Page 2850 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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In other words, if you do not agree with the boss you are out the door. Australian workers are not silly enough to accept that.
As was said by a group of senior industry figures in this morning's Financial Review, on page 4, the creative use of the old system is still the best practice. A Mr Koning, the human resource manager of Air International Group, said:
The conciliation and arbitration system itself grew out of employers' attempts in the 1890s to enforce common law contracts of service and "reduce the collective abilities of the workforce".
We will go right back to that and the same lessons will be learned again. What a silly approach this Liberal Party is adopting! The thing about the Liberal Party's approach that is most striking to me is the contradiction in Dr Hewson's recent attempts to drape himself in the mantle of Alfred Deakin, that great Australian, in delivering the Deakin Lecture. He attempted to suggest that he in some ways is following on in the Deakinite tradition. Let me quote to you, Madam Speaker, what Alfred Deakin said on the introduction of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act in 1903:
No measures ever submitted to any legislature offer greater prospects of the establishment of social justice and of the removal of inequalities than those which are based upon the principle of conciliation and arbitration.
Madam Speaker, those words of Alfred Deakin are as true today as they were in 1903. In his words, no system offers greater prospects of the establishment of social justice and the removal of inequalities than an independent system of conciliation and arbitration - and you lot want to rip all that up. You want to rip up that collective work that has been built up over some 90 years and go back to the law of the jungle, go back to freedom of contract. You can negotiate with your employer; there is freedom of contract; it is a wonderful system, and all things will flow from this. But John Howard let the cat out of the bag yesterday in this quote that has been widely disseminated and that we will keep reminding you of in every forum - the national parliament, State parliaments, and out there in the hustings:
If you can't reach agreement, well, you do go your separate ways.
That is what John Howard said. It will be the sack for every worker who will not accept the reduction in wages.
Madam Speaker, this national policy, this con, as Senator Cook described it, is indeed worse than expected. Read the commentaries today. Laurie Oakes's column is headed "If it isn't broken, don't fix it". He says what a foolish policy this is, and there are enormous risks of massive industrial confrontation flowing from it. He cites again what BHP chief executive, John Prescott, said:
The fact is that there are many, many opportunities for workplace reforms in our present system.
So, we have John Prescott from BHP, and we have Laurie Ferguson, and they are all wrong.
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