I think we all know what the LNP think 'mature discussion' entails.
"Let's have a mature discussion about taxes"
"OOGA BOOGA CARBON TAX KILLING WORKING FAMILIES MINING TAX KILLING JOBS AAARGH"
Looks like the latest pitch is that they'll give a tax cut in return for ending penalty rates. Because it isn't like taxes will inevitably rise while penalty rates would be next to impossible to re-implement (leaving aside the proportions of money for the employee involved in each).
Exactly.
"Mature discussion" straight up attempts to discredit the position of "we don't need to do anything about penalty rates" from the get go.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
It is disturbing how low the price is to buy a politician in Australia.
Give em $5000 and they're dancing to your tune.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
The other thing about penalty rates is that they reached an all time high in exchange for some other concession. Turns out that the businesses want to keep their concessions while abandoning the penalty rates. Of course.
But I think they have been returned to the "normal" levels of just time and a half on public holidays instead of up to 2.5?
Goddamn it. So, the LNP over there, and National here get to campaign on being "good for the budget", while parties like the Greens here get constant shit for how terrible they would be while proposing this that would actually work.
Goddamn it. So, the LNP over there, and National here get to campaign on being "good for the budget", while parties like the Greens here get constant shit for how terrible they would be while proposing this that would actually work.
I really hate politics sometimes.
That isn't true, the party that wants to maybe keep the status quo is the extreme crazy nutter party with unworkable policies because that's what the papers told me.
People who need penalty rates the most are rarely making over the $18k tax free threshold anyway
The arguments they're making revolve entirely around "These businesses can't afford to pay penalty rates!" while completely ignoring the fact that people who get Sunday penalty rates often can't afford to go without them.
Credit where credit is due, Turnbull's rhetoric following the recent police station shooting has been approproately evenhanded, far from Abbott's screaming of terorism from the rooftops during the Martin Place siege. Supposedly processing on Nauru will also be accelerated, which is at least a silver lining on a shitty situation of their own making (if obviously a response to the high court challenge).
Once the senate and the house of representatives have sitting days on weekends, once politician's offices are open on weekends, once government departments, centrelink, etc etc are all open over weekends then maybe maybe I'll be more receptive to this "it's a 24/7 world and in the modern era weekends aren't important anymore" horseshit.
This is what bugs me the most about that rhetoric - the modern era is what we make of it. The implication what we should all get on our knees for our coroprate masters because, whelp, that's just the way The Future has to be is a very dystopian way of thinking. Technology should be making our lives better, damn it, not forcing a race to the bottom.
Speaking as someone currently living in a metropolis where shops do not open on Sundays, I think my life would be better if I could buy bread and milk on Sunday. First world problems, I know, but I'm not particularly disturbed by this advance of technology into everyday life. Maybe I don't quite understand what you're driving at here.
I don't know where he got the scorpions, or how he got them into my mattress.
At somebody else's expense? Nonsense. If you work on Sunday, you still get paid. I used to work Sunday mornings. That was to my benefit and the customers'.
I don't know where he got the scorpions, or how he got them into my mattress.
At somebody else's expense? Nonsense. If you work on Sunday, you still get paid. I used to work Sunday mornings. That was to my benefit and the customers'.
You got paid a lot more for working Sunday mornings.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
At somebody else's expense? Nonsense. If you work on Sunday, you still get paid. I used to work Sunday mornings. That was to my benefit and the customers'.
So they don't get to have a holiday, but you do.
But its okay, because you used to do that with your nice fat sunday pay.
Classy.
Without penalty rates, working on weekends is a normal workday while others get a holiday. It is not even remotely fair.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Yes. All those people working weekends, they are working seven days straight always at a single job and have no entitlement to holidays. This is a reasonable position from which to enter the debate.
Sure.
This is difficult, because there are several people in this debate and they're not all are taking the same position. So, to clarify: my response was mostly regarding
Once the senate and the house of representatives have sitting days on weekends, once politician's offices are open on weekends, once government departments, centrelink, etc etc are all open over weekends then maybe maybe I'll be more receptive to this "it's a 24/7 world and in the modern era weekends aren't important anymore" horseshit.
and Suriko's followup, which seems to suggest some kind of keeping the Sabbath sacred approach to commerce. Which I don't support. I don't think Sunday trading is slowly bringing about the ruin of the Australian good life.
I still hold that if you don't like working on weekends: don't. But there are tons of people who do. The easiest to identify are of course students, who keep odd weekday hours while studying, making it more convenient for them to work weekends. I suspect many of us can relate to this.
I don't know where he got the scorpions, or how he got them into my mattress.
Yes. All those people working weekends, they are working seven days straight always at a single job and have no entitlement to holidays. This is a reasonable position from which to enter the debate.
Sure.
This thing you are claiming I said. I did not say this thing.
You have this tendency towards strawmen. It makes it difficult to take you seriously.
