PRIME MINISTER
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, MP
ALEXANDER HEIGHTS COMMUNITY CENTRE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
8 FEBRUARY 1996
I am very pleased to be here to support Carolyn in her effort to win Cowan for
the ALP and to come to Perth in support of all our candidates.
It will be hard work. but I think we can hold all our seats and even pick up one
or two including Cowan.
We have exceptional candidates in the West and we've had them for some
time. Old hands like Kim Beazley have always had to work very hard. It has
become a way of life.
I was in Canning yesterday, where George Gear is going to have to work as
hard as Kim has had to, and I left confident that George will come through too.
This election will be hard. But we're used to that. None of them has ever
been easy.
But we must win this one. We have achieved so much in the last three years.
We have got to a point where Australia is so much stronger and has so much
to look forward to we can't give it to John Howard. Or Tim Fischer, or
Alexander Downer. Or Peter Costello. Or Peter Reith and Bronwyn Bishop.
We can't leave the future to people who live in the past. We can't hand
Australia's future over to their conservative creed.
And, however much they are hiding it and pretending that they're new-born
social democrats and progressive thinkers, it is a backward and backwardlooking
creed.
Look at it its antecedents every reactionary fashion of the last fifteen years
Thatcherism, Reaganism, the New Right, the HR Nicholls society, Joh for
Canberra. the Greed is Good brigade. John Hewson. Fightback, John and
Andrew, Andrew and John and Alexander and John again, and some hybrid
now of John Howard, Newt Gingrich and the Fabian socialists.
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To help distinguish this Mr Howard from the one I have known for the past
years, in my own mind I call him Jack Howard.
And I think it is only reasonable that Mr Howard do something to distinguish
himself in the same way for the people of Australia.
The point is that for all the changes of leadership, and the changes of rhietoric,
and the changes of tactics and the changes of ideological fashion the
Coalitions intentions today are essentially the same as they have been for the
last decade.
They still want to privatise the health system. They still hate Medicare. They
still can't concede the value of a social safety net and a social wage. They still
hate the Accrd. They still have a problem with tMe idea, that people should be
able to combine to protect their common interests in the work place.
The real nature of the Coalition, the real unreformed nature of their thinking
and their intentions is nowhere revealed more clearly than in their industrial
relations proposals.
And, of course, nowhere have they made a more thoroughgoing effort to
disguise thir real intentions.
Of course there are some very obvious signs of what they have in mind. The
legislation brought down by Jeff Keninett in Victoria is one example and for
people who might think that we should not judge them by their record, it is a
useful one.
Their rcrd shows and John Howard's record particularly shows that the
Liberal and National parties want nothing in the world so much as the
destruction of the Accord. the breaking of the unions and the creation of a
labour market in which the balance of power shifts heftily to the employers.
John Howard has beern the most consistent advocate of these policies for the
last 20 years. He has opposed all but two wage rises in that period. He has
sdagain and again that tabour market reform of the kind he has in mind is
his great mission in life. He was a passionate advocate of the draconian
labour market proposals contained in lFightback.
And so thoroughly is it understood within the Liberal Party that Jeff Kennett
said recently when John Howard gets eklced those 400,000 Victorian
workers who escaped from his legislation will have nowhere to hide. In other
words, the Kennett legislation will become Commonwealth legislation.
So we have their record to judge them by and Jeff Kennetfs legislation to
judge themi by. And we also have the West Australian government by which
to judge them. 466,3
What the WA Government has been doing in public health, education, in their Un
approach to nurses' oay and industnrial relations generally is wholly lin
consiste.: with Joh:. Howard's .;. inkng over the past two dEcades. fal en
Don't be fooled by the cardboard cut-out John Howard. Th
Last time they fought a savage ideological battle. This time it's a battle of inc
tactics. But the most conservative leader the Liberal Party has ever had is still the
the most conservative leader the Liberal Party has ever had. wo
But his policy on industrial relations exposes the truth. And you don't even Le
have to draw comparisons between Mr Howard and Mr Kennett and Mr Court in,
to prove it. You don't even have to draw the logical inference from his past. If;
Remember how Jeff Kennett said that there would be nQ " loss of wages and sh
conditions" end then when he was elected abolished all state awards and took rrm
away holiday loadings? Th
Remember when Richard Court said that he was no Jeff Kennett and that
workers had nothing to fear and then when he was elected removed all Ne
income guarantees from the West Australian system and cut youth wages to eff
S3.77 an hour? W,
And remember any one of hundreds of statements made by John Howard over m;
the past dozen years. Jo
There is no doubting their intentions. 0
If John Howard is elected the Commonwealth industrial relations legislation will
become the same as Kennett's and Court's. an
But it will also be distinctly and expressly John Howard's. He hasn't waited Ethis
long to look like he's imitating someone else. Tr La
John Howard's industrial relations package in 1996 will deliver the same
results as the package contained in Fightback. The only difference is that the Th
Fghtback package spelt it out. jot fro
In the new 8 January 1996 package you have to look at the fine print and in
when you do you see that the " rock solid guarantee" that " employees cannot
be worse off" is cynical nonsense. MI
of
Look behind the veil of comforting rhetoric shrouding his most recent policy
announcement, and you can see the distinct shape of the old ideological M
obsessions lower wages, less security, weaker unions: in short a labour rru
market much more closely resembling the US labour market, and much less Ev
our own labour traditions. ME
The proof of the pudding is in the proposal itself. ye
4664
Under the Coalition's system the Industrial Relations Commission will be sidelined
and made impotent. There will be no public testing or assessment of the
fairness of contracts. Workers will have to bargain, as individuals, with the
employer, in secret
The Australian Workplace Agreement, which is what the Coalition is calling
I, individual contracts, will be filed and that just means put in a cabinet with
the new so-called Employment Advocate. It will not be looked at unless the
Lets think about the circumstances in which a worker would ask for an
inspection of their contract.
