Source : the age
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The argument that basic wages should not rise because of the impact on small business seems plausible but is immoral. Capitalist economic thinking revolves around aspiration, where all should be able to develop their good ideas, or follow their passions, and improve their lives with the hard work and risk involved in setting up a business. The resulting increase in personal wealth then benefits all in society with some wealth generated trickling down to all. However, the reality is that about 50 per cent of small businesses fold within three years.
Many aspirationals make misguided assessments about their ideas, abilities and the markets they hope to serve. To argue thousands of people should sacrifice their standard of life to ensure these businesses can survive does not pass the pub test. And it exacerbates the two existential challenges of inequality and destruction of the biosphere.
Howard Tankey, Box Hill North
What about a fair go?
There was much confected outrage in The Age at the lower-paid workers getting a pay rise (“Bosses warn pay rise fuels inflation”, 3/6). This pay rise is still inadequate though because it “keeps workers worse off than they were before the pandemic when accounting for inflation”.
Apparently the “only way to sustain higher wages was through higher productivity”, says the Australian Chamber of Commerce. So perhaps baristas could hurry up and make more coffees more quickly. Nurses should run between patients. Obviously, lower-paid workers can do little to increase productivity. What has this country come to? What about a fair go?
Economics, politicians and leaders need to look at better ways to make a bigger pie (productivity) rather than expect lower-paid workers to do the heavy lifting by being content with low wages.
Jan Marshall, Brighton
Higher pay benefits business
Why is there an outcry by business every time the lower-paid workers in our society receive any kind of pay rise, large or small?
What businesses all need to understand, if they don’t already, is that if you pay your employees more each week, the extra dollars will be spent buying more of their products and services. Don’t they deserve it?
This will in turn help to keep their businesses operating for longer, and it will also mean that companies can afford to invest in their businesses to the benefit of the entire community.
It starkly contrasts with pay rises to those who are paid much more but will most likely spend the extra dollars on expensive overseas junkets and expensive motor vehicles, and plough their dollars into the stock market.
Peter Foster, Albion
When exactly is the right time?
As expected, the usual suspects – the Coalition, of course – and employer groups are unhappy with the lowest-paid workers getting a pay increase. The usual excuse is trotted out: “It isn’t the right time.” Perhaps they could point to the last “right time”. They would have to go far back in history, and even then they wouldn’t find it because it has never happened. Of course, it is always the right time for corporate bonuses for the bosses.
Ross Hudson, Mount Martha
The lobby that cries wolf
Every time there is an increase in the minimum wage, business groups come out with the same catastrophic predictions: small businesses will collapse, unemployment will rise and the sky will fall in. After the last increase, how many of these things happened?
Michael Brinkman, Cowes
THE FORUM
Aspire to be better
Jim Chalmers’ budget has got many of us talking about aspiration. Changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing have shifted the dial on political debate. Young people with aspirations to enter the housing market buoyed versus the crushed aspirations of those wanting to get ahead with their dreams to build their own businesses.
My aspiration is for us all to take a broader view, so that we all do better. We could aspire to have well-paid teachers, police and nurses. We could aspire to have fully funded social security and disability services. We could aspire to have the best hospitals. We could aspire to fully fund public schools.
Of course, all these things require buckets of money and a good government to see that the taxes collected are well managed. Is it fair that the entrepreneurs, who generate jobs, are also able to find all sorts of mechanisms at their disposal to reduce their own personal tax obligations?
Let’s find some better ways to support business ventures. This might even help us to better define our Australian values.
Graeme Parncutt, Hawthorn
No ideas
Thank you, Jenna Price, for your in-depth search of One Nation’s policies (“I looked for One Nation’s policies. Here’s what I didn’t find”, 3/6).
As a political party claiming to have top billing as the “party of choice” for the electorate, it would appear that it lacks a coherent accounting of what truly matters to Australians – health and Medicare being No.1.
