Page 2839 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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MR KAINE: They hate it, do they not? The rapidity of change and the need for flexibility in industrial relations will not diminish.
Mr Connolly: No, we think it is great. More! More!
Mrs Grassby: We love it. We want the author.
MR KAINE: I would have thought they would have wanted to listen to this. This is a constructive debate.
They are part of the new technological reality. They are features of industrial life that will continue long beyond our lifetimes. Labor and the union movement must come to terms with the demands of the new age at the international level, at the national level, and even here at the micro or local level. It is no longer beneficial, Mr Deputy Speaker, nor is it acceptable, for mass labour movements or mass employer associations to impress their demands unthinkingly on the community. The unions long ago recognised that the days of the International shop floor have gone. They have moved steadily over the past 30 years into the political mainstream. The ACTU and the major unions still recruit in the factories and the business of the land, but only as a means to reinforce their power in the halls of government.
The days of the working man rising to management positions in the unions and playing a role in the broadest levels of national life ended long before the arrival on the scene of Mr Hawke and Mr Crean and Mr Kelty. It is now the bright, university-qualified men and women of the labour movement who increasingly dominate union management, and it is they who now make or influence policy in the Labor Federal Government. Power blocs and the exploitation of working men and women by Labor intellectuals must be seen for what it is. It must be changed. It is no different from, and no better than, domination by industrial capitalists. Social justice and social equity demand - - -
Mr Berry: You got that off John Hewson's office.
Mr Lamont: No, this is the Young Liberals.
MR KAINE: I would have thought that these people would have wanted to listen to some enlightened thinking, Mr Deputy Speaker. They obviously do not want to. I even use their own words.
Social justice and social equity demand that governments represent ordinary men and women, their aspirations, and their vision of community. The old stereotypes which the Labor Party represents cannot satisfy those needs. They are anachronistic, they are tired, they are unproductive, and they are out of touch. Social justice demands that men and women, in the ACT at least, are represented by their elected representatives, not dragooned by unions that represent only 35 per cent of the work force and a markedly less proportion of the population as a whole.
It is scandalous, Mr Deputy Speaker, that unions imagine that they can topple a Minister in any government for a crime no more heinous than attempting to make the public transport system more efficient, more effective and less costly to the taxpayer. It is outrageous that they as a body should threaten to stack branches of a political party to bring a Minister to heel. So much for democracy.
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