By Kevin Healy
A week when all the expectation, all the predictions, were put to rest with the announcement of the big date. Yes, workers were thrilled to learn that all their worries will dissipate in March 1993, when they receive a pay rise under the Accord Mark 7 deal stitched up between the government and the ACTU.
Not all workers, mind you. After all, most of them are already receiving exorbitant wages which are crippling this once great True Blue Aussie with the Big Red Heart and preventing the beleaguered employing class from doing what it loves doing more than anything else: providing employment for the simple masses who can't show the initiative and entrepreneurship and greed which drive us toward the prosperity that only this system could bring, if only the greedy, selfish workers who totally control the national agenda were prepared not to be so prosperous.
Anyway, the very lowest paid workers will pick up $10 a week each, less tax naturally, to compensate them for cost of living increases over the last several years. What's more, these lucky, lucky low paid workers may get another $10 rise in March 1994. All the other already highly paid workers naturally will receive no pay increases. Which leaves us t ponder what a desperate position workers would be in if they didn't have the dedicated leadership of the ACTU and the committed socialists in Canberra on their side.
In Victoria, we're about to spend seven weeks listening to the riveting voices and even more riveting content of Joannie Learner and Jeff Footinmouth.
I was deeply moved, as I'm sure many were, with Joannie's beautiful words, "We will not arrogantly walk over the top of people for the sake of an ideology". She didn't need to add the rest: "After all, we haven't got an ideology. We'll just walk over people non-arrogantly, for the sake of personal ambition matched by mind-boggling incompetence."