I was interested to read in the age that Greg Combet has come out urging the Labor Party to fight against the new Industrial Relations Laws. What interests me most is this quote
"Mr Combet said research showed the laws were strongly opposed by the majority of the public." The Age
How does Mr Combet think that the majority of the public have formed an opinion on a topic that has only had the regs for a week. The media has been focused on the Commonwealth Games and not IR reform. So I would be surprised if the majority of people had logged onto the government web site Workchoices and read up to be informed enough to opose the reforms.
So Mr Combet please just stick to the facts and not project your opinion onto the majority of Australians.Â
Err, I think the debate about the IR Laws has been around much more than a week.
ReplyDeleteYes Pat it has but the regulations were only released last week so any debate has had little information by which to debate factually. To claim the majority of people have an opinion that has had such little time out in the public domain is a long bow to draw. The legal people delivering the IR laws are still working on it.
ReplyDeleteSo the laws are currently incomplete, yet they passed through both houses of parliament last year, yeah?
ReplyDeleteIt could be argued that people would then be judging the laws on what our elected representatives judged them by as well.
It is not the laws that are incomplete but the regulations. These regs were released last week. So what is it that the "majority of people have been debating? Until the regs came out the out workings of the laws were not known by the "majority" so how did they make their opinions? From the word of mouth of the media. this is not the information to use to form an opinion!
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't disagree with your point that he's talking spin - but unfortunately no one involved in politics doesn't spin.
ReplyDeleteBut from the mixed and contradictory messages we got from the politicians before the laws were confirmed, there was quite a bit of unhappiness about how it seems the laws were going to work.
Also, Combet didn't project his opinions, he was going off research, going by what you've quoted him saying. Not that that means the opinions were got with full knowledge of the facts - but are they ever?
Some comments on the topic from someone who isn't from the unions
ReplyDelete