No I don't think anyone deserves it. A lifestyle choice for one is a lifestyle choice for all....at best people should be eligible for new start allowance after three months, like everyone else who leaves a Job...the three month wait is a tad harsh.

Edited by Joffa: 27/8/2013 07:29:55 PM

If you're a low-income earner earning 30k/year it's pretty damn hard to save up working during your pregnancy for when you have the child.

If you're earning 150k/year it shouldn't be a problem to save up for after the birth.

That's why I think new start allowance should be available, it provides a safety net, nothing more and nothing less.

Election 2013: Economy the key for battle-weary Queensland

Queensland voters want more than just a local in the Lodge, finds Bridie Jabour

Bridie Jabour in Brisbane
theguardian.com, Tuesday 27 August 2013 08.51 AEST

If you follow the highway south from the Brisbane CBD – past the young Liberal National party and Labor members waving signs and jostling for a place on the footpaths while they dream of their own faces on corflutes – out to the edges of the city, you will eventually arrive at a small shopping centre in Acacia Ridge so devoid of billboards and politicians you could be forgiven for forgetting the name of our prime minister, let alone that there is an election on.

In the suburbs, letterboxes are filling up with fliers warning of the third circle of hell that Australia would enter if Tony Abbott/Kevin Rudd (take your pick) is elected prime minister on 8 September. The country will enter a debt spiral under Labor, the pamphlets warn. Abbott will cut to the bone, say others, almost daring you to visualise the amount of blood that would be spilled if the metaphor became literal.

At Acacia Marketplace a small boy crayons on a photo of Rudd inside the state’s newspaper, the Courier-Mail, while his mother flicks through a magazine. When asked what is important to her in the election she smiles and shrugs.

“I have nothing to say on that,” she says as she returns to the fashion pages.

Further down the footpath a man in a paint shop yells: “I’m voting for Mickey Mouse; none of the pricks can be trusted!” before turning back to his colour samples. Just a few doors down in a barber shop I ask 18-year-old hairdresser Kate Ladgrove what will decide her vote, and she just shrugs before revealing she is not enrolled to vote. Well, what does she think of Rudd?

“He’s a nice guy. I’m glad they gave him another shot,” she says.

And Abbott?

“Who is he?” she replies earnestly.

I tell her he is the opposition leader and she laughs nervously. “Please don’t make me look stupid,” she says. Of course, she is not stupid; like thousands of other people in her electorate she just has a life to get on with that does not revolve around the 24-hour news cycle.


Kate Ladgrove: Kevin Rudd is 'a nice guy. I’m glad they gave him another shot.' Photograph: John French for the Guardian
Acacia Ridge is in Moreton, the most marginal seat in Queensland; Labor’s Graham Perrett won in 2010 with a margin of only 1.1%. A bout of gastro in the wrong part of the electorate on 7 September and there would be a new MP.

Battle-weary as they endure their fourth election campaign in five years – state, national, state, national – Queenslanders have almost stopped listening. The apathy in Moreton is almost palpable and the economy is the only political issue that can rouse any passion. Queensland lost its AAA credit rating under the previous Labor state government and the 2012 election state campaign was largely fought over the finances of the sunshine state.

“If we keep going the way we’re going at the moment, it will be more unemployment, more small businesses going under,” Dave Tasker, a butcher at Sherwood Road organic meats in Moreton, says. “The previous government put money in the bank. If the wrong people get in at the next election it could be worse than the Great Depression.”

Rudd may be a Queenslander but the voters want more than just a local in the Lodge. Just beyond Moreton in Forde – a seat lost to the Liberals last election with a margin of 1.6% – is Rudd’s trump card, former state premier Peter Beattie.

Beattie led Labor to four straight election victories in Queensland before retiring and passing the baton to Anna Bligh. Seen by the party as a “game changer”, Beattie may have instead simply given voters the opportunity they thought had passed them by when he handed over to Bligh in 2007 – to reject him at the ballot box.

Guardian Australia runs into Beattie in Beenleigh getting a coffee at Deetox cafe, flashing his toothy grin at the barista and shaking hands with customers while talking loudly.

One of them, Andrew Griffin, a teacher at a local high school, sees Beattie as a saviour for Forde, complaining that Liberal MP Bert van Manen has ignored countless invitations to come to his school.

“I think he’s great,” Griffin says of Beattie. “I’m excited he’s decided to run here; education is the most important issue and we’ll get to Gonski with him.”

Francis Jackson, the waitress who serves Beattie his coffee, is less enthusiastic. “I don’t think anything of him really,” she says after he has walked away. “I’m not interested in the way everything is going, the fighting.”

When asked about van Manen, she brightens up. “He comes here for coffee all the time. He is a lovely man, really personable.”

