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The Abbott Government

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Knobby22 said:
Yes, spot on. Well its all history now.
Only Toyota left.
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And according to the article below, Toyota's days are pretty much numbered as well.
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Enterprise bargaining with union sealed fate
HOLDEN is going because it is easier to spend $600 million leaving Australia than it is to get out of its enterprise agreement with the union.

Returning workers to the award wage was the only hope. The taxpayer was subsidising each Holden worker to the tune of $50,000 a year, which is, by my calculation, still less than the amount the enterprise agreement adds to the cost of each employee.

PDF: Holden EBA 2011

Yes, to be clear, the employment cost of the Holden enterprise agreement is well more than $50,000 per employee a year. I defy anyone to say that enterprise bargaining with the union didn't sink Holden.

PDF: Toyota EBA Altona 2011

No one ever envisaged enterprise bargaining would produce a crisis of this proportion. Half of the Australian workforce has been bumping along for 20 years on the centralised wage-fixing model; yearly dollar amount increases have produced modest wage growth. The other half of the Australian workforce has been receiving percentage increases of about 4 per cent per annum, compounding, for 20 years.

We are on the cusp of a major crisis, enterprise bargaining wages are now just hitting the violent upswing point in the bell curve, stratospheric wage levels are ahead of us and many of our big companies are going to fall over.

Putting wages aside, productivity inhibitors in agreements cripple the ability of a company to respond to outside pressure. Unions, jaded by constant employer exaggeration about poor finances, are not facing reality. What we are seeing now with Holden and Toyota is only the beginning.

Now that Holden has announced its departure, we need to consider the Toyota situation, which will come to a head with a vote on its enterprise agreement tomorrow. In September 2011, thousands of Toyota workers went on a protracted strike to get a 12 per cent pay rise. The company caved in; a deal with a 13 per cent pay rise between then and March 2015 was given. Base rates for technical and trade workers are in the $65,000 to $97,000 range with generous allowances, loadings and penalties on top.

The Toyota enterprise agreement lists its "purpose" as "to achieve TMCA's success as a Global Company" yet no single business contract could guarantee its failure more. This document, as much as Holden's, reflects an extraordinary level of union control over daily workplace organisation.

When Toyota wants to hire someone, a union (employee) representative must sit in every single job interview as "an observer". Heaven knows what they exactly are looking out for. Perhaps they are scrutinising for union talent or maybe their presence is to convey that Toyota is a totally union-controlled company and union membership is compulsory. A table in the agreement sets out exactly how many union representatives the company has to have in every section of the workplace and 10 paid union training days a year is given to union reps.

Toyota is allowed to hire casuals only from "time to time" and not at all without union agreement, although agreement must not be "unreasonably withheld". Casuals can perform only the "agreed specified tasks" for the "agreed specified period" mandated by the union. "The maximum period for which a Casual Employee can work continuously on a full-time basis is one month" and any casual around for six months must be made a permanent employee.

Contract labour can be hired only after Toyota reaches "agreement with the relevant Union official and Employee (union) Representative". Contractors around for 12 months must be made permanent employees.

This means Toyota can never really have a hiring freeze but are continually bound to a destructive cycle of taking people on before eventually having to make them redundant. In any case, on a monthly basis, "details of all utilisation" of all "employment categories" must be "presented" to the union.

Over-staffing must be a big problem because the agreement mandates one team leader to look after "between 5-7 process workers". Supervisors, whose base rates range from $75,000 to $103,000, are forbidden from helping with workloads. Supervisors can "assist" workers only with their "verbal agreement" in certain circumstances, such as "assistance in performance of heavy/awkward lifting or stock relocation or in the performance of minor adjustments to equipment to overcome malfunctions" and "any manual task performed by a Supervisor" must not exceed "a very limited time period".

If Toyota needs to dismiss someone, an outrageous procedure of at least three years and three months continuous disciplinary action is required before dismissal can occur. This defies belief.

The procedure can technically be shortened by a dismissal if the employee commits misconduct, but any dismissal can be reversed by special arbitration powers Toyota gave the Fair Work Commission to reinstate employees upon union request.

So, Holden versus Toyota: which union enterprise agreement is worse and will the Toyota agreement destroy the company?

Both agreements caused me to repeatedly question my own sanity before briefly wondering whether there should be a special industrial relations prison created for grossly incompetent management types.

Even though Toyota say they can bear the workforce costs as long as flexibility concessions are made, unless the union agreement is dissolved by the Fair Work Commission the company is doomed.
 
