Howard Government claims IR rights

The Howard Government has insisted on the right to seize control of state workplace laws - covering workers from senior business executives to the low-paid - because of constitutional powers allowing it to "occupy the field of employment contracts".

Declaring that the commonwealth had the power to exclude state laws, lawyers for the Howard Government told the High Court yesterday that Canberra could override the states' laws without having to duplicate their laws in detail.

Barrister Henry Burmester, representing the federal Government, said he did not mean that the commonwealth could "legislate at large".

But the commonwealth's power to legislate on employment contracts using the corporations power of the constitution meant that Canberra could dominate in this area, he said.

Mr Burmester was defending the Government's hostile takeover of state industrial relations laws in the High Court on the final hearing day of a challenge by state Labor governments and unions.

Judges Ian Callinan and Michael Kirby have raised a series of questions during the six-day hearing about how the commonwealth's seizure of state laws using the corporations power might be used to considerably widen its role in areas such as health, education and transport.

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Budget: flight of fancy

Lack of faith in ideas and learning could cost Australia

The Age editorial May 11, 2006

"It must be concluded that the Government has an ideological aversion to greater public funding of higher education and skills training. In the meantime, as Education Minister Julie Bishop has observed, higher education has become a focus of development in such countries as the US, Japan, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea, which plan to "use brainpower as a catalyst for economic development". A study by the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council has warned that the relative position of Australian education, science and innovation is being eroded. This means our economic capacity to compete and grow is also being eroded."

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Budget: nothing for vital skills

The Opposition, trade unions, and industry groups have slammed the big-spending budget for remaining "absolutely silent" on the critical skills shortage.

At a time when Australia was desperate for more tradespeople, the Government has reduced the percentage of the budget spent on skills and training, said Opposition training spokeswoman Jenny Macklin.

She said $13.7 million had been slashed from a program that encouraged rural businesses to take on apprentices.

"Instead of focusing on training Australians first, the Howard Government has imported an extra 270,000 skilled migrants but has already turned 300,000 Australians from TAFE," Ms Macklin said.

The Australian Industry Group tips the need for 100,00 more tradespeople by 2010, and its chief executive, Heather Ridout, said it was disappointing that more progress had not been made.

"These areas are required to build the competitiveness of Australian business and to assist in rebalancing the economy as the current minerals boom begins to fade," she said.

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Judges: Howard's IR power grab "suspicious"

The Federal Government was asking the High Court to grant it industrial relations powers it had been refused in four referendums, a judge said yesterday.

The High Court questioned the extent of the Government's industrial relations power grab as the Commonwealth argued for the second day that its workplace laws should be upheld.

Justice Ian Callinan said the Commonwealth had failed four times between 1911 and 1946 to expand its industrial relations powers through referendums.

He indicated he felt uncomfortable being asked to grant the Commonwealth powers that Australians had refused on those occasions. "What you are really saying is it is very hard to get a change, therefore, ask the court to do it," he said.

Justice Michael Kirby said he was "a little suspicious" of the Government's motives because it did not refer to its use of the corporations power in the title or objectives of the legislation.

"What is at least a source of puzzlement and anxiety is that in the list of objectives of the act, nowhere is there any suggestion that one of the objects of the Parliament was to make a new law for employment in corporations and that makes you then start to wonder is that really the object of the act or is it, as one looks at it, simply a refurbished industrial employment act with a new label thrown in?" he said.

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