Federal Government In A Muddle

Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews’ quest for a single national system of industrial relations is looking increasingly illusory.

Opposition is growing on both sides of politics, and there are manifest problems with the Government's muddled approach.

The fundamental difficulty for the Government is its' plan for a hostile takeover of the State industrial relations systems. This will never deliver a single national system because the Australian Government simply does not have the power under the Constitution to make the necessary laws.

Just about all State Government employment would be beyond the reach of the proposed Commonwealth laws, and to that can be added vast tracts of small business and many other areas of employment. Industries such as public education and health may even revert from the Federal to the State systems to avoid the hostile national laws.

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Unions Urge Fair Go For Timorese

The ACTU is calling on the Government to ensure East Timor receives its fair share of benefits from gas and oil projects in the Timor Sea.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow says East Timor deserves a fair go and a fair share of the billions of dollars being earned from the Timor Sea oil and gas reserves.

Burrow says it is also in Australia's best interests to have a prosperous and stable East Timor as our neighbour.

The ACTU is calling on the Australian Government to stop short changing the East Timorese on maritime boundaries and government royalties.

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May Day: Workers rally against loss of rights

Thousands of workers flocked to May Day rallies across Australia yesterday to protest against the Federal Government's planned industrial relations changes.

The ACTU president, Sharan Burrow, said many basic workplace rights would be threatened if the Government went ahead with its plan.

It intends to use the Senate majority it will gain in July to set up a single national industrial relations system that will override state systems.

The plan is opposed by state and territory governments, the Federal Opposition and unions, who claim it will leave workers worse off. Ms Burrow said Australia should use May Day to reflect on what it stood to lose if the Government went ahead with its plan to strip workers of many of their basic rights

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Good riddance to Joh Bananas

Not everyone’s a hypocrite. Some of us will be raising a glass to send the old bastard on his way to whatever level of hell lies in wait for hillbilly dictators. In all of the maudlin, confected nostalgia generated by Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s long overdue demise, something precious has been forgotten. The hate.

Because there were thousands of us trapped north of the Tweed who hated that vicious, crackbrained yahoo with a visceral intensity.

There were thousands of us who’ll look back on the Johera as a waking nightmare, when a gang of slack-jawed yokels, crooks, bandits, half-smart chancers and degenerate greedheads ensconced themselves in power by brutally crushing all opposition, debauching the public offices, and rewarding favoured cronies with the sort of naked contempt for propriety that would have impressed Ferdinand Marcos or Manuel Noriega

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Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the fictions of hindsight!

We are going to miss the late Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the lovable rascal. They don't make them like him any more. Joh was a battler for Queensland, a doughty warrior for the National Party who put his state four square on the world stage. He built the economic powerhouse that is Queensland today. Don't you worry about that.

And so on, blah blah. This is the ludicrous spin whipped up by the remnants of the Bjelke peanut mafia who will be seeing the corrupt old loon dispatched at his funeral in Kingaroy on Tuesday.

You expect such nonsense from them. And from the likes of the Nationals' federal leader, John Anderson, who pumped out a fatuous press release hailing Bjelke as "a great servant of the Queensland people and the National Party".

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