Paul Starick: How Peter Malinauskas is channelling Hawke and Eastwood when it comes to injured workers’ payouts

There’s an echo of Clint Eastwood’s wandering gunfighter in Peter Malinauskas’ plan to handle his first major test in office, Paul Starick writes.

A high-stakes game is being played by Premier Peter Malinauskas as he moves to stamp his authority firmly in the middle of an impasse over injured workers’ payouts.

On one side are businesses warning they are exposed to a $1.1bn liability and 20,000 job losses if projected levy increases to fund compensation costs go ahead.

On the other side are unions, including the shop assistants once led by the Premier, who are accusing his government of hurting working people with proposed legislation that “attacks our most severely injured”.

Just like Clint Eastwood’s wandering gunfighter in the 1964 classic spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, Mr Malinauskas’s strategy is to position himself in the middle of the warring parties and pragmatically manoeuvre for advantage.

Clint Eastwood’s unnamed gunfighter stares down his adversaries during a showdown in a still from the film, 'A Fistful of Dollars, directed by Sergio Leone, 1964. (Photo by United Artists/Courtesy of Getty Images)

Staking out this middle ground with the aim of achieving a balance between capital and labour has been the key element in the Malinauskas playbook since he rose through the ranks to become the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association state secretary at 27.

It is the same approach he is taking as he seeks to be a pro-business premier whose government acts decisively to create jobs and investment, while simultaneously nurturing the base that propelled Labor to a landslide election win on March 19.

In the fight over ReturnToWorkSA charges on employers, a key objective is to isolate Liberal Leader David Speirs from his party’s traditional base, in particular the small businesses who flocked to Labor at the March 19 election in frustration at Covid-19 restrictions.

Many of these small business owners voted Labor for the first time and Mr Malinauskas is determined to demonstrate he is looking out for their interests, so he can keep them in the ALP camp.

If Mr Malinauskas can achieve an outcome that appeases both sides – there is speculation he will hammer out a compromise this long weekend – he will have successfully transferred his approach as a union leader to the state’s top job.

This will involve bringing together business and unions to find common ground – just as his political hero Bob Hawke did in the 1980s with the Prices and Incomes Accord.

Mr Malinauskas keeps in his parliamentary office an autographed poster of Mr Hawke, Australia’s third-longest serving prime minister and a fellow former union leader.

The-then prime minister Bob Hawke campaigning for the 1984 federal election in Coburg, Melbourne.

The Accord was a tool of Mr Hawke’s consensus politics. As former federal Labor leader and ACTU president Simon Crean said of the Accord to Hawke biographer Troy Bramston: “We showed what the Labor movement could do for the nation when it shared the economic agenda.”

In his definitive biography, Bramston argues the “Hawke government was more pragmatic than ideological and many of its policies were crafted by necessity rather than design. He emphasised the importance of educating the electorate, so they would understand and support the need for change. His overarching vision for Australia was to have a more competitive and productive economy and a compassionate society at home, and to be an independent and respected nation abroad.”

Narrowing the scope to South Australia, this is a neat description of Mr Malinauskas’s mission as premier.

Bob Hawke, prime minister from 1983 to1991 with wife Hazel during Labor’s 1987 campaign. Photo by Patrick Riviere/Getty Images

Some savvy union leaders realise this, particularly the benefits to their constituency of the progressive agenda already unveiled by the newish Labor government. As such, they will most likely forge a compromise over Labor’s Return to Work amendments. This is despite the hubbub created by union leaders, including the SDA’s Josh Peak, co-sponsoring an ALP state executive motion demanding the Return to Work Bill’s withdrawal.

Some more pragmatic union leaders, like Mr Peak, have softened their rhetoric during the past week and moved toward the consensus demanded by Mr Malinauskas. They realise he is not for turning on this issue. Clearly, Mr Peak has no interest in handing the Liberals a victory by weakening a newly minted Labor premier – a key ally. He would rather represent workers’ interests and forge the foundation for a long-term Labor government.

Mr Malinauskas has laid down two key markers for compromise – employer levies cannot rise beyond 2 per cent and legislation must be passed before parliament’s midwinter break starts after July 7. This, he insists, is about achieving a balance between business and unions. Payouts to injured workers must be fair, without increasing the cost of employing people, at the expense of jobs or wages growth.

The test is whether the Premier’s innate ideology can survive its most searching examination in office yet and set a precedent for the future.