It’s time for the Monday Message Board, where you get to post your comments on any topic (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). My suggested discussion starter – Malcolm Turnbull, future PM??
14 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”
Comments are closed.
John Quiggin 
No.
I heard him this morning on AM. He was terrible. His delivery was ordinary and his language tangled and bureaucratic.
Turnbull has no feel on how to get a message across in plain language. His communication strategy seems to be based on the idea that if he sounds knowledgeable and authoritative then this will come accross as credible.
Unfortunately for Malcolm this strategy is about 20 years out of date.
He talks like a lawyer because he is a lawyer. He comes across arrogant because he is arrogant. He’s arrogant because he is a man who has spent most of his adult life bullying and threatening people and getting his own way.
Whilst he may have won Wentworth with his power and influence this same power and influence will not be enough to connect with ordinary voters and win their support.
The best thing about the Wentworth preselection battle was wathching Abbott and Costello extolling the virtues of Peter King while trying to keep a straight face.
absolutely no chance. ever. somehow failed to overcome the almost equally unimpressive Kerry Jones despite the fact that polls consistently show that Australians want a republic. Anyone with any feel at all for public opinion could have told him that his arrogant refusal to combat the sensationalist ‘no’ campaign with similar populist campaigning was a sure way of losing.
An ad featuring the Barmy Army singing a medley of their favourites “God Save Your Queen” (‘long to reign over you’) and “get your sh*t stars off our flag” would have been enough to convince most voters.
Does the UN suffer from international illegitimacy because of a gerrymander? We all tend to want run off to the UN when it suits our purpose, but dismiss it as irrelevant when it doesn’t. Cold War politics and Security Council power of veto saw it become an emasculated propaganda forum. Should a Mugabe have the same vote as a Blair?
In an idealised international community, each nation’s vote should be proportional to its population. This would be a logical reform, if it were not for the fact that many countries do not pass this democratic test internally, nor do they abide by UN conventions. The legitimisation of the tyranny of majorities. Should we remedy that by reform of the UN rules? Each country is a full member(with voting rights) and gets a vote on proportional grounds, providing it meets the conventions and guidelines of the organisation. Those who don’t, must sign up to move toward establishing these same credentials of full membership. In the interim, they have the right to input into debates, but no voting rights of associate type membership. Perhaps only AAA credited members could stand on the Security Council?
Would those who differed on intervention in Iraq, be prepared to abide by a ruling one way or the other, by this UN?
I should add that I recognise the problem of agreeing to a minimum standard test. If that is the case, should the democracies abandon the current UN, take the lead and set up their own United Democratic Liberal Nations body?
Observa – use the Commonwealth. Ain’t that a quaint idea?
You a pro-Iraq man David? You haven’t got room for France and Germany?
I thought I’d try asking for help.
The story so far, touched on briefly elsewhere, is that I got ambushed and trampled by an internal politics clique in the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. We are now at the final stages of looking for a workable settlement that doesn’t just send me out to sea with enough fuel to get over the horizon. If that doesn’t work, I have to try a kamikaze thing at a formal hearing at the end of next week, with a very strong chance of being told I was stitched up but very little chance of getting my career rebuilt and ever working again. Unfortunately if I roll over the way things are now, I also just end up unemployable while the clique buries me ever after.
So, can anyone help with what the conciliation attempt needs? I attach the body of the text of an email I just sent to some advisers, with some names deleted for confidentiality. If anyone knows anything along the lines of what I have to look for, feel free to email me (I’m in Melbourne).
The body of the email follows:-
“At the conference I undertook to look into the practicality of a dedicated employment search through a specialised agency, to be funded as part of a settlement. That is, an agency with a material placement track record and material access to a pool of potential employers, NOT an outplacement agency that assists people in working the open field and cannot take them the crucial step of actually reaching a destination (I have used those before at my own expense, and I can gain no further job search skills from them). I also undertook to see if I could arrange a designated and reliable ARCBS individual to handle all reference checks. All this would need to be pulled together by 9.3.04 if it were to be acceptable to both sides.
“I have made some progress with getting a nominated reference, with being agreeable in principle; he has also agreed to look into alternates. (Clearly any settlement would have to default to the arms length contract arrangement the ARCBS finds unacceptable, if they ever violated this – no other sanction would salvage me. I am not interested in a promise they could break and leave me with the consequences, even accidentally, no matter how much they got penalised – I’m not trying to hurt them, just to rescue me.)
