The Rest of Your Life (v3.0)

HEY ALL -

Here’s a little letter I just sent to a bunch of my Liberal-voting friends (I’m sure we all have some, poor misguided fools that they are) – you might like to do the same before the weekend.

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So guys, I know you’re probably sick of all the election stuff already over the last month. I also know SOME of you are avowed Liberal supporters, although I’m not sure all of you are – so please don’t take offence at my assumption if I’ve got it wrong in any of your cases !

You’d all be aware of course, that I’m not a big fan of our current PM and his party. That doesn’t mean I hold it against you if YOU are, it just means we’ve got different hopes for this weekend’s outcome. Whichever way you look at it though, it’s going to be a pretty ‘historic’ vote this time ’round, so that’s why I’m writing you all this quick email.

Given the ‘importance’ of this election, I reckon if I can get even one Liberal voter to change their vote (whether it’s putting Labor, the Greens, The Democrats, or the Utter Raving Nutter party first – it doesn’t matter to me, as long as you don’t preference the Libs first or second), I’m doing a ‘good’ thing. Feel free to discard this email if you vehemently disagree with everything I’ve just said – otherwise please hear me out for two seconds.

I don’t know if you guys read the fantastic ‘Opinion Piece’ by Paul Keating in today’s Herald, but I think he’s hit the nail right on the head.The crux of his argument is that we need regime change to find our way back to the principals and values this great country once stood for.

As Keating says, the eleven years we’ve endured under the present regime have seen a tragic errosion in the quality of our public discourse, and the very social fabric that underpins what it means to be ‘Australian’. Howard has not only championed, but actually encouraged a ‘turning inwards’, while seeking to solidify a ‘fortress Australia’ mentality to serve his own ends.

Our reputation overseas has suffered undeniable harm thanks to a whole range of issues such as mandatory detention, Tampa, our participation in the Iraq fiasco, and our refusal to ratify Kyoto. Believe me – I have family and numerous friends overseas – I know what people in other countries say about Aussies these days.

Domestically, we’ve seen the Liberals tear our public health & education systems to tatters, destroy housing affordability, and try to shaft everyone but the ‘big end of town’ with their onerous Work Choices legislation. We’ve heard ‘non-core promises’, ‘one day promises’, and outright lies. Yet perplexingly, the majority of Australians (myself excluded … but hey, you get that) have up till now continued to vote Howard & friends back in.

Now Johnnie has the arrogance to try and tell us that “change for the sake of change itself is meaningless”, and “you can’t change government without changing the country”. I think he’s missed the point.

All the opinion polls aren’t pointing to a Liberal defeat because people want change “for it’s own sake” – they want change because they are whole-heartedly sick of HOWARD, his party, and their inwardly focussed, self-serving policies.

The whole point is that the tide seems to have turned against Howard precisely because the electorate WANTS to “change [our] country”. We’re sick of the fear-mongering, the half-truths and distortions, the grubby little back-room deals which lead to things like the AWB scandal or sending our boys overseas to fight in a “War on Terror” which is ultimately America’s brain-child, and not our own.

We’re sick of a government that funnels money out of our hospitals, our public schools and universities, our welfare system, and our pockets via the GST and fuel excises, then pumps it in ever-increasing fistfuls into privately outsourced ‘detention camps’ which lock up innocent people seeking a better life in our country and the occasional Australian citizen, into Bush’s war machine, into pointless rounds of so-called ‘informational’ advertising designed to convince us we’ve “never had it so good”, into hastily approved (or worse) ‘pork-barrel’ projects to prop up Liberal and National seats, and into the pockets of its mates with their corporate kick-backs and high-income tax breaks.

Granted, there’s *always* a chance Kevin Rudd may turn out to be no better than John Howard in the long haul (although somehow I doubt it), but at least he’s paying lip service to a vision for the future which doesn’t involve more of the same feckless horrors above, which the Liberals have doled out to the people of Australia for the last eleven years.

