As well as a journalist, I'm a small
business. I don't talk too much about Bunjaree Cottages in these blog
posts, but it's there.
The Business Council of Australia
scares me.
It'll go on the radio at every
opportunity telling me that it represents small business, not only
big business, but its prescriptions for the economy are a recipe for
disaster.
Listening to 702 this afternoon while I
wrapped up my day's work, I heard some muppet from the BCA espousing
the abolition of penalty rates again.
Because retail and restaurants and coffeeshops want it that way.
At
some point, asked by Richard Glover about peoples' right to a
lifestyle, the BCA spokesman rewarded us all with a lecture about
being a 24x7 online economy (hang on, though, wasn't he talking about
the needs of retail stores and restaurants and coffeshops?).
It's
like the BCA doesn't understand the intersection between society and
the economy.
Look,
you idiots, if nobody has a weekend, any business that relies on
weekend trade is done for.
Look,
you idiots, if nobody has money for discretionary spending,
coffeeshops and restaurants will suffer.
What
it feels like to me is that the BCA is utterly committed to an
ideological crusade against unions, and it doesn't care if a business
like mine is sacrificed to its endgame, the abolition of the weekend.
It –
the BCA – will damage the economy in the long term, erode society,
and along the way (I confess my interest) suck the life out of a
business like mine. Why? So it can pound its chest about beating
unions.
They're
idiots, and they scare me.
