Kneejerk Leftist policy ideas undermined by the facts

Productivity figures blast a hole in Leftist propaganda plans but "spin" based on old figures is the suggested solution!

KEVIN Rudd's economic brains trust has told him that productivity is likely to accelerate, blasting a hole in Labor's election-year argument over the state of the economy. Just days after John Howard accused the Opposition Leader of economic illiteracy, his senior advisers have told him the outlook for productivity is looking better, after years of low growth. They also partly blamed the productivity slowdown, reversed only in the past two quarters, on the booming labour market, which has seen unemployment fall to a 32-year low of 4.2 per cent. This undermines the ALP's claim that the productivity slump is largely due to a lack of investment in education and infrastructure.

A confidential nine-page briefing document was prepared for Mr Rudd last Friday - one day after he failed during a radio interview to acknowledge the rebound in productivity growth. A spokesman for Mr Rudd said last night the briefing paper was consistent with the party's expectation that, although there was likely to be "some correction" in productivity numbers, there were "no clear signs of a return to the strong productivity growth of the 1990s". Labor argues that Australia needs an education and broadband "revolution", as promised in its platform, to deliver stronger productivity growth, which the Government's May budget forecast to flatline over the next year.

But the briefing document, prepared by Mr Rudd's senior economics advisers, Tim Dixon and John O'Mahony, says the outlook is already looking rosier. "We should expect that as the rateof GDP growth picks up, quarterly productivity statistics will be strong in the next year or so," Mr Rudd was told. And while productivity growth has slowed over the past few years, the Labor analysis, obtained by The Australian, backs up the Government's claim that it is partly due to the strong employment market. "Part of the reason (for the decline in productivity) is because employment growth was stronger in the early 2000s compared with the mid 1990s," the document says. "Stronger employment growth is often associated with weaker productivity growth." It also blames the drought and the massive investment in mining as factors that have caused a slowdown in productivity growth.

Labor seized on the May budget - which forecast zero productivity growth - to argue the Government has no reform agenda to ensure economic prosperity after the resources boom ends. But last week's national accounts figures showed a pick-up in productivity in recent months - 1.4 per cent in the December quarter and 0.6 per cent in the March quarter. Mr Rudd, however, failed to acknowledge this rebound during a radio interview on the ABC's flagship AM program last Thursday morning. John Howard and Peter Costello later seized on Mr Rudd's comments during a robust parliamentary debate, claiming that he knew "precious little" about economics.

Labor's economic brains trust provided the Opposition Leader with a detailed briefing paper, titled Productivity and the National Accounts, the day after this parliamentary tussle. The "leader's meeting/policy brief" was is designed to "provide a response to the questions on productivity raised by (ABC journalist) Chris Uhlmann on AM on June 14". Mr Rudd's office last night verified the document.

With economic management certain to dominate the election campaign, Mr Rudd is determined to prosecute the Government over the rate of productivity growth. But he has been warned that the next national accounts figures - due out in early September, just before the likely start of the formal election campaign - is likely to back the Government's argument. Labor's economic team argues that Mr Rudd should continue to cite the Budget forecast - of zero productivity growth - "as it has not been updated by Treasury". "While quarterly or annual productivity statistics are not reliable, it is still worth making the point that there is no evidence that we are out of the low productivity cycle," Mr Rudd is told. The Opposition Leader is told by his advisers that productivity "in its simplest form ... equals outputs divided by inputs".

A spokesman for Mr Rudd last night noted that in January Labor stated that "while the even sharper decline in productivity since 2004 is unlikely to continue without some correction, it nevertheless indicates that there are no clear signs of a return to the strong productivity growth of the 1990s". "Therefore when the briefing paper refers to the fact that we 'should expect that as the rate of the GDP growth picks up quarterly productivity statistics will be strong in the next year or so', this is consistent with federal Labor's public observation in January (and) is entirely consistent with Labor's argument that we have seen a long-term decline in productivity growth."

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These are the guys the Left wants to put back in charge of Australian workplaces

Union bullying of site manager taped

A SECRETLY recorded video and audio tape shows the federal secretary of a militant construction union standing by as three underlings bully and intimidate an occupational health and safety manager on a Perth building site, calling him a "f..king maggot" and a "f..king idiot".

The recordings, obtained by The Australian, show Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union national secretary Dave Noonan, assistant state secretary Joe McDonald and three other union officials being asked at least a dozen times to leave a city building site run by Len Buckeridge's BGC, one of the country's biggest construction companies.

