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Why Australia Sucks!!!

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/26076027/radical-shifts-in-labour-review/


[h=1]Radical shifts in labour review[/h] Kim Macdonald The West Australian January 23, 2015, 2:40 am Share



a_100509frebocelli2_1ac2b5s-1ac2b60.jpg
Under review: Penalty rates and varying minimum wages. Picture: Mogens Johansen/The West Australian An end to weekend penalty rates and varying the minimum wage across States are among a raft of radical changes to Australia's workplace relations system going before a national inquiry.
The Australian Productivity Commission has released five discussion papers on potential changes it will consider in a review of the industrial safety net.
It says it will entertain "fresh ideas" and is "open to lateral suggestions" about changes that would affect 11.6 million working Australians.
The Government, which will get the final report in November, has promised to seek a mandate at the next Federal election if it backs the APC's proposals.
But UnionsWA fears the review's scope is a sign Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants to bring back the WorkChoices regime.
UnionsWA secretary Meredith Hammat said some protections should not be open for discussion. "Cutting wages of the lowest paid by slashing the minimum wage and penalty rates will lead to a US-style population of working poor," she said.
But the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry welcomed the review, saying the current system did not meet the needs of the modern workplace.
Chief executive Deidre Willmott said penalty rates, flexibility and productivity issues should be examined.
"Recent disputes involving maritime employees have highlighted the need to look at … industrial action, including the recent Port Hedland dispute where a handful of highly paid deck hands were threatening strike action that would have closed the port and cost WA taxpayers approximately $7 million a day in lost royalties," she said.
The APC called for submissions on issues including protections under individualised or bespoke agreements, awards, unfair dismissal, bullying, industrial action, enterprise bargaining and sham contracting.
Radical proposals include:
·Replacing minimum wage laws with guidelines;
·Partly replacing the minimum wage with tax credits or benefits such as childcare subsidies;
·Replacing weekend penalty rates with time off in lieu;
·Whether the "better off" test should be assessed at a workforce rather than individual level.
·Making productivity improvements mandatory in agreements.
 
http://www.watoday.com.au/comment/p...-that-will-weaken-us-all-20150125-12xgfc.html

[h=1]Productivity Commission review is an attack on workers that will weaken us all[/h] Date
January 25, 2015 - 6:00PM


[h=3]Tony Sheldon[/h]
C:\Users\VALUED~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.gif

Rich and poor divide: Cutting the minimum wage and work conditions, such as penalty rates for weekend and night work, would hit business confidence. Photo: Rob Homer
Everyone has friends. And friends look out for friends. The problem is when rich, influential people have friends in government who do favours for them. With this the rest of us suffer and that is exactly what is going to happen with the Productivity Commission review into workplace relations.
There is no reason why the government should attack pay and conditions for workers in Australia. Our economy is stalling but our debt is low.
Treasurer Joe Hockey succeeded with his budget last year in sucking confidence out of the economy by terrifying consumers with warnings about a budget deficit and by attacking our health, education and welfare systems. With confidence hit and a downturn in commodities prices, the last thing we need is consumers to further shy away from spending.
But this will happen if the government unleashes its attack dog the Productivity Commission to cut the minimum wage, scrap extra pay for Sunday and bank holiday pay and attack workplace rights.
Advertisement
Real wages fell last year in Australia for the first time in 17 years with wage increases slipping below inflation. This is at a time when corporate profits in Australia are on the increase – obscenely so in the case of the major banks which posted billions of dollars in profits last year. A further hit to people's pockets would broaden the divide between rich and poor and could pull the economy into recession.
Apart from the effects on taking confidence out of the economy by hitting wages, inequality isn't good for growth. This isn't just the view of the labour movement it is a topic discussed at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"Inequality undermines growth," warned a paper entitled Benchmarking Inclusive Growth and Development, which received broad consensus at the forum.
But while world leaders at Davos appear concerned by inequality, we in Australia are hell bent on enforcing it.
The paper also shows that robust industrial relations are a benchmark for a strong economy. Yet in Australia our government is attacking the labour movement which fights against inequality to deliver community and individual economic freedom.
The Productivity Commission review is just a sequel to the attack launched last year in the form of the Royal Commission in Trade Union Governance and Corruption. Despite $52 million spent so far (a further $8 million will be spent for the commission to continue its work this year) no new information has come to light. My own union which was investigated by the commission was shown to have done nothing wrong – the best that could be mustered against us was that a fine could be levied over a technical issue to do with record keeping, which we resolved over three years ago.
There are also soundings that the government will try to undermine the superannuation system which sees not-for-profit industry funds bring higher returns for its members over the for-profit retail funds. The cry has gone up for greater competition in superannuation and to wrestle "control" of the system from trade unions. But it makes no sense to drag one system, set up to benefit only its members who are ordinary workers, down to the level of a system set up to give banks and their investors more profits. Industry funds do better and people will know from television adverts showing they can yield workers tens of thousands dollars more in returns. A move to strip away this system would serve to undermine the economic freedom and dignity in retirement of individuals.
And so if none of these attacks make sense – if undermining workers pay and conditions will only hurt the economy and if attacking the labour movement will serve to increase inequality – then why is the government doing it?
Which brings us back to friends. The only sector of society which will benefit is the rich elite and even then it will be a short-term gain. In the long term, Australia will become a poorer, harsher and less fair society if these changes are made. Those opposed to this desperate future prospect must fight to ensure this never happens.
Tony Sheldon is the national secretary of the Transport Workers' Union.
 
