Page 3776 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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Prime Minister Costello will take Work Choices further because Peter Costello has spent the last 21 years agitating, advocating and legislating for a more and more extreme American style industrial relations system.
For 21 years, Mr Costello has used all the skills at his disposal, financial, legal, and political to erode the take home pay and conditions of working families.
Now after 21 years—and in the shadow of an election—Mr Costello has spent the last 21 days reluctantly promising he won’t take Work Choices further.
To judge the intentions of Prime Minister Peter Costello working families are entitled to look at the last 21 years, not just the last 21 days. Highlights of Mr Costello’s extreme industrial relations crusade include.
In 1986 Mr Costello formed the new right organisation called the HR Nicholls Society. You would be familiar with that, Mr Speaker. In March 1986, Mr Costello was one of the four founding new right members of the HR Nicholls Society. The HR Nicholls Society is the most extreme industrial relations think-tank in Australia. Also in 1986 he advocated in the national wage case a 44 per cent cut to the minimum wage. In December 1986 Peter Costello advocated in the national wage case for all award wages to be reduced to the level of $171.30. This was a 44 per cent reduction from the metal industry award 1984 rate for a tradesperson G10, equal to a C10 classification, of $305.10 per week. Again in 1986 he attempted to radically change the Liberal Party industrial relations policy from outside parliament.
In 1989, Costello was installed in a safe Liberal seat as part of the new right push. In 1991 he argued to privatise the independent industrial relations umpire. In 1993 he supported a $3 youth wage under the Liberals’ Fightback! policy. As a member of the coalition shadow ministry Peter Costello was a key supporter of the $3 per hour youth wage, which was a centrepiece of the Liberal Party’s infamous Jobsback policy, part of the extreme Fightback! policy rejected by the Australians in the 1993 election. In 1999 he agitated for cutting the wages and working conditions of employees in regional Australia. On 11 December 1999 Mr Costello told the Age that he believed that people outside of Sydney and Melbourne did not deserve to be paid the same, saying:
When minimums are set, they are basically set for what is appropriate in big business for somebody in Sydney or Melbourne, and I’m saying that’s not necessarily appropriate for regional centres.
In 2004 he agitated for the Howard government to use its Senate majority to introduce the extreme industrial relations laws. In 2005 Costello, Howard and Kevin Andrews drafted the Work Choices legislation plan. Howard was forced to restrain Costello from even greater extremism. Again in 2005 Mr Costello argued to scrap all protections except the minimum wage and to put more workers onto unfair AWAs, he agitated for the removal of all protections from unfair dismissal and then he voted to introduce Work Choices. In 2006 he received economic modelling from his own department to take Work Choices even further. In 2007, after a lifetime crusade, in the shadow of an election he began denying that he wanted to take Work Choices even further. And in 2009 Prime Minister Peter Costello will take Work Choices further if elected this weekend.
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