The Treasurer today said the independent commission’s decision would force Australian businesses to pay “either the highest or the second-highest minimum wage in the world”.

“It wasn’t just the decision that the minimum wages that flow through the people on minimum wage … but it flows right through to even people above $150,000 a year getting that sort of increase,” Mr Hockey told Sky News.

“So those increases in wages do have an impact on job creation, but I still remain confident that we at this stage can try and constrict the rising unemployment we were left with.

“There is an impact associated with higher wages that comes at a cost to jobs, there’s no doubt about that, so what you’ve got to get is improved productivity.”

read more: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/joe-hockey-says-fair-work-minimum-wage-rise-will-cost-jobs/story-fn59noo3-1226944250823

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A bit rich for Joe to lecture us, after his mob destroyed the car industry and a few other technological prospects, including the decimation of the CSIRO and made life in this country more unaffordable... Idiot.

From Greg Barns

Climate change policies are a test of the Prime Minister's free market credentials - a test that he has failed dismally in the past 48 hours, writes Greg Barns.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been burnishing his small government, free market credentials since he took office last year and some supporters have praised him for it. So one should expect some searing criticism from this support base as it digests the news today that Mr Abbott, along with Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, wants to thwart the Obama administration's push for global market-based reforms designed to curtail the rate of climate change.

Mr Abbott, according to media reports this morning, is working with Mr Harper to undermine President Obama's agenda of global action on climate change via market-based mechanisms such as carbon pricing and emissions trading schemes. Mr Abbott prefers direct action - edicts from government - to deal with climate change. That is why he supports President Obama's recent announcement that would see America's power plants cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent of their 2005 level over the course of the next decade (though he ignores the fact that Obama is encouraging US states to introduce their own market-based mechanisms in order to reach this target).

Strange stuff indeed. Because controlling climate change through taxing the source of emissions or by placing a price on greenhouse gas emissions is very market friendly. That is why a poll of economists commissioned by Fairfax Media last October showed that there was almost uniform consensus that emissions trading and a carbon tax "will yield the greatest environmental bang-for-buck at the lowest economic cost," according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-10/barns-free-market-hypocrisy-on-climate-change-policy/5512372

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What Greg Barns needs to realise is that Tony Abbott DOES NOT BELIEVE IN CLIMATE CHANGE (aka global warming). Thus in order to appear intelligent on the subject he blurts "double entendre" stuff that has no other efficient substance than line the pockets of miners and rich. This "double-meaning", or double-speak, is often used with sexual connotations but Tony uses it to tell one thing while meaning another about global warming which he does not care about despite saying the opposite.

If TONY CARED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, he would have not sacked all the scientists working on this problem in Australia.

If TONY CARED ABOUT SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING. he would not have appointed denialists to the fore of his "climate policy"...

TONY IS A RIDICULOUS IDIOT who has developed a cunning sense of conning people. Tony Abbott has no clue about global warming and HE DOES NOT WANT TO KNOW. For him, after having destroyed the scientific community who could present some trouble to his inane thinking, the best way to support an "economy" is to dig more holes with quicker way to transport the stuff out of the country while accountants fiddle the books to fill the pockets of his mates. END OF STORY.

Tony's intelligence does not go beyond that. 

AUSTRALIAN company Rossi Boots has been rejected for a lucrative Defence contract that would have secured its future - instead, Aussie soldiers will wear boots made in Indonesia

See toon at top... and blame the Abbott Regime for being dorky and stupid and nasty and dumb...

Unemployment has jumped to a 12-year high of 6.4 per cent, despite the loss of only 300 jobs.

Bureau of Statistics figures show the jobless rate surged from June's reading of 6 per cent to 6.4 per cent last month - the worst reading since August 2002.

An estimated 300 jobs were lost, but the jobless rate was also pushed higher by a rise in the proportion of people in work or looking for it.

The so-called participation rate rose from 64.7 to 64.8 per cent, a possible indication that people who had been discouraged from looking for work are now coming back into the jobs market.

Other positive detail in the data was a 14,500-strong rise in full-time employment, while an estimated loss of 14,800 part-time jobs accounted for all of the decline in positions.

Despite the apparent shift to full-time work, the seasonally adjusted July figures show total hours worked fell 0.9 per cent to 1.61 billion.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-07/unemployment-data-abs-july/5654926

Australia's good fortune, however, looks to be waning. Slowing growth in China, driven in part by the government's efforts to rebalance the economy, has devastated commodity prices: Iron ore, Australia's biggest export, now fetches half of the $US140 per tonne it did last December; coal prices have tumbled as well. These are long-term, not cyclical trends. And unfortunately, the trajectory plotted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott over the last 14 months has left the country less prepared for that difficult future than when he took office.

Australian voters have soured on Abbott - his Coalition lost power in Victoria state's election last week, leading to chatter that he might not survive a full term in office - because of what they see as broken promises. A needlessly austere budget slashed education, health and welfare spending. The government appears to be coddling mining billionaires and backtracking on its environmental pledges. It even cut funding for national icon Australia Broadcasting Corporation.

My worry has more to do with Abbott's economic priorities, which ignore how rapidly the world is changing around the Lucky Country. Although Abbott has talked about diversifying the economy away from its dependence on China, his policies have effectively done the opposite.

See toon at top...

Mike Dowson reveals how the latest report from the Australian Productivity Commission reads between the lines as neoliberal policymaking. 

PRODUCTIVITY IS a useful measure. It tells us how much of value we can produce with a given input of capital and labour. Generally speaking, more is better.

In industry and agriculture, productivity has often been the immediate yield of technological advancement. It’s been said there’s no free lunch but the more we can harness science and engineering to make lunch for us, the closer to free it should become. Less labour cost goes into it and the saved labour time can be used for other things.

One might reasonably expect an entity called the Australian Productivity Commission to be primarily concerned with this form of progress. But the Commission’s Workplace Relations Report, tabled in final form this week, doesn’t offer a lot of insights into productivity. One thing it does recommend is making some kinds of employment more attractive to business through lower wages and reduced job security.

Depending on your view, this may or may not be a worthwhile goal, but what does it have to do with productivity?

The cost of labour and labour productivity each represent entirely different measures. Technology has an effect on both of them but at the moment, it’s easier to see its effect on labour cost than its effect on productivity, which seems to resist dramatic improvement.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/productivity-...

See toon at top