Paul Keating's Media Broadside

I stayed up late on Thursday night to watch Paul Keating interviewed on Lateline. I wasn't disappointed.

Keating's discourse was somewhat rambling and egotistical, but he hasn't lost the art of producing the 'quotable quote.' Here's some lifted from the transcripts.

On the effect of Work Choices on productivity ...

If you go to 200 or 300 people in a factory or 200 or 300 people in a workplace and come to a three or four year bargain to the improve productivity and share it between wages and profits you've got a good chance of getting productivity from the whole enterprise. But if you just take one person at a time, bring them into the boss' office and cut their wages there's no chance of getting any productivity. That's why trend productivity is now rapidly on the way down. It was 3 per cent under me. It's now under 1 per cent.

And this in the same vein ...

The great lie of the Howard Government in respect of workplace changes, they are simply a set of arrangements to keep unions out of workplaces. They've got nothing to do with productivity and the quicker we move away from that kind of discriminatory structure to a truly trust based co operative sharing of work and workloads, then we get back to reasonable levels of productivity and again, reasonable rates of growth in real wages. It's no accident as you saw in today's front page of The Sydney Morning Herald and other places that the wage share in the economy has gone down, and the profit share in the last four years has gone up because wages are now in real terms, are declining.

On using the Corporations Powers to regulate IR ...

Let me make this clear, the Liberals decided that they wouldn't use the conciliation and arbitration power.

Under that power of the constitution you always needed a commission who tested capacity to pay and comparative wage justice. They've now used the corporations power and the High Court for the first time as validated its use. That means a Federal Government can now legislate the wage and the conditions.

On the real reason why the economy has boomed without the traditional wage blowout ...

Everything in those national accounts yesterday, everything, that is the growth in the economy and the low unemployment, the reason the system is not blowing, the tinder box has not taken off is because of the float, because of the tariff changes and because of [the previous Labor government's] IR changes, structural changes. That's why they're there. Not because of any superior management by Mr Costello. You know this pat line tonight about you wouldn't put an L plater. God, he's the greatest L plater of all time.

And finally, best til last. This on poll based policy. Could be true for any political organisation these days ...

The Labor Party is not going to profit from having these proven unsuccessful people around who are frightened of their own shadow and won't get out of bed in the morning unless they've had a focus group report to tell them which side of bed to get out.

Keating makes the current pollies we're lumbered with these days look very bland. I look forward to his next media forray.