John Robertson will zero in on Barry O’Farrell’s most controversial decisions, with a string of promises to wind back workers’ compensation changes, reintroduce the ban on hunting in national parks and re-open Grafton jail, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
John Robertson to zero in on Farrell’s most controversial decisions
Promises, promises
By Heath Aston, Political Editor
The NSW Opposition Leader also pledged to fund 800 university scholarships to train maths and science teachers if Labor can somehow recover from the state’s biggest landslide election defeat to recapture power in 2015.
Addressing Labor’s state conference at Town Hall yesterday, Mr Robertson savaged Mr O’Farrell.
Among the delegates was Denise Seal, a carer for people with disabilities who voted against Mr Robertson in his seat of Blacktown at last year’s election.
With temperatures still high in Grafton where 100 prison workers lost their jobs last week after the closure of the town’s jail, Mr Robertson promised to reopen the 119-year-old facility despite the government’s insistence it was costing the state millions of dollars to keep it open.
Mr Robertson saved some of his venom for the O’Farrell government’s decision to allow recreational shooters into national parks.
”In a single grubby deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party, Barry O’Farrell has broken his promise and opened up our pristine national parks to amateur hunters. Shooters with high-powered weapons can now traipse through the parks we once camped in and bushwalked through with our kids,” he said.
Given the extent of Labor’s loss at the last election and with three years until the next one, Mr Robertson’s promises are unlikely to be tested. However, he did address some of the past failures that still haunt the ALP.
”Sadly for us, even today, the ghosts of Labor’s past still occasionally emerge to embarrass us. You know who they are. I don’t need to name them.”
That was because they had been splashed over the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday. The former minister Ian Macdonald, the former MP Angela D’Amore and Michael Williamson, a former Labor national president and state vice-president, were suspended from the party because of investigations or adverse findings by authorities.
MR Robertson is pissin in the wind
Looks pretty scary in Vic [as well] on the Lib side…
As Tony’s chances go up, workers’ hopes will go down
IN A sure-fire sign that the Liberals have grown incredibly cocky about their electoral prospects at the next federal election, Tony Abbott has once again raised the spectre of WorkChoices.
Despite his promise during the 2010 federal election that WorkChoices was “dead, buried, cremated”, the spirit of WorkChoices rose from the dead again this week.
On Wednesday the Opposition Leader addressed a forum of tourism industry bosses and pledged that if elected he would enact laws that would allow greater flexibility for employers and promised that he “won’t stop there”.
By Thursday he was bizarrely declaring that he, Tony Abbott, was the best friend of the Australian worker but that “right now we have got a flexibility problem, we have got a militancy problem, we have got a productivity problem.”
This is, of course, absolute rubbish. Everybody knows that there’s very, very little industrial unrest in Australia at the moment. Australian workers are some of the hardest working in the world, and insecure work not inflexible workers is a major problem.
Once again, Abbott is resorting to his favourite technique, create a problem where one doesn’t exist (“militant unions”), repeat it ad nauseam (“we must stop militant unions”), and hope the public falls for it (“I will stop militant unions”).
In Abbott’s defence, he did profess his love for all Australian workers (but presumably, not their unions) during an interview and as Abbott has himself acknowledged, sometimes he gets a bit carried away.
After all, nobody could really accuse him of having the best interests of Australian workers at heart.
The simple truth is, that in a time when many punters complain that there’s very little daylight between the two major parties, when it comes to rights of working people, the Liberals simply cannot help themselves.
There is nothing they like better than slashing wages and conditions. It’s almost pathological.
Abbott will claim that his move for “greater flexibility” is not WorkChoices, and in the lead-up to the election he will give one or two sound bites on industrial relations reform but no detail will be given. This is the modus operandi of the Liberals when it comes to workplace laws.
John Howard never once mentioned his plans for industrial reform in the 2004 federal election campaign but his fourth term agenda was all WorkChoices.
And here in NSW we only need to look at the actions of the O’Farrell government in ripping away the rights and entitlements of injured workers through the “reform” of the Workers Compensation system – again, something that slipped their minds during the state election campaign.
Liberals will say that unions and the Labor Party are just trying to run a scare campaign, that WorkChoices is nothing more than a bogeyman, but the real onus of proof is on them.
If Tony Abbott has nothing to hide then he should put his money where his mouth is and outline in detail what workplace relations laws would look like under his government, instead of giving coded messages to big business.
The Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, has offered to debate the Liberals on industrial relations, anytime, anywhere.
It’s an invitation that neither Tony Abbott nor his Workplace Relations spokesman Eric Abetz seem to have the guts to take up. Because they know if they outline their plans it will be met with hostility in the electorate.
The Liberals can’t help themselves when it comes to ripping away the entitlements of workers, it’s in their DNA. But they have learnt a valuable lesson from the WorkChoices debacle.
They learnt that they can’t afford to talk about or outline their plans before an election. They didn’t learn the actual lesson of the spectacular failure that was WorkChoices, that instead of ideological purism, Australians want moderate, practical and centrist industrial relations policies.
