Surprise Wage Decision a Blow to Labor

But not bad for the lowly paid.

After being painted as a humourless, god-bothering technocrat, the chairman of the "Fair Pay Commission (FPC)," Professor Ian Harper, has surprised everyone by bringing down a generous decision on behalf of low income workers. They'll get an increase of around $27 per week, or 5.6% over the minimum wage.

The decision has been an unexpected god-send to the government. It's allowed them to paint themselves as friends of the lowly paid, when everyone knows that the commission was created to drive down the minimum wage. They would have been expecting to defend an unpopular decision. Instead, from the Prime Minister ...

"It's substantially higher than what the Labor Party said would be the case and the Fair Pay Commission has been true to its title," [Mr Howard] said.

"It's been fair in the payments for the low-income people in this country.

"This is the third of the trilogy of dishonest criticisms in the Labor Party's attack on our industrial relations system."

And from the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews ...

"For the first time the lowest paid workers in Australia will be earning more than $500 a week," Mr Andrews said.

"So on any objective measure this is a very fair decision of the Australian Fair Pay Commission indeed.

"The Australian Fair Pay Commission has lived up to its name."

Unsurprisingly, the business lobby isn't quite so impressed ...

But the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Peter Hendy, believes the increase is too high, describing it as a big blow to the business community.

"We think this is actually a bad decision that's been caused by the fact that they fundamentally miscalculated the transition from the old system to the new," he said.

"The fact is that this increase is well above the inflation rate, well above the underlying inflation rate."

The cheek! It's been a while since the big end of town's pay increases were restrained by the inflation rate.

The only losers in all this is the Labor party. They would have been expecting the Professor to do his job, giving them a largish stick with which to beat the government. The decision hasn't done them any favours at all.

So we have the delicious situation where the government and the opposition have to look happy about a decision they didn't really like.

We'll have to wait a year for the next FPC decision to see if it's a 'one off,' or marks a trend.

At least the lowly paid are grinning tonight.