22 October

To me it’s ridiculous that modern countries like Australia can only offer people 4 weeks of leave in a year. Other counties are even worse. My sense is this won’t change in Australia for one main reason - our worship of small business. Small business often can’t afford these sorts of conditions, and there’s the rub. While we worship it, we can’t actually afford to change peoples’ working lives. Conservatives love small business because it's also not usually unionised, so is putty in their hands. Incidentally the government said yesterday its response to the tanking economy will be - industrial relations reform. That’s code for more attacks on wages and working conditions. Low wages are the reason the economy is tanking. If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.