Dignity of Work

26 June 2017

The Rudd Government’s 2009 overhaul of Australia’s industrial relations regime represented a substantial reversal of almost two decades of reform. Australia’s trajectory towards decentralised wage-setting directly between employers and employees was arrested in favour of a system with government and trade unions at its core. The reregulation of the labour market by the Fair Work regime (‘Fair Work’) has not

26 June 2017

“Fair Work has been a disaster for our economy, for businesses and, importantly, for thousands of Australian workers,” said Gideon Rozner, research fellow at the free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. The IPA Dignity of Work Project has today released its first major report: Fair Work and the Right to Work by IPA research fellow Gideon Rozner.

29 March 2017

Free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs has welcomed the direction of the Productivity Commission’s Draft Report into Alternative Superannuation Default Models but will urge it to go further in its Final Report. “The IPA believes that all Australians should have the freedom to choose their superannuation fund and that there should be no role for an employer,

23 February 2017

“It is encouraging that the Fair Work Commission has moved in the right direction to make weekend work more secure,” says Aaron Lane, Legal Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. “Penalty rates are a penalty on jobs. The higher the penalty, the higher the barriers are into employment – putting the job market further out of reach for the

1 December 2016

  Uber and Airbnb are part of a wider market revolution changing the way the world does business, writes Evan Mulholland.  The last few decades have delivered us a monumental shift in how we receive goods and services. Disruption has enabled people to get what they want, at a price and delivery time that works for them. We often delve

1 December 2016

Australia has a 21st century workforce labouring under a 19th century industrial relations system, writes Brett Hogan.     Better health, housing, communications, education and transport options allow more people to make more decisions for themselves, helping to break down the notion of ‘class’. Defining a person by where they live, or what they or their parents do for work, is

22 November 2016

The passage through Parliament of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Bill in the early hours of this morning has been warmly welcomed by free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. “Australia’s workplace relations laws should ensure that as far as possible, the duties imposed on unions and employer organisations and penalties for non-compliance are equal to those that

4 November 2016

What Ardent Leisure did last week says a lot about Australia’s corporate culture. Two days before its scheduled annual general meeting four people were killed in an accident at Dreamworld, a Gold Coast theme park owned by the company. The annual general meeting went ahead and shareholders voted to award the chief executive a bonus. Instead of focusing all of

26 October 2016

Enterprise bargaining requires negotiation from both sides. The government’s policy provides the flexibility for this to occur on the employer side. This is in stark contrast to the public sector unions’ bargaining policy, which, as the IPA understands, has objected to every single proposed APS agreement – including those agreements which have ultimately resulted in approval from employees. The IPA’s

14 October 2016

Voters in the ACT have a stark choice this weekend: Jeremy Hanson and the Canberra Liberals, or four more years of a government notoriously beholden to trade unions (even by Labor standards). Canberrans only have to look south to see what a union-dominated government looks like. Victoria’s situation is so dire that Metropolitan Fire Brigade chief Peter Rau resigned recently