[Kevin Rudd] urged unions and workers to exercise wage restraint and asked business operators "to do their utmost to protect their workers from dismissal, knowing these workers will serve them well when times turn good again".

"I know there are employers who have asked their workers to accept shorter working hours rather than lose their jobs," he said. "That encourages me because at this time Australians need to look out for each other as we have done so many times in the past when the going has got tough. We are all in this together". Source

So, it seems Kevin is subtly kicking Keynesianism into gear by halting the growth of wages, a pre-requsite for the theory to "work". The next step will be to start the inflation-making machine (printing presses, spending) and watch as the nation becomes poorer! The lowering of hours is a good one too -- all that will result in is previously employed or "productive" employees (the ones who will keep their jobs regardless) subsidising, in effect, either unemployed workers or the "unproductive" ones (who would have lost their jobs). The very quotable Henry Hazlitt:

...in order that the new workers will individually receive three-fourths as many dollars a week as the old workers used to receive, the old workers will themselves now individually receive only three-fourths as many dollars a week as previously. It is true that the old workers will now work fewer hours; but this purchase of more leisure at a high price is presumably not a decision they have made for its own sake: it is a sacrifice made to provide others with jobs.

While these policies may appear to provide benefits in the short run to certain 'favoured' groups at the expense of others, it can never be good for the economy in the long run as it distorts the structure of production (over-expansion in some industries at the expense of others, wasted capital -- which, eventually, will collapse when it cannot yield an adequate return post-inflation).

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause - it is seen. The others unfold in succession - they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference - the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil. --  Frédéric Bastiat, That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, the Introduction.