Solidarity

Wow.

In April 2006 I wrote that the Employer Advisor Program was an anti-union slush fund, with the Howard Government “blatantly tipping a bucket of money into the business lobby’s coffers, to subsidise its anti-union campaigns”. A year later, in April 2007, I pointed out that Julia Gillard thought business would be expected to run election ads as a quid pro quo for the EAP cash.

But I never really thought we’d see conclusive proof that’s what happened. I never thought we’d see an email from within a peak business group saying members should vote to fund the ad because they receive EAP funding — but that’s what’s reported in The Age today.

In March, the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry couldn’t agree about whether to fund the business lobby’s pro-WorkChoices campaign. So the president sent an email to his fellow board members:

In a confidential email sent to the board on June 18, and obtained by The Age, chamber president Richard Holyman tried to convince fellow board members to support the advertisements. He linked the call for a donation to the fact that the Government had given grants to VECCI under the Employer Assistance Program to run WorkChoices seminars.

“It is apparent that the key contributors are not wanting a blatant political campaign, but believe that so much effort went into supporting the WorkChoices package, we have to help defend it now,” Mr Holyman wrote to fellow board members.

“We have had in excess of $600K in grants to help implement WorkChoices.”

At the next meeting, they decided to pay $750 000 towards the propaganda campaign. Given that VECCI would have educated its members about WorkChoices regardless of the EAP funding, effectively the Government has chipped in $600 000 for the business lobby’s misleading propaganda campaign.