Pile-up in Western Sydney
November 10th, 2005This morning as I was driving to work I heard HoWARd say (in reference to the Paris riots) that he saw a direct correlation between highly regulated labour markets and high unemployment.
"We see the domestic misery of the French people at the present time, and, unlike the Labor Party, I am not going to blame the riots in Paris on the industrial relations system that France has – but I do point out that one of the reasons for a feeling of alienation and disadvantage is the persistence of high levels of unemployment in this country against a background of other European countries with less regulated labour markets that have experienced much lower levels of unemployment."
As I swerved back into my lane I waited for the second half of the analysis. I waited and waited, but no mention from HoWARd of the endemic racism, police violence and the policy of the French political establishment towards the rioters who are first and second generation French nationals predominantly from the North African and African immigrant community. Ok. Let’s follow HoWARd’s thinking on this. IR reform and the WorkChoices package is going to solve unemployment rates for Australia’s alienated and disadvantaged. How? Not by stripping worker’s rights.
As usual HoWARd gives us fear.
His message is if Australia doesn’t embrace his IR bill we’ll have riots in our cities. Australia does not have a large former African or North African group of residents so he can’t be referring to them. The United Kingdom and New Zealand comprise the largest group of New Australians, but I don’t think that he’s referring to them either. I think he is referring to Australians born here to parents whose first language isn’t white.
You know your leader is lying when he has to pile up such a wobbly stack of tenuously related data and play the race fear card.
Image from here
