The social engineers and central planners are at it again.
“Companies to face mandatory reporting in bid to boost gender equality”, announced yesterday’s The Australian.
The article explains:
“Firms with more than 100 workers will face spot checks and mandatory reporting on the numbers of women they employ and their position under tough new measures aimed at boosting gender equality in the workplace.”
Our first response is, why 100? Why not 99 or 101?
100 is an arbitrary number. But it’s a round number.
It means a firm employing 99 men and no women gets off scot-free, while a firm employing 99 men and 1 woman could be in the soup, and subject to on-the-spot inspections.
The paper quotes Minister for the Status of Women, Kate Ellis:
“There will be regular spot checks to ensure that the information that organisations are providing to the government actually matches how they conduct their day-to-day business.”
What business is it of the government to know how many men and women you employ?
It makes you wonder why on earth would anyone ever start a business in Australia, when the bureaucrats think up rubbish like this.
Not satisfied with successive Liberal and Labor governments burdening the Australian manufacturing industry with so much red tape that there’s almost nothing left, the bureaucrats now want to attack any business with 100 or more staff – regardless of the industry.
Now, we’ll assume the government will decide there are some industries that are male dominated and some industries that are female dominated. Those industries may be able to avoid imposts from the Australian Sex Police.
But that’s a big assumption… maybe a naïve one… yes, it’s naïve, I can barely believe I even thought of it!
But let’s say they exempt some industries – which industries? At what point does the government decide one industry is fair game for male/female dominance, whereas another industry deserves equality?
And what about job roles within an industry or business? Is it OK for certain roles to be male/female dominated, while others must be equalised?
That’s a lot of questions.
But what it shows you is yet again, bureaucrats who’ve lived a life of shuffling paper and dreaming up new regulations will now tell bakeries, shoe shops, car manufacturers and mining companies how many staff should be employed and what gender those employees should be.
Think of it this way. I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve popped into the local Brumby’s or Baker’s Delight most of the time the bakers are male.
As for the counter staff, that’s probably fifty-fifty between men and women…
Now, I’ll be honest the closest your editor comes to baking is chucking the odd cake in the oven for the missus’ birthday, so we’ve got no idea about the ins and outs of being a baker.
But our guess is there’s probably little reason why more women can’t be bakers… if they want to.
And here’s the thing. Is the bakery industry full of rampant misogynists? The Secret Brethren of Bakers can’t stand the thought of allowing feeble women into the clan?
Or is it just that over time, bakery work is something that’s traditionally been done by men. Just like many other jobs are male dominated – such as the garbo industry. And for that fact, many jobs are female dominated – primary school teachers for example.
Unfortunately, central planners and social engineers can’t abide freedom of choice. They can’t cope with the idea that people should have the freedom to do as they wish and work in the jobs they want.
And they also can’t abide business owners being able to choose between who they employ and who they don’t employ. Why should a government bureaucrat have as much say in the hiring of workers as a businessman or woman who started the business from scratch with their own capital on the line?
If a business owner only wants to employ men only then so what. If a business owner only wants to employ women only then so what.
But as I say, central planners don’t like that. They need to set quotas.
They need to meddle and decide women and men should be forced into jobs against their will just so a government quota can be met.
It’s similar to the Review of Australian Higher Education Final Report in December 2008 from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. The report suggested:
“The target proposed for higher education is that 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds will have attained at least a bachelor-level qualification by 2020. This will be quite testing for Australia as current attainment is 29 per cent.”
But what if only 35% want to go to university? Is the intention that the government would force an extra 5% to go to university, or manipulate the market to ensure the target is met just so a stiff-necked bureaucrat can tick a box?
The fact is, when bureaucrats get involved in things they know nothing about, it causes more problems.
Bureaucrats know nothing about running a business. Yet every day they’re telling entrepreneurial businessmen and women what to do… “No, you can do that unless you file this form, and if you don’t we’ll fine you.”
As an example, look no further than page 53 of Monday’s Australian Financial Review (AFR). It contains a CV of Martin Parkinson, the man who this week has taken over as Number One from “Emperor” Ken Henry as Treasury secretary in the Australian federal bureaucracy.
According to the AFR, Number One’s career highlights are:
“Companies to face mandatory reporting in bid to boost gender equality”, announced yesterday’s The Australian.
The article explains:
“Firms with more than 100 workers will face spot checks and mandatory reporting on the numbers of women they employ and their position under tough new measures aimed at boosting gender equality in the workplace.”
Our first response is, why 100? Why not 99 or 101?
100 is an arbitrary number. But it’s a round number.
It means a firm employing 99 men and no women gets off scot-free, while a firm employing 99 men and 1 woman could be in the soup, and subject to on-the-spot inspections.
The paper quotes Minister for the Status of Women, Kate Ellis:
“There will be regular spot checks to ensure that the information that organisations are providing to the government actually matches how they conduct their day-to-day business.”
What business is it of the government to know how many men and women you employ?
It makes you wonder why on earth would anyone ever start a business in Australia, when the bureaucrats think up rubbish like this.