THAT my friends, is why I’m hoping Kevin 07 comes through this Saturday, and Australia finally gets to see ‘Howard’s End’.

So please guys, as one friend to another I’m urging you to think carefully.

Please make your votes count this Saturday, and join me in letting the Liberals know that (to paraphrase TV’s Big Brother) – “JOHN, IT’S TIME TO LEAVE THE HOUSE” !!!

- Authorised by (your name and suburb go here)

Listening To: Symbols : KMFDM

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
andyg721 i think it was on CNN
andyg721 Condoleeza Rice went to Asia
andyg721 the headline was RICE IN ASIA

From Wikipedia – “White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a World War II non-violent resistance group in Germany famous for a leaflet campaign in which they called for active opposition to the Nazi regime.” It initially consisted of five Munich University students in their early twenties – Sophie and Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf. As a result of writing and distributing a series of political pamphlets between June 1942 and February 1943 which called for an end to the Nazi atrocities of that conflict and the active resistance of the German people, they along with Professor Kurt Haber (a later member that helped in the drafting of the final two pamphlets) were arrested and tried by the Gestapo, and ultimately executed by the Third Reich. 

“So what does all this have to do with the price of tea in China”, I hear you ask ?

In February 2005, a movie about Sophie Scholl’s last days, Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days), featuring actress Julia Jentsch as Sophie, was released. Drawing on interviews with survivors and transcripts that had remained hidden in East German archives until 1990, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in January 2006. Two other previously released films have also dealt with the tragic story of this remarkable group of young people.

The story of the Scholls, and the White Rose movement as a whole, serves as an important and poignant inspiration in our contemporary context. This group of idealistic young people spoke out, in spite of the war their country was embroiled in. We’re talking the real blood and guts conflict of WWII, not the so-called ‘War on Terror’ that Bush et al. see fit to define as a war when it suits them, and as a ‘police action’ when it doesn’t. They elected to follow their consciences, despite the prevailing ‘popular opinion’ in Germany at the time, which either held with the abhorrant policies & ideology of the Nazi regime outright, or simply refused to acknowledge the more barbaric implications of said policies for the selfish sake of economic prosperity.

The White Rose spoke out against the war, and their nations involvement in it despite the obvious danger to themselves of this action. Indeed in the end this courageous group paid the ultimate price for daring to believe in concepts such as “Human Rights”, and for speaking out against the actions their government was involved in, and which we – the rest of world – ultimately (rightly) judged as war-crimes.

Hearing the neverending stream of bad news from Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and other ‘hot zones’ in the so-called ‘War On Terror’ (it’s telling, isn’t it, that this Neo-Con catchphrase can be abbreviated to WOT ? ), you can’t help but wonder what the members of The White Rose would have to say about it all. My bet is they wouldn’t be huge fans of America’s, Australia’s or the UK’s current administrations, and their aggressive foreign policies. It’s also a dead-cert they would also be strongly opposed to the ongoing suppression of debate that many sections of the international media establishment, the United States military, and all the governments involved continue to try and exert with regards to human rights abuses in the context of the WOT?.

The majority of ‘regular’ people have only a vague understanding of the Geneva Protocols on Human Rights (and ancillery treaties + protocols) established as a direct result of World War Two and the so-called ‘Nuremberg Trials‘. It’s important to note however, that the United States of America and the United Kingdom were two of the major players actually involved in the suggestion and drafting of these principals of human and State conduct at the time. They drafted these resolutions in the hope that the kinds of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during WWII could never again be repeated.

It’s ironic then that as a human being living in a 21st Century Western society, you can’t help but worry about the direction that the USA, UK and our very own Australian governments seem to be taking us in their pursuit of the perceived ‘terrorist threat’. I read a particularly disturbing report online yesterday by Karen Parker, president of the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers, based in San Francisco. 

