So, there were a couple of major items in the Australian news this morning, sending very worrying signals of what is to come in our country.
First up was the Federal government using their parliamentary numbers to stop a debate into and investigation on our immigration tactics.
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A brief background on this for those unaware. Australia has mandatory detention for all ‘illegal immigrants’, ne. refugees (and by this we mean boat people for the most part. Those that have taken the long and potentially deadly voyage across the sea to our country and gotten caught. After all, they might be terrorists don’t you know?). This detention is served in barbed wire encased camps in remote regions of Australia (and sometimes other countries, like Nauru), run by private organisations who have only limited reporting requirements to the government. There has been any number of tales of mistreatment and degradation, even if you ignore the basic degradation of their position. Oh, the detention includes women and children by the way.
In addition to this, the government has both a tendency to politicise the detentions (look, we’re tough on probably innocent civilians, vote for us), and also a wonderful tendency to fuck up. Recently two tales have come to light. First an
Australian citizen of German origin with Schizophrenia was found to have been detained for a year or so before the truth was discovered. Then another
Australian citizen was found in a hospice in the Philippines, after having been deported in 2001.
So basically after these fairly serious problems, our opposition is calling for an enquiry into what the hell happened and how it can be fixed (obviously there are political considerations, but the idea is still valid). And apparently our wonderful government doesn’t like that plan. They’re already able to this before they take complete control too. When they gain their majority in the Senate in July (from the election last year), they will have a majority in both houses of parliament.
Another quick background note. Australia’s parliament consists of two houses, same as America, but there is no true executive, the leaders still being members of the Senate and the House. Party loyalty is very rigid here though and it is very uncommon for a member to vote against the party line on anything. So a complete majority is pretty much a rubber stamp
I was particularly saddened by this as there were some rumblings from Liberal back-benchers recently that they were out to challenge the government on mandatory detention and would cross the aisles (vote against their party) to do so. Looks like that’s been shot down, or at least severely weakened.
In addition to this, John Howard is going back to his political roots in an attempt to screw people over. ‘Sweeping’ Industrial Relations laws are set to come in which limit unfair dismissal claims to companies with over 100 employees. Now quite when employees stopped getting shafted by small to medium business I’m not quite sure, but there it is.
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In a wonderfully Orwellian turn of phrase, Howard claims that this will protect the interests of workers, because currently businesses don’t want to hire more workers due to fear.
Oh I can see it now…You know, we really are short-staffed and we can’t fill orders, but I just really can’t risk the potential that someone might file a valid unfair dismissal claim against me. What ever shall I do… Oh right, I’ll fucking hire someone because the chances are low and my business needs to grow. Right. Silly me. Erm, anyway.
So it looks like refugees and a large percentage of workers are getting screwed all in one day down here. And that’s before this goverment takes complete power. *sigh*
Not sure how interested anyone is in Australian politics, but I felt like ranting.
I’m very interested in Int’l Politics. (Tucson, Arizona, USA here) but always hungry for more info on world affairs. Thx 4 the diary, keep ’em coming.
Gday mate – nice one. Australia’s position on illegal immigrants is a constant source of embarrassment to me. Whats worse, is in discussions on this topic with otherwise kind-hearted people their argument is always ‘if we weren’t so tough on them it would open the floodgates’. Meh.
On the unfair dismissal thing, I’m no expert but I have been part of a conversation where a builder was too scared to hire young tradesmen, as basically if they were crap and took more of his time in supervision than they were worth, he couldn’t get rid of them for fear of unfair dismissal. So I’m ambivalent on this issue as I don’t know enough about it.
I’ll look forward to more Diaries about Home…
Mike (in Manchester, UK)
I was using hyperbole I’m afraid so understated the lack of impact the fear of unfair dismissal claims can have. That obviously wasn’t apparent though, so my apologies.
That being said, I feel that a lot of the fear over this issue is unnecessary. In terms of hiring people and finding that they are incompetent, that’s what probation periods are for. I know when I started my current position, I was on probation for 3 months (legal under state law), which meant that I could be fired at any point during that time, for any reason and I would have had no recourse. Three months to me seems a fairly valid period during which to assess the competence of a new employee and ensure that they are indeed up to task they were hired for. If this isn’t available in all states and territories then perhaps that would be a useful addition to federal law, but I still feel that removing one of the few true recourses of action available to those unfairly fired is an over-reaction to the concerns of business owners.
