Solidarity

The Government’s primary attack on Labor’s policy is that Rudd and Gillard are making it up as they go along, with the underlying implication that the big bad unions will walk over Rudd and Gillard. The Australian has joined in that attack by running a series of articles making false claims about the policy.

In an article entitled, “Gillard’s new bid to back unions”, Brad Norington claimed that an email from Gillard to business groups “appears to be another revision of the policy”:

[I]n an emailed letter sent to business groups on Tuesday, Ms Gillard has added harm to “bargaining participants” as one of the reasons for Labor’s new Fair Work Australia tribunal to intervene and arbitrate.

The article goes on to refer to this as “Gillard’s amendment”. The problem is, Norington was wrong, and Gillard was furious. She wanted to know “how [Norington] can be referred to a page and a paragraph in a policy and then contend that the words that appear in it do not appear in it.”

Check for yourself — here is the paragraph Norington discusses, with the supposedly non-existent words highlighted:

Common sense dictates that where protracted industrial action is causing significant harm to the bargaining participants, there must be a process to resolve the dispute. Where industrial action or threatened industrial action is causing or may cause significant harm to the wider economy or to the safety or welfare of the community, there must also be a process to resolve the dispute.

It’s right there in black and white, on page 16 of the policy document. Having been directed to the text of the paragraph, do you think The Australian would print a correction? Of course not. It published another article, bylined to both Norington and Steve Lewis (the paper’s chief political correspondent), maintaining the lie for a second day:

Prominent industrial lawyers said Ms Gillard had again amended the policy released at the ALP conference two weeks ago by proposing a power to arbitrate when strikes crippled an employer’s business.

But that story is unravelling, too. One of the prominent industrial lawyers quoted was Andrew Stewart, and he now says “it isn’t in fact an addition” — and he says it was the dodgy circumstances of the interview that led to his confusion:

[Stewart] told Workplace Express today that he was out of the office when he took the call from The Australian, didn’t have the policy in front of him, and had relied on the words the newspaper’s journalist maintained had been “added” to the policy when he was asked to comment.

Stewart told Workplace Express that on looking at the policy today, it was clear that “it isn’t in fact an addition at all”.

Did you read that? Stewart “relied on the words [of] the newspaper’s journalist” — yet the paper decided this was independent confirmation of its smear campaign. I won’t be holding my breath for a correction. The Australian is part of an orchestrated anti-worker campaign, and it is clearly willing to mislead its readers as long as it is attacking Labor.