But working people shouldn’t be lured into a false sense of security. With Abbott making overtures to the business community and his steadfast refusals to outline his policies, the writing is on the wall. WorkChoices, or something even worse, will be back with a vengeance.
For Sydneysiders, this is particularly worrying. Last week research was released showing that the take-home pay for Sydney families has now fallen below the national average.
This is despite the fact that living in Sydney is more expensive than any other city in the country. This is a big problem for our city, but it’ll be an even worse problem if we have a federal government which legislates away our rights to be able to earn a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
Because, if Tony Abbott is the best friend of Australian workers, I’d really hate to meet their worst enemy.
Paul Howes is the national secretary of the AWU
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/as-tonys-chances-go-up-workers-hopes-will-go-down/story-e6frezz0-1226426120314
ACTU secretary Dave Oliver said unions will not stand by and let Abbott take Australia back to a ‘dog-eat-dog industrial relations system’.
Kearney said that Abbott’s claim that ‘if the coalition wins the next election, the workers of Australia will find that I am their best friend’ was outrageous given his history of attacks on workers and their rights.
She said Abbott could not be trusted, given his mentor, John Howard, had used virtually the same words before introducing WorkChoices without any prior warning.
‘Tony Abbott’s history shows he is anything but the workers’ best friend,’ Kearney said.
You only have to watch Tony Abbott’s face closely and his body language.
When he doesn’t like a question or he isn’t prepared for a hard question he goes ah ah and then actually doesn’t answer the question he throws a question back .
His shoulders move a lot when he isn’t telling the truth and his eyebrows raise up so he looks poppy eyed !!!
He will bring back work choices but label it another name .
Sorry, I don’t trust this man as he has too much baggage from his time being a minister from the Howard era!! Watch him in Federal Parliament when he is speaking !!! He is too self centered and likes to hear his own voice !!!!
Shooters Party MP faces potential jail term
THE NSW upper house MP Robert Borsak faces possible prosecution for perjury, and up to 10 years in jail, after a Supreme Court judge found he and an associate gave ”knowingly untrue” evidence during hearings to resolve a commercial dispute.
The finding, by Justice Robert McDougall, has been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions by a solicitor for Roy Jackson, a 73-year-old former business associate who was being sued by a company controlled by Mr Borsak and fellow director David Christie in the NSW Supreme Court.
Any conviction that was not appealed would force Mr Borsak’s resignation from the Legislative Council, where he is one of two Shooters and Fishers Party MPs who share the balance of power with the Christian Democratic Party.
It would also jeopardise his parliamentary pension, as under the act that governs the politicians’ super scheme, MPs convicted of a serious crime – defined as one which attracts up to five years’ jail – may be stripped of all super entitlements bar their own contributions to the scheme.
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But it would not alter the balance of power, as the party would have the right to choose Mr Borsak’s replacement.
In his judgment Justice McDougall said that Mr Borsak and Mr Christie ”swore and maintained in the face of detailed and forceful cross-examination” that they were provided with copies of the financial statements of a sheet metal company, Osborne Metal Industries, they were about to purchase from Mr Jackson for $1.4 million in 2004.
They claimed the financial statements overestimated the company profits.
However, Justice McDougall found the claim could not be correct, as the documents were not created until nine days after Mr Borsak and Mr Christie claimed to have received them.
”I am forced to conclude that this aspect of the evidence of Messrs Borsak and Christie was knowingly untrue, and not merely mistaken,” he said in his reasons for judgment.
Justice McDougall also found that the evidence of Mr Borsak, Mr Christie and Mr Jackson was ”heavily coloured by perceptions of advantage and self-interest”.
He found that Mr Jackson’s company, Bullock Manufacturing, should pay Osborne Metal Industries more than $900,000 relating to the sale.
In a separate judgment, he ordered Bullock Manufacturing to pay a proportion of Osborne’s legal costs.
He dismissed the claim that Mr Jackson had engaged in false and misleading conduct and had breached his duty as a company director.
However, Mr Jackson’s solicitor, David Palmer, has written to the Director of Public Prosecutions requesting that it consider charging Mr Borsak and Mr Christie with perjury, which is punishable by up to 10 years’ jail.
”We are instructed to request the DPP to investigate this matter and prosecute Mr Borsak and Mr Christie accordingly,” Mr Palmer wrote last week. He wrote that if the DPP declines to prosecute Mr Borsak and Mr Christie then Mr Jackson proposes to do so in a ”private prosecution”.
Mr Jackson told the Herald he suffers from the lung condition pulmonary fibrosis and did not believe he had long to live. He had once been a member of the Shooters Party but was no longer involved in politics.
Mr Borsak entered Parliament in September last year following the death of the Shooters and Fishers Party MP Roy Smith. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/shooters-party-mp-faces-potential-jail-term-20110724-1hveg.html#ixzz20wRJRgQ0