Just relations

The non-story on Liberal policy on - to use an old-fashioned term - industrial relations was badly handled and badly reported.

It was badly handled for two reasons:

1. Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott should have shut up about individual contracts. Oppositions don't get where they are by talking about what they're going to do in office: Kevin Rudd didn't in 2007, John Howard didn't in 1996, Bob Hawke didn't in 1983. Turnbull should have imposed some discipline on himself and on Abbott, who was wandering away from his portfolio area like some Parkinson's-riddled pensioner reeking of his own piss.


2. The Labor policy on industrial relations is pretty similar to that of the Fraser Government in about 1978, but without Ian Macphee or Bob Hawke. This is what they call "modernisation".

Just because this was the government's Line Of The Day doesn't mean that it was worth reporting. How did Dennis Ferguson jump the public housing queue? Why does that Pommy bloke who won "best job in the world" look like an Aardman claymation figure? Why aren't Indian investors piling into the Australian stock market? Do I have to ask these questions myself, or can we get a journalist onto this sort of thing?