Workplace relations, Tony Abbott, unions, Labor Party Craig Emerson - Shadow Minister for Workplace Relations

Radio Interview with Phil Cleary

Transcript - Radio 3AK, Melbourne - 31 July 2003

Cleary: … Federal Shadow Workplace Relations Minister. Yesterday we had Mr Tony Abbott on the radio and we had yarn with him about industrial relations and the like and he had a few interesting things to say about unions and Craig Emerson joins us now to respond. Good morning Craig.

Emerson: Hi Phil.

Cleary: How are you?

Emerson: I'm fine. You're a boy from Coburg too, aren't you?

Cleary: Indeed I am Craig, yes. Just north of the Pentridge Prison in fact.

Emerson: Aha, well we might be able to talk about umpires and footy in the context of industrial relations in a moment.

Cleary: Well, tell us what is your view on industrial relations and the job being done by Mr Tony Abbott?

Emerson: I think the Australian way, Phil, is for Australians to work together and not to fight against each other. The role that I see Tony Abbott playing is that when he does get involved in a dispute he gets involved in a way that inflames it and he always gets involved on one side of the argument, that is the employers' side. I reckon it's pretty important that a federal minister for workplace relations, if he or she is going to get involved, gets involved with a view to settling the dispute and not take sides. I think that's basically my main criticism of the way Tony Abbott operates.

Cleary: Well, yesterday, Craig Emerson, Tony Abbott told us that he had, in fact, once been in a union – the AJA in fact – and that he wasn't opposed to unions per se.

Emerson: Yeh, I heard that and that's why I asked to come on this morning because, like people who say ‘Oh, I'm an environmentalist too' and then go round cutting down lots of trees, the situation with Tony is this is his one credential in terms of unionism and then he says ‘That proves that I'm not anti-union'. But if you look at the 12 bits of legislation that he's got in the Parliament now, each and every one of them is anti-union. Each bit of legislation is against the interests of working Australians. So he ought to match his rhetoric with his actual behaviour. But he doesn't.

Cleary: All right. We'll come to the legislation in a minute.

Emerson: Sure.

Cleary: The Labor Party has made some interesting statements recently in relation to unions and many of those indicate that you want to separate yourself further from the union movement. Is that not true?

Emerson: I don't think that's right. There was a debate about whether unions have 50 per cent or 60 per cent representation at our conferences and that was resolved in favour of 50 per cent. But certainly I and Simon Crean are determined to strengthen our links with the trade union movement. I don't shirk from the fact that the trade union movement founded the Australian Labor Party. It doesn't mean we agree with every trade union on every issue. But it is a matter of pride for us and, again going back to Tony Abbott, in the Parliament he says, virtually on a daily basis, look at all these people who have got union affiliations. Well, if he comes on your program and says well ‘I like unions too', why would he do that day after day in the Parliament as if it's a matter of shame. In fact I consider it a matter of pride that we have an association with the trade union movement.

Cleary: Well isn't there a problem out in the electorate, in that, it's electorally advantageous to criticise trade unions?

Emerson: Well obviously Tony Abbott considers that. But I'd have to say that part of his agenda is related to his aspirations. He is always going to get a few brownie points off John Howard if he bashes trade unions, and so he does it pretty frequently. For our part, I think the trade unions play an important role. They have for one hundred years Phil. That does not mean, as I say, that we agree on every occasion with every action of every trade union.

Cleary: But are unions full of time servers? And are there all sorts of deals done between unions and the Labor Party which are unsavoury?

Emerson: Really I don't think so. I don't know if you have had Greg Combet on your program before, for example. Greg is a young, dynamic guy, who understands the imperatives not only of working Australians and the need for an improvement in their conditions when they loose all their entitlements, but he also understands that it is important for businesses to stay in business. There's one example. But you will find the leaders of many of our unions, most of our unions, are in their early forties. So I wouldn't call them time servers by any means. They're pretty dynamic people.

Cleary: What about the construction industry?

Emerson: Well there have been some problems in the construction industry, but that Cole Royal Commission, cost about $60 to $80 million and it was all one-sided. All it looked at was the activities of construction unions. One person a week dies in that industry, and they found in a $60 million inquiry only two breaches of occupational health and safety provisions. In relation to tax evasion, not avoidance, but evasion, there is evidence that it is rampant in this industry, but the Cole Royal Commission just turned its back on it. So if it had been a fair Commission, if it had looked at both sides of the argument it might have had more credibility than it has. And it really doesn't have much at all.

Cleary: So what are you going to do about this? And how can you turn it into an electoral advantage?

Emerson: Well the truth of the matter is, over the last seven years, working Australians have lost so many of the entitlements that have been built up over a hundred years - and I'm not talking about really exotic entitlements here – I'm talking about entitlements to sick leave, holiday pay, leave loading. All of these have been lost with the casualisation of the workforce.