You also have a different moral position from me, a position you find difficult to truly understand because whenever I try to express it pop out comes the strawmen.
You seem to have this odd idea that you are the only truly reasonable and balanced person in this debate. What this tells me is that you are confusing moral displeasure with capacity for reasoned judgement. I assure you, I can see all sides of a debate just the same as you. I make my comments from a position of having considered them all, and found a problem with it anyway.
You can't just read annoyed comments I make and then decide I'm an extremist in all things. That isn't how people work, and I'd like it if you stopped doing that.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
At somebody else's expense? Nonsense. If you work on Sunday, you still get paid. I used to work Sunday mornings. That was to my benefit and the customers'.
So they don't get to have a holiday, but you do.
But its okay, because you used to do that with your nice fat sunday pay.
Classy.
Without penalty rates, working on weekends is a normal workday while others get a holiday. It is not even remotely fair.
So here, you implied that people working weekends don't get to have holidays. If you meant something different, you should work on your writing. And you paired it with what is deliberately poorly-disguised attempt at an insult. So no, you stay classy.
Furthermore, your little attempts at psychoanalysing me are not getting any more accurate. I don't know if everyone else finds them as asinine as I do, but if they do, we'd all benefit if you knocked it off.
I don't know where he got the scorpions, or how he got them into my mattress.
The Black HunterThe key is a minimum of compromise, and a simple,unimpeachable reason to existRegistered Userregular
Solvent you're not filling in any blanks on your own, turning the whole debate into a constant restatement of old, long covered ground with different wording each time to fill gaps that should be filled with some simple intuition.
Getting Monday and Tuesday off isn't the same as getting Saturday and Sunday off.
I would be along every day off if it were in the middle of the week. Does it make perfect business sense? No, but it makes social sense and society deserves equal consideration to business interests.
If a business finds weekend pay too expensive, they should close on the weekend
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I gather from this you thought I was declaring myself superior in some fashion to other posters in the thread including yourself. This wasn't my intent. Rather than argue about what I really meant, I'll just try to put it another way: I am asking you to argue from a position of good faith and to assume that others have reasons for why they hold their opinions that are approached, by them, rationally. You might disagree with them, but accusing them of irrationality because you disagree with them is not arguing in good faith.
At somebody else's expense? Nonsense. If you work on Sunday, you still get paid. I used to work Sunday mornings. That was to my benefit and the customers'.
So they don't get to have a holiday, but you do.
But its okay, because you used to do that with your nice fat sunday pay.
Classy.
Without penalty rates, working on weekends is a normal workday while others get a holiday. It is not even remotely fair.
So here, you implied that people working weekends don't get to have holidays.
The example I was thinking of was a student studying full time, working a few hours on the evening on thursday night, and two shifts on the weekend. Where is their holiday? But instead you thought of this:
Yes. All those people working weekends, they are working seven days straight always at a single job and have no entitlement to holidays.
If you meant something different, you should work on your writing.
Oh yes, I admit I need to work on my writing. I'm always working on it. While I'm doing that, do you think you could consider more options when trying to work out what someone else is implying as well, since you don't just do this with me, and you frequently pair your mistaken interpretations with accusations of irrationality, which isn't arguing in good faith.
And you paired it with what is deliberately poorly-disguised attempt at an insult.
That was not intended to be disguised, I used that word in the same way as you might say "Uncool man. Uncool", ie I didn't intend it to be read as a strong insult, and wasn't aware that it would be read that way since I don't think of it that way. Since I seem to have offended you greatly, I apologise for that word choice.
Perhaps it a better way to say it would be that I have some fairly strong moral issues with your stated reasoning.
Many of the people currently working on the weekend are doing so because they cannot work a normal full time job (for example, studying full time), or simply can't get other work for various reasons due to barriers to employment, such as disability or lack of qualifications. Weekend work is most prelevant in industries that don't employ as heavily during regular business hours, such as hospitality or retail, so the jobs are heavily weekend loaded and based on shifts: more shifts, more employment opportunities, hence more chances for vulnerable or needy people to get some work that can pay their bills, since these jobs don't require hefty qualifications.
What you are advocating is a reduction in pay for those people, hurting their quality of life, for convenience. You point out that they will get paid: well yes, we know they get paid. The issue is they get paid less and that this will hurt them.
I used to live on a farm, where bread and milk was two hours away. The nearest town also closed on a sunday. We had to buy our everyday goods ahead of time. This is a fairly simple solution that did not require us to reduce the pay and thus quality of life of people who need to work on weekends to survive.
I think this is a problematic thing to support, and that your given justification isn't, from my point of view, one that renders it morally acceptable. I know you are working from a position of a rational self interest, but that is still, fundamentally, self-interest. I can't support your (or anyone elses) self-interested Sunday bread and milk buying over people who currently need the money to survive and don't have options elsewhere.
