Beijing edicts hard to digest

THE LONG VIEW - RICHARD LONG

Newspaper hacks, visiting Beijing in the days when it was called Peking, underwent an initiation rite at the hands of the correspondents staffing the Reuters office.

They were taken out to dine at what was, quite correctly, described as an exclusive restaurant.

After a splendid repast, repeat orders and much merriment, the sadistic hosts revealed to their visitors that everything they had eaten, from the snacks to the mains, had been dog meat.

Some visitors found that revelation a little hard to digest, so to speak. But, frankly, what I find harder to swallow from our new free trade partners is their disproportionate view of what is important.

The Beijing authorities are instructing restaurants to take the infamous dog meat off the menu for the duration of the Olympics, while conniving in serious offensives against humanity.

Their army can beat up monks in their satrapy of Tibet, their government can tacitly support genocide in Darfur by opposing United Nations action, they can look the other way over Zimbabwe and trample on human rights at home, but they figure everything will be fine as long as they truck the homeless out of town for the Olympics and do not offend tourists at the dinner table.

I read of the Beijing dog meat ruling just after noting a British High Court ruling granting compensation to a 73-year-old caretaker, who had fallen off his stepladder, on the grounds that the school authorities had failed to show him how to use it. The world is clearly going mad.

What a charmed life the 73-year-old caretaker has led, dicing with injury throughout his early employment years, then into middle age, finally into old age. Then, when he falls off a six- foot stepladder, it is his employer's fault because he had not been instructed how to climb it safely, or how to get down.

Under our no-fault accident compensation system, the Pom caretaker would have been covered in any case, but the news item made me reflect on National's plans to open up ACC to competition and to make changes to employment law, to allow a 90-day probation period for small businesses hiring new staff.

Labour and the unions have attacked the proposed ACC changes by using the scare word "privatisation", whereas the policy is actually aimed at providing choice in an area which is at present a monopoly.

Not many shoppers, except perhaps Woolworths shareholders, would like to see us reduce to one supermarket chain, for example. So why have one accident insurance provider? And am I the only person mystified by Auckland airport's claims that reducing to one monopoly duty- free outlet will not reduce competition or lead to increased prices?

As for the 90-day probation period, that is opposed vociferously by Labour and the unions, who argue that allowing employers to terminate some staff after a trial period will count against the poor and disadvantaged.

Actually, if the critics would only consult small business employers – and we are a nation of small businesses – they would find that the poor and disadvantaged are the very candidates penalised by the present system.

Such is the nightmare of red tape (three verbal warnings, offers of retraining, final written warnings) in trying to undo an employment mistake, employers generally play it extremely and obsessively safe.

Candidates who have tatts, signs of gang connections, a jail background or police record, invariably fail to make it through the selection process.

An employer may instinctively feel that some candidates in this category would apply themselves diligently if given a chance to get a foot on the employment ladder, but most dare not take the risk.

A mistake in a small business employing two or three workers could drive the employer to the wall.

A probation period would enable employers to be more adventurous in the hiring process, giving candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to prove themselves.

But these advantages tend to get lost in all the emotional shouting.

It has certainly been a mad world week. The Italians, of all people, passed a law making it illegal to eat, shout and sing in the streets. And the Indian police, concerned about female fans throwing themselves at cricket idol Mahendra Singh Dhoni, seconded an attachment of tall, stunning women police officers to protect him. They were immediately dubbed Dhoni's angels.

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