There is unease in the community about how Beattie was parachuted into Forde, although no one can remember the name of Des Hardman, the man who was standing for Labor in Forde until 7 August. Beattie himself admits it has been an issue when voters are talking to him and says he has come across “a bit” of anger over it.

“Des will be campaigning for me in the last week or so. I think that [the anger] is pretty understandable but you’ve got to make the best of it and Des will help me through it,” he says.

A few hours after buying his coffee, Beattie is joined by former New South Wales premier turned foreign minister Bob Carr at Poppy’s Chocolates, a chocolate factory in Logan. Here they talk up the importance of small businesses and tourism to the economy as well as the benefits the 2018 Commonwealth Games will bring to the state.

Lynda Bos, the factory’s owner, smiles between Beattie and Carr at the press conference and briefly tells the cameras Logan has untapped potential as a tourist destination.

After the press conference I ask her if she is going to vote for Beattie. “Oh God, no,” she replies. “Bert is a local and he represents the area very well. He has a genuine interest in the people of the area.”

I ask Bos if she thinks Beattie has a genuine interest in the people of the area.

She looks away before replying: “I don’t really have an opinion on Peter Beattie.”

Bos says sales at her factory have dropped 20% and small businesses are really struggling in the area – she points the finger of blame at the federal Labor government.

Van Manen was too busy doorknocking to sit down with Guardian Australia and an interview promised for the next day did not materialise. In the CBD of Brisbane, his Liberal colleague Teresa Gambaro is facing a similar fight, albeit without such a high-profile opponent.

Gambaro won the seat of Brisbane from Arch Bevis in 2010. Bevis had held the seat since 1990 and it had been Labor for decades, apart from a brief period between 1975 and 1980.

Fortitude Valley is one of the more left-leaning areas of her electorate, so it is surprising to see a large sign there declaring “Tony Abbott is the only one who can stop the boats”. It gets a reaction from almost everyone who walks past.

“What’s going to happen when he doesn’t stop the boats?” a man says in passing to his partner as they stroll past.

“There’s our next prime minister!” another man says to his child as he pushes the toddler in a stroller.

A man who wanted to give only his first name, Peter, tells Guardian Australia the sign does not make him more or less inclined to vote Liberal.

“I really don’t care about the boats. That message seems to be for another part of Australia,” he says. “I just want someone in parliament who cares about my rights.”

Which rights specifically? Same-sex marriage, says Peter. So surely he is for Rudd, the first Australian prime minister to back gay unions?

“Does he though?” Peter asks. “It just seems really convenient for him. And if the Coalition don’t agree to a conscience vote it doesn’t mean anything, does it?

“It has just been such a circus, the last few years. The state government has been appalling when it comes to same-sex rights but I don’t think Abbott could behave the way they have. We need a serious government. I don’t know how I’m going to vote. Maybe Liberal.”

Queensland is often referred to as a country state and that is not usually meant kindly. Inherently conservative, the state is the country town embodied and while people are friendly it is not polite to talk politics. To indulge in sweeping generalisations for a moment, they keep their cards close to their chest. Bos stands next to Beattie and smiles because she is a polite Queenslander; it would be wrong to interpret her politeness as an indication of her voting intentions.

Whether problems with the federal and state economy are real, imagined or maybe just exaggerated in people’s minds, these could be the issues that kneecap the Labor party in this crucial state. Queenslanders may offer up an observation here or there but the rest of the country, including Rudd, is only going to find out how they really feel at the ballot box.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/26/election-2013-economy-battle-weary-queensland

I dunno about newstart allowance. Maybe a slight increase given you have to pay for a child. But I concur.

Tony Abbott recycles work-for-the-dole policy with tough new rules

Bonuses for long-term unemployed who move for work similar to a Labor scheme that has had limited success
Follow Lenore Taylor by email

Lenore Taylor, political editor
theguardian.com, Tuesday 27 August 2013 07.23 AEST

The Coalition is to reannounce a 2010 election promise to pay the relocation costs of long-term unemployed people who move for work, even though Labor has since implemented the plan with limited success.

The Coalition leader, Tony Abbott, will on Tuesday unveil an employment participation policy almost identical to the one he took to the last election, including tough new work-for-the-dole rules as well as bonuses of $2500 for long-term unemployed young people who get a job and keep it for a year, and an additional bonus of $4000 if they remain employed for a second year.

The policy also includes assistance of $6000 for any long-term unemployed person who moves to a regional area to take a job, $3000 if they move to a city and an additional $3000 if they have dependent children.

Since the last election Labor has implemented a similar scheme – at a cost of around $30m – offering similar amounts to long-term jobseekers who move, but it has suffered from limited take-up. Under Labor's scheme the number of available places is capped, but demand has never reached that limit.

In its 2010 policy the Coalition also promised a $3250 incentive for employers offering jobs to long-term unemployed people who are over 50.

