3 March 2008

MANDATE?

Labor’s current ‘mandate mind games’ — ably abetted by sections of the media — would do the Indian cricket team proud.

Just over 47 out of every 100 voters (47.3%) voted for the Liberal and National parties after distribution of preferences. It is patently ridiculous for Labor to claim that any criticism or opposition to their policies is acting against “the will of the Australian people”.

“The will of the Australian people” saw the Howard Government re-elected in the 1998 GST election, but that didn’t stop Labor from opposing the GST legislation and forcing the Government to accept Democrat amendments to get the legislation passed.

But large sections of the media are assisting the ALP to project the view that the Coalition should simply roll over and play dead, particularly on Industrial Relations laws.

Our job in Opposition is to hold the Government accountable and to put forward what we regard as the best policies for the Australian people and the Australian economy.

On Julia Gillard’s IR laws, the Coalition, in the House of Representatives, will seek to amend the legislation to extend the life of Individual Employment Agreements from 2 years to 5 years.

In the Senate, the Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Standing Committee is holding an Inquiry into the laws, particularly looking at the potential social and economic impact of abolishing AWAs.

I’m a member of this Committee. Hearings begin in Perth on March 3 with a hearing being held in Brisbane on March 10. The Committee will report to the Senate on March 17, just before the legislation is debated in the Senate. Coalition senators will be using the evidence from these hearings to shape our response to Labor’s IR proposals.

ESTIMATES

Senate estimates hearings last month were the first formal opportunity to scrutinise the Rudd Government. The Government’s stock answer to any question of substance about what they are actually going to do was “it’s under review”, but it was possible to get a sense of the scale of the promises they won’t be meeting and the cuts they will be making.

Education

• Labor's promise of “a laptop for every school student” has faded to “access to a laptop for school students”. A suggestion has been made that laptops might travel from school to school to fulfill the promise of "access".
• Labor has also put the “Investing in Our Schools” program on the chopping block - an initiative by the Coalition Government which delivered more than $1 billion directly to projects that schools needed - not projects which departments thought the school should have.

Industrial relations

• Before the election the Labor Party demanded that the Prime Minister guarantee that no worker would be worse off as a result of their industrial relations changes. In Government they refused to give the same commitment on their Industrial Relations changes.

Rorts

• Kevin Rudd has directed that no project shall be funded against the advice of the Department. In estimates it was revealed that Labor committed $5.75 million in funding against the direct advice of the Department of Fisheries and Forestry.
• Despite promises to cut out rorts, Kevin Rudd was forced to repay the cost of providing a baby-sitter for his 14 year-old son - which had been added to his personal staff at taxpayer expense.
• The draft Ministerial Code of Conduct appears to be another of those promises that make a good media release until you ask for the detail. Despite admitting that he failed to live up to his pre-election promise to release the ministerial code before the election, officials from the Prime Minister's Department and Senator Evans, representing the Prime Minister, could not adequately define a number of key terms in the draft code. There is still no firm date when either the promised Code of Conduct or the Register of Lobbyists will commence.

Whaling

• Diverting the Oceanic Viking to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet cost over $1.2 million - however the Government is unsure whether the whaling occurred in Australia’s Antarctic waters and has no plan to take legal action. As a result of the Oceanic Viking’s diversion, the areas around McDonald and Herd Islands have been vulnerable to toothfish poachers since the January 8 – and still are.
• The government also admitted there was no Minister who had specific responsibility for whaling.

Roads

• Even the Minister is unsure exactly which road promises will be kept and which will be junked. Officials and the Minister at the enquiry, Senator Conroy, refused to discuss Labor’s pre-election, Australia-wide road funding promises.

Local Liaison Officers

• The Government admitted that it did not have a plan to deal with the impact of the decision to remove Local Liaison Officers, a decision that has the potential to disadvantage thousands of Queenslanders desperate to sort out problems with Centrelink, the Child Support Agency and Medicare. More than 11,000 people rang their local MHR or senator last year with problems that were then resolved by the politician speaking to a liaison officer. 99.6 per cent of the problems were fixed within two days. These are all people with serious issues who have tried the usual ringing and writing to the agencies.
• Before the election, Labor said scrapping the LLO program would save $52.5 m over 4 years. Now they say it will save a paltry $1.6m.

UPCOMING LEGISLATION

There have been 38 new bills introduced into the Senate so far this year, and 32 introduced into the House of Representatives. Many of these will require serious scrutiny and amendment.

These include:

• Workplace Relations (Guaranteeing Paid Maternity Leave) Amendment Bill 2007[2008]
  Amends the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to provide for a 14-week government funded, paid
  maternity leave scheme available to all women in the Australian workforce????
• Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008 - Amends the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to: abolish Australian Workplace Agreements; provide transitional arrangements through Individual Transitional Employment Agreements (ITEAs); introduce a no-disadvantage test for ITEAs and collective agreements and ensure no agreement is approved until it passes the test; remove the requirement for a Workplace Relations Fact Sheet; provide that all parties agree to terminate collective workplace agreements; enable award modernisation processes to be undertaken by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission; and makes consequential amendments to 16 Acts (covered in mandate story).
• One piece of legislation which Labor are aiming squarely at the Coalition would mean donations to political parties and the cost of party membership were no longer tax deductible (Tax Laws Amendment (2008 Measures No 1) Bill 2008). Labor would continue to have their rivers of income from compulsory union levies, whilst the Coalition would need to work doubly hard. Labor are hoping to push this through the Senate after June 30 with the support of the minor parties.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

International Women's Day will be celebrated on March 8, commemorating the march by 15,000 women through New York City in 1908 demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. The first International Women's Day was launched on March 8, 1911 in Copenhagen.

In Queensland men voted in State elections for the first time in 1860 - and a short 47 years later Queensland women were able to do the same. In 1915 women were also able to vote for other women when women gained the right to stand for Parliament. In 1929 our first woman, Irene Longman, was elected to State Parliament as a non-Labor candidate. She was responsible for the appointment of Queensland's first women police.

In 1966, Indigenous women were able to vote for the first time in a Queensland State election.

For more information about IWD events in your area, go to http://services.women.qld.gov.au/iwdcalendar/

"IT'S OUR HOUSE" PRIMARY SCHOOL COMPETITION

Parliament House in Canberra will celebrate it's 20^th Anniversary this year!

Primary school students will have the chance to win cash prizes for their school by designing a poster as part of the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the opening of Parliament House in Canberra in 1988.

Students are being invited to design a poster using the slogan "It's Our House" somewhere in their design. The winners will be judged on originality, creativity and entertainment value with prizes of $2000, $1000 and $500 for their schools. Winning entries will also be put on display this year at the Parliament House Open Day on May 10 and also on the Open Day website at http://www.aph.gov.au/Openday/index.htm .

For further details and entry forms visit the link on the House News website: http://www.aph.gov.au/Openday/Poster_Comp.pdf or ring freecall 1800 139 299.

Entries close on Wednesday April 30, 2008.

STATISTICS QUEENSLAND

I’m an absolute sucker for a good statistic and always find the weekly update from the Queensland Office of Economic and Statistical Research (OESR) worth a look.

For the week of February 25, the site includes a link the Residential Tenancies Authority stats on median weekly rents for most major centres throughout the State.

To subscribe follow the link to http://datasmart.oesr.qld.gov.au/Events/datasmart.nsf/CR?OpenForm  

Sue Boyce
Liberal Senator for Queensland