Sunday, November 04, 2007

Howard stuffs big, fat, pregnant cat back in bag

“Some people will believe us, some people won’t, that always applies in election campaigns, but we do not have any plans to further change the industrial relations system.”

One wonders if those who “will believe” will be the same people who believed the PM’s non-pledge in the 2004 campaign not to introduce a further wave of industrial relations “reforms” that became known as WorkChoices.

Or maybe those who “will believe” will be the same people who believed the PM would act “in the national interest”, regardless of election non-pledges, by introducing a further wave of industrial relations reforms that became known as WorkChoices.

When Finance Minister Senator Nick Minchin told the H.R. Nicholls Society last year that a further wave of IR reforms — beyond WorkChoices — was needed, this was excused by Government spinmeisters as “a personal view” that was not necessarily representative of the Government’s thinking. That Minchin expressed “his” view as a prominent government front-bencher was apparently neither here nor there.

So, in the game of Alice-in-Wonderland croquet that is contemporary Australian politics, maybe Labor could “get away with” excusing Peter Garrett’s change-it-all gaffe — or non-gaffe, as the case may be — as merely expressing a “personal view” that was not necessarily representative of the Government-in-waiting’s thinking: “We are a broad church,” etc.

Incidentally... if Labor is “anti-jobs” because it opposes (or, at least, says it does) the Government’s IR platform, then is the Government “anti-jobs” because it introduced a “Fairness Test” as an antidote to the electoral poison of Australian Workplace Agreements?

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2 Comments:

Blogger Father Park said...

Belief: that will be what utlimately decides this election. He lied last time and he does not believe in the changes forced upon him this year.

People will judge.

By the way Jacob, I was just about to pen a piece on that shining light of democracy, Muharraf, when this appeared:

Oh no! Your invite to this blog has expired.

Jeez, Harry calls me a ratbag racist lier and hater and you bar me?

Oh dear.

4/11/07 9:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oo er... um, I've looked at the permissions page, and you're still listed as an author, with no qualification that I can see. Maybe the 'invite' has expired, but you should still be able to log in? Let me know...

As for who was ratbag and/or liar and/or racist and/or hater, I really have lost track of who was what ... other than that you, old chap, were and presumably remain 'relentlessly partisan'.

Never mind, at least you weren't a reflexively leftist automaton, which from memory is what I ended up being ... um, at some stage or other.

One day someone ought to publish a concordance so we know just who's what.

4/11/07 9:57 PM  

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