Article appearing in ‘The Age’

Tuesday 8^th February 2000

Hon. Mark Birrell, MP

Shadow Minister for Industry, Science & Technology

A flawed and cynical strategy is the key cause of Victoria’s damaging outbreak of industrial disruption and business shut-downs over recent weeks. It is this strategy of the Labor Government that must be abandoned if we are to avoid the State’s economic reputation being further damaged by extreme and unchecked union behavior.

The recent disruption of community and business affairs by union leaders in the La Trobe Valley could have been avoided if the current State Government had utilized the armory of legal and persuasive powers readily available to it. Instead, the Labor Cabinet selfishly implemented a strategy that actually escalated the dispute and delayed the taking of sensible steps which help end such major confrontations.

Labors plan was simple: it would avoid having to publicly comment on industrial disputes during its term in office by pretending that the Premier had "no powers" and the Government had "no role". The partisan aim was to avoid having to criticise or over-rule union allies whose support is so critical for the Parliamentary A.L.P. But the outcome of the plan was a longer and much more damaging dispute, with union leaders emboldened by the Governments silence and citizens left in the dark.

In simple terms, the new minority Government put its own political interests ahead of the public interest. We have all paid dearly, but worse is yet to come if Labor refuses to alter course. On this very day Victoria is again suffering from the costly impact of strikes and bans by construction unions. In a matter of weeks things will be made even worse when the left wing manufacturing unions start their threatened State-wide campaign of industrial unrest.

• the Essential Services Act
• the Vital State Industries Act
• the energy industry Acts.

More generally it can utilise the considerable options available to it under the Workplace Relations Act, as the Kennett Government frequently did when we gained leave to intervene before the A.I.R.C.

In the lead-up to the electricity crisis, the Acting Premier, Mr Thwaites, tried to have us all believe the Government had none of these powers. Nonsense. It had the right and ability to intervene but did not do so for fear of alienating a powerful union. The belated appointment of a State arbitrator only served to prove that the Government could move. This step should have occurred long beforehand, as should the use of the A.I.R.C..

Mr Thwaites and his Ministerial colleagues also wanted the public to believe the greatest furphy of all – that they have no capacity to act because the previous government referred the State’s I.R. functions to the Commonwealth. This is a willfully misleading excuse. None of the unions who have disrupted Victoria in recent months (the energy, construction and manufacturing unions) were under the old State I.R. system. They are Federally registered, operate under Federal awards and, even if a State system was established tomorrow, would continue to work solely under the Federal system!

When the Cabinet faces reality it will find that the most potent industrial relations tool in a State’s hands is the capacity to influence public opinion. As part of any new approach it should therefore abandon the tactics it first used with the Colonial Stadium dispute, then at Yallourn and with the building industry, where the government’s silence was deafening. Labor’s Ministers must be committed to publicly tempering extreme workplace demands and thereby cultivating a more sensible industrial environment . In the context of contemporary union disputes this necessitates the government representing Victoria’s interests by:

• opposing the 36 hour week and 24% wage rise being demanded by construction unions, which will have damaging flow-on effects for the State’s competitiveness
• supporting voluntary unionism and freedom of association, which the energy unions irresponsibly campaign against
• working with our excellent manufacturing sector to defeat exorbitant trade union demands and the pattern bargaining campaign.

I am advocating that the Government demonstrate consistent leadership. This necessarily

requires the changes I have outlined plus one more improvement – the currently invisible Industrial Relations Minister, Monica Gould, has to lift her game. The Minister must shed her blind loyalty to the union movement (where she previously had an organisers job) and step up to the duty of providing honest assistance to all the parties to a dispute. Not for every strike, but for significant cases that impinge upon the State’s over-riding interests.

At the end of the day Victoria can not afford to regain the reputation it had for chronic industrial instability under the last Labor Government. All the more reason for this administration to alter both its I.R. policy and its duplicitous tactics.