If asked to sign a 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.
New workers will be forced onto agreements that will not be scrutinised by an
effective or even expert body.
With the high levels of job mobility which characterise our modemn labour
maket. the system must quickly and inevitably reflect the law of the jungle.
Job mobility is an issue with huge implications for the Howard legislation.
Over 1.7 mnillion Australian workers face a new employer each year about
300,. 000 tertiary education graduates: up to 150. 000 year 11 and 12 leavers:
and 600.000 workers who change jobs every year.
Every year 220,000 Western Australian workers take a new job. 33,000 are in
Trades, 45,000 are Sales or Personal Service workers, and 55.000 are
Labourers. 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 contacts will be secret
Many of these workers will be young around 750,000 people under the age
of 25 take a new job every year.
Many of them~ will be immobile and without much choice around 225,000
marred women return to the workforce to new jobs after iooking after children.
Every year.
Many of them will have a poor understanding of Australian practices about
150,000 people born in non-English speaking countries take a new job every
year. 4665
T,.
Many of themn w.: l te taking their f si ever jot-about 2730 000 Australians W
expenence, this every year.
In proportionate terms, the figures are similarly striking. The number of new
job takers over a year is about 40 per cent of all employees in Sales and
Personal Assistant occupations, and the same for Labourers. Twenty five per
cent of all all wage and salary earners take a new job every year. n
Ask the most batsic question: how can an inexperienced jobseeker, possibly It
with litte confidence, surel without a good understanding of the award 4
system, and without doubt little recourse to the Australian Industrial Relations OL
Commission, unions, or the government's award inspectors how can they
expect to strike a fair and balanced agreement with an employer about the pay If
and conditions of a secret individual contract? -cc
Just taking the fact that over 40 per cent of workers have been in their current TI
job for less thani 3 years, it must follow that over the first term of a Hoard PC
government at least 3.2 million workers will be on individual contracts. SIC
Secret indivdual c ontracts.
Contracts that the applicant won't challenge, because if they do they won't get SI'
the job. ba
Contracts that the existing employee won't challenge. biecause if they do there Ir
will be big and adverse personal and professional consequences. M
Contracts that will change the nature of Australian workplaces and pay, and W
with this the social fabric.
Existing employees are also not going to challenge their employer if they think a,.
the contract is unfair. This would amount to publicly questioning the W
employer's honesty and credibility. ac
The employer can make this costly in all sorts of ways -by not offering Jo
overtime hours. by niot allowing holidays when they are wanted, by not giving 58.
promotions, and even by the sack under the Coalition's impotent new unfair
dismissals laws. T
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How can an individual worker resist? Th
Why would an individual worker bring a complaint to the Employment $ 2
Advocate when it has no judicial power, and no way of enforcing a decison, be
othe than to take it to court where it could stay for many monfths and where AL
the outcome is uncertain? ca pn
4 666
The eenI issues concerning the Coalition's new agenda in comrbination
with the mobility in the Australian labour market are a profound part of this
debate. They are explained in more detail in the Statement issued from my
Office today.
But for all the detail in that Statement and all the details of the Coalition's
many statements, the industrial relations system has more fundamental
meanings. It goes to the core of society. If the conditions in which we negotiate our
working lives are unbalanced, our society is unbalanced. If they are unfair,
our sciety is unfair unfairness will be built in.
if intimidation of the weak is built into our workplaces it is built into the
Tcohme mCuonaitlyit. on's industrial relations proposals are atac tic to disguise their real
policy. And their real policy would make a monumental change not just to
something abstract called the industrial relations system it will make a
monumental change to the balances in Australian society.
