there is now a feeling that John Howard and Peter Costello are beginning to hit their straps at the right time of the electoral cycle; that while Kevin Rudd remains indisputably at the head of the field, the Prime Minister and Treasurer are coming around the turn and beginning to gather the Labor leader in.

The little Aussie battler, the ordinary, unloved, ragged, wartorn underdog, fights back with tenacious guts and dour determination against the Labor behemoth. From News Ltd, coming soon to a paper near you …

If the LNP can pull a point or two from the Nielsen, and then a point or two from the budget, expect “Government draws level” reports Dennis Shanahan, “ALP lead slashed to 10 points.”

What you’ve heard is the first day of rhetoric. Howard will drum that message into peoples’ heads without an iota of entering the question until he stands strong in voter mind as the man of those select, few, brilliantly consumable idioms.

Rudd, instead, has to open up the bigger picture and prove he can hold that together. But he can also rip into Howard with similar, simple, messages. That’s for the taking if voters see Howard as a dud.

If a swing is already in the air, none of this matters. But if not, and Howard and others have good reason to expect it’s not, then Howard’s toe-hold can open up into a case of a touch “too much risk” to vote for Labor. Howard has done this before. It’s partly about people’s fear, partly about their apathy. Partly about the media grab. And partly about acting the part.

So far, the IR issue in the binoculars of an election, is not at all clear – unlike the clarity of daily IR issues.

I’m not making Howard out to be the master playmaker here – I imagine he knows he’s lost a lot. But I am saying today’s acceptance and reading of Howard’s move is not as it will be in three month’s time.

Nor is that to say Rudd is not benefited by Howard’s move.

But for now, notwithstanding daily winds and dialogue, Howard’s move has yet to reap its reward – and my point is it wasn’t designed to do so today. Today, he cops the flak. ‘Tomorrow’, the words he spoke start working.

Rudd can shoot them down as much as shooting his own foot.

It’s a fascinating beginning.

That toe-hold is designed to keep his words in public mind as the game rolls on. ‘Sectorially’, he covers his bases as he sees them.

The question is how the mob now see Howard, and how or if they take on board his utterances.

Why it’s clever is because Rudd has by no means claimed IR as Labor’s win, and having made the changes, Howard can call Labor on several fronts – he’s the architect now (having had the laws in place for significant electoral time -hence the need to rush them through pre that

… After all the approach enshrined in the new fairness test (on which millions of PR dollars are already being expended will be protected by law.

Ah, but will those laws be enacted as core legislation, or non-core legislation?

The whole thing is a joke. The Employment Advocate Workplace Authority would be tearing its hair out except for one thing: the whole certification process goes on behind closed doors so the bureaucrats can apply pretty much whatever interpretation they like and nobody is in a position to challenge them.

Do you think there should be ‘no disadvantage’ tests for people earning >75K? I’m afraid I don’t.

And if I might change the tone a little, surely you’re not suggesting that on getting back into govt Howard would diddle the workers who’d voted for him. After all the approach enshrined in the new fairness test (on which millions of PR dollars are already being expended will be ‘protected by law’.

Interesting admission.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but Kelly Hoare will have done over 8 years of parliamentary service by the next election. By my reckoning that entitles her to a Lifetime Gold Travel Pass and a Retirement Allowance which would be around $60k a year.

After she regains work her income will be at least very close to when she was an MP probably much higher. Surprised to see you falling for a bit of Labour hack spin :-)

Talk about a fake subject…

Anthony the changes can be framed now as making the system less flexible, because the awards from which the preserved entitlements are drawn are effectively frozen. Neither employers nor unions can apply to vary them to reflect changing industry circumstances.

Your comments about the problems of monitoring adherence to any no disadvantage test are spot on. I’ve seen AWAs from the late 1990s that didn’t appear to meet the test that applied then but they had been certified nevertheless. One of the obvious deficiencies in the process is that the Employment Advocate’s staff can ask the employer for verbal assurances and make their decisions based on them, with no provision for later review.