We deserve better, and I believe voters will reject Hanson’s ill-considered methods. As Price rightly says, they are more of a “permanent protest movement built on fear-driven rhetoric, rather than substantive solutions”.
Joyce Butcher, Williamstown
Different results
Jenna Price has scoured the One Nation website for coherent policies but she finds very little on core policies such as health. Many interviewed people are saying they may vote for One Nation to “try something different”. We can look across to the US where they have “tried something different”, and the world is still trying to come to terms with the results.
David Fry, Windsor
Face the consequences
The observation “Perhaps regulation could include polling subjects being tested … if they haven’t got a clue then don’t ask them to comment” (Letters, 3/6) should be extended to filter out my friends and neighbours who have no intention of supporting One Nation even though they profess (or hint) otherwise.
They are simply tired of being misled and deceived, fed up with extreme political correctness and reject “Yes23-style” directives – “We know best, just do as you are told”.
Labelling them racist if they question population and immigration policy has political consequences. The first, winding up others with utterances designed to provoke responses of shock, horror and disbelief from their highly educated comrades. The last? A “1” next to One Nation, but it won’t come to that.
Ronald Elliott, Sandringham
Protesters well aware
Ignorance means lacking knowledge or awareness of a topic. Charlie Pickering yesterday derided many of the people who protest against the current genocide in Gaza and the West Bank as “ignorant a lot of the time” (“Pickering joins criticism of Tame deal”, 3/6/26).
In fact, the opposite is true. Protesters are highly aware of the numbers of deaths and injuries caused by the IDF, the deplorable treatment of prisoners, the senseless destruction of homes, hospitals, and places of learning and apparent crimes against humanity: that is why they continue to turn out to support Palestinian people. I would suggest that it is he who is ignorant.
Elizabeth O’Connor, Ivanhoe East
Gaza outrage
I wish Charlie Pickering and other detractors would show similar outrage to the 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza as they have with the appointment of Grace Tame hosting a podcast series on the ABC.
Corrado Tavella, Rosslyn Park, SA
Rebate donation
I am donating my car registration rebate to the Liberal Party, and I urge others to do the same. Jacinta Allan’s government long ago forfeited any right to another term, and given the enormous deficit it has run up, it simply cannot afford to waste more money it doesn’t have on people who don’t need it.
The Liberals deserve their chance at running the state, but they will need every penny to see off the One Nation threat. There would be a delicious irony if Labor’s largesse was used to see it kicked out of office.
Greg Hardy, Upper Ferntree Gully
Condemn aggression
Peter Hartcher does not mince words about the originators of the disastrous wars in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf region (“Dud’s army: When hubris goes to war”, 2/6). Both conflicts have cost a huge loss of life and civil and economic infrastructure, and are grinding on in an endless stalemate due to the excessive and misplaced pride of Putin and Trump.
Similarly, the protagonists in the Levant seem incapable of recognising the many years of past and future trauma caused by the grievous, massive destruction in that region.
Other nations, including middle powers such as Australia, must become much more active in condemning reckless acts of aggression, including those initiated by “allies”. At the same time, they must do what they can to strengthen civil society and economies in the developing world to help reduce poverty and other precursors to unrest.
Andrew Trembath, Blackburn
Democracies kill too
In response to David French’s opinion piece (“Worst ideas are back to haunt us”, 3/5), which details the bloodshed caused by fascist governments. I support democracy but would note that the historical record is more complicated than a simple contrast between fascist and democratic states.
In my reading of world history, many nations that described themselves as democratic were responsible for immense suffering within their overseas empires. Massacres, forced starvation, repression, torture and other abuses committed under colonial rule have been extensively documented by historians. The victims of these democratic nations were no less dead because the governments responsible held elections at home.
Paul Caine, Glen Huntly
Facing the heat alone
Thank you to Bianca Hall for reporting on the scary El Nino event coming our way (“El Nino poised to heighten climate effects”, 3/5).
