Correction: Hawthorne isn’t the Heckler

The Age’s Mark Hawthorne writes: Re “Tips and Rumours” (yesterday, item 6). While I’m an avid reader of Heckler every Sunday I can categorically say I have never written it.

Industrial relations isn’t just Work Choices

Ava Hubble writes: Please, during this election can we hear less about Work Choices and more about the ongoing casualisation of Australia’s workforce? Yet again, it’s a subject all the major parties seem to prefer to ignore, even though casualisation is a miserable fact of life for millions of Australian workers. They have virtually no rights to trade away.

For example, they are not paid sick pay or holiday pay. They are not even paid for public holidays and most are low income earners. Worst of all, many of these workers don’t know from one day to the next whether they will be rostered on for the next shift. Media stars who have just returned from spending paid school holiday leave with their children, might spare a thought for casuals during their next political interview. What’s the situation at present? Is it one in four, or one in five Australian workers who is employed on a casual basis?

David Hand writes: Well, every one’s got very excited about the slogan “Moving Forward” that Julia has worn out after only one day. There’s another slogan, “WorkCchoices”, doing the rounds that is having a lot more effect. It seems set to become the dominant slogan of the campaign as it carries Julia to victory. I call it a slogan because listening to the news reports yesterday, your unflattering coverage of Tony Abbott’s campaigning and the crossfire in Q&A, it’s clear that “Work Choices” has become a bogyman in the Australian community. No one is bothering to define it any more. Tony got into difficulty over quite unrelated questions about potential modifications to Fair Work regulations, something I fully expect the re-elected Labor Government to do anyway. The term, “Work Choices” means different things to different people but universally, it’s bad. It has succeeded in making any discussion about “moving forward” with any labour market reform impossible.

One must give great credit to the Union movement for its spectacularly successful 2007 scare campaign “Your rights at work”. I concede the unions probably had something to be scared about as Work Choices looked designed to help their steady decline along. But their real success is that there can be no discussion, thinking, policy development or kite flying about changing labour laws without someone jumping out from behind the furniture screaming “WORK CHOICES! WORK CHOICES!”

So Julia is likely to get re-elected on a Work Choices slogan. The real problem however is that this decline of the union movement is a symptom of the changes underway in our economy, not from an evil plot by the moneyed conservatives in our community. Julia and co will find it increasingly difficult to run the economy without the labour market flexibility it needs, which will be to the comfort and satisfaction of the Union movement but at significant cost, job losses and poor economic performance to the rest of us.

Election: the public debate

Terry J Mills writes: Is it any wonder that punters like me get confused when Abbott, Hockey, Robb, Joyce et al on the Opposition side tell us that Labor continues to borrow $100 million per day creating massive public debt and erratic spending and , in the process, denying business access to financial markets. Then Glenn Stevens makes a speech saying that there is ‘virtually no public debt in Australia’. Can Crikey provide some analysis please as the media generally seem to find it too hard to explain.

Voting fun

Hamish van de IJsel writes: I  find it surprising that yesterday I received a letter purely for the purpose on showing voters how to submit a postal vote from Don Farrell. Tony, I receive a similar set of instructions from the AEC. How many wasted letters, envelopes and most importantly tax dollars has Don wasted in duplicating the work of a government department?

Alan Kennedy writes: Before we get too far down the track, and my oh my the road ahead to August 21 looks long and hard, can we please get one thing right?

Voting in  the election is not compulsory. Bernard was at it this morning in today’s Campaign Crikey morning edition (“Keane: debates are for political tragics — most people don’t give a toss“, item one) with “But of course, you can’t track the level of political engagement because we use the threat of criminal sanction.” It is only compulsory to turn up. What you do with your ballot paper is your business. You can eat it or write obscenities on it, draw on it or just leave it blank.

No-one checks. Being made to turn up once every three years or so is fair enough. I spent a bit of time with people in countries where people have died for the right to vote. It is the least we can do to show some respect for them and others to get off our arses and go down to have our names marked off.

It also means pollies can’t become captive to the loonies like the religious fanatics in the US who skew voting by being able to get their people out to vote for the most lunatic candidate they can find.

That’s how we got George W Bush and that’s why brain dead nongs like Sarah Palin still think they can be president.

Renewables vs. non-renewables continues:

Viv Forbes writes:  Re: comments (yesterday). I confirm that I am a non executive director of Stanmore Coal Limited, a small Australian coal exploration company and also Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition. I also breed cattle and sheep on a small grazing property.

I have spent a long working life in many positions in mining, farming, public service, national service, lecturing, consulting, journalism and political agitation. I have held all of the other (part time) positions listed but no longer do. I have not hidden any of these interests or past lives. And none of these interests change my views on the need to abolish subsidies to any industry, which I have held for decades.

