McLeod's Work Choices : Melbourne Indymedia

As if the Government/taxpayer funded ABC's Bastard Boys (MUA lockout of 1998) drama was not out of control unions...
Strewth what is going on at Corporate TV Channel 9 are they being subverted by the 'enemy within' who resist the Howard Government's Workplace Relation (formerly known as 'work choices' ) ?
answers on a postcard to Joe 'Liberal bully' Hockey the Workplace Relations Minister...

:-)

Popular TV soapie takes a swipe at Howard laws
18 May 2007

John Howard's harsh WorkChoices laws took another battering this week - not from the Kevin Rudd or the union movement - but from popular Channel 9 drama series McLeod's Daughters.

Howard Government MPs will know the community is very angry about their work laws when a commercial TV station's popular drama series takes a pot shot at their laws.

See the episode from McLeod's Daughters
You can see the part in McLeod's Daughters that everyone's talking about. You Tube is already hosting the visuals from Wednesday night's program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAO2jmdj4Qk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Flhmu%2Eorg%2Eau%2Flhmu%2Fnews%2F2007%2F1179437937%5F2288%2Ehtml

Source:
http://lhmu.org.au/lhmu/news/2007/1179437937_2288.html

Sacked but offered job back on lower pay AWA
One of the characters, Phil, the local mayor and business owner, fires young Patrick so he can immediately rehire him on an Australian Workplace Agreement.

"Patrick, great, I've been meaning to talk to you. I'm restructuring the business - you're fired," he tells Patrick.

He then offers the employee an AWA that has lower wages.

Phil says it involves a new title of assistant manager, more flexibility, more responsibility.

"Less money," snaps Patrick in the episode shown Wednesday night. "Much less money."

Patrick is not impressed by the promise of more pay through bonuses for hard work and rejects the workplace agreement.

"Well it's not actually your choice," says Phil. "It's either my way . . ."

"I'll take the highway," says Patrick. "I quit."

Episode based on reality
The show's creator and the executive producer of Millennium Pictures, Posie Graeme-Evans, has told the media that the episode was written nine months ago and shot six months ago.

The idea came from the case in August last year after an Adelaide service station attendant who was sacked and then offered an AWA with less pay.

"Drama takes its stories from everywhere. We absolutely cannibalise, we process the world," Posie Graeme-Evans told newspapers.

"I think it's hilarious that something we thought about nine months ago ... has screened at a time when it's so sensitive. This happens in drama series."