As Hall explains, with Australia already 1.5 degrees warmer than when records began, the impacts of an El Nino become even more severe. Rural and regional communities, in particular, need support to prepare for increased risks of fires, drought and extreme heat. But when the Albanese government isn’t even willing to properly tax the polluting gas companies driving climate change, it’s hard not to feel that ordinary Australians are being left to face the heat alone.
Karin Ruff, Yanakie
Corruption affects us all
I wholeheartedly agree with Robert Redlich, integrity experts and others calling to give IBAC follow-the-dollar powers greater use of public hearings, a broader definition of corruption, and adequate funding. These changes need to happen now and not after the state election.
I also believe we urgently need an investigation independent of government into the alleged corruption, rorting and illegal behaviour on Big Build projects.
I urge every Victorian MP and candidate in this year’s state election to remember their promise to serve the people of Victoria. Not just in the lead-up to the election when election promises fly thick and fast, but every day.
Corruption affects us all. Transparency International sums it up well: “Corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division and the environmental crisis.”
Yvonne Bowyer, Surrey Hills
Respect difference
At first glance, the article about Bianka Ismailovski choosing not to have children appears selfish (“No regrets in child-free life as baby bust bites”, 3/6). However, after deeper thought it is really a personal decision and everyone is different. That she has been called selfish by others shows how people do not respect difference.
The choice to have children is an important one and must be done freely – bringing children into our world, which is becoming more violent, is also a serious one. The irony is that many women long to have children and struggle with being childless. However, it is certainly an individual decision.
With the serious threat of climate change, and an increasingly violent world, it is not an ideal decision to bring children into it. As a parent and a grandparent, I worry for my family.
My children and grandchildren light up my world, but the world I am leaving them is a lot more troubled than the one I was born into.
Julie Ottobre, Brunswick East
Say you want a resolution
I’m sure Apple Corps wants the residents of Savile Row to let it be and allow the rooftop concert exhibit to be built (“Beatles museum ‘will block daylight’”, 2/6). However, if the residents choose to resist, they’ll have to work eight days a week, and with a little help from their friends, to take this sad song and make it better. It looks as if there is a long and winding road ahead. Help!
Rivkah Halik, Nunawading
AND ANOTHER THING
IBAC powers
By the time IBAC is convened in late 2027, the money trail will have completely evaporated.
Greg Lawes, Dingley Village
ANZ, AFL, MP and CFA are easy for me to add the words they represent. But IBAC was repeated at least 24 times in yesterday’s Age. Finding out the words was my mission. On the opinion/letters pages: Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission. Now I’m happy to read on.
Anne Hocking, Healesville
Electric vehicles
The arrival of the shipload of 5000electric vehicles means there will be 5000 fortunate new EV owners less affected by the non-arrival of the shiploads of diesel and petrol (“Arrival of BYD ship results in sea change in nation’s motoring”, 3/5).
Jenny Smithers, Ashburton
Lots of tradies’ electric utes are arriving in Australia from China. Will BYD mean “bring your dog”?
Ian Johnston, Mornington
Furthermore
The Americans are going to release 32 million mosquitoes (“Why Google plans to release 32 million mosquitoes”, 3/5). Like the cane toad experiment, what could possibly go wrong?
Myra Fisher, Brighton East
I wonder if all the economists who are concerned that the recent increase to the minimum wage may be inflationary will be knocking back their annual remuneration increases for the very same reason.
Paul Duffy, Ocean Grove
It would be a surprise if bosses did not predict doom and gloom every time there is a pay rise.
Marie Nash, Balwyn
Shane Wright tells us the 4.75 per cent rise to the minimum wage is an inflation problem. I would prefer to argue world inflation is a threat to workers if they don’t get a pay rise.
Ross Hosking, Blackwood, SA
Finally
How long before the used subs are downgraded to conventional subs? At the current rate, we’ll be lucky if we get delivered foot-long subs.
David Blom, Nunawading