yups looking at aussie dollar, it's telling obviously that the economy has weakened. but dun fret, in the long run, china will strengthen and when that happen all will be well for aussie.

China is past its peak in terms of its current growth strategy.

There are no more cheap surplus labour (one child policy), a statistic which China do not want to reveal to the rest of the word.

The infrastructure overbuilt, resulting in diminishing marginal returns.

The urbanisation process is not going well because of lack of suitable jobs and corruption.

Its retirement savings in a mess.

The country is expected to grow old before it grow rich. China's best days are over, unless it implements transformational changes.

Australia is learning the price of integrating with the rest of the world.
 
China is past its peak in terms of its current growth strategy.

There are no more cheap surplus labour (one child policy), a statistic which China do not want to reveal to the rest of the word.

The infrastructure overbuilt, resulting in diminishing marginal returns.

The urbanisation process is not going well because of lack of suitable jobs and corruption.

Its retirement savings in a mess.

The country is expected to grow old before it grow rich. China's best days are over, unless it implements transformational changes.

Australia is learning the price of integrating with the rest of the world.

Managed trade will replace free trade.
 
that is why Xi jinping had been clamping down on corruption for the past year. you are right that china is expensive nowadays, if you know the insiders from the textile industry, they actually been shifting their factories from china back to malaysia and vietnam.


China is past its peak in terms of its current growth strategy.

There are no more cheap surplus labour (one child policy), a statistic which China do not want to reveal to the rest of the word.

The infrastructure overbuilt, resulting in diminishing marginal returns.

The urbanisation process is not going well because of lack of suitable jobs and corruption.

Its retirement savings in a mess.

The country is expected to grow old before it grow rich. China's best days are over, unless it implements transformational changes.

Australia is learning the price of integrating with the rest of the world.
 
Sounds like PAP..


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-20/berg-when-is-tax-reform-actually-just-a-tax-grab/6026750
[h=1]When is tax 'reform' actually just a tax grab?[/h]Opinion By Chris Berg
Posted 20 Jan 2015, 11:39amTue 20 Jan 2015, 11:39am
Photo: The worst thing about the Government's interest in GST reform is that it makes Kevin Rudd right. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

