Digressions on IR laws and our freedoms

Two stories today make you wonder about the direction of our Australian government. The first relates to the changes to the industrial laws that the Greens finally were able to push through the Senate last night and the second relates to the threat of mass censorship using lists that are seemingly highly flawed.

Digression 1: Industrial Relations improvement

I use the descriptor improvement cautiously. In fact the following changes forced through by the Greens addresses an important issue but there are still many similar acts of perniciousness in the current proposed IR legislation that will unfortunately be enacted.

One of the worst examples of poor legislation was the Workplace Relations Act 1996 which the previous federal regime enacted as part of its campaign to rid Australia of trade unions and push down wages and working conditions of workers. Successive amendments were made and culminated in their “death sentence” Work Choices legislation.

One of the amendments to the legislation was the so-called Workplace Relations Amendment (Right of Entry) Bill 2004 which outlined the limitations on rights and times of entry and discussions with workers by unions at the workplace itself. So Section 280X – Limitation on rights – times of entry and discussions went like this:

1.71 Proposed section 280X provides that the permit holder is only allowed to enter under section 280W during working hours and may only hold discussions during the employees’ meal-time or other breaks.

Section 280Y – Limitation on rights – conscientious objection certificates

1.72 Proposed section 280Y provides that a permit holder is not authorised to enter premises if an employer:

– holds a conscientious objection certificate in force under section 180 of Schedule 1B to the WR Act which has been endorsed under subsection 280Y(2) of Part IXA, or section 285C of the repealed Part IX of the WR Act, indicating that the employer is a practicing member of a religious society or order whose beliefs preclude membership of any other body; and

– employs 20 or fewer employees at the premises, none of whom are union members.

This of-course is the fabled Exclusive Brethren clause. It allowed Exclusive Brethren businessmen the right to refuse unions entry to their workplaces even if the workers in that firm were in favour of having the union enter.

The illegal and fanatical sect had conned the previous federal regime (by funding and electoral advertising input) to exclude trade unions from businesses run by the sect’s members without any input from their staff. While the Government of the day denied that this was “the Exclusive Brethren clause”, the evidence was clear. Industrial records show that all the employers who claimed a “conscientious objection” exemption under the Act were members of the Exclusive Brethren. The rights are also embodied in NSW and SA legislation.

Evidently, around 33 workplaces (covering 4,000 workers) had gained an exemption under this vile piece of government law.

Greens senator Bob Brown has been the only one bringing this issue to the public attention. You can read about his early efforts in May 2006 when he tried to get the Senate to conduct an enquiry into the Exclusive Brethren.

To his credit he has now finally got the Senate to agree to ditch the clause.

While we expected the “conscientious objector” clause from the vile previous regime, the real worry is that the current Federal government were intent on keeping it in the new so-called (not!) Fair Work bill. What gives?

Anyway, at around 18.50 on March 18, 2009, the Australian Senate voted to remove the clause which granted the Exclusive Brethren religious an exclusion from parts of the Fair Work Bill because they objected to unions. The amendment was proposed by the leader of the Greens, Bob Brown.

For your interest, here is the voting pattern summary last night – 33 in favour of the amendment; 31 against. File this information away for the future. The WorkChoice Liberals/Nationals haven’t learned a thing from the last election.

Relately, the conservatives who I think we should call the WorkChoice Party from now on, tried to get an amendment to the definition of a small business which which would have denied tens of thousands of workers any of their current redundancy pay entitlements upon retrenchment.

Digression 2: Freedom of Choice

The second story relates to the ACMA Internet Censorship Blacklist which has been publicly leaked. This list seems to be quite generic and the reports from those who have analysed it in depth suggests that it is not very well targetted to child pornography, which was the alleged intent of the exercise.

I don’t support Internet censorship. I don’t support censorship per se. The main reason is that it provides the capacity for capricious governments to broaden out what they want to censor to suit their ideological (and political) aims. I also consider education to be the key in putting most of these sites out of business. Very few engaged people will be bothered to visit them. Further, the more child pornography sites that are active the easier it will be to catch the criminals who build and use them.

Why doesn’t the Federal government devote its energies to introducing a Job Guarantee and addressing real issues and also improving our public education systems to develop a sophisticated population capable of resisting this tawdry and sometimes dangerous capitalist intrusion into our world.

Digression 3: Where do you stand?

The following chart is my test score from Political Compass, which is a really engaging exercise. The following pictures give you some idea of what it is about but I suggest you go there for yourself.

• The classification scheme
• Examples from history
• Current Leaders

The following chart (click to make it bigger) represents my test score from today (it takes 5 minutes). Maximum/Minimum scores range from +10 to -10 on both axis. So no neo-liberal am I! And a good diagonal difference from my current Prime Minister it seems.