Refugees swapped and IR policy traded in a View from the Arch

With the Sunrise ANZAC service debacle casting a pall over the beginning of Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's week, and the prospect of dancing the rhumba with Kerri-Anne Kennerley looming ahead of him, a decision to launch the ALP's industrial relations policy at a Press Council lunch on Tuesday turned discussion away from the bright lights of TV and onto harder issues once more.

Rudd unveils IR policy

While not going into specific details, Mr Rudd told reporters a Labor Government would bring back unfair dismissal laws for small businesses - giving them a year's grace to dismiss unsuitable employees. Bigger businesses would have six months.

Under the policy, no industrial action could take place without being approved by a mandatory secret ballot and no strike pay would exist. Industry-wide strikes would also be illegal.

Labor would restore penalty rates, overtime and public holiday pay, while reducing the red tape involved with meeting GST reporting obligations, Mr Rudd said.

And, of course, Australian Workplace Agreements would be abolished.

Labor's hard-woman - Deputy Opposition Leader and Industrial Relations spokeswoman Julia Gillard, along with a team of four shadow ministers - were in Perth for the announcements, trying to win the hearts and minds of the city's resources bosses - the people that analysts tell us have the most to lose from a change to Federal Government policy.

"What we want for this nation and what we particularly want for Western Australia, is an industrial relations scheme that makes sure your booming economy continues to generate wealth and jobs but we don't want a system that throws fairness out the back door," she said.

While Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow leant her cautious approval to the changes, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union secretary Doug Cameron said the changes would make industrial action more difficult - sparking calls from Mr Rudd for him to "get used to the 21st century."

Prime Minister John Howard had a similar criticism.

"It will be the first time in a quarter of a century that a major economic reform would have been reversed," he told ABC Radio.

"If you put aside the rhetoric and the window-dressing and the few bones that have been thrown to the business community, all the big things the unions wanted - the reimposition of unfair dismissal laws, the ending of AWAs and the reimposition of the supremacy of the collective bargaining approach to wage negotiations - have been granted by a Labor government."

Mr Howard said Labor's plan amounted to a big step backwards to an old-fashioned approach to industrial relations.

The government's recent workplace relations changes, meanwhile, had ushered in another era of job creations, he said.

Carpenter happy to hand over power

Meanwhile, WA Premier Alan Carpenter and Employment Protection Minister Michelle Roberts said they would happily hand over Western Australian industrial relations laws to a Rudd Labor Government.

The Premier, who in 2006 condemned a High Court decision which gave the Federal Government the right to legislate over State IR policies, said the policy was fair and equitable.

"Kevin Rudd is looking for a consistent system across the nation," he said.

"I think that Kevin Rudd's model and the suggestions that he is making seek to strike a good balance and I'd be supportive of that balance."

For the record, in an interview conducted in September last year, WA Industrial Relations Commission chairman Tony Beech told WA Business News the WA industrial relations system applied to sole traders, partnerships, trusts and non-trading corporations (except trading, financial or foreign corporations).

This equated to around 40 per cent of the Western Australian workforce at the time.

State Opposition Industrial Relations Spokesman Murray Cowper sent out a carefully worded announcement accusing the Premier of selling out the state and giving a green light to the unions to cause industrial chaos.

"A dual system will allow a future State Liberal Government to provide a safety net for employers who would otherwise be trapped by a Federal Labor Government union-based system, just as the present Federal system is providing the safety net for local businesses looking to escape the WA regime."

"Kevin Rudd's plan to destroy the WA economy is the exact reason why the WA Liberal Party does not support a single industrial relations system in Australia."

Mr Cowper said the current Federal industrial relations system was far superior to what he labelled the archaic union-dominated system in Western Australia.

Trading Asylum Seekers

Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews raised a few eyebrows this week when he announced the signing of an agreement with the United States to "provide mutual assistance for the resettlement of people in need of international protection".

Under the scheme, Australia would send up to 200 asylum-seekers held in its offshore processing facilities to the US; in return it would take up to 200 Cuban and Haitian refugees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr Andrews has already identified 83 Sri Lankans and eight Burmese asylum-seekers detained on Nauru were likely to be the first refugees to be resettled in the US under the scheme.

"Potential resettlement in the US will be a disincentive to those who seek to come to Australia illegally because they have friends here," he said in an opinion piece printed in News Ltd newspapers today.

"This is simply an additional option for the Australian Government to consider when resettling refugees and there is no guarantee that any person with a claim for asylum will be settled in the US."

Mr Andrews said the issue showed strong leadership in the Howard government, and accused the ALP of being soft on border protection.

"Labor says if you pay your $US10, 000 to a criminal who organises people-smuggling and you get on their unseaworthy vessel, then, regardless of who you are, you will be accommodated in Australia.

"That is not the way to run a migration program. This is a way to indulge people smugglers," he said.

For his part, opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke accused the government of supplying incentives for people smugglers by making immigration to the US a possibility.

"What John Howard is saying to people now is if you pay a people smuggler and get yourself to Christmas Island, John Howard will get you to New York.

"No matter how much we love our country, and I do, they are a greater prize for people seeking a new country, than we are.

"That is the strangest policy direction I could imagine."

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister John Howard said people who are HIV positive should not be allowed to migrate to Australia.

"I would like to get a bit more counsel and advice on that [but] my initial reaction is no," he told on Southern Cross Radio.

"There may be some humanitarian concerns that could temper that in certain cases but prima facie, no."

Mr Howard made the comments in response to a Victorian Health Department study that found an increase in the number of HIV positive people moving to the state.

Bits and Pieces

• Prime Minister John Howard said strict controls would keep Australia from developing a gun culture like that of the USA while Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said Monday's shooting on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University highlighted the need for tighter controls.
• The Queensland government has set the wheels in motion for the appointment of Sue Boyce to take the Senate seat of Santo Santoro, who resigned from Parliament last month.
• The South Australian government has also approved the appointment of Simon Birmingham to take the Senate seat of Jeannie Ferris, who died from ovarian cancer earlier this month, on the same day government-sponsored injections of cervical cancer drug Gardisil, which she fought to introduce, started in Adelaide. Mr Birmingham was already slated to take Senator Ferris' spot upon her resignation from parliament at the next election.
• The WA Government unveiled a $27 million plan to give a training place to every unemployed Western Australian under 19 years of age, which would see more than 9,000 new apprentice and trainee places over the next four years, with an estimated 40 per cent of those for regional areas.

The Final Word

In a week where Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd not only Rhumbaed with Kerri-Anne but also cooked, laid bricks, spoke Chinese and interviewed swimmer Brooke Hanson, the final word must go to ACT Liberal backbencher Steve Pratt.

Mr Pratt, a former army officer and aid worker, and the Liberal opposition's urban affairs spokesman, has been spear-heading a campaign to get rid of graffiti around the nation's capital.

Knowing that there's nothing like getting your hands dirty, Mr Pratt sent out a call for Canberra media to watch him whitewash "the most obnoxious pieces of graffiti" he could find - on a wall in suburban Woden.

While Mr Pratt said the stunt highlighted the ACT Government's indifference to the graffiti problem.

Disc ACT, the sporting club which had paid $3000 to commission the mural on its wall from a local graffiti artist, wasn't so impressed.

Mr Pratt is currently under investigation by the Territory police.

With revelations in the WA Business News last week that Busselton Shire Council was refusing retrospective planning permission for a 24-carat gold leaf-plated sculpture at the front of Laurence Wines in Wilyabrup - "Free as a Bird", or the less kind "Chick on a Stick", Arch hopes none of the councillors get similar ideas.