Gillard’s “Fair Work” act will push unemployment to 6%, Sheehan predicts
(Image: bigstockphoto.com/tmcnem.)Labor rode to victory in the 2007 federal election on the back of a massive WorkChoices scare campaign run, in part, by the ACTU.
The real scary thing is what’s happening in the workplace under the Gillard Government’s so-called “reforms”, if the Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan is right.
In a piece headlined “Labor’s job-killing machine”, Sheehan says unemployment will rise as the the act’s new provisions kick in.
He predicts that unemployment this year “must rise to 6 per cent, not the 5.5 per cent forecast by Treasury”.
“Expect unemployment to rise, job insecurity to rise, union power to increase and the federal bureaucracy to expand for the duration of the Labor-Greens-Windsor-Oakeshott government, while it blames everyone but itself,” Sheehan writes.
“If you want to see why, go to the real world of small-business entrepreneurship, which is so alien to the culture of the federal government, and talk to the owners of retail stores who have been visited by inspectors from Fair Work Australia and given dozens of pages of new regulations with which they must comply.”
Liberal Party federal director Brian Loughnane warned in a speech on Saturday, “We can expect to hear more from Labor, like a tired broken record, about WorkChoices … we should expect the campaign on this to intensify.
“The central question about workplace relations policy in this country today is how does the Government reconcile its rhetorical commitment to economic growth and productivity with the changes Julia Gillard made when she was Minister which abolished not just the changes of the Howard government but also the reforms of the Keating government?
“It is clear from the growing numbers of comments from both senior business leaders and small business operators that these changes are directly affecting Australia’s productivity,” Loughnane said.
In related news, Ken Phillips, executive director of Independent Contractors Australia, reports that Scouts and other volunteers are being hit with the new Occupational Health and Safety laws.
As “a dramatic demonstration of the bad design of the new national OHS laws”, Phillips points to a memo issued by the NSW Scout Association to all its volunteer leaders and committee members.
In effect, volunteers are now expected to have the same OHS expertise and resources as a senior manager in a large corporation, Phillips said.
“This has never been required before. Volunteers now face huge risks.”