Full text of the document can be found here. With the rather unedifying title of “War Crimes Committed by the United States in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability”, it nonetheless makes sobering reading – regardless of your views on the justification for going to war in Iraq in the first place.

Listening To: Herzeleid : Rammstein

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
tom_0369 man
tom_0369 im never moving to seatle washington
tom_0369 i flew over it and it was raining and gray as fuck
tom_0369 it was depressing
sammich when was this?
tom_0369 flight simluator 2004

Sorry I haven’t had much to report of late, kids. ‘Tis officially the silly season, so in between attending various office Xmas parties (more on those later, perhaps) and being flat-out at work, I haven’t had much time or inclination left to post.

However given that I live a stones throw from Bondi Beach (one of last weekends officially designated ‘no-go zones’), and given the depressing events of two weekends ago in Cronulla … I thought it was about time I gave you my two cents worth on Sydney’s current ongoing beachside turf wars / race-riots. Strap yourselves in – this ain’t gonna be a ‘light and airy’ post ! First though, for those of you unfamiliar with the DB story, I should give you a bit of background so you’ll have to proper context to put my forthcoming rant in.

I was born in 1977 in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Both my parents are also Czech, and we emmigrated to Australia in 1984 after living in Pakistan for 6 years where my dad was a trade attache to the Czech embassy. ‘Emmigrated’ is not quiet the right word though of course, since back then the world was still in the grips of the tail-end of the ‘cold war’, and (then) Czechslovakia was one of the ‘iron curtain’ Communist countries. So in actual fact, my parents didn’t simply emmigrate with me, they ‘defected to the West’ – with all the attendant hush-hush secrecy that implies.

Since then, I’ve spent most of my life living in Australia – and indeed I feel ‘Aussie’ – as much as anyone born here. I have the citizenship and passport papers to prove it. I also happen to possess a Czech passport however, and I’m as equally proud of my Czech heritage as I am of being Australian. Personally, I never thought the two were mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately groovers, I’ve had people trying to tell me different virtually my whole life. In the current debate on ‘racism’, ‘national identity’ and similar themes stemming from the events at Cronulla two weeks ago and the ongoing beachside tension since, anyone who has publicly expressed dismay at the racist sympathies apparent in some sections of the Australian electorate is, in my opinion, either a naive fool or trying to manipulate the debate for their own sinister ends. Growing up a migrant kid in the 80′s and 90′s, from the get-go as a 7-year old I was made painfully aware of the fact that Anglo-Saxon ‘aussies’ weren’t entirely comfortable with people from different backgrounds.

Bullied, taunted and regularly beat-up at school for everything from my accent, to the lunches my mum would pack for me (never mind that in those early days my parents were often so poor they could barely afford to feed themselves, yet they would save the ‘best’ food for me), to my clothes and even my last name (which is Czech but might as well be Arabic for all the good that did me, and certainly sounds it) . My experience is far from unique – the European immigrant families of the 50′s & 60′s would have faced similar prejudice when they came out here after WWII, as have our waves of Asian immigrants (the so-called “boat people”) in the 70′s and 90′s. Coming into the new century and the new millennium, it seems like it’s the turn of migrants of ‘Middle-Eastern Appearance’ and background to be the targets of this undercurrent of racism.

Like any migrant who has come to this country in the last 20 years I can attest to the fact that a level of racism has always been inherent in the Australian mind-set and always will be. Being from a communist country in the 80′s certainly didn’t help either. Yet, trying to paint this country and its people with a racist brush is to do it a great dis-service. For every fat, freckle-skinned 7 year old of Irish stock trying to beat me up for being a “communist, wog, poofter” (never mind that a 7 year old doesn’t even know what a ‘communist’ or ‘poofter’ is), there was a kid from India who wanted to know what living in Pakistan was like. For every 6th-generation ‘Australian’ making fun of my name or stealing my raw-capsicum and my salami sandwiches in order to throw them over the playground fence, there was another 6th-generation kid whose uncle had married a woman from Yugoslavia and was thus curious about life in Eastern Europe. I think a quote I read the other day in the Herald sums it up best –