And in 2010 it insisted its policy would come at a net saving to the budget, with all the implementation costs being offset by the benefit of more people moving off the dole.

The Coalition has also repeatedly promised to reintroduce work for the dole – a signature policy of John Howard's government.

When he last reannounced the policy earlier this year Abbott said work for the dole should be the mandatory "default option" for everyone under 50 who had been on unemployment benefits for more than six months, and pledged to suspend all income support payments for people under 30 in areas where work was available.

He said his policy would contain "sensible, targeted measures to help get people off welfare and into work. More the than 140,000 Australians have been unemployed for more than 12 months. If elected, we will take real action to get them into work."

Under Labor's Move2Work scheme long-term unemployed are offered $4500 in relocation assistance, $6500 if they have a family.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/26/tony-abbott-work-for-dole-tough-new-rules

Wage rise blowout a figment of Coalition’s imagination

Far from the Fair Work Act ushering in excess wage rises, both actual and expected wage growth remain low

It says something about this election campaign that the only time the Liberal party’s industrial relations spokesman, Senator Eric Abetz, has put his head above the parapet it was to announce policy measures that were quickly denied by others in the party.

In an extraordinary change of policy, Senator Abetz told the Australian last week that the Liberal party was going to introduce more regulation into the IR sector.

He was concerned about pay rises that were negotiated and agreed to by workers and employers. He told the paper:

“Unions pursuing agreements allowing for annual pay rises of, for instance, 5%, should be required to show to the Fair Work Commission that they had ‘genuinely discussed’ productivity with their employer before the deal is approved.”

Why did he think this was needed? Well, because Australia’s businesses were weak and lazy. He said that the Liberal party wanted to bring in this arrangement to ensure “that lazy companies don’t just give wage increases because it’s the easiest thing to do, and the path to least resistance”.

It must be heartening to the CEOs around Australia to know that the Liberal party thinks so highly of them that it believes they would agree to pay rises that are not sustainable.

As economist Sinclair Davidson wrote on the Libertarian blog Catallaxy Files:

“We already have a perfectly good mechanism for dealing with those firms that give their employees productivity-free pay increases – it is called bankruptcy.”

The next day, Fairfax papers revealed that Abetz was talking out of turn and had been told to go back to where he had till then been hiding himself this campaign.

But Abetz’s thought bubble (or inadvertent revelation of future plans) reveals a common complaint about the industrial relations system that has existed even before the Fair Work Act came into effect – namely, that it will provoke a union-led wages blowout.

But two weeks’ ago the latest Wage Price Index was released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics; it showed that the annual increase in wages is a mere 3% – the lowest such increase, outside the period of the global financial crisis, for the past 10 years.


Wages price index: annual increase (%) – latest figures show annual increase of 3%, the lowest (outside the GFC) in 10 years. Source: ABS
In fact, since the introduction of the Fair Work Act in July 2009, other than for a short period in the first half of 2011, the annual increase has been well below the 10-year average.

Inflation has been low during the past 18 months so it is worth looking at the spread of the wage price index to the consumer price index to get a sense of real wage growth. This measure is not the best one to use – using average wage earnings is better, but in the past six months the ABS has changed how it calculates those earnings, which makes comparing them over previous years rather difficult, so we’ll use this as a pretty good substitute:


Real wage growth (%): Spread of WPI to inflation (weighted median) – real wages are now growing at 0.4% a year. Source: RBA, ABS
The plunge to negative growth was due to the increase in inflation in 2007-09, not so much the increase in wages.

After the GFC, and the introduction of the Fair Work Act, real wages recovered to the pre-GFC average growth of about 1%. But, as you can see, they have now fallen to 0.4% annual growth.

If the data does not convince, then let us turn to the Reserve Bank. The bank explicitly examined wages in its latest Statement on Monetary Policy. It noted: “Business surveys and liaison suggest that wage growth remained subdued in the June quarter and firms have tended to report that they expect a moderation in wage growth over the period ahead.”

But Abetz was worried about wages growth over productivity. Thankfully, he can rest easy. The RBA also looked at that link and noted, “Unit labour costs ... declined over the year, with the sharp slowing in the growth of average earnings more than offsetting an easing in labour productivity growth from its recent fast pace.”


Unit labour costs growth: non-farm – labour costs declined over the past year. Source: ABS, RBA
For the past six years there has been a lot of hoo-hah said and written about industrial relations. As soon as the ALP moved to change IR legislation, warnings came from the Liberal party and conservative commentators of a wages boom. They also warned that the Fair Work Act would destroy productivity.

It didn’t.

In his campaign launch speech on Sunday, Tony Abbott talked of returning IR to the “sensible centre”. It’s a claim based on the view that unions now have too much power. If that is true, there is scant evidence they have used it to gain excess wage rises which have decoupled earnings from productivity.

