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I'm not sure hwo the Govt can be considering this when unemployment is at a decade high

http://www.businessspectator.com.au...l&utm_content=1079679&utm_campaign=am&modapt=

The Abbott government is considering changes to migration rules that would allow local firms to employ skilled foreigners for as long as a year without applying for the 457 skilled worker visa, The Australian Financial Review reports.

The new temporary visa proposal from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection would also reportedly allow foreign workers to bypass language and skills requirements and remove requirements for companies to prove the position cannot be filled by a local.

Should the government proceed with such a plan it will likely be warmly welcomed by employers, but derided by unions.

“There are already significant problems with graduate employment in professions such as dentistry, computer science, medicine and engineering,” skilled migration researcher Bob Birrell told the AFR.

“Liberalisation such that being mooted is going to crash head-on with that situation. The government is going to have some angry professional associations on its hands.”
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sydboy007 said:
I'm not sure hwo the Govt can be considering this when unemployment is at a decade high

http://www.businessspectator.com.au...l&utm_content=1079679&utm_campaign=am&modapt=
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I can see the govt taking that up too, with cheap Indian public servants they can make big cuts to the outgoings.

I've watched the construction sector increasingly use itinerant Korean plasterers and tilers and watched that sector decline in local content to the point where it's odd to see a European face on those tools on large scale project..... it's also comical watching the Heath Robinson methods employed, although dangerous on occasions.
 
Tisme said:
It's hard to put a finger on what is happening out there, but something has happened to the dynamic in business. There is no doubt Australia has become fixated on the money measure for all things (even tragedies are measured in dollars rather than the social impact these days) and the shineout entrepreneurs seemed to have vanished.
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Perhaps a reflection of increasing foreign ownership of larger corporations who have no skin in the game of our society, and just want our money.
 
SirRumpole said:
Perhaps a reflection of increasing foreign ownership of larger corporations who have no skin in the game of our society, and just want our money.
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Yeah well we have seen sellouts to companies like Schneider. The Chinese are in the thick of sublets and acquisitions across the globe and the USA is the only economy in good shape today.

The good news is that while Europe is providing a negative yield on its bonds some idiot in charge of finance here is giving +ve yields and paying big interest bills on loans to boot instead of renegotiating the exposure down to zip...... I think my head is about to fall off form all the head shaking I do whenever I see what our clowns, supposedly running the show, are up to.
 
Tisme said:
It's hard to put a finger on what is happening out there, but something has happened to the dynamic in business.
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In the past, I'd always assumed that should I ever find myself in a senior management role (not something I've ever aimed for by the way), that it would be in the same industry I've spent many years working in or at least something reasonably related to it.

But as someone pointed out to me a while ago, a large proportion of businesses these days are run by generic managers. They know how to administer a business, but haven't got a clue about the actual activity of the business as such. So you end up with things like biologists running building companies and so on. They can manage it as such, but they're in no place to actually lead it.

It's like saying that I'm pretty sure I could keep a large plane flying. Get a real pilot to take off and get it up to cruising altitude, put it on auto pilot, then I'll take over. Look, see, it's easy! So long as we're just flying straight ahead, I can just sit there and the plane keeps flying. But we'll be in real trouble should I need to climb, descend, or in due course land the plane since I sure don't know how to do that. Better hope the real pilot comes back in the cockpit pretty soon.

I see a similar concept with business. There are many exceptions of course, but in a lot of cases it's a short term manager who knows little about the actual business and they'll be gone after their contract expires anyway. So they'll just apply a few generic ideas, cut x% of the workforce, put prices up x% and hope that it all holds together until their time is up. They're just flying straight ahead and making cabin announcements. They don't know what to do if anything goes wrong.

