I DOUBT if there is anyone in the world who would tell you our relationships are not more important than money. And yet there is often a big gap between what we believe and what we do. In practice, we're always putting money - whether earning it or spending it - ahead of our relations with family, friends and neighbours.
The best thing to come from John Howard's plans for a revolution in industrial relations is the way they are prompting people to ask what effect they would have on family life. It's a question we should have been asking a lot earlier about other aspects of economic change.
In the policies they advocate, economists quite deliberately ignore the possible implications for our relationships. In their professional capacity, they neither know nor care. It's not their department, so they leave it for more qualified people to worry about.
Which people? Well, one group with a special interest in the topic is the purveyors of religion. They are always being told to butt out because they know nothing about economics - although no one ever tells the economists to dry up because they know nothing about relationships.
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