“Tony Abbott will bring back WorkChoices”

From Judith Sloane at Catalaxy Files:

It came somewhat out of the blue when Tony Abbott declared that “We don’t support statutory individual contracts. We did once, but we don’t now.” And notwithstanding some less than gentle prodding from some very senior Coalition ex-politicians, most notably the two Peters – Reith and Costello – he is standing his ground. “What I also made crystal clear is that we want to work within the existing act. I think there is a lot of scope within the existing act to make individual flexibility agreements more practical, more workable, more effective.” So the position is no to statutory individual agreements (known as Australian Workplace Agreements – AWAs – under the Workplace Relations Act and Work Choices) but yes to revising the provisions that govern the individual flexibility arrangements – IFAs – that are contained in the Fair Work Act. This decision by Abbott, which apparently is not supported by all members of the Coalition, begs a number of questions. What are the key differences between AWAs and IFAs? What can be achieved with AWAs that cannot be achieved with IFAs? What are the main changes that need to be made to the IFA provisions to make them more “practical, workable and effective”, to use Abbott’s adjectives?   Read on…