“Our society can be both warmly welcoming and capable of deep, dangerous racism”

As a matter of fact, I think in some respects it was easier for migrants in the 80′s & 90′s, when the successive Hawke and Keating governments were committed to a little social policy called “multiculturalism”. At its root, this policy and its attendant legislation were about building a homogenous national identity out of many disparate wholes. Somehow, it seemed to work too – more or less. Certainly as I’ve already stated, an element of racism has always prevailed; but at least under multiculturalism this was discouraged on a national level, and the government policies of the time were all about trying to combat the racial and cultural divisions in Australian society as a whole, not about trying to exploit them. Unfortunately, if one examines the policy agenda of the Howard government over the last 12 years (and indeed Howards’ personal political agenda over the last 20), it would appear that exploiting social divisions is precisely what this government is about.

All that aside, it has to be said that in this debate and this situation, the Lebanese (and to a lesser extent Muslims of other cultures) youth certainly aren’t helping themselves either. Naturally, it would be a gross generalisation to claim (as some commentators in the media have) that all Lebanese/Muslim men are ‘troublemakers’. Unfortunately, there is a small but very visible minority giving their wider community a ‘bad name’, and said community seems reluctant to reel these trouble-makers in. Partially of course this is precisely because of the perceived ‘racism’ they feel, as all migrant groups do at some point, from the wider ‘Australian’ community. They feel victimised, and in many cases are simply unwilling to entertain the belief that ‘their’ sons could be capable of the terrible things ‘we’ accuse them of.

The problem of course, is that some of the aforementioned minority; such as convicted gang rapist Bilal Skaff and his cohorts, the unidentified gang who attacked the volunteer lifesavers at Cronulla two weeks ago and others, have been up to some truly awful things. To give you an example which directly impacts on my own life, earlier this year my lovely fiancé IG went to Europe for a month. Whilst in Spain she too was attacked a gang of Middle-Eastern men, and only managed to escape thanks to a combination of kung-fu, quick thinking, and glassing her lead assailant in the face. Whilst it’s clear she managed to avoid gang rape, she’s naturally reluctant to talk about her ordeal, so I will probably never know for sure to what extent her first attacker managed to assault her before his friends got there and she managed to escape. Regardless of ‘how far’ this first cowardly arsehole actually got, the point is he attacked my fiancé and tried to force her into having non-consensual intercourse with him. For that, he deserves to rot in hell, as do all rapists and attempted rapists. It’s precisely this sort of behaviour which makes it so easy, and so tempting, for otherwise ‘tolerant’ people like you and me to start hating young men ‘of middle eastern appearance’ as a group.

The thing is though – I simply can’t do it kids. I can’t. I’m not a “hater”, to borrow a phrase from one of my favourite hip-hop bands, Australia’s own 1200 Techniques. Don’t get me wrong – I definitely hate the fucktards who attacked my baby in Spain, as surely as I hate the little (Slovak) shit who sexually abused me a few months after I first came to Australia with my parents. However I hate these people as individuals, and not as representatives of any particular “group”, save perhaps the group of “scumfuck sexual predators”. I don’t ‘do’ hate based on race, creed or other such generalisations – the only ‘hate’ I have is based on demonstrated, individual, abhorrent behaviour. In other words -

Just because some middle-eastern men are rapists, doesn’t mean all middle-eastern men are rapists. Just as some Anglo teenagers beating a pair of innocent Arab men to a bloody pulp on the train at Cronulla station doesn’t make all Anglo teenagers viscous, violent racists.

