Thursday 20 October 2011

'Clean Energy Future': Gillard's WorkChoices?

I find it incredibly ironic that the woman who played such a key role in dismantling WorkChoices (and who revelled in it with smug joy...) is now facing an almost identical scenario with her so called 'Clean Energy Future' scam - I mean 'scheme' - otherwise known as the Carbon Tax. The key arguments which brought down WorkChoices, and the Howard Government, are as follows...
  1. Pushing such a far reaching reform through parliament is undemocratic: Howard had what most government’s dream of, control of both the House of Reps and the Senate. However such a rarity proved to be a poisoned chalice; where the Senate was once a counter balance to the government's power, a place for review and debate, it was now seen as a rubber stamp, blindly approving Government legislation. This made a lot of Australians anxious, with some believing that due to the makeup of the parliament that the government had too much power and that there was nothing to keep it in check. Australians a pretty accepting of new reforms, provided that we believe it has gone through a proper, rigorous review.
  2. Tax-payer dollars for party policy adverts: There is nothing wrong with a government advertising and educating the public on new policy and reform. However when that policy is viewed by the public as being more around ideology as opposed to national interest, it ruffles feathers. Australians do not like to see their hard-earned tax dollars funding party policy... especially unpopular policy. The more the Howard Government tried to sell and promote WorkChoices, the more cynical and jaded the electorate became. It was viewed as a shallow attempt to sell Liberal Policy as opposed to Government Reform.
  3. Dial 'M' for Mandate: "How can you do this?!" The unions and Labor decried, "You have no mandate to introduce WorkChoices! How dare you make such far reaching reforms of Industrial Relations without first getting approval from the people!" Nothing had been said before the election about WorkChoices, so how could the Howard Government claim that it had a mandate to introduce? If all large, far reaching reforms need approval from the electorate the responsible thing would have been to go back to the electorate and seek their permission to do so... At least Howard did not say "There will be no IR reforms under any government I lead"; could you imagine the uproar if he had...?
Sound familiar? Gillard, with help from Bob Brown, is pushing this tax that will be felt across every sector, through the parliament with no discussion or debate (and certainly no consensus!) while spending over $200,000 PER DAY advertising this [Greens'] policy, all the while lacking a mandate! Instead of crowing over the fall of the greatest government we have ever had the privilege to have, Gillard should have been learning the lessons of WorkChoices...

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