There's also the issue of protections full time and part time employees have that casual employees (who make up a major part of the workforce that these changes are intended to target, including places you get your bread and milk from) do not enjoy. They can be fired much more easily, with no notice, and without penalty rates there is less disincentive for employers to push their casual employees to work on weekends knowing that they don't dare refuse.
According to the fair work ombudsman:
A casual employee:
has no guaranteed hours of work
usually works irregular hours
doesn't get paid sick or annual leave
can end employment without notice, unless notice is required by a registered agreement, award or employment contract.
Casual employees have no annual or weekly holiday rights or entitlements, except for minor parental leave and carers leave. If they get asked to work weekends and they refuse, an employer can get someone who will and toss them out the door with no notice, legally. That puts a lot of unfair pressure on an employee to agree to such requests. I think that this is pretty likely to happen if penalty rates are reduced enough, and I don't really see anything in the current legal framework surrounding casual staff that would prevent this.
Furthermore, your little attempts at psychoanalysing me are not getting any more accurate. I don't know if everyone else finds them as asinine as I do, but if they do, we'd all benefit if you knocked it off.
I wasn't attempting to psychoanalyse you. Psychoanalysis is a specific therapeutic technique based on leading questioning, so if I was attempting to do that, I would be asking you questions like "why do you feel the need to bring up words related to rationality all the time?"
I was responding to this
This is a reasonable position from which to enter the debate. Sure.
which directly followed from a classic strawman. And this
earlier. As well as numerous other times you have used similar language when debating with others. In such cases you are implying the posters intelligence and rationality are questionable. Assuming that you believe the other person is being irrational is an obvious reading of the language you use: "nonsense" is unambiguous, for example. You have a tendency to use such language whenever you disagree with another person's take, ie frequently. So you clearly think a hell of a lot of people are being irrational. I don't know why you do this, and I don't care either, but pointing out that you do isn't "psychoanalysis." It's simple observation of your behavior and basic language comprehension. If you don't think this of other people, you should probably stop using that kind of language, because currently this is how you come across, and boy does it not mesh with your previous assurances that you are approaching things as reasonably and moderately as possible. In my experience, moderate and reasonable people generally don't go around accusing people of irrationality every time they disagree with them.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
As a person who has worked both full time during the week and on weekend shifts, and casual both during the week and on weekends, there is no way in hell I'd work on the weekend without overtime rates.
If fulltime, you get more access to things that are only open during the week on your weekdays off, but your social life eats shit and dies. If casual, you are working during the busiest periods and once again your social life takes a bullet because the VAST MAJORITY of people in casual jobs that are working on the weekend are doing so because they are busy during the week.
You point out that they will get paid: well yes, we know they get paid. The issue is they get paid less and that this will hurt them.
I used to live on a farm, where bread and milk was two hours away. The nearest town also closed on a sunday. We had to buy our everyday goods ahead of time. This is a fairly simple solution that did not require us to reduce the pay and thus quality of life of people who need to work on weekends to survive.
I had actually worked out how to ensure there's food in the house on Sundays myself, but thanks for your input.
I disagree with your assertion that you are not reducing the pay and quality of life of people who need to work on weekends to survive. And I find it difficult to believe that you are unable to see this, which is why I am terse in my responses on this issue. In your own construction, you say these people need to work on weekends to survive. Given that information, I fail to see how using the government to remove work opportunities for those people improves the situation. Perhaps explain it to me. Your argument, as written, says there are people who need to work weekends to survive. Your argument (saying that you bought bread and milk ahead of time, and the town closed Sunday) says that disallowing weekend trading is a solution that did not reduce the pay and quality of life of these people. So logically, you have people who need to work weekends to survive that cannot because there is no Sunday trading. Help me out by rephrasing this argument in a way that shows the improvement in quality of life for the people who need to work weekends.
I can't support your (or anyone elses) self-interested Sunday bread and milk buying over people who currently need the money to survive and don't have options elsewhere.
False dichotomy. You don't need to take only one or the other.
I was thinking of was a student studying full time, working a few hours on the evening on thursday night, and two shifts on the weekend. Where is their holiday?
Strikes me as different but irrelevant. How is Sunday trading the problem with that scenario? Remove Sunday trading. What does that do to the scenario? Now the student has to work, say, a Tuesday and Wednesday shift instead. They have a holiday Sunday. If they prefer this, why weren't they doing it already? Alternatively, if they do not prefer this, because it makes them tired as crap throughout the week, then they're worse off because they can't work a Sunday shift anymore. The problem of them not getting a holiday is only tangentially related to Sunday trading. The problem of them not getting a holiday is because being a full time student and working to support yourself is hard. A better approach to this problem lies in considering student support networks and entitlements.
As a person who has worked both full time during the week and on weekend shifts, and casual both during the week and on weekends, there is no way in hell I'd work on the weekend without overtime rates.
I support this wholeheartedly. If you don't want to work on weekends, you totally shouldn't.
