rate was high was over-regulation of the employment market. If you look around the world, there’s a direct cause-and-effect between over-regulation and unemployment. It’s undeniable.

Now, when you remove certain protections in the workplace, initially some greedy employers go on a free-for-all and a bunch of sad faces end up on A Current Affair and Today Tonight. The irony is most of these stories actually had nothing to do with Workchoices. People getting fired or who are unemployed blame Howard nowadays. Bizarre. But what’s the untold story?

100,000 extra jobs have been created since Workchoices, and a massively high percentage of those jobs are full-time. Initially, some people lose benefits. But in 2 years you’ll see them back with the same benefits and even higher pay, but only if the Rudd government doesn’t change the laws.

What happens when a nation has very low unemployment?

1. Employers extend the hours of their part-time employees to retain them, and also because they can’t find anyone else.

2. Employers improve the conditions of their current employees in order to retain them.

Point 1 happened to me. My workplace - which pays me quite well for what I do - couldn’t find any new employees. I spent 2 months working insane hours and making some very good cash simply because there’s not so many people looking for work as there used to be.

The Australian people were on the cusp of a golden era of employment and conditions. Times will still be good, but nowhere near as good. We now need a bunch of rate-rises to make things even better (in terms of my own personal interests.)

Well I’ve received more than 100 emails now asking me to post my response to the Federal Election.

In terms of campaigning, Labor smashed Liberal, hands down. We can’t blame the voters for their inability to see the bigger picture. We failed the Australian people in that we weren’t able to sell them on our vision. We also failed them in being unable to convince them of the benefits of Workchoices.

Fact : Good economic policy often creates glaring losers when policy is initially enacted. It’s a sign of good government that you’re willing to risk your position to do the right thing, not the popular thing - look at the GST, Education reforms, and Workchoices. In every re-elected term they have engaged in a major reform, and every one has majorly slugged part of the constituent base for the long-term good of Australia. Income taxation reform may sound nice to you but it has actually slugged big business, massively. Noone writes about this.

Labor has partially learnt its lesson if you look around the nation. The NSW government is doing a woeful, horrible, disastrous job which is massively hurting the State but the other ones are puttering along.

The problem with Labor is that they’re not bad anymore, they’re just mediocre. We’ve signed up for a decade or so of just.. meidocrity. It doesn’t make me angry, it just makes me feel really deflated. Imagine your friend had all potential in the world and decided to spend his whole life as a janitor. That’s deflating. The decision for second best? That’s deflating.

Obviously Rudd will bring some good aspects which I’m looking forward to. I’m not a scare-mongerer, and I’m not particularly worried about Australia’s future as Keating and then the Liberals have given us such a good foundation it would take some extraordinary incompetence to lose this.

A few disappointments:

1. My friend Emanuele Cicchiello lost. Not so much a surprise, but the other guy is totally lazy and doesn’t deserve to work at Safeway let alone run a nation.

2. Mal Brough is probably the most mourned loss within the Liberal Party. He deserved much better.

3. Peter Costello is a loss in 3 years time but his expertise is now lost. He’s an incredibly brilliant man, and now Australia has lost their chance. That makes me very sad.

4. Rudd would make a good Cabinet minister but his team is useless. Crean is decent quality, Albanese, Tanner and Swan are junior minister quality, Gillard is not minister quality (I have no idea why people rate her), Garrett is barely MP quality. Conroy, Smith, Faulkner, Combet, Shorten wil probably be either decent or junior in quality.

There’s none there  who I would describe as super-talented (only Rudd and Beazley fit that bill for me), which half of the Liberal ministry was. Should be an interesting few years.