The worst part is this is all slowly making Clive Palmer look more and more proficient.

Queensland public servants get Christmas pay rise
Date
December 10, 2013 - 11:40AM

Queensland public servants will receive a 2.2 per cent pay rise for Christmas.

The 48,000 public servants under the core enterprise bargaining agreement will receive the pay rise by February 2014, but it will apply to leave loading payments from December 1 this year.

The announcement from Premier Campbell Newman follows a recent decision by the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission to grant ambulance officers a 2.2 per cent pay rise.

Negotiations between the state government and the public sector’s Together Union to raise the award for the public servants on the core enterprise bargaining agreement have been ongoing for more than a year.

The stalemate lasted so long the Industrial Relations Court had to hear an appeal for an interim pay increase while arbitration continued.

The union had hoped the government would grant a 2.35 per cent pay rise each year for three years.

“This is not an interim wage increase. It provides certainty about wage increases for the next three years,’’ Mr Newman said in a statement.

The pay rise will take effect from December 1 this year, meaning it will apply to 2013 leave loading payments.

The premier said he personally intervened to break the 18-month deadlock and he blamed the Together Union for the delay.

‘‘I’m delighted to have broken the impasse,’’ he said.

‘‘The whole process was going nowhere. It’s well and truly overdue.’’

Together members’ postcard campaign has forced the turnaround by the Newman Government, according to the union secretary Alex Scott who described the decision as ‘‘neither far nor reasonable’’.

“Sure the government has been forced to abandon their extremist legal tactics but this is still a bad decision. If the government cared about public servants they would have given a pay rise before last Christmas not delayed public servants a pay rise unnecessarily for a further 12 months,’’ he said.

“Let’s not forget though that politicians received a three percent increase this year and ensured that their own pay increase was backdated to 1 July. Now the Premier has decided to only backdate the increase for hard working public servants to 1 December.’’

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-public-servants-get-christmas-pay-rise-20131210-2z2tj.html#ixzz2n27S9rCn

Childcare workers asked to hand back wage rise

December 10, 2013

Jonathan Swan and Bianca Hall

The Abbott government is asking childcare providers to “do the right thing” and hand back $62.5 million given to them to improve wages in the poorly paid sector, in a move slammed by Labor as a broken election promise.

The contracts were signed with the previous government, with the money to be spent in 1100 childcare centres to bolster the $19-an-hour wages of certificate III childcare workers by $3 an hour and the pay of early-childhood teachers by $6 an hour.

Asked whether it was cruel to be asking low-paid childcare workers to return money promised to them, Assistant Minister for Education Sussan Ley said: “Of course I feel for workers who might have expected a pay rise, but who led them to expect that pay rise?”

At a media conference in Canberra on Tuesday, Labor's child care spokeswoman Kate Ellis said the government had led child care workers to expect that pay rise when it promised to honour agreements.

Ms Ellis said the government's process was ''shambolic'' and ''cruel'' to child care workers before Christmas.

Ms Ley admitted she had no legal ability to force the childcare centres to repay the money, but said she “hoped” they would do the right thing.

Labor had set aside $300 million in the budget to boost the wages of 30,000 childcare workers, an increase frozen when the Coalition came into government.

The Abbott government now wants to spend the full $300 million on professional training and development for childcare workers rather than wage rises.

The starting wage for a university-educated early childhood teacher is $42,000 a year, which would rise to about $53,000 under the wage increase.

The rise was designed to give certainty to the sector – which has suffered from high staff turnover and funding shortfalls – while the Fair Work Commission considers a push to increase wages for the social and community sector, due to be completed in about two years.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott promised in question time last week that the Coalition would “absolutely honour all of our commitments, and contracts which have been entered into will be honoured”.

On Tuesday Ms Ley said the Coalition would honour the $62.5 million in signed contracts if the childcare centres insisted on keeping the money, but she hoped the providers would give the money back to the government so it could be more fairly distributed across the sector.

One of the 16 childcare providers to have already signed contracts, Goodstart Learning, has 641 centres across Australia.

Ms Ley described Labor's $300 million as a “childcare union slush fund”. On Tuesday she released a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers that she said showed Labor's fund was “deeply flawed and inequitable”.

Ms Ley said the money, which would be paid only if employers signed enterprise bargaining agreements, was a "blatant" tactic to recruit more union members.

Labor argued the bargaining agreements were a way to ensure that workers, not management, received the money.

Ms Ley said the Coalition was keeping faith with the Australian people by keeping the same $300 million pot of money, but instead of using it for wage rises it would be put to better use in training and “upskilling” childcare workers.

