Clear thinking helps clear away damaging humbug and there is a lot to be said allowing employers to pay only what their employees are worth in a competitive market and allowing the supposedly moral element to be largely looked after by government using the ever moral taxpayers’ money. (Nothing here BTW that says employers shouldn’t be kind, honest compassionate, even generous, only that they should not be the ones to bear the cost of a minimum wage set for reasons of social or political fashion).

The argument, sometimes made by reference to Singapore (with occasional legendary variations referring to Henry Ford 100 years ago) that higher wages forces the economy into a high wage, high skill, high tech, high profit path is certainly worth taking seriously. But let it be taken really seriously (and not just exposed to the sort of appalling low grade cant that forever spills out of the mouth of Sharan Burrows whenever a TV camera is in front of her: can’t someone find her a marginal seat to run for in everyone’s interests?). Attempting any broad brush approach on such reasoning in Australia would probably demonstrate that our economy was too complex and that we would be left with a lot of never-to-be-skilled, dim and geographically or socially difficult cases who would either be totally unemployed or exploited.