Fair Work Act Review. The Fair Work Act 2009 and the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Act 2008 came into full effect on 1 January 2010. Due to the scale of the reforms to Australia’s workplace relation system, the former Australian Government made a commitment to review the operation of this legislation after two years. The Fair Work Act Review was conducted by a panel of eminent Australians, comprising Reserve Bank Board Member Dr John Edwards, former Federal Court Judge, the Honourable Michael Moore and noted legal and workplace relations academic Professor Emeritus Ron McCallum AO.
As part of the review the panel invited employee organisations, employer organisations and other interested parties to provide submissions in response to a . The panel received more than 250 submissions. The Fair Work Act Review Panel’s final report, was released on 2 August 2012. The for the review are also available. Platforms try new degree of difficulty. Clawback clause won’t scratch many. ‘Execute, or you’re executed’: Deloitte. Agnes King Tough on staff but honest about it . . . Deloitte Australia chief executive Giam Swiegers Photo: Nic Walker Deloitte Australia chief executive Giam Swiegers says his firm is more adept at “weeding out” underperforming staff than rivals Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC.
That’s why it hasn’t had to employ cost-cutting measures observed at other firms in recent months. “The word ‘execute’ has two meanings in Deloitte: you execute or you’re executed,” Mr Swiegers said. “We have higher turnover of low-performing partners than anybody else. The South African insists that this does not translate into higher attrition across the firm. “I suspect that our total staff turnover is lower than the others, but our non-voluntary turnover higher,” he said. All big four accounting firms measure attrition in slightly different ways, making it difficult to test the veracity of Mr Swiegers’ statement. Deloitte is once again the outlier among the big four accounting firms. CBA adjusts lending role. Credit markets still apprehensive about banks. Tax holiday for shipping. Big funds may opt out of risk system.
Barrie Dunstan The strategy may lead to capital losses for older members Photo: Michele Mossop On July 1 this year, a new risk measurement for superannuation fund members will come into force – and the chances are that some big funds will choose to opt out of what is a non-compulsory system. So why are funds shying away from the new standard risk measurement, or SRM? It will give fund members a numerical risk measure running from one (very low) to seven (very high) for members’ investment strategies, replacing the often vague descriptions such as “conservative” or “growth”.
The system was brought in after the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority was frustrated by years of delays in the industry to get a uniform, industry-wide approach to labelling funds. But some funds have doubts about the guidelines, produced by a working party from the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia and the Financial Services Council, with help from the regulators.
RBA sees no US-style housing meltdown. Adrian Rollins Economics correspondent Luci Ellis, head of the RBA’s financial stability department, reassures Australian homeowners that they don’t face any US- or UK-style housing meltdown. Photo: Jim Rice Home owners need to get used to house prices going down as well as up, according to a senior Reserve Bank of Australia official.
The head of the Reserve Bank’s financial stability department, Luci Ellis, warned home buyers yesterday that the recent era of rising house prices had come to an end. But she assured home buyers that while house price falls would become more common than they had since the mid-1990s, Australia was not headed for a US-style property meltdown. “I would like to stress that Australia does not have the ingredients needed to create an outcome like that in the United States,” Ms Ellis told a mortgage industry conference in Sydney. “I do not currently see signs of widespread lax lending practices here in Australia,” she said. RBS takes a big hit on Greek debt. Downgrade likely for NAB’s British bank. NAB lifts its business rate. Gonski report - Vast education ambition a massive. Reading Gonski: a mud map for the minefield - The Drum Opinion - David Gonski has provided a potent instrument with which to affect education reform, if the Gillard Government were politically adept to use it.
Find More Stories Reading Gonski: a mud map for the minefield Ben Eltham I come from a teaching family. My parents met at teachers college. My dad went off to a varied career that included national service, town planning, university lecturing, and a stint as policy advisor to former state Labor education minister, Dean Wells. My mum embarked on a lifetime in Australian classrooms, where she worked her way up to become a veteran principal in some tough schools in Brisbane's outer suburbs. I saw a bit of Wells as a kid and young adult, therefore. Wells' is a voice worth recalling in the current education debate, because during his term as education minister under Peter Beattie, Wells fought in vain against John Howard's then-education minister David Kemp, who pushed through many of the schools funding reforms that remain with us today. At the same time, Australia's hitherto excellent performance in international education examinations started to decline.
