Controversial former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is rumoured to be joining the UK Trade Board to assist in post-Brexit trade deals.
News brief - 02/09/20 View this email in your browser
Paid maternity leave? 'Over my dead body!' Introducing Tony Abbott - Johnson's 'latest hire'...
To the astonishment of leaders and officials across the globe, rumours broke last week that Boris Johnson was planning to appoint Tony Abbott, former Australian Prime Minister, to the board planning post-Brexit Free Trade Agreements.
He's an "offensive, leering, cantankerous, climate change-denying, Trump-worshipping misogynist”, Shadow Trade Secretary, Emily Thornberry, said.
"Any way you look at it, this is an absolutely staggering appointment."
Australian officials seemed similarly perplexed. Former Australian High Commissioner to the UK, Mike Rann, said: "Britain asking Tony Abbott to run its trade negotiations would be about as credible as Australia asking Gavin Williamson to take charge of its education system.”
Thus far, the rumours are yet to be confirmed, and it is not clear whether the position Abbott would be offered would be as Chair of the Trade Board or as an Advisor.
But as the prevailing opinion seems to be that Abbott will be hired, and with his "excellent connections" to Conservative stalwarts Lynton Crosby, Rupert Murdoch and Liz Truss, we asked Professor Anthony Forsyth of the Australian Institute of Employment Rights to share workers' experience of his time in office.
From his promise that paid maternity leave would be implemented only "over this government's dead body" to his repeated attacks on the trade union movement, the Australian experience does not hold much hope for the UK.
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COMMENT: Paid maternity leave? ‘Over my dead body!’ Introducing Abbott: the man who could sway post-Brexit trade deals
Professor Anthony Forsyth describes workers' experience of being led by Tony Abbott.
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IER and Covid-19
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