Month: November 2005

John Howard’s Industrial Relations Reforms – is he for real?

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny… what in heaven’s name are you on about?

A few days ago, Australia Prime Minister John Howard was reported as saying that Australian workers must come to terms with the fact that the 5 day working week was dead.

Johnny – I suggest that if you want this concept to gain acceptance in the community, then you better start by getting your own Government department offices to change their habits.

Have you ever tried to deal with a Government office on a weekend?  Try telephone a Federal Government department, for example, the Australian Taxation Office, on a weekend.  You’ll either receive a recorded message advising the office is closed and giving you the “normal” office hours to call back within (and their idea of “normal” seems to be along the lines of 8.30 am to 4.45 pm), or you’ll end up being put on hold and having to listen to that infernal “muzak” noise indefinitely because there is no-one there to answer your call.

Until such time as the Federal Government’s own offices start to work within the boundaries of Mr Howard’s grand vision then I, for one, refuse to take Mr Howard seriously in respect of this issue.

Were I to be cynical, perhaps this ploy is Mr Howard’s first salvo in re-arranging the Government’s own workforce to come into line with arrangements that exist in the private sector?  If so, Mr Howard is overlooking the fact that, traditionally, Government sector employees have always been at the forefront of the changes that have led to the employment scenario we have in Australia today.  Therefore, it will be a very tough battle for Mr Howard to roll back the benefits Government sector employees currently enjoy.  The Government sector trade union is very strong with virtually 100% membership.  I think it would be fair to say that these employees would be quite prepared to undertake industrial action in the fight to retain their working conditions.

I’ll say it again – if Mr Howard wants to be taken seriously on this issue, he MUST first get his own house in order.

Terror in our house?

Eighteen people have now been arrested in relation to an alleged plot to commit an act of terrorism in a mainland Australian city.

What gives with these people?  They come to Australia allegedly seeking to escape from the conflict of their homeland, yet they bring their damned arguments, prejudices and hatreds with them.

To these extremists, I say either leave your crap behind, or go back to where you came from.

Indeed, this could be said of any new immigrant coming to Australia to settle.  You’ve come to a new country, so shouldn’t you learn to adopt the ways of your new home?  In the same way that you would expect an Australian to adopt the ways of your homeland if the Australian moved there, then you should be prepared to “Australianise” yourself when you come here.  Certainly, you should respect your origins and religious beliefs – no-one is saying you should forget them or discard them.  However, you should learn to accept the Australian way of life, and to adapt to that.

I’m astounded that the RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) in NSW allows people to undertake in their own language the test for a driver’s licence.  As English is the official spoken and written language of Australia, then the tests should ONLY be in English.  How are these people to read road signs that are written only in English if they apparently can’t read or write the language?

Memo Mr Howard (Prime Minister of Australia): Multiculturalism is nice in theory, and has brought many new and interesting things to Australian society.  However, it has also brought a lot of undesirable things, and I think it’s about time the policy received a bit of fine tuning.  Perhaps the ability to effectively communicate using the English language should be a pre-requisite for granting an immigration visa?

Memo Mr Iemma (Premier of NSW): Why does your Government let people that have emigrated from overseas undertake important tests, like that for a driving licence, in any language other than English?

What Happened to Freedom of Speech on Bigpond’s IRC Network?

I expect there are those that will agree with what follows, and those that won’t.  So be it.  Freedom of speech is a basic democratic right in our society, isn’t it?  I think it was Voltaire that said it – something like “I might not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Nevertheless, there are those that don’t seem to understand this.  Take this example, if you will.  One of my pastimes is to spend a few hours a week chatting with friends via IRC.  Telstra have an IRC network running under the Bigpond banner, and this network was my introduction to the world of IRC.  I consider IRC to be a superior chat service to the plethora of instant messenger services that exist today, mainly as the chat rooms on any decent IRC network have live moderators there to help weed out any undesirables.  But that’s another issue entirely, so I’ll get off that soapbox and back onto the freedom of speech one.

Around mid-May, 2005, there was a power play amongst senior network operators on the Bigpond network.  The network operators on Bigpond IRC are all unpaid volunteers that give freely of their time so that the IRC server can function for the benefit of the chatters that use it.  The network administrator, on the other hand, is a paid Telstra employee.  Unfortunately, this person has many other things to do as well as look after the IRC server network – it appears Telstra don’t consider it a resource of high priority.  Given that the server network costs a considerable sum of money to maintain yet it returns almost nothing financially to Telstra, it’s not really surprising that Telstra management look like they are scaling the network down.  In fact, prudent financial management of a company under the pressure to perform that Telstra currently finds itself would be to close any services that aren’t contributing to the bottom line.

In an amazing piece of mismanagement (so typical of Telstra), the administrator of the network removed the access rights of 3 of the most highly experienced and skilled operators the network had.  As a result, the network operator team is now being “guided” (and I use that term very, very loosely) by a woman that has dubious technical skills, and, in my opinion, no management skills to speak of.  She is untrained in any of these areas, yet Telstra, in their “wisdom,” have left her alone to bring the network to its knees.

With this woman and her lapdogs at the helm, the Telstra Bigpond network is bleeding profusely and losing chatters faster than it can gain new ones.  From a network that once boasted in excess of 1500 chatters per day, it now struggles to reach 400.  This person is responsible for making the network a place where chatters are unable to express an opinion that is contrary to that person’s myopic view of the network or the operators and their cronies for fear of being permanently banned from the network.  This person further seems to believe that she and her cronies can march around the server like a bunch of jack-boot wearing Nazi storm-troopers and dictate to room owners how they should run their rooms.  She seems to have no understanding of the concept that Bigpond is providing a service to people.  She and the other operators seem incapable of realising they are there to SERVE the chatters and the room owners, not RULE over them like a dictator.  They should be there to assist room owners and chatters when asked, not run around poking their noses into other people’s affairs and trying to control everything that is going on.

Addendum: The Bigpond IRC servers have since been closed down and the users have all dispersed to other networks or services.

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