Time to get IR laws right

The first instalment of the Rudd Government's legislative framework to dismantle the horrors of WorkChoices was passed by Federal Parliament on 19 March and became law on 28 March.

We will however have to wait until 2010 to see WorkChoices dumped entirely.

While that time frame is frustrating, haste, as the old saying goes, really does make waste. Quite possibly even a High Court case.

The WorkChoices legislation was enormously complex and very poorly expressed, a direct reflection of John Howard's over zealous desperation to take full and immediate advantage of his Senate majority.

Accordingly, there is an enormous amount to unravel and great care must be taken otherwise the working lives of millions of Australians, the very people that the union movement and Labor want to once again assist, will be negatively affected.

It's a very fine social and economic balancing act.

The PSA was one of many unions in this country who invested a great deal of time and effort in defeating the Howard Government and their crushing WorkChoices laws.

Given that concerted effort, which, I'm still proud to say, resulted in the Howard Government being defeated, it would be a grave mishandling of the opportunity we've been handed to rush in half baked laws to replace what Howard put in place.

That said, the Rudd Government legislation to replace WorkChoices doesn't, at this point, contain everything we want and we will, as expected, need to continue to invest some time and weight into convincing the Government to fully restore what Howard ripped from the chest of the industrial relations system over the past decade.

Further, we will have to battle big business which has typically been in the Government's ear about limiting matters that can be contained in new agreements and the imposition of mechanisms to limit union powers.

The Rudd Government's own measure of modernising and simplifying awards is a high wire act all its own and will also need to be very carefully monitored to ensure that in the process of streamlining, hard won conditions specific to certain types of jobs don't end up on the cutting room floor.

But even while the new Government was attempting to repair the damage of Howard's carpet bombing of the pay and conditions of Australian workers, some members of the former administration were preparing for another raid.

It was early February when the unexpected theatre began to unfold after a decision by the Federal Opposition to change the Government's proposed IR laws in the Senate - which the Opposition currently controls - and reinstate AWAs.

Their twisted reasoning was that AWAs would assist in reducing inflation and generally be good for the economy.

It was an amazing position that completely ignored the fact that a) the Howard Government lost the last election on a tidal wave of anti WorkChoices - and thus anti-AWA - sentiment and b) much of the country's present economic woes are a direct hangover from the policies and general neglect of the Howard era.

In that light, the Federal Opposition's lectures on economic policy were laughable while their attempts to hold onto the most dreaded component of WorkChoices amusingly suicidal.

But on 19 February, they had a wonderfully humiliating change of heart and decided that they would not oppose the abolition of AWAs afterall.

While this cleared the way for Labor's new laws, for reasons best known to themselves, the Opposition still continued with the farce of forcing the laws before the Senate Inquiry which would have delayed the Government's timeframe for their introduction quite considerably.

Then the following day came another backflip when the Opposition agreed to bring forward the report back date for the Senate Committee to 17 March which allowed the Government to have its first round of laws passed by Easter as originally planned.

Incredibly, while I was writing this column, backflip number three was reportedly being rehearsed with the Federal Opposition apparently deciding that AWAs deserved another chance after all.

Is it any wonder these people, currently led Brendan Nelson who was handed a historically low preferred Prime Minister rating of a mere 7% back in the first week of March, were reduced to rubble at the Federal election?

Power privatisation

Any way the State Government cares to dress up and sweeten their privatisation plans, the bottom line is very simple as far as the PSA and I am concerned; the power industry should remain in public hands and not be sold off in any shape or form or under any circumstances. It's that simple.

Sick leave

The Iemma Government is attempting to introduce reforms to sick leave in the public sector as a cost saving measure.

While the PSA has flatly rejected the move that may not stop individual Departments from attempting to quietly make changes in their areas.

If you become aware of any proposals of this nature in your workplace advise the PSA immediately.

Sick leave is among the most bedrock of working conditions and the PSA will simply not tolerate it being eroded merely for budget purposes.

John Cahill
General Secretary