As @The Black Hunter suggested, I will fill in my position more completely.
This particular chain started off with @-SPI- 's comment that "Once the senate and the house of representatives have sitting days on weekends, once politician's offices are open on weekends, once government departments, centrelink, etc etc are all open over weekends..." I absolutely think that Centrelink should be open on Saturdays, and I suspect part of the blame for the fact that it's not lies with the recent attempts to realign government department pay and conditions along whole-of-APS lines. As for politicians' offices, it would surprise me if none of them were open for at least limited hours on weekends, but I assume it's pretty much up to the individual member. I don't intend to look up all State and Federal pollies to check. But is there that much demand for it? If there are a bunch of people wanting to voice their concerns in person on weekends then sure, they should look at opening weekends too, but it strikes me as less pressing than something like Centrelink. Opening hours on weekends should be driven by the demand for such. I doubt that there's a lot to be gained by having parliament sit on weekends. However much you hate them, the life of a politician does involve an awful lot of out-of-hours work already. Of course, they get paid to compensate for this.
If a business finds weekend pay too expensive, they should close on the weekend
...and of course the real meat, which is penalty rates, which I don't think I raised yet. Perhaps @Morninglord will correct me.
Anyway, I agree with this. If you can't open weekends because it's too expensive, close. But let's not pretend this is costless. The price of opening is determined by government fiat, not by the people actually involved in and affected by the decision. Before I left Aus, there were local businesses not opening on public holidays (mostly in hospitality) because it was too expensive to pay regulated wages. Sundays were generally not the issue. On public holidays, however, businesses wanted to open. Not only that, but their staff wanted to work on those days. Having a business that wants to pay its workers, wants to open in order to service demand, and having staff that want to work and need the money but can't do it due to an arbitrary rule that their wage bill for the day must be 250% of what it is on other days involves an actual loss that hurts people.
I have softened my position on this in recent years, by the way. I'm not against regulated penalty rates. I recognise the role of politics and hence government in setting out social norms that can help bind us on what are otherwise divisive questions debated between laborers and capitalists. But I doubt they're currently at the right level. That said, it's unfortunate that so many of the businesses affected here are small businesses, and thus make arguments without a lot of good supporting evidence. Now, does that mean there is no good evidence? Maybe. But in my experience with small businesses, it's more likely because they don't have the administrative bandwidth to make a good case, and even if they did they wouldn't have the technical know-how. Furnish me with more information if you've got it!
Spoiler for personal information of limited relevance.
To provide further information on my personal situation, the award I used to be under dictated time-and-a-half on Sundays. And I could only work 3.5 hours, because that was as long as the business opened for (combination of lack of demand for Sunday afternoons, and also wage costs). That wage rate didn't, and still doesn't, seem unreasonable to me. I'd probably have worked for less, because I liked the job, but it's a while ago so who knows really. I would have liked more hours. I do know that if the rates were double time or higher there's no way the business could have afforded to open on Sundays.
I don't know where he got the scorpions, or how he got them into my mattress.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Thankyou for that much more reasonable response Solvent. It was a pleasure to read.
In the interests of the providing the same, I would like to wait until I have the time to craft more than a rushed reply, hopefully this afternoon.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
My point was that the key argument put forth by the government and other opponents to penalty rates is that in today's 24/7 connected world that weekends no longer have any special significance and therefore don't deserve any paid compensation if a person works during these times. If that is the case, and weekends have no special purpose or significance compared to any other day then why is parliament closed, or politician's offices (and I specifically emailed minister's offices who were outspoken against penalty rates last time this came up, and the ones that replied confirmed they would be closed on weekends and public holidays.) or other government services?
The point of the government example is that the key contention of weekends and public holidays being no different to normal working days has more implications than just penalty rates. If weekends are indistinguishable from weekdays and deserve no special consideration or compensation then there is no reasonable argument for why parliament shouldn't have sitting days on sundays compared to wednesdays, since there's no real distinction between the two days. One cannot argue that weekend opening should be driven by demand because the concept of the "weekend" no longer has significance, one might as well adjust tuesday opening hours due to demand.
I find the argument dishonest. Or rather logically inconsistent.
Weekends and public holidays do still have meaning and significance, even in our 24/7 world. How much is a different argument and one I think has more merit, but ultimately I don't for a moment believe that how relevant weekends are is actually a motivating factor for the politicians against penalty rates anyway, which goes back to the dishonesty of the argument. That's were the annoyance comes in, the "weekends don't mean anything blah blah 24/7 connected world" argument is rubbish and undercuts the much more important debate that you touch on @Solvent , how to balance the needs of businesses and the reasonable compensation and entitlements of employees.
Trade Minister Tim Groser acted unlawfully in withholding some information about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the High Court has ruled.
Anti-TPP activist and University of Auckland academic Professor Jane Kelsey and others sought a judicial review of Mr Groser's decision to reject an Official Information Act (OIA) request for eight categories of documents which related to the 12-nation trade deal.
