The photograph of Malcolm Turnbull that accompanies the ABC story of his promotion of individual contracts, shows him displaying a sour face.
Oh, those treacherous editors that embellish public policy ambition. Politicians, particularly political leaders have be conscious of image, which is why election posters for instance always have them smiling in that insufferable way. Mostly we have not met the people we vote with in the flesh, so how can we tell?
Substantially the ABC report observes:
Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has left open the possibility of re-introducing individual workplace contracts if he wins the next election.
He says he will assess Labor’s new workplace regime before making any policy changes.
Speaking at a Liberal Party gathering in Sydney, Mr Turnbull criticised Labor’s new workplace regime as inflexible for employers, calling it a contsraint on productivity growth.
“We are going to review the performance of Labor’s changes … Labor claim they will not reduce flexibility in the workplace. We believe they will.
But he conceded that the changes have only just taken effect, and it is too early to judge their impact.
“It’s a fair point to say that the new rules have only just taken effect and that’s why it’s appropriate that our concerns now move from the realm of debate to the realm of fact,” he said.
“So we’ll see what the impact of Labor’s changes are on the ground.”
He says he will announce before the next election whether he wants to bring back individual contracts
“I’m not ruling it in or out. This new system will be judged on its performance in the workplace – everyone expects to monitor it carefully,” he said.
Individual workplace agreements were a major plank in the Coalition’s WorkChoices scheme which was rejected by voters at the last federal election.
We are so caught up in our paradigms we are hardly aware that we are thinking, the systematic and discipline process of exercising reason, with a historical and cultural framework. When new solutions require new thinking, and thus by definition be impolitic it necessary somehow to innovate, to reframe the issues in ways both creative and practical.
Notice that Malcolm Turnbull follows the assumed consensus that productivity growth which implies efficiency outcomes (a economic good) but the underlying metaphor is that of a machine. The industrial system is a mechanized system in which human beings through specialization of labor are subordinated. It is implicitly violent. The people who carry out its structural – or embedded – violence are not acting in bad faith, often the contrary. They are operating within non-human paradigm but they do not see it.
The challenge is to discover a system of work in the world fitted for human beings that will enable everybody to fully express their human potential. A ecologically sustainable economy would be both global and constructed around the satisfaction of human needs and not based on consumption.