PRIME MINISTER
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
AUSTRALIAN EDUCATION UNION ANNUAL FEDERAL CONFERENCE
MELBOURNE, 19 JANUARY 1996
" CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
Thank you for Inviting me to address you today. I spoke at this Conference three years ago and then, as
now, we were facing an election. It was a profoundly Important election then and it will be just as important
this lime.
Some peopie are saying the lines are not as sharply drawn: that without the deeply ideological Mr Hewson,
and the deeply iniquitous GST, Australians this time will have some kind of tweedle dumn tweedle dee choice
confronting them.
Nothing of course could be further than the truth. Last time we faced a right wing Ideologue, a man who put
his policies and Ideas on the tabie and challenged us to persuade Australian voters that our policies and
ideas were better.
This time we are facing a right wing Ideologue who will not put his policies and ideas on the table.
John Howard has been shadowing me for a quarter of a century: we are the oldest political opponents still
practising, I know him so well and his beliefs so well that if I close my eyes I can hear them playing like a
broken record In my head and it is the voice of the most conservative politician in the last quarter of a
century.
Or, to use his own words, the most conservative leader the Liberal Party has ever had. And if anybody tells
you that John Howard has suddenly become a cuddly small Liberal who has seen the error of his
reactionary ways, you can tell them that I am a Rastafarian and Tim Fischer is a Trotskyist,
So iet's be in no doubt about this sometime In the next two or three months Australians will make a
decision about the basic nature of their society and the basic direction it will take into the 21 st century.
Tndi: y I arldrarc ynei in a Irv% 14I onvironmont whki~ to undamontolly tho camo oo it woo throo yearo Q89.
What hits changed Is that we have moved on as a nation. We have moved on as a community. We have
moved on in our social policy, our foreign policy, our Industrial relations policy, our labour market programs,
our cultural policy, our Idea for an Australian republic, our superannuation policy, our policy on the
environment, our policy for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. The economy has moved on.
In everyone of these areas we have made5 dramatic strides In the past three years.
And, with your cooperation, we have made them in education.
Now you will remember that when I was here three years ago, Mr Hewson had committed the Opposition to
shifting resources to wealthy private schools, introducing vouchers for vocational education and fees for
undergraduate courses, and slashing $ 10 billion from the social wage, Including education.
Today Mr Howard says nothing about those nasty things. He offers none of the specific policy details, just
nebulous policy directions things he believes In, he says.
You don't have to be a political genius to know why John Howard is not giving us any details. My dog knows
why. John Howard is giving us no policy detail because as we found with John Howson and Jeff Kennett
the devil is In the detail. And John Howard hopes that if he leaves the detail out, and just keeps smiling as
cutely as he can, Australians won't see the devil lurking.
I know what he will say there's that Keating trying to scare people, talking about lurking devils and John
Howard being just like John Howson. " Massive scare campaign", he will say.
Well let's look at just one of John Howard's policy principles. Let's see if there Is a devil lurking in what he
says he'll do about education.
John Howard has committed a Coalition Government to winding back specific purpose grants to the States.
The States, he says, " will have greater freedom of choice when deciding their programs and priorities".
Now the Commonwealth Government provIdas over $ 4 billion in funding for school and vocational
education In the form of specific grants to the States -nearly one quarter of all specific purpose payments to
the States goes to education.
These grants help meet the costs of teachers' salaries, curriculum development and the professional
development of teachers. Grants to build and maintain schools and TAFEs. Grants to improve educational
opportunities for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, students with disabilities, children living in isolated
regions and children who suffer sodao-economic disadvantage. Grants to Improve the quality of schooling
and access to vocational education.
Mr Howard says he would wind back these grants.
And what would he put In their place?
The State's " programs and priorities".
So where is the devil lurking in this? Well, it just could be recognisable In the " programns and priorities" of
certain States.
