PROPOSED IR CHANGES DON’T GO FAR ENOUGH

As Australians are aware (or should be aware) the Federal Government is looking to change our Industrial Relation laws to allow "greater personal choice" and help "create jobs". One of the proposals is to eliminate unfair dismissal for people who work for employers that employ less than 100 people. However even this doesn’t go far enough for our treasurer Peter Costello. He wants to scrap unfair dismissal laws for everybody.

Now initially I was opposed to these changes, but Peter Costello has made me seen the light. We need to get rid of unfair dismissal laws to help create jobs and implement the government’s other proposals to allow greater persona choice.

But why stop there. I have some other suggestions as to changes the government should implement to "create employment" and allow "greater personal choice".

Firstly get rid of occupational health and safety laws. These uniform, bureaucratic impositions on business are a significant cost that stops employers from hiring people because of the cost of "providing a safe workplace", at least as it is defined by bureaucrats. Getting rid of OH & S laws would great more jobs by lessening costs on business. Besides, if the history of the industrial revolution has taught as anything it has been that employers can be trusted to provide safe workplaces. I mean, if we can trust employers not to fire people on the basis of the family responsibilities or because they are pregnant when we get rid of unfair dismissal laws then surely we can trust them to provide a safe workplace without legislation? And even if a couple more people die in the workplace each year, the benefits of higher employment for the community will outweigh this.

Secondly, get rid of child labour laws. Children should have the right to personally choose if they want to work at the age of 5, or at least their parents should have the choice of sending them to work. Plus, because the cost of living for a child is less than that for an adult, employers can pay them less, thereby meaning that there will be even more money employers have available for more jobs. And if children are working instead of going to school, then the government wouldn’t have to spend as much money on education. As a result the government could give poor hard working high income earners a tax cut, which could be invested in business and create even more jobs.

Thirdly, while we are on the issue of tax, we need to change the current tax system. Currently the more you earn, the higher you get taxed. This discourages people from working hard and encourages them to be lazy. If the tax rates were reversed so that the lower your income, the higher your tax rates, this would encourage people to work harder and earn more money, instead of our current system which discourages hard work. The only people who would suffer from such a system is the lazy.

Fourthly, we should allow people the personal choice of selling themselves into indentured servitude. This is about personal choice; two equal parties, an employer and an employee negotiating the terms of employment, like in AWAs. If someone during their negotiations with their employer, with whom they are on an equal bargaining position, decides they want to sell themselves into indentured servitude, who are we to say they can’t do this? Sure some people say this is tantamount to slavery, but really, was slavery really all that bad anyway? I mean the entire Western capitalist economy was built on it.

Now sure, should these changes attempt to be introduced, some people may be opposed to it. A small percentage of these people may get up in arms about it and actually try to stop it. But this will only be a small minority. The majority of people opposed to these changes, so long as Big Brother and Australian Idle are on TV, or they can go shopping to buy useless crap they don’t need, will only whinge about the changes, but not do anything about them. That’s the beauty of living in a consumerist society.