In a judgement released this morning, Justice David Collins said Mr Groser failed to follow the rules set out in the Official Information Act before refusing her request.
"When the Minister refused Professor Kelsey's request, neither he nor his officials assessed each piece of information requested against the criteria in the Act for withholding official information.
"Instead, the Minister adopted a 'blanket approach' to the request based upon his knowledge of the categories of documents requested by Professor Kelsey. I have concluded this approach did not comply with the Act."
Mr Groser was told to reconsider his response to six of the eight categories of information.
Professor Kelsey said her decision to seek a judicial review had been vindicated.
"The Minister's approach epitomises the contempt for democratic processes and accountability that has pervaded these negotiations," she said in a statement.
But a six month deadline imposed by the court for further orders was "cold comfort" because it would fall after the negotiations had been completed.
"[Mr Groser's] unlawful approach in circumventing the Official Information Act appears to have achieved its goal," Professor Kelsey said.
New Zealand detainees were given little hope of returning to their homes in Australia following a meeting between Prime Minister John Key and his trans-Tasman counterpart in Auckland on Saturday.
However, Kiwis who grew up in Australia were thrown a sweetener with the offer of student loans across the ditch.
New Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed to pour more resources into dealing with detainees and speeding up the appeal process for those wanting to stay in Australia.
But Turnbull, on his first international visit since becoming prime minister in September, stood firm on the controversial policy of cancelling people's visas if they've been cumulatively sentenced to 12 months or more in prison.
Up to 1000 criminals could be sent back to New Zealand in the next five years, despite having few or no ties with the country.
"The number of New Zealanders whose visas will be revoked has been high because the law came in at the end of last year and there has been, in effect, a backlog," he said.
I'm not really sure how I would have felt even if Key had been successful. The goal was to make Kiwis the exception to the law. Which is good I guess, but the law itself still sucks and it seems kind of self serving to just get an exception for us.
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WarcryI'm getting my shit pushed in here!AustraliaRegistered Userregular
I mean really, what the hell do you need this entire fucking offshore processing bullshit for?
Sorry, not a very productive post, considering we all know the answer is that, against all reason, this is considered popular with a large bloc of voters, but surely at some point they're actually going to have to confront what it entails, and realise that it's disgusting on basically every level.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
However an Immigration source said that Abyan did in fact see counsellors and doctors, as well as nurses, when she was in Australia. The source declined to reveal just how Abyan communicated her wish not have an abortion.
Having an anonymous source confirm that you were following the law is all kinds of shady. "Hey, we totally did the right thing, but don't quote me on that."
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
However an Immigration source said that Abyan did in fact see counsellors and doctors, as well as nurses, when she was in Australia. The source declined to reveal just how Abyan communicated her wish not have an abortion.
Having an anonymous source confirm that you were following the law is all kinds of shady. "Hey, we totally did the right thing, but don't quote me on that."
"we totally did the right thing and when it is revealed that we didn't and that I am lying I don't want my name dragged through the press"
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
However an Immigration source said that Abyan did in fact see counsellors and doctors, as well as nurses, when she was in Australia. The source declined to reveal just how Abyan communicated her wish not have an abortion.
Having an anonymous source confirm that you were following the law is all kinds of shady. "Hey, we totally did the right thing, but don't quote me on that."
"we totally did the right thing and when it is revealed that we didn't and that I am lying I don't want my name dragged through the press"
At this point I expect Tunbull can claim he got a doctorate and looked after her himself, and nothing will come of it.
I mean really, what the hell do you need this entire fucking offshore processing bullshit for?
Sorry, not a very productive post, considering we all know the answer is that, against all reason, this is considered popular with a large bloc of voters, but surely at some point they're actually going to have to confront what it entails, and realise that it's disgusting on basically every level.
How do you think those of us that are against this shit feel?
Our country is having its name and reputation summarily fucked all to hell, and there is very little we can do about it. Our tax dollars are going to fund these atrocities, and there is basically nothing we can do about it. We protest, we write and sign petitions, we write letters to our members of parliament, only for it all to be completely ignored.
Believe me when I say I am EXTREMELY frustrated with our federal government, and that these people literally sicken me on a very visceral level.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
It sickens me more that I pass people on the street everyday who probably support it out of a toxic mixture of ignorance, apathy, and a distorted understanding of "Ozzie ideals"
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
It sickens me more that I pass people on the street everyday who probably support it out of a toxic mixture of ignorance, apathy, and a distorted understanding of "Ozzie ideals"
"'Straya mate, fit in or fuck off!"
Second verse of the national anthem:
For those who've come across the seas/
We've boundless plains to share
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The Black HunterThe key is a minimum of compromise, and a simple,unimpeachable reason to existRegistered Userregular
It just seems so bizarre to be back here after what we should have learnt after what happened in Cronulla. The same shitty use of language by the government has empowered the same shitty block of xenophobes, only now it's Muslims instead of the Lebanese. A very disheartening sight is seeing a lot of people from groups who were hard done by previously now taking part in the constant stream of "THEY DON'T BELONG".