The Government isn't thinking about tax efficiency or fairness, it's thinking about politics. Let's hope Parliament doesn't extend the GST for a short-term budget fix, writes Chris Berg.
The worst thing about the Abbott Government's newfound interest in reforming the GST is that it makes Kevin Rudd right.
During the 2013 campaign one of Rudd's biggest attacks on the Coalition was that Tony Abbott was desperate to increase the GST.
The sole hook for this claim was the fact that the Coalition had promised a tax review that, unlike Rudd's Henry Review, was supposed to scrutinise the GST alongside everything else.
On that basis any attempt to study Australia's tax mix could be assumed as a plan to increase any and every tax.
Rudd's GST attack was deliberate, disingenuous fearmongering - based on virtually nothing, used to fill out a campaign desperate for anything.
Yet now here we are, in 2015, and the Coalition can't help itself talking about changing the GST.
Rudd would be feeling pretty good about his ability to predict the future. The great sage of Griffith.
There are apparently two proposals on the cards. The first is lowering the threshold at which consumers can import goods without paying GST. The idea is that local retail doesn't compete on a level playing field against foreign websites.
The second is the perennial one of broadening the base. The GST should be applied to things like fresh food - things that were specifically excluded when the tax was first introduced by the Howard government at the turn of the century.
Both interesting ideas. It's nice to chat about policy.
Incidentally, these proposals will raise the government quite a bit of money.
It's painfully obvious that the main reason we're talking about the changing the GST is because of the Government's dire budget and political situation.
There's a big difference between tax reform and tax grabs. The sudden interest in the GST looks everything like a tax grab.
But there's another reason for the GST gabfest: the Coalition's search for a "narrative" that will push them through to the next election.
Folk political memory recalls how John Howard won his first re-election on the GST - the same new tax that had sunk John Hewson just a few years before. Even more impressively, Howard pulled off this trick after an unfortunate and unhappy first term.
So you can understand why trying to replicate the master's 1998 success might have some appeal.
But the GST was a grand program, not a technical adjustment. When Howard and Peter Costello announced the GST they described it as "not a new tax, a new tax system".
The idea was not that the GST would simply replace the sales tax but would reduce taxes across the board. Howard claimed "the heart" of the system was "the largest personal income tax cut in Australia's history". And the GST was supposed to allow states to abolish stamp duties and transaction taxes, and a host of other inefficient taxes.
Despite some superficial similarities, Howard was in a very different political space to Abbott. Howard had much more political capital. Budget repair was on track. There was a sense in the late 1990s that we had prosperity in our future - a sense somewhat lacking today.
And, most of all, Howard's "non-core" promises did nowhere near as much damage as Abbott's policy backflips have done.
One of the most credibility damaging moves this Government made was its introduction of the deficit levy on high income earners in the 2014 budget.
Not only did it destroy the promise that "taxes (will) always be lower under the Coalition", but it raised the marginal tax rate on high income earners to 49 per cent - just under that morally dubious rate where more marginal income goes to the government than to the earner.
The Abbott Government's approach to taxation thus far has been almost exactly the same Labor's. They've been trying to quietly bump up taxes and tax rates at the edges without causing a stir. In August last year the indexation of the fuel excise resumed. In April the Fringe Benefit Tax rate is going to be bumped up as well.
Then of course there's bracket creep, which steadily and inexorably raises everybody's tax rate without the Government having to lift a finger.
You might object that possible changes to the GST should be treated on their own merits. They're either good ideas or bad ones, regardless of what else is going on in the broader economic or political sphere.
As my IPA colleague Mikayla Novak has pointed out, lowering the import threshold is in the not-a-good-idea category. It won't fix the problems of the retail sector, and it would be prohibitively expensive to impose.
And as for broadening the base? Well, a broad tax is better than a narrow one. But unless this change is matched by wider reform, imposing the GST on food would be simply soaking the poor.
But the Government isn't thinking about efficiency, or fairness. It's thinking about politics. Let's hope parliament doesn't use the GST for a short-term budget fix.
Chris Berg is a Senior Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs. His most recent book is In Defence of Freedom of Speech: from Ancient Greece to Andrew Bolt. Follow him at twitter.com/chrisberg.
 
Sounds like PAP..


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-20/berg-when-is-tax-reform-actually-just-a-tax-grab/6026750
When is tax 'reform' actually just a tax grab?

Opinion By Chris Berg
Posted 20 Jan 2015, 11:39amTue 20 Jan 2015, 11:39am
Photo: The worst thing about the Government's interest in GST reform is that it makes Kevin Rudd right. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

The Government isn't thinking about tax efficiency or fairness, it's thinking about politics. Let's hope Parliament doesn't extend the GST for a short-term budget fix, writes Chris Berg.

The biggest difference between Singapore and Australia is that :
in Singapore, People serve the govt and in Australia, NZ and the UK, the government serve the people and the lobbyists.
 
Australia's misery index at record high.

A deepening gloom across the largest developed economy to escape recession during the global financial crisis is shaping up as one of the toughest challenges yet for Reserve Bank of Australia chief Glenn Stevens.

Australia’s misery index – the sum of unemployment and inflation rates – is at 9.0, the highest since 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings froze credit markets around the world and triggered the deepest recession in the US since the Great Depression.
While policy makers from the US Federal Reserve to the European Central Bank are still pumping stimulus into their economies at least in part to address job-market slack, Australia’s price pressures limit that option for the RBA. The upshot for the nation’s businesses and consumers: little prospect of lower borrowing costs from Stevens, 56.
“The hurdle to cut further is high,” said Su-Lin Ong, head of Australian economic and fixed-income strategy at Royal Bank of Canada in Sydney. “The RBA is likely to remain reluctant in the absence of an external driver, and the case to cut from an already historical low will need to be compelling.”


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-...xyear-high-20140818-105aqe.html#ixzz3Pvk2sWUi

People with “half a job” are the unhappiest in Australia, according to the global CEO of polling company Gallup.
Jim Clifton says a wellbeing index prepared by the company has found the extent of suffering by people who are partially employed.
“We asked people about suffering, thriving if they have pain in their body, if they have anger that day, if they have sadness, if they are lonely and all those kind of things. The worst things in life are in those people that are in half of a job,” he told an audience in Sydney.
“This blows me away. People who are unemployed feel better than those in half of a job. Being out of work, maybe, is more clarifying for you, but that is a really bad place to be.”
 