Victoria, for instance, where the education " priorities" of the Ken nett Government have closed nearly 300
schools, reduced teacher numbers by 8,000, and cut the level of spending per student by
Or Tasmania, where real spending per student has fallen by 7 per cent.
And South Australia. The South Australian Government's priorities have seen the education budget
slashed by $ 40 million.
Where is the devil lurking in this particular Liberal Party policy " principle"? Answer in getting the States to
do the details. In getting the States to do the dirty work.
A little later I will be talking about another fundamental area of national policy where the Liberal Party is
similarly attempting to impose their old agenda by new means.
In fact, the more of these policy " principles" we look at the more we will see that, under John Howard's
leadership, the Liberal Party Is attempting to do by stealth what last time they attempted to do by open
debate. For the Australian public, not getting to see the detail means not getting to see the fundamental difference
between the Government and the Opposition. It means they don't get to see the choice.
In fact the choice is very much the same as It was the last time John Howard led the Coalition in an election
campaign. It is very much the chioice Australian voters have faced ever since the Liberal Party bought the
Idea that " small government" and a market free-for-all is the best means of governing a country.
For a decade or more, John Howard has been chief spokesman for this position and in successive elections
the Australian people have rejected him and his ideology. This election is his last stand this is John
Howard's Little Big Horn and there is nothing he won't do to escape the fate of Custer.
If it means renouncing policies he has espoused all his political life, he will do it. If he can hide them he will.
And if he can get the States to practise them on his behalf well, what could suit him better?
Why you would give the States more responsibilities when many of them are walking away from their
existing responsibilities is beyond me. It is beyond Labor,
We say education is too important to leave to the States.
We say that the interests of our children are the Interest of the Commonwealth Government; the Interests of
those millions of Australians who need vocational training are the interests of the Commonwealth
Government. The interests of social equity and economic efficiency are the interests of the Commonwealth
Government. We say all these issues concern the national Interest and the national interest is the interest
of the Commonwealth Government.
Through its funding decisions, a government demnonstrates its priorities and interests and where it believes
Its responsibilities lie.
Through the provision of real Increases in funding for school education 54 per cent since we came to office
the Labor Government has supported access to education for all Australians.
In establishing the National Professional Development Fund, we have worked with teachers to strengthen
and widen their professional knowledge and expertise, acknowledging that teachers are the main agents of
educational reform.
Through support for EdNa, we have Identified the national significance of ensuring our schools are equipped
to take advantage of new technology.
In our suppoit for Aboriginal education, students from disadvantaged and isolated areas, students with
disabilities and students from non-English speaking backgrounds, we have put a premium on access and
equity. With funding for the new civics and citizenship education program, we are recognising that our young
people should understand our democratic institutions and participate in the civic life of the nation.
In Implemreniting the National Strategy on Asian Languages and Studies, we have recognised the need to
improve Australia's capacity to understand, interact and trade with our key Asian neighbours.
Through our $ 1.5 billion Increase in funding tor vocational education, we are signalling that a world-class
vocational education system is essential for building a competitive nation, and we are demonstrating that
this Government has a rock solid commitment to a public vocational education system which creates life
opportunities and allows access for all.
The Federal Labor Government has a deep interest in the shape of the nation's education system and the
education of our young people. But this interest would be hollow if it were not backed up by funding to
sustain and improve the education system. This is just what specific grants to the States are for. And this is
just what the Liberals would hand over to the States.
I have said before that education and especially public education is a wealth transfer. It is a profoundly
democratic and just investment and it is essential to the maintenance of the social fabric. It is also
essential to a healthy economy. A better trained workforce Is a more productive and innovative workforce.
Because education Is fundamental to our aspirations as a nation and as a people, because It goes to the
core of our egalitarian values, because it is an essential means of creating social cohesion, because it is a
basic right of all Australians, the Commonwealth Government has a duty to provide for it.
As teachers I expect you will have some sympathy with this attitude. As teachers you have professional
aspirations and interests an Interest in the people you teach, the quality of your schools and colleges, the
quality of curricula, the standards of your profession.