Moira A Smith writes: There has been some interesting discussion recently on Crikey on the topic of renewables vs. non-renewables. Such as David Brynes (comments, yesterday): ‘The pollution released during the production of manufacturing, mining, and fossil fuel energy generation is being subsidised itself. But the ones doing the subsidising aren’t the government, it is all of us who have to pay for the externalities through degradation of our health, instability of our climate and loss of natural ecosystems’

I agree. And there are so many comparisons. Think about them, and the craziness of this kind of behaviour will become all too apparent. As Nigel Brunel quoted (comments, yesterday): “we don’t inherit the planet from our grandparents — we borrow it from our grandchildren”.

Armies who invade a foreign region/country lay land mines and discharge ammunition full of depleted uranium (think Iraq, think Afghanistan for recent examples but there are so many more)… then they retreat leaving innocent children whose legs are blown off while herding goats and/or who have compromised health for life from playing among the refuse. It astounds me that the retreating armies never think to clean up or remove any of the toxic explosive crap they leave behind. Just like those kids and communities who live among the refuse of Australian mines and industrial areas that the retreating (often bankrupt through legal means) companies never have to worry about. The people who live there, live with the consequences, only they don’t have jobs any more.

And Joe Hockey [as Bushfire Bill pointed out in a comments stream on Crikey I can’t find again] doesn’t even get the difference between virginity and celibacy (and yes, it IS a huge difference) but he’ll use his ignorance in an attempt to bash the opposition. And the people who he’s aiming his comments at will probably believe him.

Are we a human race of idiots and inveterate ignoramuses, or do we have a bit more discernment and aim to learn more and become better people? What’s wrong with us?

Little or big or medium sized Australia

Sandy Logie writes: Re. “Labor’s population obsession might have some side-benefits in housing” (item 1, yesterday) Bernard Keene’s article on the small minority of voters who are driving the Little Australia agenda, I think there is another side to the same issue – and that is the assumption coming from big business that growth is good, and more growth is better. Without even thinking about the immigration issue, I get frustrated that all politicians seem to measure their success by how much growth there has been in the last quarter. Do we have any idea of how much growth we want? Indeed, why is growth good? Yet at the same time we all talk about the environmental issues – but there seems to be no attempt to connect the two together and work out how much growth we want.

Election snippets

Andrew Haughton writes: The Coalition has a problem making the economy a major issue. It is particularly a problem on Television Joe Hockey presents as a bit of a dill , but a likeable dill and Andrew Robb is bright but comes across as a “Dead Man Talking” with all the warmth and charisma of Phil Ruddock. Each underlines the other’s weaknesses.

John Shailer writes: Julia Gillard says this election is on a knife edge. Unfortunately for Kevin Rudd he didn’t see it coming!

Niall Clugston writes: Re. “Farmer: the reluctance to debate” (Tuesday, item 2) seems to applaud the general policy of Prime Ministers to deny Opposition Leaders the oxygen of several debates. As far as I’m concerned this is undemocratic and adds to the already unfair advantages of incumbency.

In any case, Tony Abbott’s mouth seems to be his worst enemy. The more opportunities he has to put his foot in it, the better for Labor.

John Langer writes: Assuming, for however fleeting a moment, that the printed media were acting “on our behalf”, and indeed felt exhausted by the ever increasing lack of intelligence and ethics among our political leaders, rather than being a willing partner in obfuscation, there might present itself an excellent opportunity for payback.

You know the picture of the dog running after a bird, getting tremendous satisfaction seeing the bird taking flight. What then, if the bird were to stand its ground and merely face the dog? My pathetically simple point is: what if all the media were to report nothing, absolutely nothing from Canberra, nothing about the election campaign, nothing, zip? And keep it up for, say, a week? What, if that suddenly available space were then dedicated to material of both intrinsic and practical value? What exactly would our fearless leaders do? The desperation, the helplessness, the eyes darting, the lips quivering, the foreheads bleeding from all that scratching, running from

Arthur to Martha searching for that willing ear? Would we be the poorer for this? Hardly.

Don’t forget her Welsh past

David Basden writes: Re.”Keane essay, part 2: Gillard’s words are her weapon” (yesterday, item 3) From Bernard Keane’s essay in your most excellent afternoon update, it is written:”Like Hawke, Gillard hails from Victoria and the Left (indeed, both were born in SA, although Hawke grew up in Perth), but both belied their ideological backgrounds and moved to the political centre. ”

Actually, Gillard was born in Wales. Her parents moved to SA when she was a few years old. I only point it out because I’m obviously a pedant with nothing else to do, and you guys are normally so accurate. Keep on being awesome!