Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer inform the House of the importance of a flexible industrial relations policy to the management of monetary policy? What are the dangers from support for pattern bargaining?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Stirling for his question. The Australian economy is carefully poised at the moment. We have been growing strongly with good, strong employment growth. Nearly 310,000 jobs have been created over the year to April and our unemployment rate has fallen to 4.4 per cent, the lowest rate in 32 years. Our participation rates are at near record highs. Despite all of this, wages growth, which has increased in real terms, has not experienced the level of a break-out which would threaten inflation and monetary policy, and indeed did threaten inflation and monetary policy during other periods of considerable economic growth in this country.

A flexible industrial relations policy is absolutely critical to maintaining the performance of job creation with real wages growth without wages becoming a problem and threatening inflation. From an economic point of view, nothing could be more dangerous than a return to pattern bargaining. Pattern bargaining was widely practised in this country before the introduction of the government’s industrial relations reform which removed protection for pattern bargaining as part of industrial action and empowered courts to give injunctions to stop it.

What stops pattern bargaining in this economy is the government’s industrial relations legislation. If there is a change of government and the Labor Party rips that legislation up lock, stock and barrel, as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has promised, pattern bargaining would again be legal and would again be practised. We have had come recently to light a speech by Dean Mighell from the Electrical Trades Union complaining about this government’s policy which stops pattern bargaining and boasting, when he thought he was off the record, of how he has used pattern bargaining to extract millions of dollars through strikes and bans.

Dean Mighell is not the first trade union leader to have done this or indeed the first trade union leader to have boasted about this. Unfortunately for Dean, his comments have become public. As a consequence of that, the Leader of the Opposition has confected surprise that Dean could have had these views, surprise that Dean could have been so looking forward to the election of a Labor government, and he says he is going to drum Dean out of the Labor Party. But what he is not going to do of course is drum the policy out of the Labor Party which would permit the return of pattern bargaining.

Dean Mighell was of course a speaker at the ALP national conference where the Leader of the Opposition apparently took no objection to him or his putrid comments, if I may say so, in relation to the Prime Minister. Dean Mighell is from the ETU, which is a division of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union of Australia, and that union over the last 10 years has donated $3.8 million to the Australian Labor Party. So if the money is to be handed back, we have got to have an assurance that the whole $3.8 million of donations from that union are handed back.

Let me make this point: in addition to the donations that the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union of Australia has made to the ALP, that union is actually an affiliated union to the Victorian ALP. As the Victorian ALP records on its website:

... state branches of the unions affiliated to state branches of the ALP ... give financial support to the ALP, and have voting rights at State Conference, where they nominate 50% of delegates.

So if Dean Mighell is to be drummed out of the ALP, Dean Mighell’s union should also be disaffiliated from the ALP because that union, in conjunction with other unions, happens to hold 50 per cent of the votes at state conference. This will be a great test for the Leader of the Opposition. New Labour in Britain was prepared to reduce the power of the trade unions. If Dean Mighell is such a putrid character, will he be demanding the disaffiliation of Dean Mighell’s union? Because, if he does not, Dean Mighell does not have to be a member of the ALP; he can direct the ETU delegates down on the state floor of the conference where, together with other unions, they have 50 per cent of the votes. All of the ex-union officials that are now on the front bench of the Labor Party know precisely how it works.

In addition to that, the Leader of the Opposition should give great thought to the ETU candidates that are running on behalf of Labor at the next federal election because Dean Mighell has publicly boasted that one of his shop stewards, Mike Symons, is the Labor candidate for Deakin—supported and funded by Dean Mighell and the ETU as a candidate—a candidate running lock, stock and barrel ALP industrial relations policy in the seat of Deakin. Why would Mike Symons, Dean Mighell and the ETU be running so hard in the seat of Deakin? Because they know that the only things that stand between pattern bargaining in the workplace coming back are this government and this government’s industrial relations legislation. They know the quickest and the easiest way to bring back pattern bargaining is to get rid of the member for Deakin, get a change of government and get a pack of union patsies back amending the industrial relations legislation of Australia.

To say that the Leader of the Opposition is somehow surprised about Dean Mighell would be the greatest confected piece of political theatre that we have seen for a long time. The ALP was formed by the unions. The ALP has 50 per cent union control. Every single member of the Labor Party sitting opposite is a union member. Every ACTU secretary can look forward to a superannuation package in this parliament. The Leader of the Opposition leads a party formed by the unions for the unions, and the unions want that party back because they know it will be a patsy for the union movement, the Dean Mighells and the ETUs of this country.