Change Mismanagement - A Belated Announcement

As you'll have noticed, a few of the posts here at Tug Boat Potemkin are cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo. There's also at least one post at LP that isn't reproduced here. I'm still working out a posting policy to manage posting on two blogs - provisionally, the more seriously D & M stuff that benefits from a fold is more likely to appear there, while the short, snappy and sometimes snarly stuff will remain here at Potemkin.

Payback. It's a Bitch.

Photogenic ANU academic and occasional op-edster, Andrew Leigh evidently fancies himself as a relaxed centrist:

Ideology first, facts second
April 10th, 2006

On the right, Rafe Champion is outraged by the fact that disabled workers have to work for the minimum wage.

On the left, Gummo Trotsky is outraged by Rafe’s outrageous suggestion.

Neither seem to have heard of the Supported Wage System ...

Today (11 April) he's been reading the latest HILDA report (PDF) from the Melbourne Institute and has learnt that:

The poor move house more often than the rich (p36)...

Now that's an odd thing for sure. But possibly it has something to do with the traditional preference the poor have always displayed for cheap rental accomodation over expensive freehold title. Incidentally, why you would link to a potentially out-of-date ILO page on an Australian wage subsidy scheme, when more up-to-date information might be available at the Centrelink web-site escapes me.

Get Out Now Pete, While the Going's Still Good

Slippery John has announced that any new, and tougher, rules coming from the Federal Government's review of the processes for dealing with asylum seekers will apply to all asylum seekers, not just West papuans (The Age). Clearly the bastard is hell-bent on seeing that, by the time he leaves office there won't be much that the Liberal Party stands for beyond winning office and Australia will be regarded overseas as the most mercenary nation on the face of the planet.

Look Pete - the bugger's not going to hand you the leadership until he's damn sure the Coalition is washed out, electorally, and he needs a patsy to take the fall so he can go down in history as the most successful Prime MInister since Menzies, if not ever. And if the unthinkable happens - Howard loses the next election to the ALP - you'll still be up shit creek, because as soon as you try to go after the ALP on anything like a matter of principle, you won't have any credibility left.

Give it up mate. Announce your resignation from politics now. There's still time for you to win renown as a distinguished conservative legal academic.

WorkFarces

BUILDING workers have been docked four hours' pay for briefly stopping work to collect money for the family of a colleague killed on a construction site.

The workers were docked under the Federal Government's new workplace laws, which require bosses to deduct a minimum four hours' pay for any unauthorised stoppages.

Hooker Cockram general manager Matthew Dalmau confirmed he had advised subcontractors working on a Defence Department site in Port Melbourne to dock the pay of about 25 workers.

The workers stopped for about 20 minutes on Friday to collect $470 for the widow of Christos Binos, 58, who was crushed to death by a concrete panel at a Pakenham building site on March 8.

Mr Dalmau said the law required the unions to request a stoppage in writing, otherwise it was considered illegal industrial action for which the workers must have their pay docked. Employers who failed to deduct the wages could be fined up to $33,000.

"So our hands are tied," Mr Dalmau said. "If the unions had requested it in writing prior to the event, of course we would have approved it."

...
(Meaghan Shaw in The Age)
Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo