A predictable income - it's all workers want

The trouble is, though, Employment Advocate never sees that bit because it is never lodged. So his report was about as useful as randomly analysing the wreckage of demolished buildings in order to predict what is going to be built in their place.

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Kevin Andrews, is hardly blameless in the community confusion stakes. While he got most of WorkChoices right, his lack of understanding of the political symbolism with some of the issues involved is palpable. For instance, by the simple expedient of allowing workers the choice to cash up their sick pay, even on a one-for-one basis, then every casual worker in the country would, as a commercial consequence, be recategorised under collective and individual workplace agreements as "permanents".

While it makes little difference in the workplace, these symbols are important in the political sense. Both employers and employees want to act rationally and would prefer the designation "permanent" provided it is flexible too, but if the price of that is a return to the regime of the "sicky", then that price is too high.

So where to from here? The Beazley back-flip should simply be exposed for what it is - a recreation of the union monopoly to re-underwrite ALP funding. Why not do some research and quantify Beazley's arguments, in terms of exactly what dollars are coming from what unions, and related to what businesses or industries?

But the government is also on the wrong side of the symbolism and to some extent the moral argument, about worker designations. Again, that is easily fixed by giving workers the genuine choices that the legislation infers they should have, but in fact don’t have.

And finally, who needs enemies when you have the Employment Advocate? The government should not be encouraging him to publicly report on things he clearly doesn't understand.