Cleary: Craig Emerson, can I put this to you though: that many of those policies began with the Keating Government; that you set up an industrial relations framework – enterprise bargains and the like – that began the process.

Emerson: Well I don't think enterprise bargaining itself led to the casualisation of the workforce. But certainly, the first big wave of industrial relations legislation that came through in 1996 did. It tore away at the safety net protecting the lowest paid workers in Australia and it took away the independent umpire, Phil, and that's what brings me back to where we started. You and anyone else with an interest in Australian rules football, they mightn't like umpires all the time, I understand that, but it'd be pretty ridiculous to send two teams on to a field with no umpire. And that's what this Government has done. It's taken away that umpire and said ‘The umpire can only do his or her job if both sides agree'. So if you've got one side, the employer, saying ‘We don't want the umpire' then they go on the field without one. As a result, of course, the employers have very strong bargaining power and the employees, the other team, have very weak bargaining power. One side gets to set the rules and the other side gets no say in it.

Cleary: All right, but under the Labor Party in the 80s, the late 80s, there was plenty of research showing that the gap between rich and poor had widened, so that the Labor Party wasn't presiding over a time when there was growing equality but growing inequality.

Emerson: That research, and it's been updated as well, showed that in terms of wages that was true but that the social safety net erected by the Labor Government, in terms of increased family payments especially to working families on low incomes, meant that there wasn't overall a widening of inequality. But there has been a widening of inequality over the last seven and a half years.

Cleary: I'm talking with Craig Emerson, Federal Shadow Workplace Relations Minister. But Craig, just going back to that point, the whole psychology of increased welfare or safety net is surely an issue for a Labor Party to consider.

Emerson: Absolutely, and that's why we do consider it's important that low paid families have some support from government to make ends meet.

Cleary: But you had massive interest rates in the late 80s under Paul Keating and you had growing unemployment.

Emerson: Well, there were high interest rates in the late 1980s but now we've got a situation where those people who are in work are on very low pay and that safety net at the bottom is being torn away. There's a piece of legislation, Phil, in the Parliament now that would make it harder for the Industrial Relations Commission to grant pay rises to the lowest paid workers in Australia. So the Government is saying ‘We will rip away the safety net for the lowest paid workers', but on executive salaries – where we put into the Parliament legislation that would make some of those excessive salaries not tax deductible by the company – the Government says ‘No'. We just defeated in the last week of the Parliament legislation that would have given a superannuation tax cut only to the top five per cent of taxpayers, including $25,000 more in the kick for politicians. We voted against that because that's not fair. It's a shocking example for those struggling Australians who are made more vulnerable by the current industrial relations legislation.

Cleary: Is it a difficult environment in which to win the hearts and minds of people on these questions?

Emerson: When national security stories appear on a daily basis, as they have again today, that does make the environment more difficult. There's no two ways about that. But when people focus on the domestic issues such as the tearing away of Medicare, $100,000 university fees, and these problems of working Australians losing basic entitlements then people are very interested.

Cleary: But is the problem that the Labor Party doesn't seem to stand for the things it once allegedly stood for and that you've got a crisis of faith? We've seen all sorts of stories about massive branch stacking in the Party. You refused to tackle that. There's all sorts of rorts going on between unions and the Party.

Emerson: I don't think that there'd be a legitimate accusation that Labor doesn't stand for anything when we've announced a fully funded package to save Medicare in response to the Government's plan to destroy Medicare. We've announced a higher education package that would allow young people, irrespective of the incomes of their families, to be able to go to university instead of only the privileged sons and daughters in Australia. And in this area that we're talking about now there are vast differences between Labor and the Coalition Government. So there's lots to barrack for, but being on programs such as yours Phil helps get that message across. I appreciate it.

Cleary: All right. Just a final question. Tony Abbott, what sort of bloke is he in your eyes?

Emerson: Oh well, I've said I think he's a lunatic and that's the truth of the matter. Not based on some sort of – well, it's based on an assessment of –

Cleary: What, at the personal level, you think that he's odd do you?

Emerson: I think he is odd. I think he's a guy who is tortured and who says ‘Oh, I'm trade unionist too' and then walks around the Parliament and everywhere else on other programs and talking to the business community saying how much he hates trade unions.

Cleary: Does he say that does he? Does he say that? Is that on the public record, is it?

Emerson: Yeh, when …

Cleary: He surely wouldn't of said ‘I hate trade unions' would he?

Emerson: … [inaudible] … four commissioners were being sworn in to the Industrial Relations Commission when Tony Abbott was first appointed and he went along to say what a terrible state of affairs it was that we had the shop assistants union serving outrageous logs of claims and all this sort of stuff. Well, the shop assistants union, again, represents very low paid workers in this country.

Cleary: All right. Craig Emerson, Federal Shadow Workplace Relations Minister. Great to talk with you Craig. We'll catch you along the journey also.