Posts
Exactly.
"Mature discussion" straight up attempts to discredit the position of "we don't need to do anything about penalty rates" from the get go.
Give em $5000 and they're dancing to your tune.
But I think they have been returned to the "normal" levels of just time and a half on public holidays instead of up to 2.5?
I really hate politics sometimes.
That isn't true, the party that wants to maybe keep the status quo is the extreme crazy nutter party with unworkable policies because that's what the papers told me.
Excuse me while I bang my head into a wall.
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The arguments they're making revolve entirely around "These businesses can't afford to pay penalty rates!" while completely ignoring the fact that people who get Sunday penalty rates often can't afford to go without them.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Those jeering voices are party Liberals.
Credit where credit is due, Turnbull's rhetoric following the recent police station shooting has been approproately evenhanded, far from Abbott's screaming of terorism from the rooftops during the Martin Place siege. Supposedly processing on Nauru will also be accelerated, which is at least a silver lining on a shitty situation of their own making (if obviously a response to the high court challenge).
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
You got paid a lot more for working Sunday mornings.
So they don't get to have a holiday, but you do.
But its okay, because you used to do that with your nice fat sunday pay.
Classy.
Without penalty rates, working on weekends is a normal workday while others get a holiday. It is not even remotely fair.
Sure.
This is difficult, because there are several people in this debate and they're not all are taking the same position. So, to clarify: my response was mostly regarding
and Suriko's followup, which seems to suggest some kind of keeping the Sabbath sacred approach to commerce. Which I don't support. I don't think Sunday trading is slowly bringing about the ruin of the Australian good life.
I still hold that if you don't like working on weekends: don't. But there are tons of people who do. The easiest to identify are of course students, who keep odd weekday hours while studying, making it more convenient for them to work weekends. I suspect many of us can relate to this.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
This thing you are claiming I said. I did not say this thing.
You have this tendency towards strawmen. It makes it difficult to take you seriously.
You also have a different moral position from me, a position you find difficult to truly understand because whenever I try to express it pop out comes the strawmen.
You seem to have this odd idea that you are the only truly reasonable and balanced person in this debate. What this tells me is that you are confusing moral displeasure with capacity for reasoned judgement. I assure you, I can see all sides of a debate just the same as you. I make my comments from a position of having considered them all, and found a problem with it anyway.
You can't just read annoyed comments I make and then decide I'm an extremist in all things. That isn't how people work, and I'd like it if you stopped doing that.
So here, you implied that people working weekends don't get to have holidays. If you meant something different, you should work on your writing. And you paired it with what is deliberately poorly-disguised attempt at an insult. So no, you stay classy.
Furthermore, your little attempts at psychoanalysing me are not getting any more accurate. I don't know if everyone else finds them as asinine as I do, but if they do, we'd all benefit if you knocked it off.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
Getting Monday and Tuesday off isn't the same as getting Saturday and Sunday off.
I would be along every day off if it were in the middle of the week. Does it make perfect business sense? No, but it makes social sense and society deserves equal consideration to business interests.
If a business finds weekend pay too expensive, they should close on the weekend
I gather from this you thought I was declaring myself superior in some fashion to other posters in the thread including yourself. This wasn't my intent. Rather than argue about what I really meant, I'll just try to put it another way: I am asking you to argue from a position of good faith and to assume that others have reasons for why they hold their opinions that are approached, by them, rationally. You might disagree with them, but accusing them of irrationality because you disagree with them is not arguing in good faith.
The example I was thinking of was a student studying full time, working a few hours on the evening on thursday night, and two shifts on the weekend. Where is their holiday? But instead you thought of this: which doesn't naturally follow from what I said.
Oh yes, I admit I need to work on my writing. I'm always working on it. While I'm doing that, do you think you could consider more options when trying to work out what someone else is implying as well, since you don't just do this with me, and you frequently pair your mistaken interpretations with accusations of irrationality, which isn't arguing in good faith.
That was not intended to be disguised, I used that word in the same way as you might say "Uncool man. Uncool", ie I didn't intend it to be read as a strong insult, and wasn't aware that it would be read that way since I don't think of it that way. Since I seem to have offended you greatly, I apologise for that word choice.
Perhaps it a better way to say it would be that I have some fairly strong moral issues with your stated reasoning.
Many of the people currently working on the weekend are doing so because they cannot work a normal full time job (for example, studying full time), or simply can't get other work for various reasons due to barriers to employment, such as disability or lack of qualifications. Weekend work is most prelevant in industries that don't employ as heavily during regular business hours, such as hospitality or retail, so the jobs are heavily weekend loaded and based on shifts: more shifts, more employment opportunities, hence more chances for vulnerable or needy people to get some work that can pay their bills, since these jobs don't require hefty qualifications.
