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NEW ZEALAND LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIAN WORKPLACE REFORM: A CRITIQUE OF 151 ACADEMICS
Author(s) -
PERRY L. J.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
economic papers: a journal of applied economics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1759-3441
pISSN - 0812-0439
DOI - 10.1111/j.1759-3441.2006.tb00410.x
Subject(s) - legislation , productivity , unemployment , government (linguistics) , quarter (canadian coin) , labour economics , work (physics) , inequality , inflation (cosmology) , population , political science , australian population , public administration , relation (database) , demographic economics , economics , economic growth , law , sociology , geography , engineering , philosophy , mathematics , mathematical analysis , linguistics , archaeology , theoretical physics , mechanical engineering , physics , demography , database , computer science
The Australian Government's newly‐introduced Work Choices Act represents one of the most far‐reaching changes to Australian workplace legislation since Federation. A major detailed critique of the Act—or Bill as it was at that stage—was that which was endorsed by 151 Academics (2005). This influential document, which was a submission to a Senate Enquiry into the Bill, raised many concerns about the then‐proposed legislation. One of the concerns was related to New Zealand. It suggested that New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act 1991—a precursor and template for Australia's Work Choices Act—produced income inequality, a lower full‐time participation rate, lower real wages, flatter productivity and a “diaspora of a quarter of its population”. It will be shown that these claims are, in the main, not supported by the available evidence. Moreover, additional evidence in relation to inflation, real GDP growth, the unemployment rate and employment growth paint a much more positive, or at least nuanced, picture of New Zealand's experience in relation to the Employment Contracts Act.