It will, effectively by stealth, take away the one means. by which workers have
always been able to level up the social equation the right to join together and
bargain collectively.
In other words the Coalition's agenda is not just about low wages it is about
moving the balance towards employers and away from workers.
We can see it in the fine print of the infamous January 8th sech
We can see it in their planned legislation on strike activity. They want to take
away from workers any capacity for industrial action. They want the world of
work to be defined by employers on the one hand, and individual workers
acting alone on the other.
John Howard said this just two days ago " individual contracts are lerrific!', he
said. The Coalition applauded the actions of CRA in the recent dispute at Weipa,
just because they were individual contracts.
They did not mind that workers doing the same jobs as others were paid up to
$ 20,000 a year more suiply because they weren't ass ated with collective
bargains. The government believed strongly that this was wrong, and the
Australian Industrial Relations Commission brought down exacly that ruling.
There is dlearly a place for individual contracts. But we say there must be the
capacity to negotiate conftras without discimination against collective 4667
We say that an industrial relations system that denies workers freedom of
assciation and . ollective action is unnalanced. urtair. and ultimately Fo
Sworkabje. grt
And yet that is the gist of the legislation. It is hidden but it is unmistakably Yo.
there. del 001
Consider this: Th;
The Coalition said that strikes would be illegal for the duration of a Workplace are
Agreement. wit
Now imagine some of the circumstances that might justify workers taking It i;
industrial action when the contract is in place. W1
Imagine a workplace in which asbestos becomes a threat to the health of me
workers and the employer is not prepared to take corrective action.
Imagine a workplace in which safety procedures are poor and the employer is oft
not prepared to take corrective action. wa
Imagine a boss persistently engaging in harrassment. WIr in
Even under these extreme circumstances. according to the Coalition, a strike war
would be illegal. And illegal means just that time in prison for those taking ind.
industrial action. Yo
When Peter Reith was asked about this aspect of the Coalition's policy in yok
1993, he admitted that a gaol sentence for the striking worker could follow. Th,
There is more. in i
of
Because the Coalition's policy makes it illegal to strike while an agreement is
in place, for many employers the strategic thing would be to stagger individual It i:
contracts so that a disgruntled co-worker could never have other employee val
support for action. to t
What the Coalition has in mind is legislation for employers, pure and simple. Ant
Legislation that will make it close to impossible for workers to bargain or chi
negotiate or protest collectively. Ark
So what does the Opposition hope to achieve by these proposals? Iib
Higher labour productivy? But labour productivity in Australia has been more ow
than twice that of New Zealand in the four years since they introduced an
individual contract system. WE orm
Less strikes? But wev had less strikes in the last year than in any year since
1940. Under the Acrol te number of working days lost per 1.000 workers An
has been cut by 67 per cent since the Coalition was last in power.
4668
For economic growth? But we've got growth. For inflation? But we've got
growth with low inflation.
You can run through half a dozen hypothetical reasons why they are so
determined on this course. And you can't find a plausible answer until you
come to the question of lower wages and insecure jobs.
That is the Coalition model and it always has been the Coalition model. They
are utterly obsessed with the notion that Australian business cannot prosper
without a scramble in the labour market for low paid jobs.
It is part of the Coalition vision as much a part now as it always was.
What the Coalition means by labour market reform is wage cutting. They
mean ripping away job security from hundreds of thousands of Australians.
What they mean by labour market reform is a fundamental shift in the balance
of the most fundamental of social relationships the relationship between
workers and employers.
What their proposals will also mean although they refuse to consider the
implications is a direct assault on thousands of workers' families. Reduce
wages, worsen conditions. cut penalty rates. reduce security and
4iependence and you hurt families.
You hurt their income, your hurt the opportunities available to their children,
you hurt communities.
Theywilcall what wesay ascare campanof course -but noone oudbe
in any doubt that this debate on industrial relations goes to the very essence
of the diffierence between Labor and the Coalition.
It is about the soit of society we want Australia to be. It's about how much we
value each other. It's about how deep the feeling runs that we are all entitled
to fair treatment in Australia.
And in ths campaign it is also about the truth: the Coalition hias not had a
change of heart, it has had a change of tactic.
And Australian workers and thewiryiles stand to be the losers.
It is fundamental to Labors cause that we resist this and that we re-affirm our
own vision and our own record.
We have a very good story to tell of the last four years, and an even better
one to tell about the future of this country.
And in the next three weks across the country we are going to tef. l it. 4669