'From the Gallery'

February 19, 2010

• Politicians hold up family cohesion as something to strive for. Ideal families should be together more often, because that’s what families are all about. But when it comes to action, the pollies do the reverse.

• The elderly can remember weekends when shops shut on Saturday morning at noon, and didn’t re-open til Monday. Nothing happened on Sunday at all: no football, no race meetings, in some states no Sunday papers and, of course, no petrol stations. After church, families gathered for the Sunday roast. [We’re not suggesting a complete return to limited shopping hours, and it is essential that petrol be available on Sundays.]

• Under pressure from retailers, shopping hour restrictions have gradually been wound back to almost an open slather, especially in the big cities. There are some holdouts, particularly in WA. The requirement for work on weekends is the rationale (at least in part) of penalty rates. For the Coalition to now toy with the idea of wiping out penalty rates is absurd.

• Somebody woke up in the Coalition, leading Joe Hockey to declare at the press club on Tuesday that a Coalition government would not legislate to abolish penalty rates. The problem for Abbott is – can Hockey be believed? The Coalition, having mused about dumping penalty rates, now asks workers to trust them.