Michael Stutchbury has a great article in today’s Australian calling for some hard headed thinking on IR and government support for manufacturing (Old talk on tax and jobs). He notes:

The October 6 jobs forum announced by Julia Gillard and Swan on the weekend aims to head off Labor backbench and trade union demands for an inquiry into manufacturing after the mining boom’s strong dollar forced BlueScope Steel to mothball its export business.

The unions don’t mean a fair dinkum Productivity Commission inquiry into the costs of propping up uncompetitive industries or imposing new inflexibilities on how manufacturers can more productively employ their workforces in response to the strong dollar squeeze.

Instead, they mean the sort of inquiry Kevin Rudd got former Victorian premier Steve Bracks to do for the car industry in 2008. That predictably found reasons to extend heavy “transitional” government subsidies to Victoria’s car industry out to at least 2020, past the previous 2015 cut-off.

Coincidentally, I have an article coming out this week in Policy on car industry assistance. Unfortunately, the Centre for Independent Studies website currently links to the wrong article (I’ll find out what’s going on later today).