But you also have aspirations as citizens as Australians with ambitions for yourselves and for your
children, with expectations that the reward for the work you do will allow a reasonabie amount of time for
leisure and recreation, and a reasonable salary to buy a reasonable life style now and in retirement. As
people who dedicate your labour, skills and knowledge to educating others, you expect, and have a right to
expect, decent pay and conditions of employment, including security of employment.
That is why as well as your interest In what Governments do about education, you have an interest In what
they do or propose to do about industrial relations.
When we talk about Industrial relations we are talking about more than the level of wages and salaries
although we are certainly talking about them too. When we talk about industrial relations, we are talking
about the welfare of individuals and families and their children. We are talking about the distribution of
wealth and opportunity in our society.
The Industrial relations system, broadly speaking, is the framework in which opportunity and wealth are
delivered. It is the basic mechanism of social justice. And, like education, it sets the boundaries for the sort
of society we are and want to be.
That is why, like education, It is an arena in which governments have a proper Interest. In education we
accept our responsibility to provide schools, equipment, technology, teachers. In industrial relations we
accept responsibility to provide a system that works fairly, efficiently and delivers security. That means we
accept responsibility to provide a safety net and an umpire.
And If you look at how our Industrial relations system has worked in the last decade and a half, and consider
the improvements which are still being made, you would have to ask why anyone would want to tear it down.
Why you would want to walk away from your responsibility to provide the umpire and the safety net?
The systemn we presently have and the one we have been developing for the last twelve years or so has
delivered results which were unimaginable in the days when the Coalition was in office.
It delivers a safety net for all workers. It delivers real wage increases. It delivers more than twice the labour
productivity of the country whose Individual contract system the Coalition most admires, New Zealand. It
delivers the lowest rate of strikes since 1940. It delivers employment growth. It delivers low inflation; and
Increasingly It delivers flexibility, skilling, and work place reform.
It delivers an Industrial culture of cooperation rather than conflict. It delivers an environment In which
fundamental, and fundamentally necessary, economic reform can take place without the social damage
which has accompanied such reform In other countries.
It delivers the means by which Australia has become a competitive and open economy, and yet retained its
social cohesion and the social values which have traditionally underpinned it.
In view of all this, you have to ask why would you tear it down?
Because despite their most recent efforts to pretend otherwise, tear it down is what the Coalition would do.
Labor market reform has been John Howard's passion for a decade.
What's tihe first thing the Coalition would do? They would throw away the Accord.
John Howard yearns for the pre-Accord days. We should remember what those days were like.
Australia was strike-prone.
The best measure of Industrial unrest, working days lost per 1000 employees, stood at 590 per annum under
Fraser and Howard in 1994 the number was 76. The average under the Accord is 67 per cent lower than It
was pre-Accord.
The change since 1983 has not been a slight variation to the industrial weather It has been a major change
In the climate.
But in the last resort, thle umpire still prevails.
In the CRA conflict of last November an industrial disaster was averted because the system worked: the
Australian Industrial Relations Commission stepped in.
The same Commission that John Howard wants to do away with. " We will stab the Commission in the
stomach" he said in his braver days of 1992 when the Coalition thought they would win by being honest
about their intentions.
John Howard supported Comaico the same John Howard who last week said he believed in equal pay for
work of equal value!
Ask yourself, whiat would have happened, without the Commission.
Comalco was paying workers up to $ 20,000 less than their feliow workers performing identical tasks, just
because the latter signed individual contracts.
Ask yourself how long that dispute would have gone on, and what the casualties would have been If it hadn't
been fixed quickly. The country would have been brought to its knees.
The costs would have been extreme, and the consequences would go on for a long time.
Our reputation as a low strike country has taken more than a decade or mature perseverance. But it would
all be lost in a few weeks with the Howard hostility to unions and without an umpire to sort it out.