“We committed before the election that we would undertake a considered measured independent review of Labor's controversial fund,” Ms Ley said.

“There was a clear rush by Labor to get these deals done for their union mates before the election and now they have left the Coalition and taxpayers to pick up the bill.”

According to Ms Ellis, the measure was designed as a two-year program to raise wages in the short term, while the fair wage push was resolved with Fair Work Australia.

''This government are not just breaking their election commitments, but now they are asking child care providers to do it for them,'' Ms Ellis said.

''This is an absolute shambles which takes the government’s chaotic processes to a whole new low.''

Ms Ellis said the government should honour its commitments or ''do its own dirty work''.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/childcare-workers-asked-to-hand-back-wage-rise-20131210-2z2pw.html#ixzz2n2842Rn5

Labor teams up with Abbott government to weaken environmental law

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-teams-up-with-abbott-government-to-weaken-environmental-law-20131209-2z22s.html

:lol: so now we have a senator comparing the carbon tax to Y2K

Isn't it illegal to cut a person's wage like that?

Shit is gonna get real when the Senate changes.

-PB

Whatever happened to that talk about a double dissolution, Mr Abbott?

So Warren Truss confirms that Holden will close its Australian and NZ operations in 2017.

Part of me thinks that they're just saying this in the hope that the government will bail them out.

http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/conroy-raps-smart-arse-nbn-executive/story-e6frfku9-1226780695121

They're going, money or not.

Toyota likely to go too

Conroy has been hammering them all day.

Good shit.

-PB

The fact is that due to the minimum wage laws in this country it makes it impossible for countries to be competitive in the automotive manufacturing market compared to manufacturers in second world countries with low minimum wage. 15 years ago when Australian made 4-door car sales started to decline the Australian Government should have put an excise on foreign made cars to allow Australian made cars to be more competitive in the market. This didn't happen and now we're facing the loss of up to 45,000 jobs.

NBN Co has not tested fibre to the node

http://www.watoday.com.au/it-pro/government-it/nbn-co-has-not-tested-fibre-to-the-node-20131211-hv5az.html

So other than complaining loudly about the previous board... What exactly has the new board of NBNCo been doing over the past few months?

Giving Conroy attitude?

They have been writing a strategic review that doesn't include any actual verified testing of their own newly 'preferred' technology. Instead, that has been left to Telstra to cherry pick a handful of locations for their own internal testing, which may or may not be released to NBNCo anyway.

Good work Turnbull.

The review comes out tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be full of partisan, biased, incorrect bullshit.

well as i said in the other thread of course they'll go. for companies like that profit means everything and you're not gonna get rich in australia

not only that. the government is trying to put the budget into surplus which means they'll do anything to cut costs so thats 150million going bye byes.

we have to somehow lower our currency. or otherwise more companies will go

Edited by heyitsrobbie: 11/12/2013 11:31:46 PM

The CFO hasn't even had any input, it's been one of Turnbulls mates crunching the numbers lol.

Whole thing is a major farce.

-PB

Hackett has been to ONE meeting since being appointed...

Source?

Producing shit cars doesn't help. Their answer to the affordable mid size car was the Holden Cruze and what a heap of junk those things are.

So gay marriage has been overturned.

Th nation collectively ](*,)'s

Well it is the law that marriage is between a man and a woman, it was never going to be endorsed by the high court.

Bring on a referendum.

Why should we waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on a referendum when all it would take is the politicans - taxpayer dollars we're already spending - pulling their fingers out of their fucking arses and following public opinion. What happened to "by the people for the people"? Oh wait, that doesn't apply when Tony Abbott is actually in power.

Summary of Fail Fraudband:
1) Cost blowout to $41 billion instead of promised $30 billion.
2) Speeds guarantees removed.
3) 25 to all of Australia by 2016 promise removed. Now 43% of Australia.
4) Signed up the guy who has ruined Vodaphone to run the NBN.

What a giant waste of money.

Their biased anti-FTTP part of the review was still only $70 billion (instead of $90 billion like they claimed prior to the election).

Edited by macktheknife: 12/12/2013 01:39:13 PM

Edited by macktheknife: 12/12/2013 01:41:46 PM

I would say that is one of the reasons he is in power.

"Between a man and a woman" is horse-shit. I'm hetro but anyone who thinks that denying gay people the right to marry those that they love is a moral decision should be publicly flogged.

The thing that really bothers me is that we feel the need to have a law stipulating that marriages from other countries which are between homosexual couples are not to be recognised in this country.