Nothing 'Fair' About This Test

This opinion piece was published in the Herald Sun on Tuesday 22 May 2007.

IT has been an interesting spectacle, seeing members of John Howard's Government wrestling with a stream of Labor-friendly poll results.

Mal Brough is mystified at the ``horrendous'' results.

Joe Hockey reckons he's not qualified to interpret them.

The Prime Minister suggests it could be people playing a practical joke on the Government. Possible, but not probable. There is a long way to go before the election and no one takes polls at face value.

But the Government is really struggling with the concept that it seems a bit on the nose with the electorate.

Social commentator Hugh Mackay has observed that the Australian electorate is ``entering a new phase of alertness following a sustained period of disengagement from politics, bordering on somnolence''.

What triggered this wake-up call? For my money, it couldn't be simpler: WorkChoices.

Not that we're allowed to call it that now. Once the Government's proudest achievement, WorkChoices is now the law that dare not speak its name, as though calling a skunk a rose makes it smell better.

Let's go back to the last federal election, when the Howard Government won control of the Senate. The PM said that gave it a mandate.

A mandate, it turns out, to do whatever it liked. A mandate to do what it kept from voters before the election.

A mandate to throw the fair go out the back door, ripping hard-won conditions and awards from working people, just because it could.

A mandate to pursue an ideological agenda that is

still stunning in its hostility

to workers.

We know that almost half of the AWAs abolish all the award conditions the Government promised would be protected by law.

We know that a third of them provide for no pay increase over the term of the contract. The list goes on.

And the Government wonders why the electorate has stopped listening.

Voters listened hard before the last election and didn't hear anything about their overtime, penalty rates, public holidays and leave loadings being stripped away.

Now it's time for the Government to listen. And its hearing is suddenly preternaturally acute.

When did it start pricking up its ears?

It seems to have happened suddenly. On April 15, Minister for Workplace Relations Joe Hockey told Laurie Oakes: ``We're not for turning on the fundamentals of these laws.''

The very next day, his boss told Brisbane radio he's always listening and if he's got it wrong and if it's in the interests of Australia, he's willing to change.

At this point, it's worth remembering that the PM has been known to confuse ``Australia's interest'' with ``John Howard's interest''.

By the beginning of May, it was clear that change was on the way, when Mr Howard told John Laws that WorkChoices was never meant to hurt anyone.

``I mean, what interest does any Government have in making people worse off, and what interest does a Coalition Government have in not ensuring that people share to the full the benefits of a booming economy?''

T HUS was the new ``fairness test'' born. Or as Labor leader Kevin Rudd more correctly calls it, ``a fake safety net full of holes''.

Of course, there's not much detail about the test yet, although plenty of taxpayer money is being spent advertising it.

And the workers on dud AWAs the Government has been listening to?

The ``fairness test'' won't apply to them.

And John Howard's team is still wondering why the people seem to have stopped listening to them.