Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 20/07/2010

Reporter: Leigh Sales  (In part only and emphasis by me EWG)

MICHAEL KROGER: Well, I'd say this to the business community: if you want the law changed, do what the mining industry did: get out there and make your case. Don't just off-the-record, you know, whinge to journalists that, oh, you know, you're not happy with the Opposition's policies.

Get out there and spend some money, make the case, convince the public, convince the Opposition, convince the current government that the laws need to be changed. There's no point these business people behind closed doors ringing up Liberal Party people whinging about our position now on industrial relations laws. Don't forget: this debate didn't start last year or three or four years ago.

The industrial relations debate started in the mid-1980s and I was involved in it. And the Coalition has basically implemented pretty well all it wanted to implement from 20 years ago. So, if the business community wants further changes, let them start advertising and start campaigning for it. That's what they've gotta do.

LEIGH SALES: Paul Howes, I saw you shaking your head there.

PAUL HOWES: So, Michael, what you essentially are saying is that if the business community is prepared to put in some money, then the Liberal Party is prepared to change its policy, which reinforces the point that we've been talking about this week ...

MICHAEL KROGER: No, that's not what I said. No, Paul, that's not what I said.

PAUL HOWES: No, that's what you said. That's what you said.

MICHAEL KROGER: If they want to change the - if they want the law changed ...

PAUL HOWES: That if the business community will step up some money, like the mining industry did on the RSPT, then you'll change your policy. I mean, ...

MICHAEL KROGER: No, I didn't say that.

PAUL HOWES: ... I don't know how people like yourself - I don't know how people like yourself, Michael, could be in this party when, as you said - I mean, your background in industrial relations going back to dollar sweets and all those iconic anti-union campaigns of the 1980s, how you could actually be an active and vocal participant of the Liberal Party, which is basically saying, "We will keep Labor's legislation holus bolus." Now, if you actually believe that they will do that, you wouldn't be campaigning the way you were - and that's why I would believe ...

MICHAEL KROGER: What, you think the dollar sweets campaign was an anti-union campaign. It was a campaign, Paul, about protecting the interests of small business. It happened before you were born. You weren't even born.

PAUL HOWES: We're not gonna debate dollar sweets. It happened when I was in kindergarten.

COMMENT. IMHO, I have never liked Michael Kroger or his mate Peter Costello.  Both have exhibited to me a bad case of hubris and self adulation.  However, in two of his recent interviews, I have noticed that the cool "SS look" for which Kroger is infamous, was overshadowed by his obvious anxiety in the first debate with a lowly elected Union Rep.

This second debate explains even better - the apparent fact that the Abbott Liberal/National Party is only the thickness of a cigarette paper away from returning to the worst aspects of WorkChoices and clearly for the absolute benefit of the major Corporations.

Which translates to a "hidden" Industrial Relations policy that leans towards the HAVES and away from the HAVE NOTS in the middle to lower working families.  Howard's Core and Non-Core?

God Bless Australia and may the Howard tricks of personal telephone calls from America - even to the so-called privacy of silent numbers - be recognised as only a small example of "Abbott/Howard policy of  whatever it takes".  NE OUBLIE.

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8847

From my previous post....

MICHAEL KROGER: Well, I'd say this to the business community: if you want the law changed, do what the mining industry did: get out there and make your case. Don't just off-the-record, you know, whinge to journalists that, oh, you know, you're not happy with the Opposition's policies.

Get out there and spend some money, make the case, convince the public, convince the Opposition, convince the current government that the laws need to be changed. There's no point these business people behind closed doors ringing up Liberal Party people whinging about our position now on industrial relations laws. Don't forget: this debate didn't start last year or three or four years ago.

The industrial relations debate started in the mid-1980s and I was involved in it. And the Coalition has basically implemented pretty well all it wanted to implement from 20 years ago. So, if the business community wants further changes, let them start advertising and start campaigning for it. That's what they've gotta do. (End of quote)

Is the SS looking Kroger advising a breach of his own Howard sedition laws?

The quote was part of the Lateline transcript from Tuesday 20th July 2010.  Now, less that two days later, the “smaller miners of Australia’s wealth” have heeded that “call to arms” by the Liberal Spokesman Michael Kroger and have started on the road of blackmail of  our Australian  government for “their deal or else”. Could Abbott’s WorkChoices be part of the ransom of the miner’s tax?

IF the Australians of the two major mining states are not prepared to back their own elected government under these circumstances, we are indeed on a slippery slide to total control by foreign owned Corporations.  Howardism at it worst.

One thing is inexcusable and demonstrative of the power wielded by the foreign owned media in our country – and that is that the media will back their own backers. Such is the process of the marketing ploy – democracy.

Dictatorships are more akin with the conservatives than with Labor and the real effect of conservative governments is that there is no balance between the too rich elite and the too poor working families.

The truth of the matter is that, in the last century, shearing workers in Australia refused to abide by the Howard/Abbott style of Individual Contracts and were jailed for it by a conservative government.

The foreign miners and their liberal representatives want that situation back, as did Howard before them.  Unless the workers of Australia, in particularly W.A. and Queensland, resist the abuse of our Government – WHOEVER that may be in the future – then our future is bleak indeed and only mayhem and family suffering will ensue.

God Bless Australia and the most pressured people under the miner’s backflip blackmail in Western Australia and Queensland will make history no matter what they vote if they don’t stand up to blackmail; ransom and removal of welfare. That could really divide the nation as in 1914. NE OUBLIE.