I know some people may see this attitude as naive. Perhaps I’m “backward” for trying to cling to the multi-cultural dream. Or perhaps only ‘ignorant migrants’ like myself and my generation of ‘wog kids’ actually fell for those great Aussie ‘myths’ like “a fair go” and “we come from different places, but we’re all Australian”. Nonetheless, I would hate to think this is actually the case. I would like to think that the Australia I grew up in, or at least thought I did, isn’t dead or never existed at all – it’s simply been forgotten in the heat of the moment, as tempers have flared on both sides of the current conflict, egged on by everyone from Alan Jones, to Stormfront, to various gang-leaders and the Prime Minister himself, and his governments’ 12 year reign of divisive public policy and public statements.

I have to believe that Australians of all ages and backgrounds can come together and work these issues through. That I’m not the only one who is prepared to stand up and say “this senseless violence isn’t what our great country is about”.

I want to, and have to believe what I always thought generations of Australians always knew – namely that ;

“The beach is for everyone”

For my own sake, and (clichéd as it may sound) for the sake of my future children.

I’m not Derryn Hinch, and that’s my view.

Listening To: WWIII : KMFDM

Allright kids, how fŨcked are the times we’re living, eh ? I’m referring of course to last Thursdays London bombings. It doesn’t matter which school of thought you follow – the rational conclusion of genuine terrorist bombings, or the conspiracy theory hypothesis of ‘NWO tightening their global chokehold’ / ‘keeping the masses in fear’. Regardless of who is actually responsible, it’s a frigthening catastrophe and my sincerest sympathies go out to the victims and their families. I’ve always maintained that the September 11 WTC attacks, whilst also tragic and lamentable, at least had some measure of twisted logic / inevitability from the point of view of US foreign policy. Further, I’ve always viewed the September 11 attack on the Pentagon as a separate and distinct issue, which on its own could be viewed as a ‘legitimate’ military attack given the nature of the target (which nonetheless was ‘tainted’ by the use of a plane-load of innocent airline passengers to carry out the actual strike on target).

The subsequent Bali bombings, and now the recent London attacks, are an entirely different kettle of fish however. There can be absolutely NO logic and NO justification for such cowardly and barbaric attacks on entirely innocent citizens of countries which are simply allies of the United States, with little to no actual influence on the foreign policy of ‘The Worlds Self-Appointed Sherriff’ ! Further adding insult to tremendous injury, in the case of both the UK and Australia, the majority of citizens in these countries don’t even agree with the policy stance our governments have taken with regards to issues such as Iraq & Afghanistan – precisely the issue the terrorist attacks are ostensibly ‘about’.

One of my best mates has been living in London for about two years now, give or take, so the recent bombings took on a particularly personal edge for me as I found myself deeply worried about his welfare. Turns out the double decker bus on which one of the devices went off exploded about 100 metres up the road from his office. Very, very close call indeed (thank the deities for that one !). I know of several other people from highschool who may also be living London, and I made a fair few English mates when I was on exchange in Sweden also. Conceivably then, a fair few people who have been in my life at one time or another may have been directly effected by this tradgedy, and this thought really scares & sickens me.

From my late teens, and throughout most of my twenties, it was always my dream to work and live in London town at some point. I love Soho, I love Picaddilly Circus, I’ve been to Gossips & Slimelight & The Hippodrome, and dodgy Australian pubs and even dodgier ‘underground’ trance-nights in some shitty industrial park on Londons outskirts. I’ve bought curries from Bethnal Green, leather pants from gay-shops in Soho, I’ve had to walk halfway across town at 3am during taxi ‘changeover’ hour. I love the Beeb, The Streets, The Bill, Guy Ritchie & (sometimes) even Eastenders … in fact, I love just about everything about England, and especially London ! Circumstance alas, is a strange beast, and I never ended up doing “the London thing” unlike so many others I know.