More like serve the Lobbyist and Business Groups,,serve the people is a big joke,,the Aussie sense of humour,,,

The biggest difference between Singapore and Australia is that :
in Singapore, People serve the govt and in Australia, NZ and the UK, the government serve the people and the lobbyists.
 
Today being Australia Day,,there is heaps of propaganda disputing this point,,,

http://www.news.com.au/technology/e...research-and-abs/story-fnjww1so-1226952018284

42 surprising facts about Australia according to McCrindle Research and ABS













[h=3]Welcome to Australia Street[/h]


external












HAPPY Australia Day! This article was first published on our site in June, but we've brought it out of the archives today in honour of all things Australian. Take a look at 42 things you might not realise about the lucky country below.

How much do you know about the country you live in? Not enough according to renowned demographer and social commentator Mark McCrindle.
“Most everyday Australians couldn’t tell you what our current population is,” he tells news.com.au. “They feel the effects of growth on their lifestyle and hip pocket but they don’t know the actual number.”
If you think it is 21 million, you’d be wrong. It’s much closer to 24 million now and it’s growing by 500,000 a year.
That figure might surprise you and it’s certainly not the only number worth a second glance.
Western Australia grows by more people every 48 hours than Tasmania adds every year (500 people).
There are almost 100,000 more women than men in Australia and there are more people in Sydney born in China than England.
These are just some of the amazing truths about our rapidly changing country that ‘stat men’ like Mr McCrindle are privy to.
“They tell us a lot about who we are as a nation,” he says. “Australia is not like Europe which has a pessimistic view of itself or America that has an optimistic view of itself, we just have no view of ourselves and we need to understand who we are as a country again.”


015952-bdfd0c4e-f1e5-11e3-8da8-726202433ee0.jpg

Sunshine Coast, Australia Source: ThinkStock



So who are we?
Well, if you look at the numbers, we’re the Anthony Milford of the Queensland origin team. Not quite the half back star but certainly an impact player being talked about for the future.
“The last five years have seen unprecedented change economically, generationally and technologically and most experts agree that Australia has weathered the storm well,” says McCrindle.
But we have all the best ingredients.
“Our climate, mid-sized population, education, proximity to Asia, historical connections with the likes of America and England, our entrepreneurial spirit and most of all our diversity yet unity in our communities mean the future looks good as long as we continue to plan for the growth,” he adds.
The best way to plan for the future is to take stock of where we are so here are the latest facts about our country as pulled together by McCrindle research and ABS.


021840-efc61020-f1e7-11e3-8da8-726202433ee0.jpg

Adelaide, Australia. Picture: Thinkstock Source: Supplied



AUSTRALIA IN STATISTICS

1. If Australia were a city, at 23.5 million it would still only be the world’s seventh largest (after Tokyo, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Jakarta, Seoul and Delhi).

2. Western Australia grows by more people every 48 hours than Tasmania adds every year (500 people).

3. Only 1 in 10 Australians uses public transport to get to work and more people walk to work than catch a bus.

4. The average street of 100 households has 10 babies (aged under 3), 27 cats and 45 dogs.

5. The average Australian stays with their employer just 3 years and 4 months – only a third of the way towards long service leave. If this plays out in the lifetime of a school leaver today it means they will have 17 separate employers in their lifetime.

6. What’s called a boonie in Western Australian, is called a westie in NSW and in Queensland it’s a bogan.

7. Sydney makes for a fascinating study in populations by gender, with Pyrmont having 3.6 per cent more males than females whereas the next suburb over the Anzac bridge, Balmain, has 8.7 per cent more females than males.


018041-1108ce28-f1e6-11e3-8da8-726202433ee0.jpg

Yep, there really is a man drought. Picture: ThinkStock Source: Supplied



8. Victoria is the state with the highest ratio of females to males (98 males to every 100 females), with 58,399 more women than men.

9. The number of Australians identifying their religion as Christianity is eight times larger than all other religions combined.

10. One in 10 households has a net worth exceeding $1.6 million, and one per cent of households have wealth above $5 million.

11. In Australia there are almost 100,000 more women than men, with six out of our eight states and territories experiencing a man drought.

12. While approximately one in five (22%) Australians are Baby Boomers, they own over 50% of the nation’s private wealth.

13. Three decades ago the median age of an Australian was 30.5, today it is 37.3 and in 2044 it is projected to be 40.

14. Life expectancy at birth three decades ago was 76, today it is 82 and in 2044, it is projected to be more than 90.

15. The average Australian spends 10 hours and 19 minutes each day on screen time – and due to ‘multi-screening’ this is achieved in just under eight hours of linear time.


