The ministerial visit began smoothly enough. The new minister for defence, Peter Reith, was at the Newcastle waterfront in 2001 to hand over a large cheque to shipbuilder Forgacs for a government naval contract.
So, who in the city could take issue with that? It seems that a group of waterside workers were still smarting over stringent industrial relations laws that Reith introduced when he was the minister.
As I drove Reith out of the shipyard, we were confronted by 100 angry unionists with banners on poles. They yelled and beat my car, causing considerable damage.
The largest dent was on the car roof just above Reith's head. I kept going, gradually accelerating until we were clear of the angry mob. It was an incident that Reith never forgot. For years after, he would always greet me as "my driver".
One of the underlying tensions in our political system has been the division between labour management and government over Australia's best industrial relations system. The ALP was the child of the trade union movement, formed to represent the interests of the workers in the Australian parliament (the red team). This extension of power was so effective that other political parties were forced to combine in the early years of the 20th century to form the forerunner of today's Coalition parties (the blue team).
How the various Australian 'red' and 'blue' governments over time have handled workplace relations has often been pivotal to their success or failure at the ballot box. Prime minister Bob Hawke's Accord in the 1980s was an excellent example of the government working with the trade union movement and business to create a better workplace relations system.
If that was the zenith, the nadir was the Coalition's Work Choices policy in the mid-2000s, particularly with proposed changes to the "no-disadvantage" test. The price was losing government in 2007.
The Rudd government's Fair Work Act (2009) was designed to reinvigorate collective bargaining. Still, in the following years, Professor Shae McCrystal reports: "its coverage went into decline, real wages stagnated, and businesses' share of profits increased". Moreover, since 2013 when the Coalition government was re-elected, there has been a terminal decline in the coverage of new enterprise agreements.
Up until the election of the Albanese government this year, there wasn't any serious attempt to make the changes necessary to keep the workplace relations system up to date. Over the past 15 years, the way forward has been mired in animosity, conflict, and mistrust. As a result, Australia's workplace relations system has become broken and stuck in the past.
The COVID pandemic initially provided an opportunity to change that. The threat to health and the economy in Australia led to a situation where all sides in the workplace relations system, to quote former prime minister Scott Morrison, "need to put down their weapons".
As is often the case with policy breakthroughs, success has had much to do with the personalities involved. For example, during the pandemic, there was a high level of cooperation and trust between Sally McManus (ACTU) and Jennifer Westacott (BCA). They developed a joint proposal to rewrite the enterprise bargaining laws. The Morrison government was initially supportive; however, the proposed reforms were abandoned following fury from rival industry groups.
Fast forward two years, and a landmark deal was made at the Jobs and Skills Summit to repair the "broken" workplace relations system. Again, McManus and Westacott played a decisive role. The deal centres on allowing small businesses to "opt-in" to negotiate multi-employer agreements. There's a lot of goodwill for this reform to progress.
The consensus about new bargaining laws has given the Albanese government the foundation to launch enabling legislative change. This must run the gauntlet of the senate. Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke says "there was 'enough agreement' at the summit to allow multi-employer bargaining".
However, because there is no clarity yet on where the line will be drawn, these areas of uncertainty need to be worked through if the reform is to be successfully implemented. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's employer group already fears this change might degenerate into sector-wide bargaining and undermine the enterprise concept initially devised by Paul Keating. Qantas boss Alan Joyce has expressed his deep concern: "industry-wide bargaining is something Australia left behind a long time ago, and there were good reasons why".
So, in the wake of the summit, will all parties put down their weapons and continue negotiating in good faith? The jobs and skills summit was a good start, but much work is still ahead to fix our broken workplace relations system.
Newcastle East's Dr John Tierney AM is a former chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Education Employment and Workplace Relations
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