Fed Govt ‘nonsensical’ migration policy ignores WA growth potential, favours SA instead, says WA Minister

It was astounding that skilled migrants who arrived on a skilled regional sponsored visa were allowed to live in metropolitan Adelaide under a regional classification, but migrants in Western Australia, under the same scheme, had to live in regional areas for three years – in other words, they could not live in Perth, said Margaret Quirk, Labor’s Minister for Corrective Services, in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly (5/9/2007).

NSW backbench rebellion-campaign: ‘make sure every minister knows how pissed off the workers will be’ if electricity generators, retailers sold

According to Andrew West, Industrial Relations reporter, the secretary of Unions NSW, John Robertson, said Professor Tony Owen’s report, published 11 September, could lead to job losses and high prices for consumers. “I don’t think the private sector is in a position to deliver electricity in NSW without having an impact on workers or price for the consumers,” Robertson said. “It looks like some of the assumptions… made haven’t been made with any real detailed analysis, ” reported The Sydney Morning Herald, 12/9/2007, p. 4

Fears price – rise of 600 per cent: Robertson said unions would negotiate in good faith with Premier Morris Iemma over the Owen recommendations but warned that in other countries privatising electricity had sent prices for consumers soaring. “One state in the US saw an increase in electricity prices of 600 per cent after three years,” he said. Mr Robertson argued that the publicly owned electricity supplier had delivered reliable services, unlike privatised suppliers in cities such as Auckland. “We don’t have blackouts. It’s not like Auckland, where the electricity in the CBD went out for nine weeks.”

Bring back the APEC fence: The assistant NSW secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, Paul Sinclair, told the Herald the unions would step up their lobbing of ALP backbenchers, but his colleague, Nick Lewocki, the NSW secretary of the Rail Tram and Bus Union, was more direct. “We are going to stir up a bit of a backbench rebellion,” he said, “But before that, we are going to…make sure that every minister who is responsible for our industries knows how pissed off the workers and the mums and dads of this state will be if they start privatising. Mr Iemma doesn’t seem to have the strength or experience to understand that he won the last state election not only because of the Federal Government’s industrial relations policies but because he was up against a Liberal leader who wanted to privatise assets.”

The Sydney Morning Herald, 12/9/2007, p. 4