So we have MT admitting the Govt will break it's pledge to have all households with a minimum 25Mbs Broadband connection by 2016.

I remember this Gem from Tony

“I want our NBN rolled out within three years and Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to make this happen.” - A letter to Australians, 7 September, 2013

or this Gem

http://www.sciencemedia.com.au/downloads/2013-8-13-5.pdf

QUESTION:

So, all your promises that you're announcing during this election campaign, they will be implemented in full,
That is a rock solid commitment?

TONY ABBOTT:

I will do what I say we will do. I want to be known as someone who under-promises and over-delivers.

QUESTION:

The condition of the Budget will not be an excuse for breaking promises?

TONY ABBOTT:

Exactly right. We will make - we will keep the commitments that we make. All of the commitments that we
make will be commitments that are carefully costed and the savings to fund them will all be well-known
well before people go to the polls on Saturday, September the 7th

Tis going to make any senate election in WA very very interesting
 
Knobby22 said:
There was also another announcement released at the same time as the Holden one so we all wouldn't notice.

"Hockey allows China control of coal assets."

http://www.theage.com.au/business/yanzhou-free-to-take-control-of-coal-assets-20131211-2z6eq.html
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Well we made it loud and clear with the Labor/ green hoo ha and carbon tax, that we don't want to burn it.
The only two coal miners in W.A were sold to China and India about three years ago.
So now it's a big deal when China buys coal mines over East, what a hoot.:xyxthumbs
 
sydboy007 said:
So we have MT admitting the Govt will break it's pledge to have all households with a minimum 25Mbs Broadband connection by 2016.

I remember this Gem from Tony

“I want our NBN rolled out within three years and Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to make this happen.” - A letter to Australians, 7 September, 2013

or this Gem

http://www.sciencemedia.com.au/downloads/2013-8-13-5.pdf

QUESTION:

So, all your promises that you're announcing during this election campaign, they will be implemented in full,
That is a rock solid commitment?

TONY ABBOTT:

I will do what I say we will do. I want to be known as someone who under-promises and over-delivers.

QUESTION:

The condition of the Budget will not be an excuse for breaking promises?

TONY ABBOTT:

Exactly right. We will make - we will keep the commitments that we make. All of the commitments that we
make will be commitments that are carefully costed and the savings to fund them will all be well-known
well before people go to the polls on Saturday, September the 7th

Tis going to make any senate election in WA very very interesting
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Let's wait and see the outcome of the senate election, before making any grandiose statements.:xyxthumbs
 
Its been quite am extraordinary start by this minority Liberal / Greens government :rolleyes:

Abbott has burnt political capital and hard cash on nothing issues like there is no tomorrow.

As everyone here knows I think little of Abbott and his lying deceitful false wrecker behaviour but I didn't expect him to reach such lows so early it really has been quite extraordinary.

The continued sniping at Labor rather than governing is just killing them.

Certainly puts the likely hood of a double dissolution similar to a snow balls chance in hell.

Still gives the cartoonists plenty of material the one the other day about the gay marriage couple having a longer honey moon than Abbott was a classic.

Three more years a trillion or two in debt and there will be nothing left what a mess.
 
IFocus said:
Its been quite am extraordinary start by this minority Liberal / Greens government :rolleyes:

Abbott has burnt political capital and hard cash on nothing issues like there is no tomorrow.

As everyone here knows I think little of Abbott and his lying deceitful false wrecker behaviour but I didn't expect him to reach such lows so early it really has been quite extraordinary.

The continued sniping at Labor rather than governing is just killing them.

Certainly puts the likely hood of a double dissolution similar to a snow balls chance in hell.

Still gives the cartoonists plenty of material the one the other day about the gay marriage couple having a longer honey moon than Abbott was a classic.

Three more years a trillion or two in debt and there will be nothing left what a mess.
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IF
What was the labor governments biggest success/achievement in your eyes. I'm struggling to think of anything that was delivered on time and within budget that will or has benefitted Australia.

It will take time to clean up Labor's mess.
 
AAA said:
IF
What was the labor governments biggest success/achievement in your eyes. I'm struggling to think of anything that was delivered on time and within budget that will or has benefitted Australia.

It will take time to clean up Labor's mess.
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Stopping a technical recession and the associated rise in unemployment and pretty much rescuing the SME sector from massive bankruptcy.

