Friday 2 November 2007

Anti-Business

Everywhere I go I see the '70% of Labour front-bench are unionists' ads. Um, hello, its the Labour party.

What fascinates me is that the way the government is portraying it we should all be scared of the unions because,... um,..., because, well,... just because. Maybe something about militant unions 20 years ago. Its a scare campaign without a boogeyman.

Ah, but they do try a bit. 'Anti-business'. I'm sure a bunch of people see unions as evil (militant, obstructionist) and business as good (progressive, employment), but they probably wouldn't vote labour. And i'm sure a bunch of people see the unions as good (defend the little guy, anti-IR laws) and business as bad (greed, fat cats), but they probably wouldn't vote liberal.

Surely most people are ambivalent to both sides - unions do some good work, but get over aggressive and hold more power than they deserve - but, then business answers to money rather than people or best-interest of the country, even though we all need jobs and pay. It just seems like a rather pointless exercise to spend all this advertising on an ideological battle thats not shared by most of the swing-voting population.

Bring on Nov 24th so I don't have to wait for my disappointment.

1 comment:

Hamish said...

All very true.. The general public does not feel represented by unions any more (I don't see any point in joining one myself). But are these business associations/lobby groups like ACCI etc, mostly pro-Liberal, not also unions in some way?

<Nitpick>It's the Labor party.</Nitkpick> There's no U in the Labor party - me either. ;)