018110-af20f92e-f1e5-11e3-8da8-726202433ee0.jpg

Sydney Harbour Bridge and City Skyline, Australia Source: ThinkStock



16. By the time generation Z (five-19-year-olds) begin to retire (beginning in 2063) the average median capital city house price will exceed $2 million and the average retiree will need $600,000 more than today for a comfortable retirement.

17. If you lived on an average sized street in Australia comprised of 100 households, on that street there would be a marriage every 9 months, a death every 7 months and a birth every 14 weeks.

18. The year the queen came to the throne (1952), just 40 Australians turned 100. Last year, more than 2600 Australians turned 100.

19. Currently there are almost 105 baby boys born for every 100 baby girls born in Australia

20. On average, women in Australia outlive men by four years.

21. The most widely said Australianisms are “no worries” (74 per cent of Australians have used this phrase), “arvo” (73 per cent), and “G’day” (71 per cent).

22. Less than half of Australians use rhyming slang such as “Joe Blake” (snake) – 44 per cent, “Captain Cook” (look) – 28 per cent, and “Frog and Toad” (road) – 25 per cent.

23. Swimming costumes in Queensland are known as togs, in NSW cossies, but in Victoria, bathers. And while Victorians use the word cantaloupe, in the rest of the country the fruit is known as rockmelon.

24. Australia is currently growing by 1 million every 2 years – that’s an additional Adelaide every 2.5 years.


017786-aa8e8bb0-f1e5-11e3-8da8-726202433ee0.jpg

Australia’s vastness means we rely on our cars ... a lot. Source: ThinkStock



25. Melbourne’s iconic trams carry four times as many people to work as Sydney’s iconic ferries.

26. The average Australian car drives 14,000km a year which means Australians, in their more than 13 million vehicles drive a combined 182 billion kilometres annually – that’s to Pluto and back 20 times a year.

27. Melbourne has more bicycle commuters than any other city in Australia (25,594). In fact 41 per cent of all women who ride to work in Australia live in Melbourne.

28. Three decades ago almost two in three Australians were married while today less than half are, and the “never married” proportion of Australians has increased from a quarter to a third.

29. Three decades ago the average full time worker took home just under $19,000 a year in a time when the average house price was less than $150,000. Today annual earnings exceed $73,000 with the average house price in most capital cities exceeding $520,000.

30. A quarter of Australians (24%) has a university degree but for generation Y it is more than one in three people.

31. There are more people in Sydney today than lived in all of Australia a century ago.

32. A quarter of Australians (27 per cent) were born overseas and almost half of Australian households (46 per cent) had at least one parent born overseas.


017845-eab36dfa-f1e5-11e3-8da8-726202433ee0.jpg

Aussies have more dogs than cats. How could we not with faces like that? Source: ThinkStock



33. More than half of the population state that they are about average in happiness, 29 per cent say they are happier than average, and 17 per cent are less happy than the average.

34. The average age of a first marriage is 29.8-years-old for men and 28.1 for women.

35. The median age at which men first become a dad is 33, and women have their first child at 30.7 years.

36. One in five Australians will marry more than once, and one in three Australian marriages will end in divorce.

37. Sixty per cent of all weddings in Australia take place on a Saturday.

38. Australia is growing faster (1.8 per cent a year) than any other country in the OECD.

39. Australia’s death rate is at an all time low. And Sydney is the state capital with the lowest probability of death (5.3 deaths per 1,000) while Darwin and Hobart have the highest capital city death rates (6.6).

40. Today’s baby boom is twice as large (exceeding 310,000 annual births) than when the original Baby Boom began in 1946 (fewer than 150,000 births).

41. Within a decade, couple-only households (currently 30 per cent of all households) will be Australia’s most common household type - more numerous than couple and kids households (currently 33 per cent).

42. There are almost as many passenger vehicles (13.3 million) as there are adults in Australia.




Australia's misery index at record high.

A deepening gloom across the largest developed economy to escape recession during the global financial crisis is shaping up as one of the toughest challenges yet for Reserve Bank of Australia chief Glenn Stevens.

Australia’s misery index – the sum of unemployment and inflation rates – is at 9.0, the highest since 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings froze credit markets around the world and triggered the deepest recession in the US since the Great Depression.
While policy makers from the US Federal Reserve to the European Central Bank are still pumping stimulus into their economies at least in part to address job-market slack, Australia’s price pressures limit that option for the RBA. The upshot for the nation’s businesses and consumers: little prospect of lower borrowing costs from Stevens, 56.
“The hurdle to cut further is high,” said Su-Lin Ong, head of Australian economic and fixed-income strategy at Royal Bank of Canada in Sydney. “The RBA is likely to remain reluctant in the absence of an external driver, and the case to cut from an already historical low will need to be compelling.”


