Pot calls Kettle black. Again.

[catsidhe]

It's amazing, really. John Ratbastard Howard opens his mouth, and pure shit dribbles out.

PM says AWA study wrong

People on Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) are better off, not worse off as suggested by a new survey, Prime Minister John Howard says.

[If you say something often enough, it becomes true.]

The Australia@Work study, which surveyed more than 8,000 workers, has concluded that people on AWAs earned on average $106 a week less than those on collective agreements.

[Seems simple enough: take two people doing the same job, one on an AWA, the other not. Would you expect to find that one has better conditions than the other and/or better pay? Which one? Answer: it seems that for most people, that is, for the low-paid, they will have worse conditions and lower pay than if they were on an award.]

It was conducted by the University of Sydney with funding from the federal government's Australian Research Council (ARC) and Unions NSW.

[Oh. Oh dear. Do you see the problem here? That's right: University academics were involved, who may have used intellectual rigour and independent research to pursue non-Government-approved Truths!]

Mr Howard said Australian Bureau Statistics (ABS) figures disagreed with the survey's finding.

[Mainly because they were measuring different things, factors which this study explicitly took into account.]

"The ABS tell us that people are better off under AWAs," he told reporters in Sydney.

"They tell us that wages after inflation have risen by three per cent since the new industrial relations system came into operation.

[Bzzzzt! Correlation is not causation, John. Please write that fifty times on the blackboard after class! Could it be that other factors have affected that number? I wonder if the ABS statistics actually record the difference between wages under AWAs and not? Because that is precisely what this study is trying to find out.]

"They tell us that there are 417,000 more people in work, and 85 per cent of them are full-time, and that they tell us that strikes are at the lowest level since 1913.

[That says nothing about how many of those jobs were under AWAs, or what the conditions are like, or what their pay is, or what the difference is between AWA and not. It also (conveniently) fails to mention that strikes are effectively illegal now.]

“Now, that's the Bureau of Statistics. I would believe the Bureau of Statistics ahead of something that is half funded by Unions NSW.”

[Look at that, boys and girls! Did you see that? When we point out that, say, a piece of ‘research’ that favours his preconceived and ill-advised opinion was funded by and carried out by close personal friends of his, like, eg., the Laviosier Group, then oh no, that's all irrelevant, look at the research, do you believe in ‘untouchability’? But when the research doesn't agree with him, whoah boy, the stops come out. It turns out that ‘untouchability’ is a good thing, whenever it is convenient for Ratbastard Howard and his Friedmanist* cheersquad.]

Earlier, Treasurer Peter Costello said the study was "contaminated" and lacked credibility because it was funded by unions who want a change of government.

[By the same logic, no research funded by the government can be trusted either, for similar reasons. Essentially, Costello is projecting again.]

...

Dr van Wanrooy said she had only once before been involved in research with any union association, in 2001.

"Prior to that, I spent two years working at the Department of Workplace Relations under Minister [Peter] Reith and Minister [Tony] Abbott.”

[both noted union agitators, of course. Well, in the sense of agitation of rather than for.]

...

The Australia@Work study found workers on Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) were generally low skilled and around $100 a week worse off than those on collective agreements, with both groups working 44 hours a week on average.

Dr van Wanrooy said the study assessed the impact of WorkChoices after the reforms had been operating for a year and it went beyond broad claims that everyone was either worse off or better off.

[It actually tries to determine who is better off. The results are not to Howard's liking. Well, I suspect that actually they are to his liking, but we subjects citizens weren't supposed to find out. Howard's policies are so asymptotically close to outright social warfare against the poor, that even if it isn't it may as well be. Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.]

Particularly striking, she said, was the finding that skilled workers with better bargaining power did best on individual common law contracts, while low-skilled workers did best when covered by collective agreements.

[See what I mean about War against the Poor? If you're well-off, you're set. If you slip, you'll be crushed.]

---

[*] No, that's not a good thing. Strangely enough, the Repository of Lies and Rumour's entry on Friedman manages to make the rape of Chilé's economy and social structure look like something that he was against, rather than the direct, and lauded, result of his theories. In fact when he was asked about Chilé's progress, he repeatedly exhorted Pinochet to do what he was doing, but harder and faster. It got to the point where even Augusto Pinochet thought that Friedman's economic policies were too inhuman.

Klein is right: The Chicago School is a fundamentalist theocracy. No countervailing evidence can ever be countenanced: any failure of the Doctrine is merely evidence that the Faith was not strong Implementation was not Pure enough.
And Ralston Saul is also right: the Chicago School was given its chances. How many times does it have to prove itself actively harmful before people stop listening to its prophets?


For gods' sake, John, call the damned election so I can vote you the hell out of my life.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"I would believe the Bureau of Statistics ahead of something that is half funded by Unions NSW."

So we have a report half-funded by industry (ie, the employee's representatives) and half-funded by the government itself (ie, ARC). Obviously for it to be unbiased it needs to be wholy-funded by the Big-Business lobby.

-- mpp