Solidarity

The Government’s reds-under-the-bed fear campaign has been kicked up a notch, with Peter Costello accusing Julia Gillard of being a closet Communist. And isn’t it awful that Labor’s candidates come from a tradition of representing Australian workers and their families?

Seriously, if the ALP was in the pockets of the unions, wouldn’t the ACTU guarantee support for Labor’s Senate campaign? Instead, the union movement is verging on support for the Greens, with a generic anti-Government Senate how-to-vote card and support for Greens candidates from individual unions. It is true that the Greens’ IR policy is more consistently pro-worker, and electing Greens candidates to the Senate would help prevent Labor being pressured into cutting deals with the likes of Family First or the Democrats.

The main thing is to ensure that Howard’s Government is not reelected — not only because that would entrench WorkChoices, but also because they have bigger plans. Last year a senior minister, Nick Minchin, revealed there was “still a long way to go” towards abolishing awards and the AIRC. Labor uncovered a secret treasury document called “The Regulation of Workplace Relations current, proposed and future” — the “proposed” section was WorkChoices, and the “future” section was blacked out. And now Joe Hockey has promised that the role of unions in Australia is “essentially over”.

That’s what he thinks.

Update: …and here’s why he’s wrong. Asbestos victim Bernie Banton is angry about Joe Hockey’s attitude:

“Where was Joe Hockey when we were fighting against James Hardie, he was nowhere to be seen?” he said.

“Without their [the union’s] support and their absolute total commitment to getting that deal done, we would not have a deal for all those thousands of future victims.”

“We haven’t got the conditions we’ve got today because some nice boss came along and said ‘we like the look of you’.

“We’ve got it through absolutely hard yakka by the union movement and they have stressed all along that that’s what they’re there for.”