“However, as I expected, it’s not looking good for finding an acceptable agency in the time available. Indeed, it seems likely that no such agency exists, since I have discovered that an employee driven dedicated service is incompatible with the professional ethics of professional agencies who take funds from employers – they can’t use different approaches with different commissions but have to stay with one approach for all their commissions. If no such agency exists, that shows a lack of good faith on the part of , who is bound to have known what kinds of agencies there are. (I was NOT negotiating with a view to finding a face saving way of rolling over – rolling over remains suicidal, and I have not been rendered so groggy as to lose sight of that, whatever may have been intended and even though I was out of things for much of Friday. I am interested in survival, not in feeling good.)
“So far I have rung around agencies run by Michael Cavanaugh and Peter Poynting, who in turn referred me to the Recruitment Consulting Services Association to see if they could suggest a more appropriate agency to try. None of these three could be of any particular immediate help, though they did promise to bear me in mind for the future. To show willing I will continue to look for the right sort of agency, but more slowly since it will need researching them through third parties. Of course I would also welcome any suggestions you might be able to make.
“In the event that we can pull something together, there remains the issue of the non-disparagement clause. The other side’s lawyers were at pains to emphasise how important this was to them. I will need a wording like the one saying “in furtherance of ARCBS purposes”, one that allows me to continue my good faith attempts at whistle blowing, including approaching concerned government departments and outside contractors and taking new initiatives as well as pursuing existing ones like my approach to the Australian. I do not want to mislead the other side into thinking that I am willing to compromise my integrity (this is also NOT a face saving thing – it actually matters to people the Progesa system will hit otherwise).
“Even though I will continue to look for the way out suggested, I strongly suspect that this whole exercise is a charade knowingly suggested by the ARCBS with a view to wearing me out on pain of appearing unreasonable in the hearings if I don’t waste my resources this way. So far I have lost the use of most of last week, so much so that I have been quite unable to go over the material the ARCBS lawyers sent me that I was supposed to have had the use of for a whole week now. I expect much the same again this week.”
I find Turnbull much too smooth. Might make a good health minister (reminds of that oily Woodridge chap) but I don’t think we’ve ever elected a smoothly oily prime minister. They’ve all been a bit weird really.
PML,
You do need a good advocate(lawyer?)to argue your case, simply because for 99% of us such proceedings are too emotional to argue one’s case factually and dispassionately.(Like hiring an agent to sell the family home) In general, your local Trades Hall can recommend a lawyer/advocate, conversant in this area of industrial relations law. In my experience, if an employer does not wish to continue your employment and is prepared to pay the cost of doing that, you only have monetary compensation to fall back on.
Observa et al –
Been there, done that. Rolling over is not an option for the simple reason that in all the circumstances a money settlement would also destroy me, slightly later. Unless something turns up that breaks the deadlock, my only hope is the vastly unlikely possibility that a hearing would order reinstatement. That is not denying its improbability, just recognising the futility of taking cash.
Sorry to hear of your troubles, PML. I don’t have any useful suggestions to add to those of Observa, just best wishes for a good outcome.
PML,
You don’t have to take the money and run now. You can take whatever entitlements your employer feels you are entitled to, letting them know you are not happy with this outcome. You then proceed to find alternative employment. If that proves timely and fruitful then fine. If it doesn’t, then you have a statute of limitations period, to back-claim. This has the benefit of establishing your economic loss over the longer term. Also with the employer they have an incentive to assist redeployment, because of an unknown and growing liability hanging over their head. The drawback for you as an employee is, your preparedness to carry the economic cost of this strategy. Also there is the emotional cost of this for you over a longer period. You may however, decide to take this approach for say 6 months, if finances allow, in order to test employment options.
As I said, been there and done that (and going over old ground is mildly wearing too, which is why I didn’t reach out here earlier). We are already at those stages of what to do after other stuff has failed. What I think I will do is email JQ a copy of the witness statement I submitted, and let him consider how much to post up and/or comment on or work into his own musings (the whole area is a worked example of what he was talking about in an article on managerialism hitting the cutting edges of professions like nursing etc.).
Oh, it’s not mere “emotional cost”. These things work through to bodily health and ability to function – not quite the same thing. I was wrecked for most of this morning, as I was on Friday afternoon, and what little I did yesterday would probably have ended the same way had a well meaning friend not arranged a beach trip for the afternoon (which boosted me physically but hit me with the opportunity cost of lost time – see Faustus’ last hours). The settlement negotiations close on Tuesday, and the hearing comes on 17.3.04 and the days following.