Our Industrial stability is under even greater threat from the Coalition than first appears. The deplorable
strike record delivered under John Howard in 1975-82 occurred under relatively favourable circumstances
compared to what will happen under the Coalition of the present.
At least in the 1975-82 period the Liberal Government did not directly seek conflict with the union
movement, as Its current policy does. It was more an approach of benign antipathy; today it is one of
aggressive hostility they talk about " breaking" union power.
At least in the 1975-82 period the Liberal Government did not sideline the umpire, the Industrial Relations
Commission, as Its current policy does.
So under the Coalition there would be a much bigger fight than before, and there would be no referee.
The Accord processes are more than about cooperation and Industrial peace. They reflect a consensual
view on the importance of the link between labour cost changes and national economic performance.
When the Government came to office In 1983, we Inherited double-digit inflation and double-digit
unemployment an Australian first.
In the period of the Accord we have had macro-economic outcomes foreseen by no economist and
unimaginable under the previous approach.
Real GOP growth has averaged 3.7 per cent growth per year under the Accord. It was 1.9 per cent In the
seven years before the Labor Government. That is, the Accord has delivered nearly a doubling of growth.
And It's continuing we now have had a record 17 successive quarters of GDP growth.
Economic growth means jobs growth. The Accord has delivered average employment growth of 2.3 per cent
per year; when Mr Howard was Treasurer the figure was 0.8 per cent.
In absolute numbers, the job growth figures are even starker: 184,514 per year under the Accord, 50,199
per year under Mr Howard.
If employment had continued to grow at the same rate as it did under Howard, there would be 1.4 million
fewer jobs today.
Inflation has been reduced to an average of 5.2 per cent a year under the Accord: Mr Howard's record: 9.9
per cent. For the last 4 years It has averaged 2.25 per cent, a figure that 13 years ago would have been
Incredible. Real average weekly earnings for full-time adults has Iricreascd by 8.8 per cent under the Accord. The
Coalition says wages have failcn, but that's because they are using shonky data a point explained In the
document I am launching today.
The rapid employment growth and the higher real wages have influenced the best total measure or
economic welfare: real disposable household Income per capita. Under the Accord it has increased by 22.3
per cent, or nearly 2 per cent a year. For the previous pre-Accord period the total increase was only 6 per
cent less than 1 per cent a year.
Moreover, the Accord has provided a mechanism for transforming workplaces. It is not an accident, nor Is it
an international phenomenon, that our workplaces are being transformed significantly In terms of skiling
and flexibility.
And Is not an accident, nor Is It an International phenomenon, that the transition Is being accomplished In a
cooperative and peaceful way.
it is the Accord.
The Accord has delivered and it is continuing to deiiver.
In Accord Viii the partners committed to the creation of 000,000 additional jobs up to March, 1999. This
promise builds on the Accord VII commitment of 500,000 jobs in the three years after the 1993 election.
The time Is nealy up and already 720,000 jobs have been created.
In this Accord the ACTU and the Government also committed to a 2-3 percent rate of underline Inflation on
average over the course of the cycle. It Is unprecedented to have a union movement endorsing an Inflation
target of the Central Bank.
This Accord also supported a Special Case being brought before the Commission for teachers and nurses
who had been unable to obtain wage justice from conservative State Governments.
What would have happened to teachers' pay without the Accord and capacity Of the Commission to
Intervene when pay and conditions are being eroded by Governments not sympathetic to teachers? A large
number of people in this room would be much worse off without this process.
We shouldn't forget the micro-economnic reforms underway In Australian workplaces, with an emphasis on
collective bargaining at the enterprise level. Well over half of all federal omployoes are now on
agreements, many of them extremely Innovative. And the number Is growing quickly.
Workplace agreements collectively bargained are only possible If the total value of the award conditions
Is not reduced.
This Is the real " no disadvantage" test, In which the agreements are closely scrutinised by the highly expert
and respected Industrial Relations Commission before they become law.