When the Liberal party does finally announce its changes to IR after the election, it would be nice if they could keep themselves to fixing problems that actually exist, and not ones that occur only in their imagination.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2013/aug/26/wages-blowout-in-coalition-imagination

Oh snap!

Right of entry is ridiculous at the moment, its the only real thing that needs changing.

Come again? http://www.samesame.com.au/news/local/10154/200-each-Coalition-to-fund-straight-couples.htm

Again, not supported by the statistics, whichever context you use. Yeah the numbers dipped when Howard was in charge but not substantially so, not enough to account for the massive, unprecedented drop in boat arrivals, which virtually fell to zero. The numbers have also fluctuated under Rudd/Gillard, but boat arrivals have not, they have constantly risen no matter whats happening globally and a bad situation gotten worse. There's no way you can dance around the fact the hardline policy of the Howard goverment was extremely successful at stoppoing illegal boat arrivals, while Rudd's "compassionate" dismantling of his policies have led to more displacement, more exploitation and more death at sea without any net improvement to the refugee problem. It's a bit rich to blame it all on European countries who are also signatories to the UN convention, you're basically implicating Rudd when you say Europe countries were shutting up shop at the same time we were opening our doors.

Do you see the irony in saying that the most effective thing to do is increase the appeal of living in SE Asia and yet by the same token we have little control over anything? We can lobby all we want but we can only control our own borders and regardless of what outdated international law says we have sovereign right to determine who can and can't live here. While the merits of the issue can't be dumbed down to "Stop the boats" rhetoric it's not as ridiculously complex as you might imagine, and part of the solution is inseparable from turning boats around. The most complex thing is how you do this not whether it can be done.

While airport arrivals increased.

No idea what peoples issue is with PPL. Just about every other country's PPL scheme is pegged to income, Australia is the only one based on minimum wage. If every other country is doing there must be some sense behind it. It's really kind of a left wing policy, I'm sure if it was Labors idea everyone would be applauding it.

Great, come on an airplane. At least this way we can verify you.

That's exactly the point, they're seeking asylum by plane without documentation. They weren't verified.

Just don't get on a boat

That's just boatist, man.

The hilarious thing is that Labor never care about the cost of things (think carbon tax, nbn) but when the Libs put out effectively a Labor policy they suddenly get all fiscally precious.

Typical hypocrisy from Labor and its sycophants.


Edited by thupercoach: 28/8/2013 12:14:55 AM

That's why you're not voting labor.

I'm struggling to understand how one gains anything out of kissing the arse of any of the parties. It's not very sycophantic.

+1 RedKat. A high income earner shouldnt get anything. Theyve had their whole pregnancy to save money.

Edited by afromanGT: 28/8/2013 12:28:53 AM

[youtube]NuVgMLNhFuc[/youtube]

Things I never want to see again #2130: Clive Palmer 'twerking'

Obviously, with my established left leaning opinions, I'm in the 'no extra support for high income earners' boat.

My personal thought process that brings me to this is that parental leave should not be a consolation prize for lost work due to having a baby, but a means of ensuring you can look after your child whilst you are unable to work. I believe that this can be established as one rate for all. I do not feel you should be paid a greater amount of money just because you have a high salary when you aren't actually performing the highly skilled tasks that net you that salary.

Disagree, I see opportunity cost as a vital factor in this.

Also, people on higher incomes are usually locked into higher mortgages.

Edited by thupercoach: 28/8/2013 06:34:52 AM

I agree that workplace entry is ridiculous, however it's not the only thing that needs changing...

how about union officials rights to occupy lunch rooms...?
right to sue employers for workplace bullying?
employers to finance union travel and entry to remote workplaces?
increased powers to the fair work commission?
unfair dismissal threshold and compensation going up?

and there are plenty more;)

massive assumption and generalisation

=d> =d> =d>

They don't have a right to the "lunch room", they have the right to an accessible place to have meetings at a frequency agreed upon by the employer. I always gave them the board room on another level so non-union workers didn't have to hear the bullshit.
I don't see this as a bad thing. Employers have a responsibility to provide a safe workplace free from bullying. My understanding of the ability to sue is that its only possible if the employer has been proven to have not taken steps to stop bullying after its been made aware of the situation.
Right of entry issue.
Such as?
We've had this discussion before. In my opinion it's a good thing that its harder to make permanent workers redundant, I understand that you disagree.

any decent employer will do anything to hold onto quality permanent employee's, it's a joke to think otherwise,considering the amount of training, time and money invested in them, so when you are at the point where you are forced into making some of your work force redundant it's ludicrous to be exposed to such draconian laws....

If you're unable to performance manage bad workers out of your business, it might pay to go and do a basic management course.

Do you have any examples of companies sued for an employee being bullied where the company was not aware of the bullying?