Agree with you, dukkha, that probation periods are for testing a new employee out – unfair dismissal shouldn’t inhibit any one from taking on a new employee.
Australia’s unfair dismissal law is completely fair. The reason John Howard is removing it from businesses with less than 100 employees is that at heart he is an extreme idealogue who believes in a completely free market. My impression is that small to medium enterprises are exactly the place where bosses feel they can get away with acting capriciously. Big business is more constrained by fear of bad publicity, shareholder activism and consumer boycotts.
Let’s take a look at the description of the current law on one of our Government’s own websites:
So there you have it. Unfair dismissal is basically about following due process and natural justice principles.
Of course, the Australian Government’s propaganda about changing the law doesn’t say anything at all about the detail of what they are changing. Just that they are lifting the yoke of socialist repression from small businesses, in order to make the sun shine brighter and longer…
Having read the description of the law, does anyone think it is unreasonable or too burdensome?
Thanks for the news, sad as it is. I’m very interested in news from Australia-friends there and all, I’m from New York. Sounds lately like Australia is following our path downward, I hope you can stop before you sink to our depth!
I can see the logic in checking people out before allowing them into the country. That is the right of any country. On the other hand I would like to know how throwing boat people into mandatory detention indefinetly isn’t considered cruel and criminal. Out of sight, out of mind, huh? Howard seems to be emulating his hero Bush.
It sounds like your laws for unfair dismissal perhaps should be fixed, not thrown out. Workers should be protected against dismissal for race, religion, sex, and age, but an employer should also be able to get rid of a slacker. Sounds to me that Howard is using this as an excuse to pander to Corporate Australia. Why is it that people have responsibilities to keep corporations afloat but the very same corporations don’t have any responsibilities to their workers or to the larger good of the country in which they operate?
God help you when the rubber stamp soes into effect, this may be only the beginning.
Our mandatory detention policy is considered cruel and criminal by the UN (and a lot of Australians). We’ve had a couple of reports issued about our treatment of refugee claimants by the UN Human Rights Commission I believe, blasting our actions, but the goverment pretty much dismissed them as unimportant. I can’t find a link to this for some reason, but here’s a document giving a fairly in depth background and criticisms of the situation
I agree regards unfair dismissal needing to be fixed, but I really don’t believe it’s as bad as people think. Admittedly this is a fairly biased source (being a union and all), but I would imagine the stats are fairly accurate
(AWU speech) and it shows that only one percent of dismissals end up with unfair dismissal claims, and only a small percentage of those reach arbitration. Here is an article biased in the
other direction for purposes of balance
My prinicple concern is that there is no statistical analysis that shows the scrapping of unfair dismissal laws will lead to an increase in employment. And my anacdotal experience with friends in lower positions in many industries (particularly apprentices) is that the employees are frequently treated poorly and need at least some form of protection (though none of them have needed the unfair dismissal laws). Certainly an extreme circumstances clause would be useful, but I would be curious as to what would occur now if someone was fired immediately for theft for example.
My hope is that the rubber stamp will not be quite as strong as the coalition hopes due to infighting between Howard and Costello (the treasurer), who is hoping to take over the party during this term. It’s tenuous, but it’s something
I’ve always known that the Australian government was one of the more restrictive on immigration in the world, but I never had any idea of how bad it truly was. Detention camps in the Outback? With citizens being detained? Holy shit.
And Howard seems to care about the little guy as much as George Bush does. Maximize the profit for the big corporations.
This world is going down the toilet.
Thanks for this diary, it’s interesting to see how things are going in Australia. I remember when the Tampa incident happened, I was appalled at how pervasive the rhetoric was and how the fear of “others” seemed to have trumped everything, including compassion and sense.
So refugees became “queue jumpers” and couldn’t possibly have been escaping desperate situations, because they had money to pay the boat people and so on.
Of course Australia isn’t the only country with horrific refugee policies, more and more Western nations are inacting them and policies in the US have been terrible for ages. We have refugees/illegal immigrants who have been imprisoned for years, not for crimes. No country will take them back (or the country doesn’t exist anymore) yet they also won’t be released into the US, so… they just sit there.