While Labor takes more hits in the polls because of its perceived ties to renegade unionists, media companies will today apply to the West Australian Supreme Court to get access to two other damaging video tapes of Mr McDonald and other CFMEU officials. One tape shows Mr McDonald calling a builder a "f..king, thieving parasite dog" who would end up working at Hungry Jack's. Some have interpreted this as a veiled threat should Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd win the next election.

While those tapes were deemed admissible by the Supreme Court last week when Broad Constructions moved to ban CFMEU officials from their building sites, they were not shown to the court because union lawyers argued that they were embarrassing and could be used for political purposes. The tape obtained by The Australian was taken by BGC occupational health and safety manager Paul Smedley, a former detective, in November 2004. It was used in a West Australian Industrial Relations Commission finding against a union organiser, Michael (Mick) Powell, who the commission last year found acted in an "unacceptable and improper" manner while he was with Mr Noonan at the Barrack Street site. The commission found Mr Powell's language and behaviour to be "unprovoked, aggressive and intimidatory".

The tape records Mr Smedley asking the unionists to identify themselves after he discovered they were on the BGC site. He then asked if they had their right-of-entry cards on them. When Mr Noonan, then the CFMEU's assistant federal secretary, replied that he did not, Mr Smedley told him to leave. This sparked a barrage of abuse from Mr Powell and fellow union organiser Jamie Leggo, in which Mr Smedley was called a "f..king maggot", a "piece of shit", a "cockhead" and a "f..king idiot". Mr Leggo tells Mr Smedley: "Me and you are going to have a lot of fun, c...'. Eventually, after seven minutes of abuse and threatening language, the union officials - including Mr McDonald, who Mr Smedley claimed was singing Skip to my Lou, my darlin' in the background - left the site.

When the matter was dealt with in the WAIRC in April last year, Mr Powell had his right-of-entry card suspended for one month because of his renegade behaviour. He was counselled by the CFMEU.

Mr Noonan yesterday defended his union, saying the exchanges were part of a dispute over safety "in an industry where a worker dies, on average, every week". "When safety is an issue, there is no place for shrinking violets - the proposition that swearing on a building site is some form of scandal is a joke," he said. He accused Mr Buckeridge of threatening behaviour himself, referring to a 2005 parliamentary speech by Labor senator Glenn Sterle, who accused the tough-talking businessman of boasting in an HR Nicholls Society speech that he had compiled a hit list of 30 unionists who should be "rubbed out".

UnionsWA secretary Dave Robinson told The Australian he condemned the behaviour of the CFMEU officials caught using insulting language on tape, but added that construction industry union officials were frequently subjected to strong-arm tactics of bosses who were far from saintly. "The CFMEU operates in a very tough environment ... it's a bitter struggle to improve things for their membership," he said. "None of that excuses any unacceptable conduct but the industry generates that sort of behaviour from the employers as well as from the unions representing their members." CFMEU state secretary Kevin Reynolds said he condemned violence but bad language was the language of the construction industry. He said Mr Buckeridge used "extremely colourful language himself" and it was no accident that he employed as his safety manager a former police officer.

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Trust your bureaucracy to set intelligent education priorities

Universities are producing thousands of useless graduates in sociology and English literature (etc.) but useful disciplines are being cut back

MINING-RELATED departments in universities are shrinking at the time of the nation's biggest resources boom, with 10 geoscience schools closing or downsizing over the past 10 years and only 30 metallurgists graduating a year. Mining companies are forced to hire graduates trained in similar disciplines, such as chemical engineering and materials science, and train them on the job to meet the shortfall in professions such as metallurgy.

A skills summit organised by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia in Canberra today will highlight the severe shortages of qualified professionals in geoscience, metallurgy and mining engineering. APESMA chief executive John Vines said public debate over the skills shortage to date had focused on the trades, and the intention of the summit was to highlight the shortage of skilled professionals in the engineering, science and technology sectors. In a discussion paper, APESMA calls for a tax incentive scheme, similar to the one promoting research and development, offering employers a 150 per cent tax rebate for spending more than 2 per cent of labour costs on training development. Mr Vines said the Australian average was 1.3 per cent of a company's payroll, while 4 per cent was considered world-best practice.

