Joe Hockey, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, was interviewed on Hack, Triple J’s youth current affairs program, on Thursday (listen here). I’ve just been listening to the podcast of it – he was very down to earth, and made some very good points. I wrote a message on his Facebook wall to let him know what I thought.
Since I haven’t been contacted by the AEC yet, I’ll assume that my application for work for this election was unsuccessful, and thus I’m going to start making political comments again. Actually, they don’t really say anything on their site as far as time frames go, so maybe I should make my comments a bit more subliminally just in case they’re still organising themselves? I mean, I can always start refraining from it if I’m offered a position, right? Don’t vote Kevin Rudd.
So, Joe made some good points in the interview.
On unfair dismissal laws he said “we removed the unfair dismissal laws because we found small business was not prepared to take a punt, particularly on young people”. He goes on to say that small business wanted “only people with experience”, and didn’t want to employ people with a “chequered employment history”. Once the Coalition removed unfair dismissal laws for businesses employing less than 100 people, they found employment surge because small business said “we’re going to take a punt on these people; if it doesn’t work out we can get rid of them”! Whereas before… the chance to get into the job was never there!
Joe later said to a caller: “We didn’t remove the unfair dismissal laws from business to make it easier to sack people, we removed them to make it easier to hire people”. Labor obviously doesn’t think so though – by scrapping WorkChoices, they’re going to send the unemployment rate right back up…
Later in the show there was a caller who spoke about a promotion he was offered – to act as a supervisor for a period of time – without being given any real extra remuneration for the extra responsibility. To that, Joe said “if you’re given the chance at a promotion, run for it!” I completely agree – and I think it’s simply a case of attitudes. I cannot comprehend how someone in their right mind would turn down an opportunity to gain more experience and move further along in their career just because they’re not not offered enough money for it. Isn’t that making a mountain out of a molehill? Taking issue with a non issue? It’s asking for money because you believe you’re entitled to it, and when unsuccessful, stubbornly refusing to help the company when it’d be helping yourself too – and it’s simply out of spite!
I’d take the promotion, write down the experience on my resume, and if the company did take a turn for the worse and ended up leaving a sour taste in my mouth, I’d move on to somewhere else where my skills and experience would be appreciated (they’d be worth more if I’d done time in that new position than if I hadn’t).
This is one of the major problems I have with the Labor party – and with their supporters. It’s all about attitude. I know this is a generalisation, but I believe it’s generally true – Labor supporters have a “woe is me” attitude. They want all they’re entitled to, and will stop at nothing to get it – even missing out on a good opportunity for themselves just to “punish” the other side. This is why, at this stage, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to vote Labor. I don’t agree with the attitudes of the working class. Don’t vote Kevin Rudd.
Who are the working class? Do you mean employees? You yourself are an employee, are you not?
I don’t think that that’s a very fair generalisation – I know plenty of Labor supporters who do not have the attitude that you’re talking about. The reasoning behind the opposition to workchoices held by many people who I’ve talked to is simply that they believe (and often believe very strongly) that workchoices has shifted the balance of power too far towards employers, and away from employees, and they believe that this is detrimental to the situation of employees and Australian society in general (Australian society consisting, in the majority, of employees and their families).
I personally don’t think that the average Australian worker is nearly as concerned about their ‘entitlements’ as they are about getting a ‘fair go’ in their work situation.
And no, I will not be voting for Kevin Rudd, as I am not enrolled to vote in the elecorate of Griffith, Queensland
I am an employee, but based on what I’ve read/learnt/picked up in my political/social research this year (which, having only been into it this year is probably a rather shallow understanding), I wouldn’t consider myself part of the working class. It can’t be based simply on employment status – a lot of the middle class is employed, and probably even some of the upper class too.
Apart from various thoughts and beliefs I do feel a bit unqualified to define it further than that though – I’ll read up on it some more and see what conclusions I can come to.
When I say ‘voting for Kevin Rudd’, I’m referring loosely to the presidential style campaigning that the media focuses on. Although living in Canberra and saying that is sort of ironic – we really don’t have much of a say in the lower house, unfortunately.