The process of certifying agreements Is a public one. Agreements are negotiated collectively; union
representation Is welcomed; no Individuals have to bargain by themselves with the employer. There Is not a
large powor imbalance and industrial relations inspectors are checking that agreements are fair and legal in
practice. Every worker Is protected. The system looks after those whose bargaining position Is weak. It Is fair and Is
seen to be.
These Issues and more are described, explained and analysed In the Government document Flexibilty and
Fairness at Work, which I am launching today with the minister for industrial Relations, Laurie Brereton.
Flexibility and Fairness at Work is a broad statement of the Government's Industrial relations stance. We
are very proud of it. We are confident it will reassure Australians that there is every reason to maintain our
Industrial relations approach and institutions because this system delivers flexible change and protects
workers. So, in summary, what do we get with the Accord? Industrial stability, a highly effective macro-economic
Instrument to deliver low Inflationary economic and employment growth, a framework for protected
workplace reform. A tested and proved way of operating.
Why would we want to put our social and economic security at risk by throwing it out?
What else does John Howard really want in Industrial relations?
One thing is not In doubt. He has been absolutely consistent in advocating radical change for the Australian
labour market.
It has been one of the few things we could rely on. As he said himself in July last year:
" As you know, of all the Issues I have been committed to over the last ten years, none has boen
more important, none has been more prominent, than my absolute commitment to the need to free
Australia's Industrial relations system."
If he's said It once, he's said it a hundred times. He must have said it a dozen times last year.
When economic policy reforms have been accepted as being good for the country, he has always said
things like, " yes but they won't do the most important thing they won't change our inflexible wages system".
John Howard has always stood for one thing: he wants Australia to be a low labour cost country. He wants
employers to have the upper hand with workers, because he says work contracts should be negotiated
Individually and not collectively.
Any fair assessment of his record leads Inexorably to this conclusion only: he wants workers' pay and
conditions to be cut.
How do we know this to be true?
As Treasurer in 1982 he Initiated the wages freeze which ensured that the real value of workers' pay would
fall. He has opposed riot been quiet about, not Ignored, he has opposed every proposed wage increase for
Australian worker's since 1978, bar two.
He wrote Jobsback! for the last election in which there were no protections for workers, and no way of
guaranteeing workers' pay and conditions. Hie has said on several occasions since the 1993 election that
Jobsbeck' was the right policy. He said it right up until I11 days ago.
He has referred to overtime and penalty rates as " absurd job destroying imposts", and told us for a decade
or more that labour market flexibility is the modern approach for Australia. Not having Governments, or
unions, Or Commissions Involved in industrial relations Is his panacea, his holy grail.
He looks with envy and admiration to the New Zealand changes in industrial relations which have totally
removed the awards and pushed workers into individual contracts.
The Victorian approach to Industrial relations, In which there have been significant pay reductions for
Victorian State award workers, he describes as excellent policy.
When 400,000 Victorian workers chose to move to the federal award system to escape, he has said less
and less about how good the Victorian model Is. But Jeff Kennett has said that with a Howard government,
these people would have " nowhere to hide".
John Howard has said that the Western Australian State industrial relations system is his preferred model.
For West Australian workers there are individual contracts with just a few minimum conditions, and the
certainty that employers can reduce pay legally.
8
He advocated a youth wage of $ 3 an hour in the last election, and has only dropped it now because he
argues that it Is hard to explain the benefits. Nevertheless, he says that it is right.
He continually attacks the Government for its active support of the Accord, the Industrial Relations
Commission, and bargaining processes that protect workers.
And, with these views and this line of attack, he is essentially saying two things: that ' flexibility" meaning
pay cuts Is the solution; and that he is not prepared to support a system which genuinely protects the pay
and conditions of workers.
The finest policy contribution that could be made by government in John Howard's view is the " freeing up"
of the labour market with its attendant pay cuts and loss of conditions.
Simply, he wants another, way.
It Is his deepest philosophical commitment, the definition and framework of his policy position his reason
for being.
But then a strange thing happened just 11 days ago.