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-...xyear-high-20140818-105aqe.html#ixzz3Pvk2sWUi

People with “half a job” are the unhappiest in Australia, according to the global CEO of polling company Gallup.
Jim Clifton says a wellbeing index prepared by the company has found the extent of suffering by people who are partially employed.
“We asked people about suffering, thriving if they have pain in their body, if they have anger that day, if they have sadness, if they are lonely and all those kind of things. The worst things in life are in those people that are in half of a job,” he told an audience in Sydney.
“This blows me away. People who are unemployed feel better than those in half of a job. Being out of work, maybe, is more clarifying for you, but that is a really bad place to be.”
 
http://www.news.com.au/national/aus...to-huge-pay-cuts/story-e6frfkp9-1227197449773
[h=1]Australian Council of Trade Unions fears Productivity Commission inquiry could lead to huge pay cuts[/h]
  • 5 hours ago January 26, 2015 6:59PM






450203-4c120b5a-a529-11e4-a11e-9d15a37a8504.jpg

There are fears a new Productivity Commission inquiry could force Australia’s minimum wage down to US levels. Source: Supplied



AUSTRALIA’S minimum wage could drop to US levels through a new Productivity Commission inquiry into employment laws, unions claim.

The Productivity Commission released details of its inquiry last week, calling for submissions on the minimum wage, union-endorsed pay deals, penalty rates and unfair dismissal.
Australian Council of Trade Unions assistant secretary Tim Lyons said the union would fight against changes to the minimum wage.
“We’ve seen calls for minimum wage cuts down to American levels,” he said.
“Unless we get it right, it might just happen. We would fight against any proposals to introduce American-style labour laws here.”
Australia’s minimum wage is $16.87 an hour, while the United States base pay is $7.25 an hour.
But Federal Employment Minister Eric Abetz said unions were running a “dishonest” campaign.
“It is disappointing that the ACTU is trying to use the Productivity Commission inquiry as an excuse to engage in a dishonest scare campaign about minimum wages,” he said.
“The dishonesty of the ACTU’s claims has been confirmed by the head of the Productivity Commission who has said that he does not believe lower wages are desirable.
“The story of the Productivity Commission inquiry appears likely to become the story of the union bosses who cried wolf.”
The minimum wage was first set in 1907, defined as allowing a man to support his family in “reasonable and frugal comfort.”
The Productivity Commission’s framework, announcing the terms of reference, claims that the minimum wage may be a barrier to employment.
“While minimum wages do assist some low-income households, they may not necessarily target poverty and inequality very well,” the report states. “Indeed, a higher minimum wage may actually increase inequality if it lowers employment in low income households.”
The Productivity Commission inquiry will run until the end of the year, with an interim report due in July.
Australia’s minimum wage, compared with median wages, was higher than the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and the United States, the PC framework says.
 
my scouts in china, source from chinese banks said that they are still acquiring businesses, although the GDP is one of the lowest in all years but business as usual. aussie economy will not crash, dun worry...
 
my scouts in china, source from chinese banks said that they are still acquiring businesses, although the GDP is one of the lowest in all years but business as usual. aussie economy will not crash, dun worry...

Not with the AUD devaluing, OZ will probably skip an economic recession this year.
But in WA, people are losibg jobs to the 'nnew economy'.

Meanwhile, the trade unions, as usual, don't care.
Overseas investors will get their fingers burnt.

It is not just penalty rates, every floor you build higher attracts a higher labour rate.
That 50 storey apartment they are building will be unaffordable to the urbanites.
 
Those apartments r mainly purchased by ah tiong foreign investors. They have cash to burn. More likely they will buy business n farms etc as the fta makes it easier.

Not with the AUD devaluing, OZ will probably skip an economic recession this year.
But in WA, people are losibg jobs to the 'nnew economy'.

Meanwhile, the trade unions, as usual, don't care.
Overseas investors will get their fingers burnt.

It is not just penalty rates, every floor you build higher attracts a higher labour rate.
That 50 storey apartment they are building will be unaffordable to the urbanites.
 
my friend in Perth told me there has been lots of retrenchment due to mining boom sun setting. i saw the 2 room apt selling in melbourne central going for 300k AUD, seems quite good to me. i think these apt got potential cos there are many students renting.

Not with the AUD devaluing, OZ will probably skip an economic recession this year.
But in WA, people are losibg jobs to the 'nnew economy'.

Meanwhile, the trade unions, as usual, don't care.
Overseas investors will get their fingers burnt.

It is not just penalty rates, every floor you build higher attracts a higher labour rate.
That 50 storey apartment they are building will be unaffordable to the urbanites.
 
