Re: What does "policy position" mean?

On 24/12/07 00:20, tracie wrote:
Thank you, Peter. I must say, I attempted to work on this and found
that it wasn't easy. I, personally, don't think that Work Choices
restores balance to matters of termination. I wasn't sure whether it
was balancing employment termination between small to medium
businesses and larger businesses, so that neither were in a worse
position than the other, or whether it was trying to strike a balance
between what previously was pro-employee legislation so that it was
now just pro-employer legislation (sure seems that way to me). I
wasn't able to understand the question, because I wasn't sure what they were trying to balance.

It's more, in my opinion, about shifting the balance point. It's no
secret that:

- the Labor position is that employees, and most especially low-paid
employees, have been made vulnerable by laws that prevent them from
collective bargaining, that make industrial action effectively illegal, and
that come very close to making unions illegal. (Consider the recent
nurses' dispute, where the nurses worked full-time but were not paid, on
the grounds that some of them refused to do jobs that were outside their
job description.) To cancel the unfair dismissal laws, so that these
people can be sacked for no reason at all, is a further weakening of
their power to market their labour.

- the Liberal position is that businesses will go broke if they are
forced to treat their workers fairly. (That's a biased statement of
their position, I know, but I think it's correct.) That's based on a
broader philosophy that keeping the economy strong has a higher priority
than keeping people out of poverty.

It's also no secret that Labor robs the rich to pay the poor, and that
the Liberals rob the poor to pay the rich. A comparison of their
policies therefore depends on which of these two philosophies (if
either) you support. Obviously the electorate is divided on this question.

According to the government, the laws have been amended in the best interests of small businesses and, apparently, will result in an increase in jobs.

Question 1: if unemployment has dropped to such a low figure under
Liberal management, why are so many people out of work. The answer, I
believe, is that the government has been gradually modifying the
definition of the unemployment rate. By now, if a single person in a
family is working for at least one hour per week, the entire family is
considered to be fully employed (and nobody in the family is eligible to
access unemployment benefits). In my opinion, anyone who is employed
(say) half-time when that person is seeking a full-time job, then that
person should be counted as only half a person for the purpose of
compiling the employment statistics. Note, too, that many people who
were previously listed as unemployed have been moved into other
categories. If an honest measure of unemployment were used, then I'm
pretty sure that Australia would move from having record low
unemployment to something close to record high unemployment.

Question 2: why is it that Australia was experiencing boom economic
growth before the recent election, but that figures that have come out
since the election, _for the same time period_, have shown that the
national economy is in trouble? Answer: selective reporting. There are
so many different ways of measuring economic growth that you can just
pick the one that suits you.

One thing that's clear, I believe, is that under the previous regime the
average wealth increased but that the median wealth fell dramatically.
That's because the very rich became much richer, distorting the average.
It's also because a lot of people at the other end of the scale were
summarily sacked and then re-hired at a lower wage. That is one point
that business owners feel is positive about the new laws: their profits
increased because of a decrease in wage costs. Previously, that would
have been illegal. It's no surprise that there's been a sudden increase
in such sackings just recently. Some companies are in a big hurry to
negotiate new contracts with their workers because the law is about to
be changed again.

Apparently small businesses will not be afraid to hire staff.. but
what employee would bother joining a company with less than 100
employees? they have no access to unfair dismissal laws, so I don't
see how it's in the interests of small businesses and quite frankly,
if anything, small businesses will lose staff to larger corporations,
because there they can access unfair dismissal laws and there is job
security..

That's a reasonable argument to make. Above, I've taken the same
approach of suggesting that there is a difference between what is
claimed to happen and what actually happens. To properly argue your
point, you'd have to produce figures on how easily small businesses have
found it to hire staff, but such figures take time to collate and I
doubt that anything suitable is yet available. My own personal
impression, for what it's worth, is that this question is inextricably
linked to the progress running-down of education and training over the
last decade. It looks to me as if highly skilled people, in some fields
at least, have no trouble finding work, but that those with lower
qualifications are in deep shit. That fact, I believe, has had a lot
more effect than any change in the unfair dismissal law.

This is what I argued.. I don't know whether it answers the question
or whether I have approached the question correctly, but my policy
position was that the amendment failed to increase job growth and as
such, the unfair dismissal laws under Work Choices were a bad idea..

How wrong do you suppose I am or how badly did I fail to answer the question? If you have time to provide feedback, it would be
appreciated.

I think your argument is sensible, and does answer at least part of the
question. I'd be inclined to say, myself, that you should have addressed
more than that one point, but that depends on how big the assignment
was. Whether it gets a good mark will depend on factors like the
expectations of the examiners, and how well you got your point across.
Some people can have excellent ideas but no skill at communicating their
ideas to an audience, and that hurts their evaluation badly in
assignments like this.

Note that my own position, as briefly covered above, could be accused of
being too much influenced by straight party-political bias. If I had to
give a formal presentation on the subject, I'd be a lot more careful
about weighing up the claims of both sides, and - even more importantly
- producing real data to support my arguments.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
.

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