The debt we have now is smaller than the debt we'd have if we'd followed the rest of the world into recession, which would have happened due to the negative feedback loop of rising unemployment, falling house prices, business bankruptcies and banks probably needing a bailout with large losses in their commercial property loans and probably a souring of their low doc and high LVR loans - 105% loans were starting to take off.

IF only Labor had been as high taxing as Howard we wouldn't have any deficit
 

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AAA said:
IF
What was the labor governments biggest success/achievement in your eyes. I'm struggling to think of anything that was delivered on time and within budget that will or has benefitted Australia.

It will take time to clean up Labor's mess.
Click to expand...

sydboy007 said:
Stopping a technical recession and the associated rise in unemployment and pretty much rescuing the SME sector from massive bankruptcy.

The debt we have now is smaller than the debt we'd have if we'd followed the rest of the world into recession, which would have happened due to the negative feedback loop of rising unemployment, falling house prices, business bankruptcies and banks probably needing a bailout with large losses in their commercial property loans and probably a souring of their low doc and high LVR loans - 105% loans were starting to take off.

IF only Labor had been as high taxing as Howard we wouldn't have any deficit
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AAA your comment seems to crystallise what's killing Abbott. The public voted Labor out not the Coalition in, they wanted them gone for a number of reasons but the leadership and policy debarkles would have to rated highly.

By continuously comparing the current Coalition ineptitude with Labor's 6 years in power just reminds everyone of the fraud committed by Abbott and his now broken promises.

Throw in removing the debt ceiling (blame Labor) Gonski mess (blame Labor) etc the polls show just how shallow the Coalition have been.

If you talk about stripping money off the poor super funds and paying tax breaks to rich super funds cleaning up the mess then heaven help us.

The Coalition isnt using political capital for serious reform they are throwing it away on piffle.

BTW thanks Syd
 
sydboy007 said:
Stopping a technical recession and the associated rise in unemployment and pretty much rescuing the SME sector from massive bankruptcy.

The debt we have now is smaller than the debt we'd have if we'd followed the rest of the world into recession, which would have happened due to the negative feedback loop of rising unemployment, falling house prices, business bankruptcies and banks probably needing a bailout with large losses in their commercial property loans and probably a souring of their low doc and high LVR loans - 105% loans were starting to take off.

IF only Labor had been as high taxing as Howard we wouldn't have any deficit
Click to expand...

Jeez that is the funniest post you have ever thrown up Syd, I'm impressed.:D

Everyone has admitted the massive mining construction spend, saved the day. Now they are admitting the post construction boom is causing a massive contraction.
No, Syd says, the batts fiasco, the school canteen fiasco, the send a cheque fiasco saved us.lol,lol
Funny you were pretty critical of the housing stimulus, now it is convenient to rejoyce it.lol

"The debt we have now is less than we would have had if we had followed the rest of the world into recession"
We were saved, because we didn't have the exposure to U.S toxic CDO's, are you trying to re write history?
You pin our theory on rising unemployment, can't you remember, we were having massive shortfalls of labour and 457's had to be increasede to meet labour demand.
You should write for Fairfax, or Walt Disney.:xyxthumbs
 
sptrawler said:
Jeez that is the funniest post you have ever thrown up Syd, I'm impressed.:D

Everyone has admitted the massive mining construction spend, saved the day. Now they are admitting the post construction boom is causing a massive contraction.
No, Syd says, the batts fiasco, the school canteen fiasco, the send a cheque fiasco saved us.lol,lol
Funny you were pretty critical of the housing stimulus, now it is convenient to rejoyce it.lol

"The debt we have now is less than we would have had if we had followed the rest of the world into recession"
We were saved, because we didn't have the exposure to U.S toxic CDO's, are you trying to re write history?
You pin our theory on rising unemployment, can't you remember, we were having massive shortfalls of labour and 457's had to be increasede to meet labour demand.
You should write for Fairfax, or Walt Disney.:xyxthumbs
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You have covered it fairly well sp. You did leave out Labors two biggest debacles. Border protection and the NBN. Thee are going to take time to rectify. Already off to a good start with border protection.

