The Shop, Distribution, and Allied Employees’ Association is pushing for an increase to New South Wales’ public holidays, but Michael McLaren has questioned whether the union is aware of the harm it will cause.

He’s pointed out that the attempts to cloak various policies in a “warm, comforting, rhetorical blanket of equality and fairness” have resulted in Australia’s inflation going the wrong way.

“They risk becoming unwanted pieces of kindling tossed onto an already smouldering pyre awaiting the sacrificial lamb of Australia’s future prosperity and competitiveness,” he said.

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