What you are advocating is a reduction in pay for those people, hurting their quality of life, for convenience. You point out that they will get paid: well yes, we know they get paid. The issue is they get paid less and that this will hurt them.
I used to live on a farm, where bread and milk was two hours away. The nearest town also closed on a sunday. We had to buy our everyday goods ahead of time. This is a fairly simple solution that did not require us to reduce the pay and thus quality of life of people who need to work on weekends to survive.
I think this is a problematic thing to support, and that your given justification isn't, from my point of view, one that renders it morally acceptable. I know you are working from a position of a rational self interest, but that is still, fundamentally, self-interest. I can't support your (or anyone elses) self-interested Sunday bread and milk buying over people who currently need the money to survive and don't have options elsewhere.
There's also the issue of protections full time and part time employees have that casual employees (who make up a major part of the workforce that these changes are intended to target, including places you get your bread and milk from) do not enjoy. They can be fired much more easily, with no notice, and without penalty rates there is less disincentive for employers to push their casual employees to work on weekends knowing that they don't dare refuse.
According to the fair work ombudsman:
Casual employees have no annual or weekly holiday rights or entitlements, except for minor parental leave and carers leave. If they get asked to work weekends and they refuse, an employer can get someone who will and toss them out the door with no notice, legally. That puts a lot of unfair pressure on an employee to agree to such requests. I think that this is pretty likely to happen if penalty rates are reduced enough, and I don't really see anything in the current legal framework surrounding casual staff that would prevent this.
I wasn't attempting to psychoanalyse you. Psychoanalysis is a specific therapeutic technique based on leading questioning, so if I was attempting to do that, I would be asking you questions like "why do you feel the need to bring up words related to rationality all the time?"
I was responding to this which directly followed from a classic strawman. And this earlier. As well as numerous other times you have used similar language when debating with others. In such cases you are implying the posters intelligence and rationality are questionable. Assuming that you believe the other person is being irrational is an obvious reading of the language you use: "nonsense" is unambiguous, for example. You have a tendency to use such language whenever you disagree with another person's take, ie frequently. So you clearly think a hell of a lot of people are being irrational. I don't know why you do this, and I don't care either, but pointing out that you do isn't "psychoanalysis." It's simple observation of your behavior and basic language comprehension. If you don't think this of other people, you should probably stop using that kind of language, because currently this is how you come across, and boy does it not mesh with your previous assurances that you are approaching things as reasonably and moderately as possible. In my experience, moderate and reasonable people generally don't go around accusing people of irrationality every time they disagree with them.
If fulltime, you get more access to things that are only open during the week on your weekdays off, but your social life eats shit and dies. If casual, you are working during the busiest periods and once again your social life takes a bullet because the VAST MAJORITY of people in casual jobs that are working on the weekend are doing so because they are busy during the week.
I had actually worked out how to ensure there's food in the house on Sundays myself, but thanks for your input.
I disagree with your assertion that you are not reducing the pay and quality of life of people who need to work on weekends to survive. And I find it difficult to believe that you are unable to see this, which is why I am terse in my responses on this issue. In your own construction, you say these people need to work on weekends to survive. Given that information, I fail to see how using the government to remove work opportunities for those people improves the situation. Perhaps explain it to me. Your argument, as written, says there are people who need to work weekends to survive. Your argument (saying that you bought bread and milk ahead of time, and the town closed Sunday) says that disallowing weekend trading is a solution that did not reduce the pay and quality of life of these people. So logically, you have people who need to work weekends to survive that cannot because there is no Sunday trading. Help me out by rephrasing this argument in a way that shows the improvement in quality of life for the people who need to work weekends.
False dichotomy. You don't need to take only one or the other.
I don't agree that was a strawman. Your statement "So they don't get to have a holiday, but you do" was pretty unambiguous. Your clarification: Strikes me as different but irrelevant. How is Sunday trading the problem with that scenario? Remove Sunday trading. What does that do to the scenario? Now the student has to work, say, a Tuesday and Wednesday shift instead. They have a holiday Sunday. If they prefer this, why weren't they doing it already? Alternatively, if they do not prefer this, because it makes them tired as crap throughout the week, then they're worse off because they can't work a Sunday shift anymore. The problem of them not getting a holiday is only tangentially related to Sunday trading. The problem of them not getting a holiday is because being a full time student and working to support yourself is hard. A better approach to this problem lies in considering student support networks and entitlements.
As @The Black Hunter suggested, I will fill in my position more completely.
