Bruce Childs (centre) toasts the Doc with John Langmore & Meredith Burgmann on 21 September.

The state of industrial relations

Editorial by Evatt Foundation President, Bruce Childs.

President's perspective

After tens of millions of dollars have been spent on propaganda for the Howard government's industrial relations legislation, the phoney war phase is over. The real war has started, as each side reverts to its traditions.

Joining the struggle, on Monday 14 November the Evatt Foundation will publish The State of the States 2005. The State of the States series aims to draw national public attention to state government policies and performance. The Foundation's executive committee decided that the 2005 edition should be put in service of the vital struggle against the Howard government's proposals to restructure state functions and power in the fundamental area of labour law. We are therefore delighted to feature five expert essays on the implications of the Howard proposals in this year's issue of The State of the States, in addition to the Evatt Foundation's 12th annual state government performance assessment.

The importance of analysing the implications of the federal government's extraordinary industrial relations proposals is underlined by the public language with which they are framed. In his book, Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (Scribe, 2005), the US professor of cognitive science and linguistics, George Lakoff, has argued that conservatives have come to dominate politics because they learned to manipulate the power of political rhetoric. Instead of 'tax cuts', for example, they talk about 'tax relief'. A law that will increase pollution is called the 'Clear Skies Act'. A proposal to privatise social security is called 'welfare reform'. A decision to destroy forests is promoted as 'Healthy Forests'. "This", argues Lakoff, "is the use of Orwellian language - language that means the opposite of what it says - to appease people in the middle at the same time as you pump up the base. That is part of the conservative strategy."

As the special essays featured in the 2005 edition of The State of the States show, there can be few more blatant examples of the language strategy than the ways in which the Howard government has framed its dramatic industrial relations proposals. The proposals are promoted as increasing 'choice', when they are designed to prevent employees from choosing to bargain collectively. They are said to have the aim of increasing labour market 'flexibility', when they will enhance managerial prerogative and undermine job security. They are promoted as a way of enhancing 'productivity', when every labour economist in the nation has found that they will do little or worse to this end. The body that is to take over the national wage-fixing role of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission is to be called the 'Australian Fair Pay Commission', when its aim is to extinguish equity in favour of economic wage determination, neo-liberal style. Wherever you look, the federal government's proposals are publicly presented as the opposite of their substantive meaning.

"Public language that defies normal understanding is 'an ancient repressive artifice ... the typical vice of our political class'", wrote Don Watson (quoting Primo Levi) in his book Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (Knopf, 2004). Watson highlighted the responsibility of journalists not to ignore the abuses of public language by people of influence and power: "When this happens journalism ceases to be journalism and becomes a kind of propaganda; or a reflection of what Simon Weil called 'The superb indifference that the powerful have for the weak'."

The invited essays in the 2005 edition of The State of the States aim to help cut through the thick fog of spin that surrounds the Howard government's disturbing industrial relations proposals. My thanks to the trade unions who helped the Evatt Foundation to fund the project, to Dr Christopher Sheil as editor, to Mr Mark McGrath as publication manager, and to the writers and researchers and many other helpers who made it happen.

Heralding the National Day of Protest to Protect Your Rights at Work, the book will be launched at NSW Parliament House with the assistance of the President of the Legislative Council, the Hon Dr Meredith Burgmann, in the President's Dining Room on Monday 14 November at 11.30 am for 12 noon. Evatt Foundation members and supporters are warmly invited to attend the launch. Speakers will include the former NSW Attorney General, the Hon Jeff Shaw QC, the NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People, Ms Gillian Calvert, and the Secretary of Unions NSW, Mr John Robertson. You can order your copy of the book by using the special Order Form here on our website now.

In the meantime, in this Evatt Newsletter, we present a range of articles on the Howard government's extremist proposals. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke articulated many of the basic objections in the 19th Lionel Murphy Memorial Lecture, "From Deakin to Howard - A Tarnished Vision"; in his speech to the National Press Club on 2 November, "Economic challenges & WorkChoices", ACTU Secretary Greg Combet outlined the real economic priorities; in her article, "Farewell to the 'fair go'", Professor Belinda Probert explains why Australian egalitarianism is in the gun; and in his article "Howard makes the 'blue' unlawful", researcher Chris White details the further limits that the government intends to place on the right to strike.

Young people & politics

In our special feature in this Evatt Newsletter, we publish the four papers presented to our recent popular Evatt Sunset Seminar on Young People and Politics. In her paper, "Is Generation Y apolitical & apathetic?", Dr Rebecca Huntley says that the "majority of young Australians probably cast their vote for John Howard, not because as a group they are inherently conservative; but because Howard is the prime minister they have grown up with", and argues that they are waiting to be engaged by a political force prepared to speak their language. Monika Wheeler looks at why political parties and activist organisations are failing to communicate with young people, while Pentecostal church groups are recruiting active participants in their thousands in her paper "What are we doing wrong? And what is Hillsong doing right?". Dr Ariadne Vromen's paper looks at "How different are young men & women?, and argues that "neo-liberalism constructs two stereotypes of young women: the 'can-do' girl and the 'at-risk" girl." In the final paper, on "Young people, unions, strategies", researcher Damian Oliver argues that trade unions must be "talking to young people - and recognising their different priorities around work as legitimate - from long before they enter the workforce".

Globalisation, productivity, PPPs & more

In other articles and papers in this Newsletter, we continue longstanding themes. In a challenging paper, "Saving globalization", the Professor of Economics at Colgate University in New York, Jay Mandle, presents a case for globalisation that relies on neither fundamentalism nor protectionism. After looking at the latest national accounts, in his column "The surge we didn't have", Professor John Quiggin explains that the claim that microeconomic reform is a primary source of productivity growth has been tested empirically, and shown to be false. In light of Sydney's cross-tunnel fiasco, we publish Dr Christopher Sheil's definitive reality-check on "Public-private partnerships".

In the present political circumstances, readers might find some inspiration in Rowan Cahill's introduction to a new book on the time when the space for political action was enlarged in Australia:A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movements and the Labour Movement, 1965-1975 (edited by Beverley Symons and Rowan). Finally, in her address to the Jesse Street National Women's Library Lunch, former Labor Education Minister, Susan Ryan, suggests that instead of terrorism, the Howard governments fridge magnets could have warned us of the dangers of starving our universities of public funds: "'Be alarmed, our universities are slamming the doors' they could have read: starved of public funds, forced to raise fees and cut childcare, our universities are being forced to slam the door on more and more students, and sadly, many of those are women."

The Doc, the UN, the US & Australia

We celebrated the election of Dr H V Evatt as President of the United Nations on 21 September 1948 with an Evatt Sunset Seminar on 21 September 2005. Dr Meredith Burgman spoke on Dr Evatt's role in the development of the United Nations and John Langmore spoke to his new book Dealing with America: the UN, the US and Australia. As we confront enormous struggles at home and abroad, and with the world body at a defining moment, a moment as crucial as its founding in 1945, I'll conclude with some of the more optimistic words from John's book:

"This is a period of extraordinary opportunity. We have the capacity to aim for an equitable, inclusive and secure society within a strong and sustaiable economy, characterised by mutual care, social justice, creativity, trust and environmental responsibility, and with a democratic and accountable government that values national independence and contributes to global security, peace and justice. We could reaffirm our preferences for peace rather than violence, negotiation rather than confrontation, and the rule of law rather than hegemonic dominance. Why not do it?"

Bruce Childs
President
Evatt Foundation

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