Monday, May 07, 2007

Heffernan redux: who's out of touch then?

And in a ripper bit of argument from a particularly juicy Crikey bulletin today, ANU political scientist Norman Abjorensen makes this brilliant and unanswerable riposte to the notion that the childless ought to be barred from politics:

'A glance through the biographical details of the ministry shows a gaggle of relatively autonomous lawyers and other professionals along with self-employed farmers like Senator Heffernan who call their own shots, and the privileged children of family business owners. How many of these have ever been subjected to the petty humiliations and indignities that are common every day to most Australian employees?

How many, if any, of them have ever known the fear and loathing instilled in most of us by the prospect of another day at work in an environment in which we have no say, no control and no power?

If Senator Heffernan and his party wants to go down this track of who is in touch with the majority of the community, then let them try to explain what they know, individually and collectively, of the wholly distasteful experience of work where democracy is unknown and, worse, actively opposed by existing government policy. Then we might find out who is in touch and who is not.'

4 comments:

fifi said...

Hear hear.

Tip a nappy bucket on heffrenabs head this minute.

I like this site, very interesting.

fifi said...

* Heffernan's* head

sorry

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

I thought 'Heffrenabs' sort of suited him, actually. Thanks fifi, glad you're enjoying the blog.

Anonymous said...

"of the wholly distasteful experience of work where democracy is unknown and, worse, actively opposed by existing government policy".

I like that. The whole thing of the employment contract is about subordination. The boss gets to boss, and that's what they contract for.

Groups like the IPA spend half their time celebrating the fact that WorkChoices enhances "management's capacity to manage" (they have some ludicrous index to this effect) and the other half celebrating independent contracting as the way to go because it allows workers to to be autonomous and "be their own boss"