It is disappointing to see the Fair Pay Commission has frozen the minimum wage until June 2010 (''Wage decision a 'kick in the guts','' July 8, p2). In the past when the economy has been strong they have denied a wage rise, saying they want to prevent inflation. Now their excuse is to prevent unemployment. It seems that Australia's lowest-paid can't win, in times of boom or bust. Thankfully the Commission will now be rolled over into Fair Work Australia, and this will be the last time that Howard-era appointees get to decide how minimal our minimum wage really is.
J. Collin, O'Connor
The decision by the Fair Pay Commission to not award any increase in the minimum wage (''Wage freeze decision a kick in the guts'', July 8, p2) was predicable in the present economic climate. However, the Federal Government could well assuage their disappointment and improve the lot of the lower-paid by increasing their weekly/ fortnightly take-home earnings by paying periodically more of the annual low income tax offset (reduction) to which they are entitled. It would be a simple matter to reduce their PAYG instalments of income tax. From July 1 those with an annual taxable income of $30, 000 or less are entitled an annual offset of $1350. Unfortunately for the really low paid only $700 of that benefit is available to them throughout the year, by way of reduced tax instalments.
Minimum wage earners would need to earn about an extra $50 a week through the year from non- regulated sources to incur a tax debt if their regulated tax instalments were reduced by $12 a week. How about some equity in a tax system that withholds a present entitlement from the lowest paid on the one hand whilst on the other granting generous reductions in future obligations to the well-off!
Richard Duhigg, Macquarie
So the Fair Pay Commission decides that the minimum wage should be frozen and the unions, Julia Gillard and uncle Tom Cobbley all say it stinks (Wage freeze decision a kick in the guts, July 8, p2). Seems OK to me. We Commonwealth superannuation recipients have all received our nice letter telling us we've been frozen by the CPI heading south, and it's unlikely basic-wage-recipient productivity growth would have been sufficient to compensate. So if we're trapped, eating cat food, I'm happy to see the logic universally applied.
Tom Waring, Ainslie
No guilt here?
So Robert McNamara is dead at 93 (''Architect of US role in Vietnam war'', July 8, p8), which is a damned sight older than most of the countless victims of the Vietnam War devised largely by him as US Defence Secretary in the 1960s. Still, he did finally (30 years too late) see a little light. ''We were wrong, terribly wrong,'' he famously admitted. Apart from some comments by Malcolm Fraser, there has been no such public admission of guilt or regret from any significant Australian official involved in that criminal war. Indeed, in 2005 a little Aussie skidmark stood on Vietnamese soil and brayed, with characteristic effrontery, that the only lesson to be learned from the war was that we should never have quit! The Vietnamese refrained from ejecting Howard on his ear forthwith, or indeed saying anything in response to that crude provocation. Civilised people can sometimes be just too polite for their own good.
Bernard Davis, O'Connor
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