IN THE ANGLOSPHERE AT THE END OF HISTORY...:

Howard's migrant milestone to sink (George Megalogenis, July 24, 2008, The Australian)

THE Australia that John Howard left behind for Kevin Rudd is making babies, going to work, de-unionised and hooked on immigration. [...]

Trade union membership began its slide under the Hawke-Keating Labor government, and Howard's administration completed the process by reducing coverage to less than 20 per cent last year - a point of no return, demographically speaking.

Each party has done its bit to secure lower trade union membership. From 46 per cent of the workforce in 1986 to 30 per cent in 1997 following Labor's restructure of the economy, and down again to 19 per cent by last year.

Imagine the nation a decade from now. If what happened in the Howard era were repeated, trade union coverage would have clicked back to single digits.

The last outpost would be the bureaucracy. Trade union membership in the public sector fell from 55 per cent in 1997 to 44 per cent last year. So Howard didn't quite win the culture war here, and if Rudd wanted to throw comrades a bone, he could allowthem to re-unionise the bureaucracy.

The latest issue of Australian Social Trends, the bureau of statistics annual stocktake of people and policy concerns, contains one last irony for the Howard era.

The Coalition thought it was making political capital by forcing single mothers to go back to work. What it got was a backlash in lower-income electorates.

Yesterday's data, however, confirmed a sharp improvement in the employment rates for sole parents with dependent children over the course of Howard's final term - from 48 per cent in jobs in 2004 to 55 per cent last year.

Howard got single mums working again. But they didn't thank him, and helped deliver government to Labor.

...we occasionally change the party in power, but never the policies.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 23, 2008 7:07 PM