Richard Farmer's Daily Email Briefing

Timely insights into politics every weekday.

FREE trial

ACCESS BACK ISSUES
HERE

NEWS AND VIEWS
Australia

Other Countries

A Zoo Where the Biggest Gorilla Rules

Monday, 29th May, 2006

The talking heads on Sunday morning television might get the press coverage but it is 60 Minutes on Sunday night that gets people talking at work on Monday. Which means the biggest political story this morning is not the Australian troops flying in to East Timor but the Asians flying in to jobs in Australia .

60 Minutes called its story Working Class and it portrayed trade unions as understandably nervous about bosses importing 100,000 workers this year - "a million in the next 10 years." The story is sure to ratchet up a little further as a political issue the link between immigration and industrial relations which I wrote about last Thursday. (If you missed it, see Labor and White Australia on the politicalowl.com website.)

A further contribution to the Government's problems with its industrial relations changes came at the weekend from the Right Reverend John Harrower, the Anglican Bishop of Tasmania . Bishop Harrower described the new IR laws as punitive and warned they risk creating a new class of working poor.

"The big gorillas do well, but the weaker ones don't and I'm concerned that I don't want to live in a zoo where the biggest gorilla rules," he said.

Bishop Harrower intends to write to the new Fair Pay Commissioner arguing for a higher minimum wage.