In the speech to the Young Liberals Annual Convention on January 8 he announced a complete change in
his direction. He said things he had never said or thought, or felt, or countenanced for a moment in his
entire political career.
What was his oldest anathema suddenly became his newest desideratumn.
He said things that he had fought against in the Liberal party back rooms for a decade. Among young
Liberals at least the very young it might not have raised a youthful eyebrow. But old Liberals must have
been reaching for the smelling salts, and in boardrooms across the country the level of whiskey bottles fell
by an average 8 centimetres.
Had their man gone mad? They give him one last chance and this is what he does.
" Under a Howard Government you cannot be worse off but you can be better off", he said. " I give this rock
solid guarantee", he said. " Our policy will not cause a cut in the take-home pay of Australians", he said.
He then went on to outl ine some changes to the Industrial relations system, including listing 10 so-called
minimum conditions of employment. One of these was that take-home pay would be at least the same as
the value of the award conditions.
How could this amazing turn-around be understood?
Has he radically changed? Have his previous commitments and principles now gone?
Is he entitled to be believed?
By the time they got the corks back In the bottles In the boardrooms and the beter clubs, they knew the
answer and were reassured.
They knew that this new system of his can't and won't actually deliver what he says. They knew that he still
wants radical changes and his new system will deliver this.
That instead of being straight, like Dr Hewson was, it can all be achieved by stealth. That his speech was a
ruse. The truth is, he still wants radical change.
It i5 simply not credible that John Howard, by his own definition the most conservative Liberal leader ever,
has now become an advocate of worker protections in the labour market.
He Is not entitled to be believed.
And if he is not entitled to be believed he is weak, because he doesn't have the courage to stand up for and
argue his beliefs.
And if he still wants radical labour market reform but seek it by Stealth, then he is sneaky.
John Howard won't be the first Liberal leader to promise no reductions in workers remuneration and then cut
pay and conditions Immediately on winning government. In fact, It's becoming quite fashionable.
Jeff Kennett was the first in recent times. He said Victorian workers will not suffer " any loss of wages and
conditions", but then abolished all State awards and took away holiday loadings.
Richard Court was next, saying he was no Jeff Kennett and that workers had " nothing to fear. When
elected, he out youth wages to $ 3.77 an hour and removed all Income guarantees from the Western
Australian system.
John Howard's promise that " under Coalition policy... . employees cannot be worse off* has a very familiar
ring. Kennett, Court and Howard have one thing strongly in common: an absolute conviction that labour mariket
change for which read lower wages is essential.
It is more than just the comparison with his fellow Liberals that tells us that Howard is not entitled to be
believed. It is the process of his new system that will make It Inevitable.
Under the proposed system the Industrial Relations Commission will be made redundant. There will be no
public testing or assessment of the fairness of contracts. Workers will have to bargain, as Individuals, with
the employer.
The Australian Workplace Agreement will be filed and that just means put in a cabinet with the new socalled
Employment Advocate, It will not be looked at unless the worker asks for this to be so.
Let's think about the circumstances in which a worker would ask for an inspection of their contract.
If asked to sign an Australian Workplace Agreement would a job applicant say, " let me show It to the union,
or to a lawyer first", when they know that some other more compliant applicant will then get the job? The
answer is, of course not. Job applicants will have no effective choice.
Thus job mobility will ensure that the system must quickly and Inevitably reflect the law of the jungle. Under
the Coalition's approach new workers will be forced onto agreements that will not be scrutinised by an
effective or even expert body.
And job mobility is a huge Issue. Over 1.7 million workers face a new employer each year. 400,000
married women returning to work; 250,000 tertiary education graduates; several hundred thousand year I11
and 12 leavers; and 600,000 workers who change jobs every year.
In 1994 a total of 28,258 school teachers took a job with a new employee 7675 men and 18583 women.
Some of them might be sitting in this room. That's over 10 per cent of all teachers each year without any
effective protection.