But that's politics. Email Share x Digg. Don’t Mention The Class War. Parents have plenty to study in the Gonski report — including data that shows expensive schooling isn't producing rich results for the students, or the country. Let's start with a simple statement with which everyone can agree: education is the key to this country's future. Now, a statement with which large numbers of people will disagree vehemently: private schools are making Australia dumber. Please discuss. But, before you do, consider this fascinating conundrum. Over the past decade or so, there has been a significant drift of students away from government schools. That latter point was one stressed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Feb. 20 at her press conference, held to accompany the release of the so-called Gonski report on school-funding reform. But of the correlation between that decline and the rise of non-government schooling, she said not a word.
This, of course, is hardly surprising, in political terms. Nous Group Report "Schooling Challenges & Opportunities",August 2011. Gonski's $5 billion School Fee. All eyes on Gillard and Gonski Reports of rebel Labor MPs' plans to spill the PM, and Gonski's $5 billion cost, as online political editor Tim Lester runs over the day's political news. P 21, 2012 Federal government funding for every student regardless of the income of their parents or the wealth of their school is now part of a ''citizenship entitlement'', with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, yesterday in effect declaring it part of a new Australian compact.
But while Ms Gillard committed her government to fund all schools regardless of wealth or need, she refused to commit the money that the long-running review of school funding says is needed to restore Australia's ailing education system to health. Ticking all the boxes ... But Ms Gillard repeatedly refused to commit to the funding. Advertisement Private schools serving disadvantaged students should be able to operate without collecting any fees. Yes No. How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did. Target has got you in its aim Every time you go shopping, you share intimate details about your consumption patterns with retailers.
And many of those retailers are studying those details to figure out what you like, what you need, and which coupons are most likely to make you happy. Target, for example, has figured out how to data-mine its way into your womb, to figure out whether you have a baby on the way long before you need to start buying diapers. Charles Duhigg outlines in the New York Times how Target tries to hook parents-to-be at that crucial moment before they turn into rampant — and loyal — buyers of all things pastel, plastic, and miniature.
He talked to Target statistician Andrew Pole — before Target freaked out and cut off all communications — about the clues to a customer’s impending bundle of joy. [Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Or have a rather nasty infection… Target knows before it shows. Bold is mine. How Companies Learn Your Secrets. AM - Figures cast doubts on big banks' reasoning for rate hike 21/02/2012. TONY EASTLEY: A French banker has said what many Australian borrowers suspect - that recent interest rate hikes by banks in Australia is more to do with protecting profit margins than higher funding costs.
Research by Société Générale using publicly available data from the Reserve Bank and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority show nearly all funding costs are falling. The big four banks recently raised their lending rates between six and 10 basis points, citing rising funding costs. Société Générale's head of strategy in Asia Christian Carrillo told finance reporter Elysse Morgan the reasoning given by the banks is dubious.
CHRISTIAN CARRILLO: What we have seen over the last six months is that overall funding costs for Australian banks have absolutely come down. Research suggests that effectively pretty much every source of funding that they use - in terms of domestic deposits, short-term funding onshore, long-term funding onshore - has actually gone down. PM - Reserve Bank says rising bank costs are a fact 21/02/2012. MATT PEACOCK: An interest rate strategist from the international banking giant, Société Générale, has sparked a new round of the interest rate debate by labelling the banks' justification for raising rates as "dubious". Christian Carrillo says that public available data shows most of the banks' funding costs have actually been going down, and the rate rises are simply protecting their "high profits".
But the Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens today emphatically refuted this research, saying that the RBA's figures show bank funding costs have fallen at a slower pace than the official cash rate. Business reporter Michael Janda was at Mr Stevens' speech and has this report. MICHAEL JANDA: After the Reserve Bank left the cash rate on hold two weeks ago, many banks decided it was time to set their own interest rate policy.
All four major banks, and many of the smaller ones, lifted rates by between 6 and 15 basis points. Their stated reason, rising funding costs eating into profit margins. Rising Aussie bank costs 'impossible', says French bank. "The claim that the recent increase in mortgage rates is due to higher funding costs is very dubious" ... Christian Carillo. Illustration: Karl Hilzinger Claims about higher funding costs by Australia’s big four have met with scepticism from an unlikely source - a large French bank, Societe Generale. Tokyo-based Societe Generale Asia Pacific head of interest rate strategy Christian Carrillo said it was "almost mathematically impossible" that total funding costs for Australian banks were rising, as the sector argued this month, using it as a motive to lift mortgage rates independently of a Reserve Bank.
"The claim that the recent increase in mortgage rates is due to higher funding costs is very dubious," he said in a research note. Australia's major banks have lifted mortgage customers by between 6 and 10 basis point after the RBA shocked the market earlier this month by keeping the cash rate at 4.25 per cent. Advertisement “Australian banks are essentially an oligopoly," said Mr Carrillo. RBA governor backs banks on rate rises.