Month: May 1999

The Minister for Workplace Relations, Peter Reith, continues his crusade against centralised, prescriptive and institutionalised industrial relations. It is a valuable crusade even if Mr Reith occasionally goes too far and occasionally exaggerates the problem.

The proposals he put forward in a discussion paper issued last week are a mixed bag. And the way he issued the discussion paper was a little didactic. He said the planned changes had been “painted black and white at the last election” and that the Government had a mandate to introduce them. One must wonder what is the point of discussion.

Under the proposals the role of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission would be significantly watered down. It would be renamed the Australian Workplace Relations Commission and new appointees, other than the president, would be limited to a tenure of up to seven years.
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One of the central aims of the Family Court when it was set up in 1976 was to provide quick, informal and cheap resolution of disputes arising from the breakdown of marriage. The ideal has never been met and, indeed, seems further away as time goes on as the Family Court gets taken over more by legalism and adversary procedure.

Delays in the Family Court in Canberra are now longer than the national average. It now takes 76 weeks to get a child-related matter heard in the court’s Canberra registry. The national average is 72 weeks. This is a classic case of justice delayed is justice denied. By the time the 76 weeks has expired the circumstances surrounding the child would have changed to such an extent that the delay might result in a different outcome.
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Yesterday’s ACT Budget involved a lot of back-slapping and self-congratulation by the ACT Government. But that should be tempered by the fact that a lot of work is yet to be done on the expenditure side. The Government has, indeed, improved the fiscal outlook for the ACT considerably over the position at this time last year. However, much of that has to be put down to extra revenue, particularly revenue from the Commonwealth or easy revenue options that merely match the position in NSW or rely on the old milch cows of utilities and gambling.

The Government got an extra $85 million from the Commonwealth (admittedly some of it capital). That represents all but $1 million of the Budget turnaround from an actual loss of $150 million in 1998-99 to the budgeted loss of $64 million in this Budget. So $85 million of the $86 million improvement can be put down to the Feds.

True, the ACT did a huge amount of work to convince the Commonwealth Grants Commission and the Federal Government to come up with the extra money, and for that it should be congratulated. But at the end of the day it is still federal money, not ACT-raised money.
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The Government has foolishly gone ahead with its plan to allow 4000 Kosovars to come to Australia temporarily. The Government will grant them three-month visas. The theory is that they will return to Kosovo when the situation changes.

The measure is an attempt to at once please people who have been rightly shocked by events in Kosovo and want Australia to help and those who want Australia to have lower immigration. The result is that the Government will please none. Nor should it with such a misguided policy. The theory is that they will return to Kosovo when the situation changes.

The people who will suffer most will be the 4000 who arrive here. They will be given the false hope that they will return to their homeland in three months. There is no guarantee that the situation will allow them to return in that time. In the meantime they will be housed in temporary accommodation. They will be half way around the world. They will be far from home. They will live with only hope. It will be a very costly exercise to bring people half way around the world on a temporary basis.
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The Federal Government’s health policies continue to unravel.

At the weekend figures were issued by the private health funds, the Australian Health Insurance Association, saying that there had been 100,000 new memberships for the first three months of the year. The figure might well be inflated, but even taking it at its face, it reveals that the 30 per cent tax rebate for private health insurance has been an unmitigated failure and an utter waste of public money.

The Government estimates that the rebate will cost the public purse about $1.5 billion a year. This money will go straight into the pockets of those who have taken out private health insurance. What has the rebate done in attracting people to private insurance in order to lower the drain on public funds? It has attracted just 100,000 memberships, and that is on the generous figures of the private health insurance lobby. If we multiply the 100,000 memberships by an approximate $1500 per premium we get $150 million. So we get an extra $150 million into the health sector for the expenditure by the Government of $1.5 billion.
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So the Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, wants four-year terms for Parliament. He is proposing a referendum on the subject next year at the same time as a referendum on the republic which would have to take place in Queensland if the republic referendum passes federally.

Queensland is the only state to have three-year terms. All other states have four-year terms. The ACT has a fixed three-year term.
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Last week’s wage decision by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to award a small pay rise two million of Australia’s lowest paid workers illustrates the evolution of Australia’s industrial relations landscape. The evolution has taken some pain and has taken place in a changing international climate in which Australia of necessity was a part.

The commission ruled that workers on awards earning up to and including $510 a week get $12, and those earning more than $510 get $10. The pay rise does not apply to higher paid workers in enterprise agreements. The outcome was closer to the Federal Government’s suggestion of a $8 pay rise than the ACTU’s claim for $26.60 per week.

The commission rejected an ACTU claim for a five per
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The unsatisfactory nature of the Australian tax and welfare system was illustrated last week by the fate of the $12 pay rise for the lowest pay workers.

According to the director of Access Economics, Chris Richardson, taxation and lost family benefits would eat up most of the increase. Most people would get $1.50 in the hand out of the $12. A third would go on tax and half of it would go in lost family benefits.

It seems absurd that so many Australians are at once paying significant tax and at the same time getting it back in the form of family benefits. The threshold for both should be lifted.
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The most recent issue of Family Matters paints a bleak picture for home ownership in Australia.

Ian Winters, a senior research fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, bemoans what he sees as an end to explicit social policy support for home ownership. Attached to the article was a graph of home-ownership figures over the past 40 years. The graph and a report about Winters’ comments were published earlier in the week and the graph is reproduced here.

Winters acknowledged many factors in the rate of home ownership. Nonetheless he emphasised the social policy and policy aims of government as critical.
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The best thing to come out of the GST deal is an idea – the idea of a minimum company tax of 20 per cent.

It is a good idea because the poor of PAYE taxpayer is being hit harder and harder. And we need a simple way to make the wealthy pay their way. The wealthy may not see it, but ultimately it is in their interests, too. The more unequal society, the higher incidence of poor health and crime, both of which affect us all.
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