The system will change radically, and quickly, because somebody wanting a job will sign up even if they are
unhappy with the contract. And no one apart from the worker and the employer will know what has
transpired because, as In Victoria and Western Australia, the contracts will be secret.
Existing employees are also not going to challenge their employer if they think the contract Is unfair. This
would amount to publicly questioning the employers honesty and credibility.
The employer can make this costly in all sorts of ways by not offering overtime hours, by not all owing
holidays when they are wanted, by not giving promotions, and even by the sack under the Coalition's
changed unfair dismissals laws. You'd have to be a mug to want to take on the boss publicly In this way.
And why would an Individual worker bother to bring a complaint to the Employment Advocate when it has no
judicial power, and no way of enforcing a decision, other than to take it to court where it Gould stay for many
months, and where the outcome is uncertain?
Even if the Workplace Agreement seems unthreatening at first, the Coalition has no process to up-date
them, and says that even if the awards are Improved this will not effect tihe Workplace Agreement. So over
time the Agreements must become of lower value, with no mechanism to alter this, and no right for a worker
to strike if an employer changes any aspect of them.
John Howard knows all this. And so do his political supporters.
It is instructive that neither the BCA nor the ACCI took John Howard to task for his appaient conversion to
the cause of worker protection. It is instructive that Jeff Kennett and the WA industrial relations Minister,
Kierath, both applauded Howard's policy announcement even though on paper It contradicts much of what
they stand for.
The reason is that conservative business groups and other Liberals know what John Howard knows: he can
achieve by stealth exactly what he and they have always wanted.
The conservatives saw the meaning of John Howard's speech, knowing It to be a ruse, camouflage from a
leader without the leadership to admit where he wants to take Australia.
Camouflage from a leader who won't stand and articulate that which he passionately believes.
The bottom line is that John Howard Is committed to radical labour market change nothing Is clearer. But
he has now also revealed himself as someone who is prepared to publicly repudiate his most strongly held
position because he knows that, properly understood, his industrial relations policy would lose him the
election. He Is willing to wear the charge that he stands for nothing because he hopes to win by cunning what he has
never won by advocacy.
Under Howard's system wages must fail. Conditions must be lost. And It will all happen quickly because
the labour market has so much mobility, and it is the new job takers who will be most disadvantaged initially.
But, over time, everybody will be affected.
The question Is why do it? Why throw away the Accord and put in place a system that must cut pay and
conditions and take away basic rights of workers?
It can't be for profits. Industrial peace, jobs or Inflation. And it's not for productivity as the dismal
performance of New Zealand has shown,
It can only be because he wants a radically different Australia, with considerably more employer power and
considerably less employee protections.
It can only be because he wants a low wage cost country. Make no mistake, this obsession still rules him.
Under John Howard's arrangements the Australian industrial system will be changed In favour of employers,
the bargaining will swing In their favour, the onus will fall on Individual workers and as a recent poll
indicates, they know workers' Incomes will be cut.
The real John Howard won't be standing up in this election, but we've seen enough from the last quarter
century to know exactly what to expect.
He will leave education to the States. He will leave the wages and conditions of Australian workers not to
the IRC and the system of awards and the principle of no disadvantage but to the law of the jungle and the
survival of the fittest.
With the processes of his industrial relations system his rock-solid guarantee of workers take home pay Is a
sham and a ruse.
11
With John Howard we have once again reached a fork In the road. His path leads Inexorably to a reduced
social wage, reduced educational opportunity, the end of the Accord, and the end of an industrial relations
system which levels up the playing field of our national life.
Since I last spoke to you, we have had three highly productive years. There have been major economic and
social reforms. We have maintained the environment of cooperation and tolerance which has taken us so
far in recent years. In 1996, just about the only thing which hasn't changed for the better is the Coalition.
Even the recent change in rhetoric is no change if you remember this time in 1993, they were attempting
to sell a new cuddly version of Fightback.
We are seeing it all again. And with your support, we will see the same result at the election.
ends