EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

 

 

One legal system for all 

 

ALL Australians deserve consistent protection under the law.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils' push for Muslims to enjoy "legal pluralism" through sharia, the religious law of Islam, is a bad idea that Attorney-General Robert McClelland was right to stop dead in its tracks.

It is beside the point that the councils' submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the government's new multiculturalism policy says it wants a more moderate variety of Islamic divorce law that would fit with Australian values. In a free and democratic society, a violation of the separation between church and state is not afforded to any other religious group and would be intolerable. No other religious group has made such a request, and the concession would spur widespread community unease and, in some quarters, fuel ugly racism towards Australian Muslims. In Britain and Canada, debates over proposals for parallel legal systems involving sharia have been deeply destabilising.

Australia, in the main, like other democratic, civil societies has been well-served for generations by one law for all, a factor that has attracted many Islamic families to our shores. It is appreciated, in particular, by Muslim women, who in Islamic states often find themselves stripped of property and financial entitlements if they initiate divorce proceedings.

The one deflection in Australia from the principle of one law for all has been the mixing of mainstream and indigenous tribal law in jurisdictions such as the Northern Territory, which has produced occasional serious anomalies. In 2006, after a 55-year-old Aboriginal elder was sentenced to a month's jail for having anal sex with a 14-year-old girl promised to him in marriage, the Howard government moved to prevent judges taking account of customary law when passing sentence.

Australia has been enriched by the multitude of races and cultures from which our citizens are drawn. All groups, regardless of their backgrounds, deserve the protection and fairness afforded by one law for all.

Budget makes rate rises likely

 

WAYNE Swan's timidity will make Julia Gillard's job tougher.

Home owners bracing for another round of interest rate hikes need to be aware that at least some of the blame belongs to the Gillard government's first budget. Wayne Swan talked a tough pre-budget game about the need for fiscal discipline, making all the right arguments about winding back expenditure to allow room in the economy for the massive expansion in mining investment, and reducing high levels of government spending to get the budget back into surplus and minimise inflation. If achieved, this would ease upward pressure on interest rates. Yet on budget day the knife the Treasurer brought to his cost-cutting task was not a Crocodile Dundee blade but the sort of blunt knife that would struggle to slice through the kids' cheddar. This Treasurer has now delivered four budgets, but the only time he has wielded a knife is when he helped to bring down Kevin Rudd.

Tough talk is one thing but a budget table is worth a thousand pre-budget words and it is all there at budget paper No 1, statement 3, table 3. This shows that over the next four years the decisions taken in the budget will lead to an additional $18.956 billion in spending and an extra $21.681bn in savings (a third of these so-called savings are actually tax increases). The net savings are $2.725bn over four years, or just under $700 million a year. In other words, Mr Swan has managed to come up with savings over four years that will total slightly more than the government wasted in just one of its bungled stimulus schemes, the home insulation program. Despite this, some supposedly sage, older commentators have given the budget a nod of approval, suggesting it shows fiscal restraint. Such assessments must come from people who pine for the Whitlam years, but these sanguine nods to government largesse surely have no place in today's highly competitive and globalised economy. The budget makes no allowance for the risk of a deterioration in our terms of trade, placing all our chips on the boom. Yet it expects inflation to be contained at 3 per cent, so clearly something is expected to dampen the economy. To be fair, there is reference to the high dollar and the withdrawal of the post-GFC fiscal stimulus acting as handbrakes. But the budget also refers to the withdrawal of "monetary policy stimulus" which, of course, is economist-speak for increases in interest rates.

Australian home owners should be in no doubt about what is going on here. Mr Swan has shirked his responsibility to deliver meaningful spending cuts in the full knowledge that it will necessitate higher interest rates. Instead of cutting his own spending, the Treasurer is relying on the Reserve Bank to push up interest rates and force the public to curb their spending.

This is a deliberate policy decision. Mr Swan should tell Australians straight up that he wants them to make the hard decisions with their budgets that he wouldn't make with his.

Gillard obstinate despite business dismay about IR 

 

THE government should respond to the needs of industry.

"WE have created the Fair Work system and it is there to stay." So declared an intractable Julia Gillard in response to serious concerns from senior business leaders at the Australian Agenda forum in Sydney on Monday. The Prime Minister shared a panel with Westfield group's Steven Lowy, Westpac's Gail Kelly and the Seven Group's Kerry Stokes, who were united on one issue: workplace laws need to be reformed. Ms Gillard's blunt rejoinder was that voters had rejected Work Choices and she would defend the system she put in place.

This is not good enough. The shortcomings of Labor's approach were apparent as long ago as the party's 2007 national conference. And recent developments should prompt an overhaul of the worst rigidities of Fair Work that are acting as a straightjacket on productivity in a way last seen in the early 1980s, before the Hawke government embarked on early workplace reform.

Mr Lowy pointed out that restrictive, state-regulated opening hours were compounded by Ms Gillard's workplace laws, which made it hard for retailers to open because of the penalty rates imposed under the current system. Consumers are increasingly finding shops and cafes shut on weekends and public holidays. Ms Gillard also appeared unconvinced by Mrs Kelly's observation that workplace flexibility is fundamental to improving productivity. Nor was she swayed by Mr Stokes's point that having the commonwealth involved and going through various court systems was laborious and unnecessary in enterprises where workers and management were in agreement.

If this was a snapshot of the government's relationship with the business community, the productivity agenda is in trouble. Despite Ms Gillard's insistence that she does not encounter many businesspeople "spruiking" Work Choices, The Australian has found that disillusionment over IR and dismay about Wayne Swan's performance as Treasurer are among business leaders' most frequent gripes. Industry lobbies, too, are demanding IR changes. Yet Labor continues to dismiss the business community as rent-seekers rather than partners for progress.

The generous pay deals struck at Victoria's Wonthaggi desalination plant, where workers are paid $50 an hour more than their counterparts at other projects, are further evidence of workplace laws that have swung too far against the national interest. With the current annual inflation rate at 3.3 per cent, slightly above the RBA's preferred range, it is troubling that Labor's workplace laws have made it easier for unions to take strike action in support of excessive wage demand. That trend must be reversed, especially in the slower sectors of the two-speed economy. If it is allowed to run unchecked, jobs will be lost, as they were in the early 1980s, when exorbitant wage rises cost 100,000 jobs in the metal industry alone.

In road transport, employers are saddled with so-called "job security" clauses dictating who they will hire and how much contractors will be paid, a battle that has spread to other sectors, including Qantas. Both the Gillard government and the opposition must listen to those running productive enterprises and muster the courage to support an IR system that suits current conditions.