As far as Gonski is concerned it will take time to see any results from coalition policy. It's not as if Labor did anything to improve education. It is basically a state issue and is a reflection of poor labor state government policies. It should be remembered state governments until a couple of years ago were predominantly labor.
 
sptrawler said:
Jeez that is the funniest post you have ever thrown up Syd, I'm impressed.:D

Everyone has admitted the massive mining construction spend, saved the day. Now they are admitting the post construction boom is causing a massive contraction.
No, Syd says, the batts fiasco, the school canteen fiasco, the send a cheque fiasco saved us.lol,lol
Funny you were pretty critical of the housing stimulus, now it is convenient to rejoyce it.lol

"The debt we have now is less than we would have had if we had followed the rest of the world into recession"
We were saved, because we didn't have the exposure to U.S toxic CDO's, are you trying to re write history?
You pin our theory on rising unemployment, can't you remember, we were having massive shortfalls of labour and 457's had to be increasede to meet labour demand.
You should write for Fairfax, or Walt Disney.:xyxthumbs
Click to expand...

Really. The mining sector were laying of staff at the fastest rate of any sector of the economy.

http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2011/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2

In the first six months of 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the shock waves occasioned by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Australian mining industry shed 15.2 per cent of its employees. Had every industry in Australia behaved in the same way, our unemployment rate would have increased from 4.6 per cent to 19 per cent in six months. Mining investment collapsed; mining output collapsed. So the Australian mining industry had quite a deep recession while the Australian economy did not have a recession.” (Page E17.)

I have always been critical of FHB grants because all they do is increase demand without any increase in supply causing house prices to be bid up. They don't help housing affordability. Better to direct the funds to the construction of affordable housing, or use it to encourage councils to allow the construction of properties where people want to live.

During the GFC we had 1 qtr of negative growth and barely got a positive result the next qtr, which at least meant newspapers weren't writing article after article about the recession and all the doom and gloom that will follow.

Do you think the demand for labor in the mining industry would have compensated for a recession in the retail and banking sectors? Job losses at the banks was massive during the GFC, and that was with them all still making profits. Imagine NAB UK style bad debts on the Aussie loan books of the major banks. It would have crippled lending for years in the country.

We haven't had a few hundred thousand people lose their jobs and see their skills waste away and later find themselves with a permanently reduced income.

I have my roof bats, a perfectly Coalition acceptable beige mind you, and they've helped cut my energy bills by a significant margin. I'm going to get year after year of energy efficiency savings. Seems a pretty good outcome. Definitely could have been handled better, but it achieved getting the money out into the community pretty fast and at least was better spending than Howard era baby bonuses and assorted middle class welfare.

The schools building funds helped to keep thousands of small business afloat. Yeah we didn't the best price for the construction, but the 10-15% extra that was spent would have been cheaper than the unemployment benefits that would have been paid out if mass redundancies had ensured in the SME sector of the construction industry. It's what kept a lot of those companies going. Shame the owners couldn't have been a bit more civically minded.

Based on the past 100 days of the current Govt, I don't think we'd have gotten through the GFC any better. I mean, Christopher Pyne swears blind they'd have run budget surpluses through the GFC, yet once in Govt it's all about loading up more debt this year to blame Labor, then try to produce a slightly better deficit outcome by paying more super to the wealthiest people in the country and cutting it for all the low income earners. Where is the equity in that?
 
sydboy007 said:
Really. The mining sector were laying of staff at the fastest rate of any sector of the economy.

http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2011/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2

In the first six months of 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the shock waves occasioned by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Australian mining industry shed 15.2 per cent of its employees. Had every industry in Australia behaved in the same way, our unemployment rate would have increased from 4.6 per cent to 19 per cent in six months. Mining investment collapsed; mining output collapsed. So the Australian mining industry had quite a deep recession while the Australian economy did not have a recession.” (Page E17.)

I have always been critical of FHB grants because all they do is increase demand without any increase in supply causing house prices to be bid up. They don't help housing affordability. Better to direct the funds to the construction of affordable housing, or use it to encourage councils to allow the construction of properties where people want to live.

During the GFC we had 1 qtr of negative growth and barely got a positive result the next qtr, which at least meant newspapers weren't writing article after article about the recession and all the doom and gloom that will follow.

Do you think the demand for labor in the mining industry would have compensated for a recession in the retail and banking sectors? Job losses at the banks was massive during the GFC, and that was with them all still making profits. Imagine NAB UK style bad debts on the Aussie loan books of the major banks. It would have crippled lending for years in the country.

We haven't had a few hundred thousand people lose their jobs and see their skills waste away and later find themselves with a permanently reduced income.

