I quoted Monbiot back on Christmas Day as saying: “We will know that our approach is working only when it is violently opposed.”

Now I’m not saying that any one person is responsible for the plight of Australia’s Indigenous people, it is largely a systemic issue. But the current Riots in Sydney say to me that the situation is on a knife edge and has for too long been a life and death issue for too many people.

Is anyone surprised at these reactions? It is the cry of a proud but desperate people.

Edit: with hindsight I’m quite embarrassed about this quote – I posted it with out really reading anything. This is poor an inexcusable. However my point about violent retaliation stands – it is just that there is not the focus on indigenous issues that I thought their was. However it does raise questions about ‘ghettos’ and th likes breeding a lack of opportunity. Something will give sooner or later as it clearly has here.

Further my earlier comments on Teaching methods, the Victorian State Government is now sacking teachers and principles for underperformance.

The details are unclear at the moment. If these people are being sacked because they are incompetent then that is fine.

However I think it puts an over emphasis on measurement. This can have two negative effects. Firstly, it can dominate the teaching process by taking up too much time. Secondly can also mean that students are taught to do well on the tests or in the various areas that are tested and the broader picture is lost.

As I’ve said before, and no doubt will have occasion to say again, Industrial Relations is a particularly significant issue and the battle that is ensue will be a particularly hard fought one. One of my reasons for continually harping on about it that I don’t think enough people are angry enough about it.

So I’ve reprinted Peter Lewis’s Editorial from this week’s Workers Online – an excellent free newsletter that I strongly recommend you subscribe to if you have any concern about workers rights:

And The Battle Begins
After months of skirmishing and waiting for the first shots to be
fired, we finally have a picture of the Howard Government’s agenda to
tear down 100 years of industrial relations.

Much of what is coming was expected – it is a direct steal from the
obnoxious policy paper released by the Business Council of Australia
last week.

At its heart is the ‘economic imperative’ to drive labour costs down so
big business can further increase their share of national prosperity at
the expense of working families – after all, it’s a lot easier than
running a business efficiently.

All the ‘reform proposals’ are to this short-sighted end:

- legalising the rights of employers to sack workers unfairly;

- ‘reviewing’ the minimum wage to make it harder for low paid workers
to get a pay rise;

- promoting union-busting campaigns by neutering the industrial umpire
to create a system where employer lock-outs of unionised workers is
rife;

- and aggressively spreading individual contracts to make the lives of
Australian workers putty in the hands of their managers.

The one proposal that wasn’t flagged was the federal government’s
hostile takeover of state industrial relations systems – an audacious
move that may ultimately be more difficult than Howard et al imagines.

The push for a unitary industrial relations system is one of those
insidious plays that looks oh so reasonable on paper. After all, surely
it would be efficient to have everyone under the one system?

There are two big problems; first the federal industrial relations
system is now an industrial relations system in name only, in reality
it is a license for big business to liberate their workplaces from the
influence of unions.

But more significantly, particularly for workers under the NSW state
system, it would do away with a framework of work relations that has
evolved over 100 years to deliver one of the great successes of not
just the Australian, but also the global economy.

The beauty (and yes, I believe an IR system can be beautiful) of the
NSW industrial relations system is that it has been designed to create
the sort of society that most Australians (the BCA and Kev Andrews
excepted) say they want – based on fairness and equity.

That’s why the NSW Industrial Relations Commission has powers:

- to maintain industrial harmony;

- to set wages – not just based on the wishes of employers, but also
the value of the work performed;

- to ensure that awards flow across industries, even to those without
the resources or wherewithal to make a wage claim.

But it goes further, the NSW IRC is charged with taking a broader view
of the way the economy works – in recent years it has reviewed gender
pay equity and is currently looking at the plight of casual workers.

In short, the NSW system is an institution that has delivered
prosperity and fairness – principles that big business say are mutually
exclusive, but have been part of our way of life for 100 years.

The achievements are so ingrained that few even recognise them, they
accept them as their way of life.

Most working families would be horrified to think that, over the next
few years, they may lose control over their working hours, their leave
entitlements, even their job security.

As I have written in recent weeks, our response must start with an
exercise in educating working families about what they are going to
lose – and showing how boring sounding legal terms and institutions
actually make a difference.

Peter Lewis