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https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/26104582/penalty-rates-keep-shops-shut/
[h=1]Penalty rates keep shops shut[/h] Angela Pownall January 27, 2015, 2:40 am Share



260115gencharge02_1acchs4-1acchsc.jpg
Working: Waiter Jim Karadimas at Sorrento Restaurant in Northbridge. Picture: Ian Munro/The West Australian Many venues and businesses had to close or add surcharges of up to 15 per cent to their prices yesterday to recover rising costs of opening on public holidays, industry experts say.
Chamber of Commerce WA chief executive Deidre Willmott said employers faced paying staff up to 2.5 times as much in hourly penalty rates for working Sundays and public holidays and most opted not to open.
The West Australian reported on Saturday that a local restaurant owner said opening on Australia Day would cost her an extra $900 in wages.
The Productivity Commission revealed last week it would look at ending weekend penalty rates in a raft of radical proposals it would investigate for Australia's workplace relations laws.
"What our members tell us is with the current penalty rates, they have three choices - one is to not make a profit but operate at a loss, operate with as few staff as possible and work in the business themselves, or to close," she said.
"It's most common to close. If the business has any staff, it's not practical for an owner to operate it themselves."
Ms Willmott said the chamber would submit to the Productivity Commission's review that there should be only one penalty rate, the equivalent of the current Saturday penalty rate.
It believes employers and employees should have more flexibility to negotiate on their own.
"It is a lost opportunity for those people who would like the opportunity to work on a Sunday or public holiday," she said.
"The community is missing out. A lot of people would have enjoyed being able to visit cafes and shops on a public holiday."
Northbridge was busy yesterday, with people looking for somewhere to spend Australia Day, but most shops, bars, cafes and restaurants were shut.
Fiona Dilanzo, of Sorrento Restaurant in James Street, said her family's venue opened because it had a 10 per cent surcharge on Sundays and public holidays.
"We couldn't do it (without the surcharge)," she said. "That's why a lot of people are closed on Sundays and public holidays."
Ms Dilanzo said penalty rates for Sundays and public holidays were too high and meant an unskilled worker was paid almost $40 an hour.
"I don't begrudge paying penalty rates but they are too high and I think there needs to be a minimum of hours worked," she said.
At Lot 20 bar in William Street, owner Andrew McIntyre said it was a business decision not to impose a surcharge.
"It's just a cost of doing business," he said. "We've got a good crowd in today but we've been pushing very hard."
Australian Hospitality Association WA chief executive Bradley Woods said more venues had surcharges but the public generally accepted them.
 
[h=1]Business confidence, conditions stagnate in December[/h] By business reporter Michael Janda
Updated about 11 hours agoTue 27 Jan 2015, 9:09am
Photo: The mining sector suffered a massive fall in forward orders. (Araluen: ABC Contribute)
Map: Australia

Business confidence and conditions stagnated in December, with a steep fall in forward orders indicating that tough times will continue.
While confidence edged very slightly higher from 1 to 2 points, NAB's monthly business survey showed a dip in conditions from 5 to 4 points.
Conditions are now a point below their long run average in the report.
The biggest fall in conditions was a 24-point slump for construction, probably mining-related, and a 19-point fall for the mining sector itself.
Retail reported the strongest gain in conditions last month, up 6 points.
Confidence rose most in transport and utilities, mostly due to the fall in fuel prices which will ease cost pressures on transportation firms.
However, mining (down 34 points) and financial, business and property services (10 points) had significant declines in confidence.
Trading also edged back from 11 to 9, after having spiked to 19 in October.
Profitability, employment and stocks also edged lower.
However, most worrying was a steep slide in forward orders from 5 to -1, indicating that demand for businesses' goods and services is likely to remain subdued over the early months of 2015.
This was largely due to a massive slump in mining, where forward orders fell 53 points.
NAB said the indications from its survey, as well as other economic data, suggest that two more rate cuts will be needed this year to counter falling inflation and a rise in unemployment to 6.6 per cent.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-...stagnate-in-december/6048594?section=business
 
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-27/maccallum-the-ghost-of-workchoices-is-summoned/6048872


[h=1]The ghost of WorkChoices is summoned[/h]Opinion By Mungo MacCallum
Updated about 6 hours agoTue 27 Jan 2015, 2:21pm
Photo: The boss of the Productivity Commission, Peter Harris, knows the monster he has unleashed with the inquiry. (Alan Porritt: AAP)

