EDITORIAL COMMENT.

• Author: Ayres, Philip
• Position: Editorial
• Pages: 5(3)

OUR NEW GOVERNMENT: PROGNOSIS, WARNING

Australia moves into a new period with the election of the Rudd Labor Government. Some things will change for the worse. On the industrial relations front we are likely to see a return to the bad old days when no employer could dismiss an incompetent employee without much difficulty and the passage of much wasted time. Mr Rudd's promise to slash the size of the bureaucracy is to be welcomed, and he has been touted as an "economic conservative" determined to resist inflationary pressures, but it remains to be seen whether he will be strong enough to restrain a newly confident union movement out for whatever it can get by indirect or direct action. After the new government's honeymoon period there will be massive pressure for wage hikes, which cannot help but fuel inflation and higher interest rates.

We are in for massive doses of hyperbole on the dubious subject of global warming, with costly consequences for the economy. On the defence front we are unlikely to see much damage done--Labor has a reasonably sound historical record on defence. Labor's much-touted "reforms" in the education sector will consist in making more students computer "literate" while ignoring real literacy/illiteracy. Had it been re-elected, the Howard Government would have introduced a new history...