Movement and quite rightly. The Do-nothing Government has woken to the nightmare of a Labor/union campaign against falling kids wages, via News:
FOREIGN workers will be banned from taking jobs at McDonald’s, Hungry Jack’s and KFC in an unprecedented crackdown by the federal government.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has declared Aussie teenagers who want to serve fries or flip hamburgers at fast food outlets should not lose out to foreign rivals when youth unemployment is rising.
The minister will scrap a deal, struck while Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was workplace relations minister, allowing major fast food outlets to import staff. It is the first time an entire sector has been banned from sponsoring overseas workers.
“Every Australian teenager should have the chance to get a job at the local shops,” Mr Dutton said.
“The Aussie kid shouldn’t be knocked out of the job by a foreign worker, which is what Bill Shorten did.”
In the past four years, more than 500 visas have been approved in the fast-food industry.
…Mr Dutton said the Coalition government had cut back on the number of 457 visas being issued from a peak of 110,000 in 2013 to about 90,000 now.
What was arsehole Labor thinking? What it needs to do now is get moving on much deeper visa reform or the desperate Coalition will outflank it. To wit, Loonponder Eric Abetz today at Domainfax:
“No worker will be worse off” was the reassuring and successful message of all Coalition government workplace reforms from 1996 until WorkChoices. We paid the price. Lesson learnt.
In 2013, our policy was similarly underscored with a “no worker worse off” approach. To be successful and accepted, workplace changes need to be evolutionary not revolutionary.
Now a similar anti-WorkChoices style campaign not of the Coalition’s own making has been served up to the government as a direct result of the Fair Work Commission’s decision to cut penalty rates in some sectors. And the decision came from a full bench made up entirely of Labor appointees.
The arguments that it is an independent umpire’s decision and that Bill Shorten said he would respect the decision but has changed his mind are all interesting and valid debating points, but they are of cold comfort to our fellow Australians who face the prospect of a cut in their existing wages. And let’s be clear, they are relatively low-paid workers who mostly live week to week.
I am pleased that the Fair Work Commission made the decision that it did. It will support small businesses to create more jobs and it will help otherwise unemployed people to gain entry to the labour market. But it’s now important that the Fair Work Commission’s decision is implemented in a fair manner for current workers in the retail, hospitality and tourism sectors.
But in order to protect existing workers, the Fair Work Commission should use the powers it already has to grandfather current employees’ salary rates so that only new employees are covered by these new rates. The Fair Work Commission, under current law, already has the ability to do this and it is something that should be a part of its final order.
Just scrap it. The Coalition kingmaker, Pauline, is on board:
Pauline Hanson is considering backing away from her calls to abolish penalty rates as her party contemplates Labor’s push to block the Fair Work Commission’s decision to cut Sunday and public holiday pay.
One Nation yesterday did not rule out supporting the Labor legislation, which would prevent the cuts taking effect, after a spokesman saidthe party would “have to take a look at” the bill.
Senator Hanson has been forced to distance herself from the Fair Work Commission’s ruling in the lead-up to the Western Australian election after she and Derryn Hinch became targets of a union campaign. It used remarks made in 2014 in which she declared penalty rates should be scrapped “right across the board”.
“I’d also say get rid of the 17.5 per cent loading and get rid of payroll tax hurting businesses because they are gearing up to bring in workers from overseas who will be competing for Australian jobs and that’s when you’ll notice a big change in our country,” Senator Hanson says in the clip.
So far this is just a spot fire created by the Fair Work Commission and a targeted government response designed to humiliate Shorten. But it is a taste of what’s coming and the “billionaire’s lacky” rhetoric will soar.
I’ll say it again. Labor needs to move to a major new platform of reform for the deeply corrupt visa system, which will enable it to deeply cut immigration without all of the bigotry, or it will be outflanked by the populist Right, which will include the Coalition.
Aside from anything else, it needs bloody doing.
