Minchin stuffs big, fat, pregnant cat back into bag

Following Prime Minister John Howard’s disavowal of a further wave of industrial relations reforms should his government be returned to office in the coming election, Finance Minister Nick Minchin has disavowed his avowed view of last year that a further wave of IR reforms is desirable.

As is well known, Senator Minchin touted the need for further IR reforms in a speech last year to the H.R. Nicholls Society. But now we can confidently rewrite history and confirm that he didn’t say it, he never did say it, and he never will say it — well, certainly not during the present election campaign.

This is important, indeed momentous, because Senator Minchin is a man with an uncanny sixth sense about what the voting public thinks, wants and feels.

Defending the convention that politicians may claim travel allowance on the election trail right up until their formal party launches, the Minister oraculated:

I think Australians understand they want to hear the political messages from both sides of politics and to do that you’ve got to get around the country.

Given the fuzziness of Senator Minchin’s avowals and disavowals, we can’t be sure whether this is actually a defence of that particular convention, or laying the groundwork for jettisoning yet another convention.

We can only anticipate with bated breath further communiqués from this enigmatic articulator of the zeitgeist.

—READ MORE—

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.”

• Prime Minister John Howard

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?

—READ MORE—