Real knowledge has been greatly devalued in modern society as I see it. There was a time when, if you were going to run something like a railway, you needed to actually know about railways. These days you're just as likely to find that the CEO is a qualified chef whose last job was managing a department store. They'll keep the trains running, but they don't know enough about railways to do anything strategic with long term benefits. And with only a few years in the job anyway, they'd be foolish to spend now if the returns won't eventuate until after they've moved on. End result = lack of innovation, even bigger lack of creativity and it doesn't achieve what it could achieve. :2twocents
 
I guess less Indians will be getting through the turnstiles for a while:



Thousands of Immigration Department public servants face the sack if they fail to comply with tough new security tests imposed by their new bosses.

Immigration's 8500 officials have been told they must complete an "organisational suitability assessment" if they want to work at Border Force Australia, the new merged agency combining Immigration and Customs.

The move by the Customs bosses, who are taking up many of the key posts at the top of the merged entity, comes despite all Immigration public servants already holding the "baseline" security clearances that are standard across the Australian Public Service.


But the new requirements go further, probing into past activities in the private lives of Immigration's bureaucrats and those of their families, friends and other acquaintances
Canberra Times
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Wheels falling off for Govt:




The ANZ has broken ranks with the other big banks, backing Labor's Future of Financial Advice legislation and implicitly rejecting the Coalition's attempts to water it down.

In June the Coalition introduced regulations that would have allowed banks to continue to reward their advisory staff for the volume of business they generated. The regulations also removed the requirement for clients to "opt in" to continuing advice every two years and removed the requirement for advisers to provide an annual fee disclosure statement to clients who they had signed up before July 2013.

The Senate disallowed the regulations in November, reinstating the disclosure and opt in requirements and reinstating the broad ban on conflicted remuneration.

In a newly-published submission to the Senate inquiry examining the scrutiny of financial advice the ANZ says it believes Labor's legislation will improve the quality of advice and protect consumers from poor advice.

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"ANZ is a strong supporter of the Future of Financial Advice and related MySuper reforms and is working to not only comply but take a leadership position to rebuild consumer confidence in advice," it says.

The submission backs the best-interests duty which requires advisers to put the interests of their clients ahead of their own, backs the fee disclosure and opt-in provisions, and backs the ban on conflicted remuneration describing it as "critical in removing conflicted or inappropriate adviser behaviours".

The Commonwealth Bank's submission stops short of endorsing Labor's reforms saying it expects legislative and regulatory settings "to continue to evolve".

The submission includes an apology for the unacceptable behaviour of its some of its advisors, but notes that regulations alone cannot make any business highly ethical.

Westpac also stops short of endorsing Labor's reforms and says regulations need to be balanced against the additional costs they impose and the resources needed to comply with them.

It proposes what it calls an "independent self-regulatory organisation" to govern the behaviour of advisers.

The ANZ calls into question the exemption from the Future of Financial Advice rules for life insurance products.

It says they too should transition to fee-for-service sales in what would have to be a staged process.

Care would be needed to ensure the change did not exacerbate under-insurance and continued to give advisers a fair and reasonable reward for their work in providing quality advice.

The ANZ submissions also backs a national competency exam for financial advisers and a national insurance scheme for advisory firms too small to self insure.

"Those firms that choose not to participate in an industry insurance scheme should demonstrate an adequate capacity to provide redress to those who have suffered loss," it says.

It rejects concerns that compulsory insurance would encourage firms to be reckless saying those whose from whom customers take payouts would expect their premiums to rise.

The consumer group Choice also backs what it calls an industry-funded compensation of last resort.

It recommends that no further major changes be made to the Future of Finance Advice Act until a full review of its effectiveness is conducted in 2018.

It wants the Australian Securities and Investments Commission given the power to ban individuals from managing financial advisory businesses and it wants it given adequate funding to monitor financial advisers and conduct regular shadow shopping exercises.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/anz-backs-labor-on-fofa-20150111-12lxcj.html#ixzz3Oak90hkQ
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From the Liberal Daily News today


Spending rise hits ‘cuts’ talk
$14bn spending rise hits ‘cuts’ talk
A $14 billion surge in government spending has reignited the fight over the need for budget savings.

