The Australian Financial Review
9/11/98

Let market set job
conditions PM urged

By Katherine Murphy

Australia should scrap its historic industrial relations regulations and allow the market to set wijge rates for young people, according to a yet to be released policy blueprint commissioned by State find federal labour ministers.
Canberra has been urged by conservative commentator Mr Des Moore to let a new industrial welfare body recommend separate minimum wages for each State and to remove the Australian Industrial Relations Commission's traditional role in setting an income safety net.
In an excerpt from the labour ministers' paper obtained by The Australian Financial Review, Mr Moore also argues that the Howard Government should break its "core" promise that no Australian worker will be worse off if they sign a workplace agreement.

If the Government wants to secure substantial numbers of jobs, it should also allow the business community to maintain "satisfactory rates of profit over the longer run", while resisting any proposal to repartee age-based pay rates for young workers with wages linked to Competence.
The recommendations, while reinforcing some of the Government's key policy objectives, are also political dynamite for the Coalition, which during the recent election campaign unveiled only an evolutionary round of industrial relations changes.
But the Government is also under intense pressure to bring down unemployment during its second term in office, a development leading the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, to hand responsibility for employment to his Minister for Workplace Relations, Mr Peter Reith.
News of the paper brought immediate condemnation from the Federal Opposition, with Labor leader Mr Kim Beazley describing some of the recommendations as an "absolute obscenity". Mr Beazley also moved to link further labour market deregulation with the Government's plan to introduce a GST, claiming workers would face a "double wharnmy" if wages were slashed and new taxes imposed.
But Mr Reith -yesterday played down the pay recommendations, saying the Coalition had no plans to slash minimum wages.
Mr Reith, however, refused to dismiss the overall thrust of the report, saying Mr Moore's work was "an important contribution" to the wider policy debate on unemployment.
Other key recommendations of the report include:
Scrapping current unfair dismissal laws, which Mr Moore says are "undoubtedly continuing to inhibit employment", while removing the power of the AIRC to determine whether terminations are harsh or unjust.
Allowing workers to decide whether they are worse off by signing collective or individual agreements via abandoning the "illogical" legislative no-disadvantage test, which ensures no loss of terms and conditions overall.
Mr Moore's paper is due to be presented to the next meeting of the Labour Ministers Council late in November.