With my EU passport however, it nevertheless remained a perrenial possibility. True – my first priority these days is the lovely IG, so if I ever do go in the end, it most certainly won’t be without her. Unfortunately, last weeks bombings have taken some of the shine off the idea. Not all the shine of course – a decade of wanting something doesn’t disappear overnight, regardless of how dangerous that desire has suddenly become. Certainly however, there are many more factors to weigh up now (i.e. the potential risk to ones life and limb) if I ever made the decision to follow through on this particular dream. As I said at the start of this rant “how fŨcked are the times we’re living, eh ?”

Once again – my sympathies to all the victims, their families, and everyone else effected by this tradgey. Will light a candle for you.

Listening To: Remedy (Disc 1 – Pre Op) : Various Artists

So, the beautiful IG and I sat down to watch BB-Uncut last night. We missed it last week, but wanted to catch it this time ’round after our weekend trip to Adelaide (more on that might be posted later). Seeing this confirmed a few things for me, which have become pretty edvident over the last few weeks :

(1) Glenn from Hickville … is a complete frikkin arse-clown ! Actually – all the guys this year pretty much are tools, except for Tim.

(2) Tim is a freakin legend, and deserves to win !

It’d no surprise, really, that Glenn is a moron of the highest order. What kind of retard picks another guy to go into the rewards room with him ? The latest episode of uncut showed another side to the carrot-topped simpleton however … the sleazy, randy side unfortunately. Given that a ‘highlight’ of the episode was Glenn ‘getting it on’ with the equally-aesthetically-challenged Geneva, complete with 60′s-risque-pseudo-porn editing which substituted cliched images of fireworks and exploding champagne bottles for the moment when ole’ carrot top presumably creamed his jocks (leaving Geneva less-than-satisfied) … I think IG’s comment of the moment summed it up best “Ewwww ! It’s like two ginger haired guys getting it on. I think I’m gonna be sick !”

We were also treated to Glenn and the other lads (bar Tim) lighting their own farts, and Glenn doing his best bubble-boy impersonation with the aid of a handy condom. Oh yes, and a couple of sequences of the lads going into the toilets to take turns shaking hands with the bishop ! I was almost expecting a circle-jerk at one point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this didn’t actually eventuate, and was simply not shown ! Quality-fŨcking-televison, literally.

The episode also showed a snippet of some of the meaner things the “lads” (hereafter known as The Retards Collective), headed up by none other than our favourite Cletus-from-the-Simpsons-lookalike, Glenn, have been doing to Tim. Hog-tied, punched in the nuts, wrestled – all of these things he’s had to put up with. Yet when BB called Tim into the diary room for a bit of a chat, and gave him the opportunity to have the guys disciplined for their bullying essentially on a platter, Tim actually told him “no, it’s OK, I’ve had worse, I don’t feel like I’m being bullied”. Hats off to Tim, ladies and gentlemen – there is a man with BIIIIG fŨcking balls ! If it was me, I would have long ago gone to the diary room to have a chat to BB off my own bat. But Tim is happy to grin and bear it. Now who wants to talk to me about ‘whining lefties’ ?

The other reason Tim is legend in my book (and should be in yours), is of course precisely because he is a Leftie – certified, signed, sealed and delivered ! He used to write for The Chaser, and lately has penned stuff for Workers Online. In this day and age, in a houseful of extreme-right Liberal loonies like Nelson and Angela (and Glenn too, I’d wager), it’s freaking fantastic to see an articulate, intelligent, politically active, union-supporting, young man like Tim step up and boldly proclaim “Hey, I might act a bit creepy around girls, my haircut might be a decade out of date, and my fashion sense doesn’t really work outside ‘a Newtown, but fukkit … I’m left-wing and proud of it, and I can go head to head with a bunch of jock-Liberal-retards and emerge out the other side. Maybe victorious, maybe not … either way I’ll emerge intact, and so will my big balls !”

Go Timmie, go – you’ve got my vote to win son … and with the unions behind you (if the Workers Online site is to be believed), there’s a small chance we MIGHT even swing it !

