The HR Nicholls Society said, the myriad of complex new laws would also create a system where so-called IR professionals would stand to make a lot of money sorting through it,
The society was set up more than 20 years ago to argue for unfettered management of the workplace and as a counter-balance to union influence.
But society president Ray Evans does not like the centralised power being handed to the government under the changes, nor its encroachment on states' rights.
"It's rather like going back to the old Soviet system of command and control, where every economic decision has to go back to some central authority and get ticked off," he told ABC TV.
"There is a lot of that sort of attitude in this legislation and I think it is very unfortunate."
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Fremantle wharfies will stand guard over containers awaiting the arrival of the Australian licensed Boomerang I due in port this weekend, after the ship lost cargo in Melbourne to a Flag of Convenience vessel.
The Boomerang I, the first Australian crewed liner vessel in the coastal trade for a decade has priority under the Navigation Act to ship coastal cargo. But while on her maiden voyage to Melbourne last week, the FoC vessel MSC Kota Ekspres made off with containers on a continuous voyage permit. This is in contravention to Australian maritime law, which only allows foreign vessels to carry domestic cargo if no Australian licensed vessel is available.
Corporate law firm, Freehills, has been contracted to track down blue collar workers who objected to “fleapit” conditions and prosecute them in court.
Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, has endorsed the campaign to secure up to $1.5 million in fines against AMWU members who struck to improve Outback living conditions.
A spokesman for the Minister endorsed the prosecutions and promised similar actions "would be pursued across the country".
The cases, alleging breaches of the federal Workplace Relations Act, stem from action by around 70 people, last year, over inhabitable living conditions at Moranbah, central Queensland.
AMWU members stopped work for three days but returned, after securing improvements, to complete maintenance on a dragline for a nearby coal mine.
read moreEmployees in NSW could lose protection from covert surveillance at work and state laws outlining how apprentices may be treated will be overridden, the release of regulations reveal.
Responding to the changes, the deputy director of Sydney University's Industrial Relations Research Centre, John Buchanan, has warned that scrapping state apprenticeship laws will worsen the skills shortage.
"One of the real reasons for skills shortages has been the collapse of quality on-the-job training," he said.
"These changes are going to strip even more quality out of the training system. They go in the complete opposite direction to what is required."
In London, crowds filled Trafalgar Square to demonstrate their opposition to the war.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered in cities around the world to protest against the war in Iraq, on the third anniversary of the US-led invasion.
Across time zones and cultures, their anti-war sentiments and their opposition to the US-led action in Iraq was the same.The message across the globe was the same - to end the war in Iraq.
Henderson has worked his way through various institutions of the Australian Right, beginning as an employee of the Catholic anti-communist critic of the Australian Left, B.A. Santamaria, and his National Civic Council. It was here Henderson imbibed the politics of anti-communism, cutting his teeth as a propagandist defending Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War and attacking the radical student and anti-war movements of the 1960s.
Yesterday it was revealed that Finance Minister Senator Nick Minchin had told a closed meeting that he believed the Howard Government should go to the next poll seeking a mandate for a second wave of reform.Building 1,000 new childcare centres and reducing childcare costs for working parents would attract up to 250,000 women into the workforce and could generate a significant economic growth dividend says the ACTU.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow called on the Federal Government to increase its investment in childcare so there are more childcare places at a cheaper cost to working families.
Releasing a new ACTU plan to solve Australia's childcare crisis, Ms Burrow said:
"Increased investment in childcare would bring big benefits to working families as well as to the economy with ABS data showing there are currently around 250,000 women not in the workforce because they are either unable to find a childcare place or unable to afford one.
Under the ACTU plan, it is as easy as 1 - 2 - 3.
On coming to power, the Howard Government systematically crippled Australia's innovation infrastructure, and the effects are already showing. Under Labor, investment in research and development by Australian businesses was rising at a rate that would have put Australia in the top quarter of OECD countries by now. Under Howard, this investment is falling and Australia is heading into the bottom quarter.
The amount that the Government saved in the context of a total Commonwealth budget by withdrawing support for innovation is a joke. The research syndication scheme cost the Government nothing: it just diverted money from tax scams into vital early stage finance for innovators.
Maintaining the Bureau of Industry Economics cost a few million dollars a year but, as we now know, Howard and his ministers don't want to hear advice that might contradict their preconceptions. The big-ticket items, maintaining support for the CSIRO and Australia's universities and continuing the 150 per cent research and development tax allowance would have cost at most $5 billion a year, less than half the surplus.
Australia's ability to run up ever higher international debts has spared most Australians any pain from the reduction in our national innovation capacity, but the country is living on borrowed time.
Compare What's Fair helps you to compare current award entitlements with a proposed Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) for your typical working week.
This week we learnt that the net foreign debt had reached $473 billion by the end of December.
