Workplace stoush a test of attention span
Wednesday November 16, 2005
COMMENT
By Laurie Oakes
National Nine News political correspondent
Kim Beazley is very clear about what will happen to John Howard's new industrial laws if Labor wins the next federal election. During the union-organised national day of protest, he told workers attending the Brisbane rally: "My first act as prime minister of this nation will be to stand on the steps of parliament and rip these laws up — gone. These extreme laws are headed straight for the bin — which is where they belong. And then what I'm going to do is to sit down and write a law and put it through that protects the rights of every Australian in the workplace. That's what's going to happen then."
Sounds good. Kimbo showing some ticker. Making a stand on behalf of Labor's traditional base — the workers. Establishing some product differentiation between Labor and the Coalition. The only problem is that it's almost certainly a hollow promise.
When it became clear after last year's election that the Coalition had gained a surprise majority in the senate, Labor's then Upper House leader, John Faulkner, studied the figures — and then, grim-faced, told clerk of the senate, Harry Evans, "This is a six-year sentence".
Even if Labor returns to government at the 2007 poll, the overwhelming likelihood is that the coalition will keep control of the senate for at least three years after that. And without a senate majority, Prime Minister Beazley would not be able to repeal or amend Howard's IR legislation. Nor would he be able to put through a new law protecting workers' rights.
But at the moment, Beazley is not looking further ahead than the election itself. His focus is getting into office, and he believes Howard's radical reshaping of the IR system is a potential winner for Labor. Certainly, the current community concern about the new laws that the government is ramming through parliament give him reason for optimism. The key question is whether voters will still be fearful when the laws are actually in place and have been operating for more than a year.
Howard thinks not. He expects a repeat of what happened with the GST. Once the new tax was in place, Australians adjusted quickly and Labor's scare campaign collapsed. When the new IR laws are in place, the Prime Minister says, the sky will not fall in and, after a while, people will wonder what the fuss was all about. If he's right, the issue will not change votes come the election.
Beazley agrees that the sky will not fall in. He says the government's IR takeover is a "slow burn" issue. In other words, he believes there'll be a gradual accumulation of evidence that the new laws hurt workers. He's relying on voters becoming more and more aware of problems as the election approaches.
Union leaders understand that, somehow, the issue has to be kept alive up to the election, and they are working on ways to ensure that happens. Both ACTU secretary Greg Combet and president Sharan Burrow have said they expect unions will refuse to pay fines under the new laws, for example. Such defiance will be punishable by a jail sentence. The theory is that the sight of union officials being thrown into the clink for representing the workers will serve to keep voter concern on the boil.