I have my roof bats, a perfectly Coalition acceptable beige mind you, and they've helped cut my energy bills by a significant margin. I'm going to get year after year of energy efficiency savings. Seems a pretty good outcome. Definitely could have been handled better, but it achieved getting the money out into the community pretty fast and at least was better spending than Howard era baby bonuses and assorted middle class welfare.

The schools building funds helped to keep thousands of small business afloat. Yeah we didn't the best price for the construction, but the 10-15% extra that was spent would have been cheaper than the unemployment benefits that would have been paid out if mass redundancies had ensured in the SME sector of the construction industry. It's what kept a lot of those companies going. Shame the owners couldn't have been a bit more civically minded.

Based on the past 100 days of the current Govt, I don't think we'd have gotten through the GFC any better. I mean, Christopher Pyne swears blind they'd have run budget surpluses through the GFC, yet once in Govt it's all about loading up more debt this year to blame Labor, then try to produce a slightly better deficit outcome by paying more super to the wealthiest people in the country and cutting it for all the low income earners. Where is the equity in that?
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Syd, where have you been living for the past 6 years?

The batts, schools and NBN were the biggest waste of assets ever expended by Federal government.

A financial crisis is not an excuse for an ALP lack of governance over expenditure of a hard won surplus by a disciplined Coalition.

It comes down to bread and circuses.

Rome fell when the Romans spent more than they earnt.

Australia was close to achieving that under the ALP and would have been bankrupt under another ALP/Green duopoly of the mediocre.

Welfare is not a substitute for jobs, whether it be Centrelink or Holden.

Bugger the polls, I say, and let us make real jobs, not mickey mouse jobs that satisfy the ABC and the New Class to keep workers poor and in their place.

The Abbott Government will deliver us from this quagmire that the ALP made.

gg
 
Get ready for the great sellout of the national interest in the hope of increased access for our Agricultural products.

http://theconversation.com/update-from-the-latest-trans-pacific-partnership-meeting-21416

A draft of the intellectual property chapter leaked to Wikileaks in November showed the United States has continued to push for expanded and extended patent protection and exclusive rights over clinical trial data, among other provisions, that could delay access to affordable medicines.

Several countries have put forward a fairer counter-proposal. While Australia was reportedly involved in the early development of this counter-proposal, its current position is unclear.

The Australian government has maintained that it will not accept anything in the agreement that would undermine the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme or the health system.

But on the third day of talks, a leaked memo prepared as an update after the last set of talks in November revealed Australia’s support for the fairer medicines counter-proposal for the intellectual property chapter of the agreement was waning.

The memo also showed Australia had collaborated with the United States and Japan to revise the “healthcare transparency annex”, the part of the agreement that will affect the PBS.

While he was in Singapore, Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb’s office also made it very clear that he was prepared to agree to an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS) in the treaty, in exchange for access to other markets.


Since the Abbott Ministry of Truth has declared most Govt sourced information a state secret, what's the bet a deal is done over Christmas and rushed through with little to no community consultation.

How can the Govt even consider allowing ISDS when we've seen what major corporations can do with it - Phillip Morriss is using it via a Hong Kong agreement to challenge the Govt over plain packaging laws.

Labor had a blanket ban on ISDS and rightly so. It seems to benefit only the very largest of global companies at the expense of national sovereignty!
 
Surely Syd they can't be that dumb. It worries me that Andrew Robb is the minister though.
We did, under Howard, sign the free trade treaty which cost us heaps, so we are pretty dumb.
 
Knobby22 said:
Surely Syd they can't be that dumb. It worries me that Andrew Robb is the minister though.
We did, under Howard, sign the free trade treaty which cost us heaps, so we are pretty dumb.
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The mob in power have form on doing deals to get pictures with the great and powerful that do the rest of us little benefit. The US FTA was so biased against Australia it's not funny.

Just waiting for Abbott and Co to sell us out to the Chinese and the TPPA.
 
sptrawler said:
Would that be after Labor relaxed foreign ownership rules.
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/08/rudd-hypocrisy-on-foreign-owned-land/

This banter can go on and on.:xyxthumbs
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The land is still here. Giving away the right to enact policy as we see fit is not a good thing for the future.

But hey, if you're happy to support the LN+P in singing us up to FTAs that allow the largest of multinational companies to take us to court in a country of their choosing, evergreen drug patents, force us to enact draconian IP laws, then go for it. The economy will suffer tremendously. It may become illegal to grey import products depending on how much we get sold out by the Govt.

The Australia tax we're charged will be back with a vengeance.
 
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