Paul Keating on Workchoices

'WorkChoices is nothing more than a bitchy ideologically based attempt to break down the wages and working conditions of the lowest-paid Australians; in the main, women and young people.'

Amen

he also calls Workchoices 'Goebbellian-titled'

and

'John Howard has mauled the one group in the community that successfully took on the fight against inflation and who co-operated in the dismantling of the centralised wage system to keep that victory in place. Not one bit of thanks or acknowledgment has he given them. After all, if they were the wreckers and thugs he says they are, how could we have possibly had a 2.5 per cent inflation rate consistently over the past 16 years?

One thing is for sure, if the inflation rate does jump, as the Reserve Bank believes it will, because the Howard Government has done nothing with the supply capacity of the economy for 10 years, while pumping the demand side with five rounds of tax cuts, John Howard and Peter Costello won't know what to do about wage rises.'

Argh, nothing like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise boring campaign.