Coalition Government spending rising = some one else's fault

Extraordinary
 
Tisme said:
Wheels falling off for Govt:
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Of course. No doubt they will be wiped out at the next election.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Here you have ANZ and perhaps other banks desperately trying to redeem themselves in the eyes of the public after more than one scandal exposing their own incompetence and/or corruption.
It's no longer just CBA whose financial planners ran amok. Story in the Weekend Australian about ANZ and mortgage brokers for anyone who wants to seek it out makes it plain they need to engage in damage control in a hurry.

But hey, don't let that stop anyone putting a completely political slant on it.
 
IFocus said:
From the Liberal Daily News today


Spending rise hits ‘cuts’ talk
$14bn spending rise hits ‘cuts’ talk
A $14 billion surge in government spending has reignited the fight over the need for budget savings.

Coalition Government spending rising = some one else's fault

Extraordinary
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You subscribe to the "Liberal Daily" ??
 
Julia said:
But hey, don't let that stop anyone putting a completely political slant on it.
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The Gillard legislation had many admirers from both sides of the political divide and obviously still does. The question being asked is why the legislation is being modified when it had so much consensus in its genesis.

That a conservative corporation which is more probably a nursery for LNP players comes out in opposition of an LNP proposal is rather a significant event.
 
Deal breaker. When an Australian government attacks bulk billing, it is time they were gone.

Especially when they are so gutless with the big end of town.

http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/2809188/prognosis-for-health-is-grim/?cs=205
Prognosis for health is grim Jan. 11, 2015, 3:33 p.m.

...Here is a typical example, on January 19, the Medicare rebate for a GP consultation lasting six to 10 minutes will fall from $37.05 to $16.95, and then down to $11.95 from July 1 (reduced rebates frozen until 2018).

The consultancy rebate falls 54 to 67 per cent over the next six months, even so, the government expect GPs to remain economically viable on the supposition of patients making up the shortfall – the death of bulk billing.

Under the changes and limited government support the future looks bleak for GPs and their patients.

I urge everyone to write a letter of protest to their local MP showing concern.

Letter writer, NSW, Jan 2015.
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Wouldn't be happening if there hadn't been such a confected outcry about a measly $7 co-payment, capped at just $70 p.a.
 
Logique said:
Deal breaker. When an Australian government attacks bulk billing, it is time they were gone.

Especially when they are so gutless with the big end of town.
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Seems they've been doing a lot of this kind of dodgy policy on the run

Throw in major license changes to stop stop TPG rolling out their FTTB network to compete against the NBN, and we've now got Brandis trying to somehow link metadata retention to stopping terrorist attacks, yet the wally still can't actually explain his policy, nor put a cost to it.

But the apologists still keep trundling out the same crap and ad hominem attacks.

No one forces a Govt to bring out poor policy.
 
Julia said:
Wouldn't be happening if there hadn't been such a confected outcry about a measly $7 co-payment, capped at just $70 p.a.
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How does it make a difference? The co-payment was mostly for a medical research fund.

Also the cap is for people with concession.
 
Tisme said:
That a conservative corporation which is more probably a nursery for LNP players comes out in opposition of an LNP proposal is rather a significant event.
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I can't recall any past examples where someone significant (big business, unions etc) backed "the other side" without that being associated with a change of government shortly afterward. I can certainly recall a couple of state issues like that in the past, not sure of the history of such things at the federal level.

I'm not suggesting that such a move directly leads to influencing the vote sufficiently to change the government. More likely, it's indicative of an already somewhat extreme position if you actually end up with something "unnatural" like that happening. :2twocents
 
drsmith said:
You subscribe to the "Liberal Daily" ??
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No but if I post any other rag here I get blah blah blah.

I have noticed a slight change in tone from the Oz lately not a good sign for the Coalition.
 
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