From The Australian Editorial
Employment Minister Joe Hockey said that since the Government’s workplace reforms were introduced in March 2006, 430,700 jobs have been created.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. Since the Government’s workplace reforms were introduced in March 2006, the Australian dollar hit US$0.90 for the first time since 1984, and the arctic ice has melted at an alarming rate. Correlation does not imply causation. Employment was on the rise before WorkChoices, at least show me
Where the rise in job numbers is an objective fact, measured by the ABS, academic investigations into the impact of Work Choices on working conditions and employee security and sentiment have been highly politicised and the data is unreliable as a result.
So because the government didn’t like the results of the study done on the specific effects of Work Choices on conditions they yelled a lot about it and how prejudiced and biased it was even though they funded half of it. As a consequence of their vociferous objections, it was politicised and as a consequence this has somehow magically mutated the data itself.
Jobs growth and higher real wages challenge the view put by social welfare and church groups that Work Choices in some way lacks morality.
Yes it does challenge that view if and only if you are a utilitarian! If morality = utility and WorkChoices increases overall utility then it is not immoral, no matter how unfair it is. You see it’s just a semantic problem, church groups tend not to be utilitarians. They’re very big on the whole moral absolutes thing.
As Health Minister Tony Abbott told a Quadrant and Institute of Public Affairs discussion this week, the problem for the social justice lobby is explaining how 10.9 per cent unemployment under a more regulated labour market is more fair than 4.3 per cent unemployment under the policies of the Howard Government. On examination, Mr Abbott said, what’s called “social justice” usually turns out to be socialism masquerading as justice.
Wow.
Of course, how could I find this point of view so immensely repulsive? Here is how you arrive at it.
1. Become indoctrinated in the free-market ideology that what we call the ‘free-market’ (which is usually pro-business regulation masquerading as the free-maket).
1a. This means a deregulated (pro-business) market results in better social goods for all.
2. Groups who criticize the results of these policies as being to the detriment of social justice fail to see or deliberately ignore the better social goods being produced for all.
C. Therefore these groups must be inherently anti-free market and are actually socialists.
I’m sure the ideologues at The Australian know what I’m talking about, even the most anti-union legislation in this country’s history isn’t ‘free-market’ enough for them:
The Australian has never been a keen supporter of Work Choices because we consider it to be too bureaucratic, resulting in more red tape and unnecessary compliance costs for large and small businesses. But we cannot ignore the fact that a large number of jobs have been created as a result. Reform of unfair dismissal laws giving small business flexibility to take on staff without the risk of having to carry them if circumstances change (that allow them to fire them unfairly) has undoubtedly had a significant impact. The introduction of contract agreements that recognise the reality of working life (that reality being that employers hold all the cards and the little guy and suck on it) have no doubt also played a part.
Keep up the good work guys.
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