Not satisfied with successive Liberal and Labor governments burdening the Australian manufacturing industry with so much red tape that there’s almost nothing left, the bureaucrats now want to attack any business with 100 or more staff – regardless of the industry.
Now, we’ll assume the government will decide there are some industries that are male dominated and some industries that are female dominated. Those industries may be able to avoid imposts from the Australian Sex Police.
But that’s a big assumption… maybe a naïve one… yes, it’s naïve, I can barely believe I even thought of it!
But let’s say they exempt some industries – which industries? At what point does the government decide one industry is fair game for male/female dominance, whereas another industry deserves equality?
And what about job roles within an industry or business? Is it OK for certain roles to be male/female dominated, while others must be equalised?
That’s a lot of questions.
But what it shows you is yet again, bureaucrats who’ve lived a life of shuffling paper and dreaming up new regulations will now tell bakeries, shoe shops, car manufacturers and mining companies how many staff should be employed and what gender those employees should be.
Think of it this way. I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve popped into the local Brumby’s or Baker’s Delight most of the time the bakers are male.
As for the counter staff, that’s probably fifty-fifty between men and women…
Now, I’ll be honest the closest your editor comes to baking is chucking the odd cake in the oven for the missus’ birthday, so we’ve got no idea about the ins and outs of being a baker.
But our guess is there’s probably little reason why more women can’t be bakers… if they want to.
And here’s the thing. Is the bakery industry full of rampant misogynists? The Secret Brethren of Bakers can’t stand the thought of allowing feeble women into the clan?
Or is it just that over time, bakery work is something that’s traditionally been done by men. Just like many other jobs are male dominated – such as the garbo industry. And for that fact, many jobs are female dominated – primary school teachers for example.
Unfortunately, central planners and social engineers can’t abide freedom of choice. They can’t cope with the idea that people should have the freedom to do as they wish and work in the jobs they want.
And they also can’t abide business owners being able to choose between who they employ and who they don’t employ. Why should a government bureaucrat have as much say in the hiring of workers as a businessman or woman who started the business from scratch with their own capital on the line?
If a business owner only wants to employ men only then so what. If a business owner only wants to employ women only then so what.
But as I say, central planners don’t like that. They need to set quotas.
They need to meddle and decide women and men should be forced into jobs against their will just so a government quota can be met.
It’s similar to the Review of Australian Higher Education Final Report in December 2008 from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. The report suggested:
“The target proposed for higher education is that 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds will have attained at least a bachelor-level qualification by 2020. This will be quite testing for Australia as current attainment is 29 per cent.”
But what if only 35% want to go to university? Is the intention that the government would force an extra 5% to go to university, or manipulate the market to ensure the target is met just so a stiff-necked bureaucrat can tick a box?
The fact is, when bureaucrats get involved in things they know nothing about, it causes more problems.
Bureaucrats know nothing about running a business. Yet every day they’re telling entrepreneurial businessmen and women what to do… “No, you can do that unless you file this form, and if you don’t we’ll fine you.”
As an example, look no further than page 53 of Monday’s Australian Financial Review (AFR). It contains a CV of Martin Parkinson, the man who this week has taken over as Number One from “Emperor” Ken Henry as Treasury secretary in the Australian federal bureaucracy.
According to the AFR, Number One’s career highlights are:
Source: AFR
Photo: Dr. Alex Cowie’s iPhone
But even if there was a stint in the private sector, it was clearly nothing the AFR thought worthy of mention.
So we can only assume it’s a career of academic dreaming and bureaucratic meddling.
The most troubling entry is the note for 1990, “PhD at Princeton, studying under Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the US Federal Reserve.”
Personally, that’s the sort of thing I’d keep off my CV. But for bureaucrats, statists, central planners and social engineers, studying under (only figuratively) Ben Bernanke is clearly a badge of honour.
The roll of bureaucracy is to inhibit business. It’s to stifle innovation and stop entrepreneurs from… well, entrepreneuring.
But in the end, will the statist Workplace Gender Equality Agency actually achieve anything?
Yes. It will annoy people. And it’ll put another hurdle in front of businesses. But what it won’t do is lead to gender equality – for a start (here’s some breaking news) there’s no such thing as equality.
Everyone is different. You can’t be equal. Humans aren’t some manufactured widget from a factory that can be made identical to millions of other widgets.
But that’s exactly what the bureaucrats would like humans to be. That way they can pigeonhole you into certain tasks based on their urge to control the economy and control you.
Governments and bureaucrats are good for nothing. All they know is how to tax and how to control people with violence and threats of violence.
Yet for some unknown reason bureaucrats are painted by the mainstream press as heroic figures. People who supposedly have given up the opportunity to earn mega bucks in the private sector in order to serve the people in the public sector.
In reality, for the most part the bureaucratic top-dogs are nothing more than insecure control freaks who wouldn’t survive two seconds in the private sector. So to make up for their inadequacies they feel the need to boss others around.
We can hardly imagine a sorrier bunch of individuals if we tried.
Regards,
Kris Sayce
for Money Morning Australia
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