This particular chain started off with @-SPI- 's comment that "Once the senate and the house of representatives have sitting days on weekends, once politician's offices are open on weekends, once government departments, centrelink, etc etc are all open over weekends..." I absolutely think that Centrelink should be open on Saturdays, and I suspect part of the blame for the fact that it's not lies with the recent attempts to realign government department pay and conditions along whole-of-APS lines. As for politicians' offices, it would surprise me if none of them were open for at least limited hours on weekends, but I assume it's pretty much up to the individual member. I don't intend to look up all State and Federal pollies to check. But is there that much demand for it? If there are a bunch of people wanting to voice their concerns in person on weekends then sure, they should look at opening weekends too, but it strikes me as less pressing than something like Centrelink. Opening hours on weekends should be driven by the demand for such. I doubt that there's a lot to be gained by having parliament sit on weekends. However much you hate them, the life of a politician does involve an awful lot of out-of-hours work already. Of course, they get paid to compensate for this.
This all eventually brings us to this: ...and of course the real meat, which is penalty rates, which I don't think I raised yet. Perhaps @Morninglord will correct me.
Anyway, I agree with this. If you can't open weekends because it's too expensive, close. But let's not pretend this is costless. The price of opening is determined by government fiat, not by the people actually involved in and affected by the decision. Before I left Aus, there were local businesses not opening on public holidays (mostly in hospitality) because it was too expensive to pay regulated wages. Sundays were generally not the issue. On public holidays, however, businesses wanted to open. Not only that, but their staff wanted to work on those days. Having a business that wants to pay its workers, wants to open in order to service demand, and having staff that want to work and need the money but can't do it due to an arbitrary rule that their wage bill for the day must be 250% of what it is on other days involves an actual loss that hurts people.
I have softened my position on this in recent years, by the way. I'm not against regulated penalty rates. I recognise the role of politics and hence government in setting out social norms that can help bind us on what are otherwise divisive questions debated between laborers and capitalists. But I doubt they're currently at the right level. That said, it's unfortunate that so many of the businesses affected here are small businesses, and thus make arguments without a lot of good supporting evidence. Now, does that mean there is no good evidence? Maybe. But in my experience with small businesses, it's more likely because they don't have the administrative bandwidth to make a good case, and even if they did they wouldn't have the technical know-how. Furnish me with more information if you've got it!
Spoiler for personal information of limited relevance.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
Because so far everytime a company could exploit something they do, and it affects the most vulnerable demographics the worst.
i.e. Zero hour contracts
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
In the interests of the providing the same, I would like to wait until I have the time to craft more than a rushed reply, hopefully this afternoon.
The point of the government example is that the key contention of weekends and public holidays being no different to normal working days has more implications than just penalty rates. If weekends are indistinguishable from weekdays and deserve no special consideration or compensation then there is no reasonable argument for why parliament shouldn't have sitting days on sundays compared to wednesdays, since there's no real distinction between the two days. One cannot argue that weekend opening should be driven by demand because the concept of the "weekend" no longer has significance, one might as well adjust tuesday opening hours due to demand.
I find the argument dishonest. Or rather logically inconsistent.
Weekends and public holidays do still have meaning and significance, even in our 24/7 world. How much is a different argument and one I think has more merit, but ultimately I don't for a moment believe that how relevant weekends are is actually a motivating factor for the politicians against penalty rates anyway, which goes back to the dishonesty of the argument. That's were the annoyance comes in, the "weekends don't mean anything blah blah 24/7 connected world" argument is rubbish and undercuts the much more important debate that you touch on @Solvent , how to balance the needs of businesses and the reasonable compensation and entitlements of employees.
So, it appears they chartered a flight to avoid a potential court injunction?
Is that as outright an avoidance of the law as it appears, or am I missing something?
In other news:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/73113955/australia-offers-little-hope-to-new-zealand-detainees
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/73114557/key-pleads-kiwis-case-turnbull-says-no-diplomatic-dance-goes-through-the-motions
I'm not really sure how I would have felt even if Key had been successful. The goal was to make Kiwis the exception to the law. Which is good I guess, but the law itself still sucks and it seems kind of self serving to just get an exception for us.
Can you guys, I dont know, stop this shit?
I mean really, what the hell do you need this entire fucking offshore processing bullshit for?
Sorry, not a very productive post, considering we all know the answer is that, against all reason, this is considered popular with a large bloc of voters, but surely at some point they're actually going to have to confront what it entails, and realise that it's disgusting on basically every level.
Having an anonymous source confirm that you were following the law is all kinds of shady. "Hey, we totally did the right thing, but don't quote me on that."
At this point I expect Tunbull can claim he got a doctorate and looked after her himself, and nothing will come of it.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
How do you think those of us that are against this shit feel?
Our country is having its name and reputation summarily fucked all to hell, and there is very little we can do about it. Our tax dollars are going to fund these atrocities, and there is basically nothing we can do about it. We protest, we write and sign petitions, we write letters to our members of parliament, only for it all to be completely ignored.
Believe me when I say I am EXTREMELY frustrated with our federal government, and that these people literally sicken me on a very visceral level.
"'Straya mate, fit in or fuck off!"
Second verse of the national anthem:
For those who've come across the seas/
We've boundless plains to share