Listening To: Remedy (Disc 2) : Various Artists

So you’ve probably noticed I haven’t posted for a while, right ? Blame it on lack of inspiration, ongoing loneliness (IG gets back on Saturday, thank sod !) and a certain level of brain-mush induced by too many nights (weeks ?) of successive drinking. Today however I spotted something over at Margot Kingstons site which I think is more than worthy of comment.

Australia’s world-class industrial relations system, and the Howard governments successive attempts to butcher it and take away the rights of ordinary workers like you and I have always left a bitter taste in my mouth. A recent episode of My Restaurant Rules highlights the perils facing all of us come July 1st, when the government will use its Senate majority to push through legislation once again undermining the ‘Award Wages’ system and making it easier for greedy employers to force their workers into accepting AWAs.

You can background to the story here and here, but essentially what it boils down to is that in the recent episode of the show, Evan and Bella who run Sydney’s Pink Salt decided to move their staff off Award wages and on to Howardesque AWA (Australian Workplace Agreement) contracts – without prior discussion with or agreement from the staff in question ! Stewart the sous chef was understandably pissed when he found out he would be taking home 300 bucks a week less for his troubles, and confronted Evan about it on camera. Pink Salt have since hastily back-peddled, no doubt after some advice from Channel 7′s legal eagels, and their staff are back on the Award. But it’s a scary glimpse of a dilemma many of you out there in reader-land may be facing in the near future.

As for myself kids – I’m already there !!! If you read back over some previous posts, you’ll see I’ve expressed anger on a number of occasions about the employment contract I’m currently on. Guess what ? It’s basically an AWA. As a contractor to my lovely employer, I enjoy no union representation, nor was the option of any offered to me when signing the contract. Further to this, I’m doing a more demanding role now than I was when I worked here previously as full-time employee, yet my hourly pay rate on paper remains the same as it was before the company and came back. Back then I was also on a pseudo-AWA and my hourly rate was already woefully below the Award (as indeed are the majority of pay-rates where I work). However, back then I was getting public holidays, annual leave, weekend loadings and the like paid. Now I am no longer getting any of those loadings on my new ‘contractor’ status … and I’m actually WORSE OFF then when I was working as a full-time employee.

I was aware of all this when negotiating to come back, so I built a 10% increase into my wage demand to cover that. AWA’s are supposed to be all about negotiation (‘Agreement’) after all, or that’s what The Rat and his ministers would have you believe. Guess what ? My employer came back and told me “sure, you’ll get the rate you want”. Only they neglected to mention the rate they were quoting was including superannuation, while I was talking ex-super. What’s the rate of super these days kids ? That’s right, 9% ! So surprise, surprise … my 10% increase is wiped out by employer/HR dirty tricks. Anybody surprised ? If you are, you shouldn’t be !!!

AWA’s are inherantly dishonest, and deprive the worker of the protection of 150 years of industrial relations gains made on their behalf by the Unions of Australia, and other individuals and organisations. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti-employer or anti-small business. I (still) run my own small (sole-trader) design company, never mind that I don’t actively seek clients and would be lucky to do work ‘for my company’ once a year if that. I even go through the pain-in-the-arse that is lodging BAS returns every quarter, because I’m hoping one day I’ll get the business back up and running. The point is though – if ever grow enough to have employees, I recognise that I have a responsibility to them as an employer, not just my own bottom line ! IF I ever have employees, they go on an Award at minimum, or if I can afford it, a contract which is better for them and me, not just my greedy wallet !

An AWA which leaves your staff worse off than they would be under the Award, as almost happened at Pink Salt, is just plain wrong ! Yet the lack of transperancy all of Howard’s successive changes to IR have created mean, unless you’re lucky enough to have your workplace on reality TV, there is a big danger that you’ll end up like me post July 1st – locked into an AWA that pays you sweet bugger all, and denies you the basic rights you used to take for granted under our old system of industrial relations !!! Think about it kids, it’s not a happy thought …