Don't you love this?

John Howard comments on changes to the Immigration Act to send all unauthorised boat arrivals offshore...

"It has nothing to do with listening to Indonesian politicians."

And the Immigration Minister backs him up!

"It is indisputable that we have taken into account the concerns of Indonesia."

Tomorrow we can expect Kevin Andrews to toe the party line when he states that Work Choices really was about cutting wages. (Oink, Oink, Flap, Flap)

Kim Beazley promised, if elected, the scrapping of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWG) during a speech to the NSW State Labor Conference yesterday.

This move ranks with the stupidity of Mark Latham's promise to "bring the troops home from Iraq before Christmas." That comment allowed the Government to portray Labor as a "bunch of quitters," a position that weighed heavily on the population despite their dislike of our involvement there.

Will they ever learn?

To the punters, many of whom are union averse, Beazley's promise will seem like he's handing control of IR to the unions. The government and employer groups have already started to push this line.

There's no doubt that a large percentage of the population are worried about the 'Work Choices' legislation. However, many people are working under AWGs made before 'Work Choices' abolished the 'no disadvantage' rule and are quite content doing so. What they want is the 'no disadvantage' rule reinstated. Beazley would have been much more sensible in stating that they'd remove the worst excesses of 'Work Choices,' and allow workers the option to engage a union if that's what they want.

There's nothing wrong with the practice of allowing parties to negotiate more flexible work arrangements. The system just needs safeguards in place to prevent unskilled workers from being exploited.

Beazley has given the government a free kick with this badly thought out announcement.

Later: Beazley was on The 7.30 Report tonight and he made a good fist of explaining his position. Although I still think his announcement plays into the hands of the government, he did give a good account of his party's position.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Well let me ask you that Mr Beazley. You've asked the Government's record on productivity, but what is your fail-safe formula for improving productivity? Going back to the policies of the previous Labor government?

KIM BEAZLEY: Look, the productivity that we gained in this country by going over to a system of enterprise-based agreements, moving away from the centralised wage-fixing system to that, but still collective agreements, is what produced the productivity boosts.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And that, in your mind, is the end of labour market reform?

KIM BEAZLEY: No, that is not the main, necessarily the only - I should say - not necessarily the only factor underpinning productivity. The other factors are innovation and skills. And the fact that productivity has gone off the boil over the last few years under this Government - in that first tranche, if you like, of industrial relations that you talked about - has got everything to do about the Government dropping the ball on things like innovation and skills. Productivity is not only about how the workforce works, it's about what the businessmen invests in and it's about the character of the workforce and the state of its skills. So there's nothing in Howard's legislation which does anything about those things, but insofar as industrial relations impacts on it, it is the collective agreements that produce the productivity outcomes. It's as simple as that.

It's worth reading in its entirety, but the bit above does spell out the difference between the government's and Labor's positions. Labor wants to increase productivity by improving processes, work practises and training, while the government wants the same effect by cutting costs at the employees' expense.

Beazley will have to do a lot more of this to counter the Government's scare campaign.

It doesn't take much imagination to guess the outcome of the Nuclear Power enquiry announced by the Prime Minister this afternoon.

The former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski will head the enquiry into the future of nuclear energy and uranium mining.

Dr Switkowski will be backed by a panel of five experts, and Australia's Chief Scientist Jim Peacock will assist with the review.

Yes, the guy who's heading the enquiry is a member of an organisation that has a vested interest in the nuclear industry.

Dr Switkowski is a nuclear physicist, and also sits on the board of ANSTO, the nuclear agency which released a report this week saying nuclear power is a cost effective option.

Not everyone thinks ANSTO's report was valid, though. From last night's 7.30 Report ...

DR MARK DIESENDORF, INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, UNSW: It's a complete rubbish and if one of my students produced something like that, they would fail.

MATT PEACOCK: According to environmental scientist Mark Diesendorf of the University of NSW, the ANSTO study assumes Government subsidies. He believes that nuclear will cost almost three times as much as coal.

DR MARK DIESENDORF: The study does not reveal the most fundamental, basic parameters of the problem; it doesn't tell us the basic capital cost of the nuclear power station; and it doesn't tell us the interest rates used on the capital, in order to calculate the cost of electricity. All it does is present us with a bottom line that suggests that given some subsidies from the Federal Government, nuclear power might become competitive.

But why pick one tainted member when you can pick two?

Another member of the Prime Minister's Task Force, Professor George Dracoulis, is also a nuclear physicist. He works at the Australian National University in Canberra.

The setting up of this enquiry could have been taken from an episode of "Yes Minister." Devotees of the show would remember Sir Humphrey lecturing Jim Hacker that the key to obtain a wanted outcome was to appoint the correct personnel.

The third member of the enquiry panel is Professor Warwick McKibben from the Reserve Bank Board. As RBB members are government appointees, we can safely guess his views on the subject will be 'sound.'

More members of the enquiry are to be announced tomorrow. Don't be surprised if they have connections with the mining industry.