Member special: Post-debate election update

Most commentators see last week as being won by Labor. Basically, this comes about because the commentators assess the parties on the performance on a daily basis – did they get the issues they wanted to talk about up? Was time spent defensively dealing with issues they do badly on?

On that point Abbott had to deal with Work Choices and Gillard with the return of the former PM.

Today’s Newspoll is interesting as the poll has come back much more to trend – the coalition primary is at 42 and the ALP at 40 giving a 52/48 two party preferred for Labor. The Green primary vote is at 12% with a preference deal signed between the Greens and the ALP this will advantage the Greens certainly in the Senate and the ALP in marginal seats (if Green voters follow the How to Vote card which isn’t done and dusted).

B    The Debate

The debate was scored by most commentators as either neutral or a narrow win for Abbott (although the 9 worm loved Gillard).
The public do not engage much in the debate but they do notice the headline issue of who won or lost. Importantly, for the parties there were no major mistakes which could take them off message.


C    What happened this week of interest to CCF members?

Thus far the Campaign has been pretty low key policy wise. The major issues of relevance to us:

(i)    Employment and Workplace Relations

The Coalition announced that it would not change the current Workplace Relations Law – in other words the Unfair dismissal changes will stay.
This is a significant concession as until now the Coalition was clear that it would remove this obligation from small business.

(ii)    Population and Immigration Policy

This is a highly contentious issue. This is not directly relevant to us save and except that as constructors of infrastructure we would want to encourage Governments to plan both new projects and routine maintenance.
Traditionally, our members have not been big users of skilled migration (there are disincentives in the system in relation to this) and our issues in skills tend to be around training incentives and training infrastructure.


(iii)    Skills and Skills Training

Labor released a policy “ the National Trade Cadetship”. From 2012, students from years 9 to 12 will be offered new National Trade Cadetships  (NTC) as a training option under the National Curriculum.  This is designed to give students credits towards apprenticeships and other training and would be like the academic pathways for students wanting to become professionals like lawyers and doctors.

There will be two streams of cadetships: Foundation Cadetships which will focus on essential work readiness skills and laying the foundation for further training and; National Trade Cadetships - Preapprentice - which will focus on a specific trade or occupation. The NTC is to be delivered in Trades Training Centres or by Registered Training Organisations (RTO’s)  where Trade Training Centres are not yet available.

We know from work with members that the pathway from school to our careers is poor. Our employees come to us later in life and often as a second career.  This is an area where we will need to work closely with our Skills Council and other employer and industry bodies to make sure we can take advantage of this iniatitive.

A copy of the policy is available at www.alp.org.au

In making annoucements in relation to cost savings the Coalition also committed to discontinuing  the Productivity Places Program at $1071 Million over 4 years.

We will need to see what the Coalition is proposing in relation to Skills in that they have committed in their Principles Document to the importance of Vocational Education – see Coalitions Economic Principles at www.liberal.org.au

(iv)    Environment

The Coalition had previously announced its direct action plan on climate change. The Labor Party has announced that it will be seeking further consensus around Climate Change through the use of a Citizens Assembly as well as a number of incentives such as the cash for clunkers (based on the US scheme introducted by President Obama).

D    Updates and Next steps

For updates please see our website under Election 2010 – Infrastructure more than just a Media Release.

Cheers Julie