The Productivity Commission inquiry into employment laws may not literally lead to WorkChoices, but it could look like a bloody good imitation of it. This could end in tears for Tony Abbott, writes Mungo MacCallum.
It's back! After more than seven years in exile, the malign spirit of WorkChoices is once again stalking the land.
Actually it never really went away: Tony Abbott said repeatedly that the policy was dead, buried and cremated but somehow its stubborn ghost has remained unlaid.
Abbott has himself mused, unwisely, that WorkChoices was not all bad. His right-wing warriors have been more direct; in the parliament, in the business community and in the media they have spruiked for at least some aspects for it to be resurrected. And for the unions and their allies, the mere mention of the words "labour market reform" is enough to raise the spectre in its fearsome entirety.
The boss of the Productivity Commission, Peter Harris, knows the monster he has unleashed. He insists that he is interested in busting the myths, and that WorkChoices was done in 2012 - although its demise really came straight after the 2007 election.
"We're not here to do it again," he insists somewhat plaintively. "We're here instead to examine the effectiveness of the system in terms of the whole of the system."
Well, perhaps, but the immediate reaction of the players was that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is unlikely to resemble a pet budgerigar. Indeed, it is far more probably a predatory vulture in camouflage.
And it must be said that the Commission's own items for consideration tend to confirm the view. At the top of the list are the minimum wage, penalty rates and unfair dismissal laws. Let's face it, would be remarkable indeed if the Commission's review recommended increases in the rates of the first two and the untrammelled retention of the third. And beyond them is the threat of tinkering with enterprise bargaining and the furthering of individual contracts. This program is potentially very radical indeed; if it is not literally WorkChoices, it is a bloody good imitation of it.
According to the employers, this is as it is meant to be.
And many, if not most, conservatives agree: it's a no brainer. Cutting wages and conditions leads to more jobs, end of story. Well, up to a point. Taken to its logical conclusion this chain of reasoning leads to universal slavery, thus providing work for all, whether they want it or not. But not even the free-market zealots of the Institute of Public Affairs are advocating that - at least not in public, not yet.
There has to be a recognition that the jobs do not entail abject poverty, and this has been the view in Australia since 1907. In that year Justice Henry Higgins in the newly formed Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration and laid down what he termed the basic wage as "the normal needs of the average employee regarded as a human being in a civilised community." And, importantly, he emphasised that this was not to be determined on the profits of the employer.
In those days it was taken for granted that the average employee was a man with a non-working family. These days the minimum wage of $16.87 an hour is not generally considered sustainable, to use one of Abbott's favourite words, to support a whole family without a second income or supplementary assistance. Nonetheless, the pressure is on to reduce it further.
And as for penalty rates, in 2015 people eat and drink, shop and pay for entertainment all week and on holidays; why should the employers have to pay their workers extra to accommodate them? True, it works for the customers but that is just the point. The customers go out at weekends and holidays because they can - because those are their days off. The vast majority still work five days a week; they include most factory workers and office workers and just about all students.
Clocking in at weekends and holidays is not the norm, and is not likely to be for a very long time.
Those who are required - or choose - to work during those hours expect to suffer a disadvantage, and therefore expect compensation.
Abbott thinks this is unreasonable: "If you don't want to work on a weekend, fair enough; don't work on a weekend," he advises somewhat smugly. But it isn't as simple as that: in many businesses both big and small the staff are expected, demanded, to follow the rosters set by the boss. And if they don't, my way or the highway. This applies particularly to so-called "permanent casuals", who have no choice at all.
Abbott complains that the Melbourne hotel in which he stays has closed its dining room on Sundays because of penalty rates. Well, perhaps if the owners don't want to pay to open on Sundays, fair enough; don't open on Sundays. And it is worth remembering the that the profit share of the economy continues to rise with or without penalty rates. Abbott can choose from plenty of other establishments to indulge his culinary preferences.
Expect the debate to continue more or less acrimoniously from the moment Peter Harris prematurely released his press release (a week before the Queensland election - Campbell Newman was not amused) until the Commission's deadline in November. Then Abbott and his ministers will have to decide what to do with it, and on present indications it will not be pretty as they seek a new mandate in 2016.
If they squib on the recommendations, they will be excoriated as gutless by business and its factional warriors, but unless Abbott has regained a lot of political capital in the coming year, they will have no choice. The alternative would be a reprisal of Howard's suicide pact of 2007. And in any case, running dead would probably not help; when it comes to election promises Abbott has form, and Labor will constantly tell the voters that he has another hidden, savage agenda ready if he is re-elected.
Abbott has, belatedly, redeemed one pledge from 2013: he has set up the Productivity Commission inquiry. And this may well turn out to be yet another promise that will end in tears and recriminations.
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator.
 
Managed trade will replace free trade.

Who is managing?

These days I very scared of the word Manage.

So far, all the managers are not managing properly.

Eg Singapore use a basket of currencies for the SGD managed float, but to me, it results in more like a peg to the USD
 
what do you mean? "Singapore use a basket of currencies for the SGD managed float..."

Who is managing?

These days I very scared of the word Manage.

So far, all the managers are not managing properly.

Eg Singapore use a basket of currencies for the SGD managed float, but to me, it results in more like a peg to the USD
 
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