There is no denying that modern elections are promises games. Given the regularity with which promises are made by politicians, it is no wonder than the trustworthiness of politicians is the subject of public debate.
The Government is experiencing the electoral effects of a turn in trust and it seems from their behaviour this week that they don’t quite know how to cope. At this stage in the 2004 election campaign voters were inundated with Coalition messages on trust and interest rates. Caught out by the rate rise this week, John Howard could only dance a bizarre semantic tango over whether he was to blame, apologising, or just plain sorry for the rise.
But a more revealing example of the fracture between the public’s trust and coalition promises came on Monday, with Joe Hockey’s promise that he would quit a re-elected Howard cabinet if the Government made any further changes to its IR laws. Apart from being infected with weasel words – what if it’s a Costello government, and what if Hockey isn’t IR minister? – Hockey’s claim completely lacks credibility. Because, of all of the Coalition’s breaches of trust, the introduction of WorkChoices has been the most devious and most harmful.
The 100th anniversary of the decision of HB Higgins in the Harvester Judgment reminds us of senior Government members’ form on IR. It was John Howard who famously remarked in 1983 that ‘the time has come to turn Mr Justice Higgins on his head’. Howard had a false start with Jobsback, the radical IR component of John Hewson’s Fightback, which Howard authored in the lead up to the 1993 campaign. A hostile senate kept Howard’s plan at bay for 12 years, but his patience wore through. It was Howard that pushed WorkChoices to the top of his Government’s agenda after the 2004 election.
The ideological obsession with IR runs deep in the Coalition front bench. Nick Minchin told a meeting of the HR Nicholls society last year that the government intended ‘another wave of industrial relations reform’. Peter Costello has said that workers should only be guaranteed a minimum wage. Despite their protestations to the contrary, the reality is that the Government would have no qualms about introducing even more radical IR changes if it could get away with it.
The Harvester Judgment also reminds us that in the 20th century Australia led the world in the development of decent working terms and conditions. Labor has been a driving force for change in every era of workplace reform, from the development of the award system to the promotion of productivity through enterprise bargaining.
It is important to remember that, when the Government talks about workplace reform and deregulation, it has done anything but. WorkChoices has made IR more bureaucratic, more regulated, and more difficult for both employers and employees to navigate. It has combined the worst of unfairness with the worst of inflexibility.
Labor’s IR policies – abolishing AWAs, reinstating unfair dismissal protection for all workers, providing a good safety net – will return Australia to the decent and productive IR system developed in the Hawke/Keating years. This system underpinned much of the economic growth that led to Australia’s current prosperity. Most importantly, Labor’s IR system will return principles of fairness and decency back to the workplace.