Steve at Lavateus Prodeo suggested the changes had been ‘hatched … in the Brisbane cabinet meeting last week.’ I reckon they must have done it after a particularly long lunch.

But a desperate Kelly Hoare won’t get any sympathy from millionaire Kevin Rudd (who claims he lived out of a car boot after his father died and his Mum lost the house) or Greg Combet (who claims his father’s death made him a warrior for justice when his Mum lost their residence at the winery).

So the old no disadvantage test operated by reference to the wide-ranging and complex web of minimum conditions set by the relevant industry award (which was itself a dynamic and evolving code).

The new system effectively puts in place instead a two tier baseline: the five minimalist conditions in the Australian Fair Pay and Classification Standard, which cant be traded away, and a second tier of conditions around things like award entitlements to penalty rates and public holidays etc, which can be traded away, as long as theres a genuine trade.

The genuine tradeor fair compensation notion raises the same difficulties we saw with regard to the no disadvantage test. First, its hard to tell whats a genuine trade when comparing apples with oranges: to what extent can, say, higher pay compensate for the loss of conditions which go to a worker’s control over their job. Secondly, ensuring theres a genuine trade can be administratively a hard slog, and there was some evidence with the no disadvantage test that the office of the Employment Advocate (in the case of AWAs) and the AIRC (in the case of collective agreements) werent always that diligent in making sure agreements met the test.

However he hasn’t reinstated a proper no disadvantage test at all. As Fred Argy notes, it’s full of holes. Moreover the way the media is reporting it makes it look even more trivial than it actually is. A car space as a trade off for penalty rates – how many people are going to think that’s a good deal? It’s one more indication of how out of touch the government is – it thinks employees of Macquarie Bank in the Sydney CBD are your typical Aussie battlers.

I reckon Howard’s ended up with the worst of both worlds: he’s conceded that WorkChoices is unfair but he hasn’t done anything worthwhile to improve it. All he’s managed to neutralise is concern over Labor’s IR policies. He can hardly criticise them for making changes on the run when he’s just done exactly the same thing.

One more screw-up by the bloke who was supposed to be The Master Politician of His Era.

“I get very angry when I see injustice and unfair treatment of people and that had always been, I suppose, a theme in my thinking and my feeling about the world from a very young age… After my father died, we had to move house. We had six weeks to get out… had he not died, I mightn’t be a union official.”

The dumped-for-Combet Labor MP yesterday:

“Kelly Hoare, who has held the electorate of Charlton since 1998, said she first learned of Mr Combet’s firm decision to run as a candidate in her seat when he phoned her at 7pm (AEST) last night.

Asked how she felt about it today, Ms Hoare said: “I’m pretty angry.”

She said her sacking would put financial strain on her family, with a daughter at university and son on apprentice wages.

“If you knew that you were doing a bad job or that you could somehow be sacked, you’d have that financial consideration in mind,” Ms Hoare said.

“But, when you’re doing a good job and you don’t anticipate it, particularly people in the Labor Party who are campaigning against unfair dismissal to sack you… there never has been that consideration.”

This is “a 21st century campaign”? Throwing a woman and children out of work? Combet is a disgrace. He should withdraw and apologise.

Decoded: Chris had a chat with other Laborites in the Evatt Foundation staff room.

That would be a good description of Mr Rudd telling the National Conference that union membership is now irrelevant. Second place for astonishing idiocy: Julia Gillard forgetting the minimum wage in Labor’s IR Gold.

Unbelievably cynical. The PM has discovered his heart because he has discovered fear in it.

Huh?

“Why not? If the 18th century works for the construction industry…”

Then who are the BLF and CFMEU?

Do you mean he will actually outlaw voluntary association or just remove the pro union bias in IR laws?

I think what he would do is restore the tort of criminal conspiracy to cover all collective attempts by employees to control the terms and conditions under which they work. Why not? If the 18th century works for the construction industry, why not the rest of society.