Apprenticeships
“There Is No Alternative” was a favourite line of Margaret Thatcher’s whenever she was trying to push one of her ideas on to the public.
The “TINA” philosophy has become part of the armoury of governments, big corporations, and others who want to convince us that we are naïve, ill-informed or stupid when we try and question the wisdom of their decisions.
Qantas is the latest example of a major company trying to convince us that There Is No Alternative to its plans to shift its operations offshore, and to cut about 1000 jobs here in Australia.
Continue reading "The flying kangaroo need not be a flying panda" »
The Queensland floods are the most economically damaging natural disaster in Australian history – but as reconstruction begins, we should be wary of a different type of deluge, of a far more avoidable type.
In December last year, ANU academic Peter McDonald made headlines when he suggested that foreign workers should be rushed into the country to work below Australian minimum wages and conditions.
Professor McDonald argued that Australia needed to accelerate the construction of major infrastructure and that the best way to achieve it would be to put the projects out to international tender, allowing the winning bidder to bring their own workers to remunerate and treat as they see fit.
Continue reading "Foreign workers are not the solution to a quick cleanup" »
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Stephanie Todd says:
If restuarant owners and operators want to hire backpakers at half the price as an Australia man or woman then no low paid work for workers will be left. Next other industry groups will follow suit, hospitals will hire only backpakers to done low paid jobs, Australians will need to… Read more »
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Reg says:
Greggie, I understand your pun about surfing into third-world standards. Very droll! So “in the fullness of time,” as Sir Humphrey may have said, you expect that the WTO and escalating weather patterns may drag us all down to the same third-world standards +1? How depressingly realistic of you. Just… Read more »
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