In the UnionsACT Sunday Focus newsletter, Guy Mosel points out some of the ways the Morrison government and its big business allies are already pushing a hard-line agenda — for example, by allowing bosses to ram through permanent wage and condition cuts. And now, Morrison is foreshadowing using coronavirus recovery as the excuse for a business-as-usual, “aggressive pro-business” agenda: “Senior government figures on Friday flagged the potential return to cutting the company tax rate for big business and a possible aggressive overhaul of the nation’s industrial relations framework.” The AFR observes [$] that this will give the Government the excuse it has been waiting for to implement dearly-held ideological beliefs that it suppressed to win the election: “[T]ax options include cutting the company tax rate (which would be an election promise breach)… The deregulation agenda will focus on ‘streamlining’ approvals, especially environmental approvals, and making inroads into industrial relations. Morrison promised before the election no significant changes to industrial relations”. The fight back must start now — if we wait until coronavirus restrictions are lifted, it will be too late.
19 April 2020