In its position paper for the summit, the Australasian Institute of Metals and Metallurgy calls on the federal Government to increase its university funding for mining degrees as part of a strategy to remedy the "dire state of minerals education". It wants the federal Government to increase funding for minerals courses by about $4000 per student, to bring it into the highest cluster of university funding, along with agriculture. Universities receive $13,411 from the Government for every student in science and engineering courses, which are expensive to deliver, compared with $17,870 for agriculture students.

The institute, representing more than 8000 professionals in geoscience, minerals processing and mining engineering, also calls on the Government to commit to a set of national principles for higher education, along the lines of the National Research Priorities, to ensure that "disciplines of national importance" are maintained.

Geosciences professor at Monash University Ray Cas described geosciences as a "nationally endangered species" and AIMM chief executive Don Larkin said at least eight minerals departments had closed since 2000. Mr Larkin said the federal Government had given a commitment to fund disciplines of national importance but, because of the Government's philosophy to move to a user-pays and market-driven tertiary education system, that was not happening.

A survey of almost 2000 members conducted last month by AIMM, and due for release on Friday, found that about two-thirds said the professional skills shortage had left them short-staffed. More than half said the shortage meant more people were working in senior roles outside their experience. And more than 60 per cent believed their employer was paying more for less-experienced personnel, with salaries rising about 18 per cent since 2005. A paper by Professor Cas says at least 10 geoscience departments have "either been closed down or downsized to the point of being ineffectual" over the past 10 years.

The closures include the geoscience department at the University of NSW, once the biggest in Australia; previously significant departments in the universities of La Trobe, RMIT, Bendigo and Deakin in Victoria; Flinders and South Australia in Adelaide; New England and the University of Technology, Sydney, in NSW; as well as smaller, regional schools. Other departments have been amalgamated into other disciplines such as geography and environmental sciences, leading to a rationalisation and decrease in staff at universities including Sydney, Wollongong, Western Australia, Melbourne and Ballarat.

But student enrolments are growing in second and third years. Professor Cas says Monash University has a record number of students, and now the largest in Australia, despite the number of first-year students not growing beyond about 200. The number of graduates at Queensland University is also growing. A 2005 agreement between international mining company Xstrata, which has a number of operations in Australia, and UQ is designed to lift the number of metallurgy graduates at the institution from five in 2004 to 20 next year.

Australian Council of Deans of Science chairman John Rice said it would take 10 years to rebuild the infrastructure, expertise and resources of these departments, with a skills shortage in the industry also translating into a shortage of people able to teach in universities. Professor Rice said the shift by government to funding universities based on student numbers made the low-enrolment schools unviable, but said the removal of the cap on full-fee paying places in the last federal budget left room for industry to step in and pay for mining courses.

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His Eminence hits back at attempts to silence him



THE Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, has criticised "intolerant parliamentarians" for trying to stifle the right of religions to speak out on ethical matters. Cardinal Pell singled out the Greens MP Lee Rhiannon for seeking to limit the say of the churches. "I'm not sure that Lee Rhiannon could be characterised as particularly tolerant or sympathetic to Christian religions," he said. "I think she has a considerable history in that area. I don't have chapter and verse but my office does." Cardinal Pell said he expected his right to lobby MPs on a bill that aims to overturn the ban on embryonic stem cell research would be upheld by State Parliament's privileges committee. It is investigating whether his warning to Catholic MPs that a vote for the bill would have consequences for their position in church life constituted contempt of Parliament.

Speaking at an inter-faith conference , Cardinal Pell said the principle of the separation of church and state was not intended to silence religious leaders but to protect clerics like himself from "interfering government and over-enthusiastic parliamentarians". A small minority of commentators and intolerant MPs wanted to delegitimise the public expression of religious views, he said. "None of us as religious people should co-operate with that or oblige them in any way. We must insist on our right of expression of public views." Cardinal Pell said he would continue his lobbying efforts when the bill reaches the upper house later this month.

James Haire, from the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, defended the right of religions to involve themselves in politics. Professor Haire said privatising religion to the nave, the temple or the cloister was a foolish and futile way of dealing with the variety of legitimate views held by people of faith.

Ms Rhiannon defended her right to comment and criticise. "I've consistently said Cardinal Pell has a right to participate in debate but he did cross the line when he used people's religious life as a point of leverage to gain support for a no vote in the stem cell bill," she said. "In singling me out he is failing to recognise there was much stronger criticism from cabinet. In referring his comments to the privileges committee we've had an outcome. "Cardinal Pell is learning there [are] boundaries in the way he conducts himself."

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