Greg Combet on IR

Polemica quotes Greg Combet from an interview in the July issue of the Monthly. Combet's a smart operator and this is a very succinct and useful summary of the ACTU's opposition to Howard's ideological reform of IR in Australia.

"I recognise that markets distribute resources fairly efficiently. And you need to harness that," he says. "That's an extremely important recognition, because you can't hold that and believe in a command economy. But what I've also recognised is that the distributional effects of a market economy on working men and women can be devastating, and therefore you need a range of protections and rights for people."

"This is what drives the fundamentals of my work now: acknowledging that markets generate wealth, but in doing so create inequalities. It's these inequalities that governments much address. That's the defining political difference between the conservatives and Labor."