Bully boys and bodgy barbecues

THE ACTU is leaving nothing to chance in this election. As union members continue to opt out of the dying movement and union leaders scramble for seats in Federal Parliament (the ALP's lifeboat), union bosses are targeting remaining members in a campaign with ominous precedents.Union HQ has authorised its stormtroopers to zero in on the nearly quarter of a million members who live in marginal seats _ and work on them to ensure they vote the union line.Using computer programs rather than the brick-through-the-window terror favoured by groups such as Hitler's nazis, Stalin's communists and Mao's Red Guard, union activists have been told to home in on church groups, faith organisations and family members.Union bosses are urging activists to contact members using an electoral data base search program - zeroing in on members in marginal electorates.The 75-page ACTU election strategy directs union officials to routinely contact members identified by the programs and bombard them with political material, even register them to vote if necessary.Despite all the nonsense about privacy legislation, those union members in swinging seats identified by the ACTU, will, in effect, be told: ``We know who you are and we know where you live, we know how many are in your family and even if they are entitled to vote''.This is intimidating enough, but coming from an organisation associated with the Robespierre of Australian politics, Greg Combet (soon to parachute into a safe Labor seat) and Sharan Burrow, who arguably broke the International Labor Organisation's rules with her attempts to politicise its dealings and has since been attempting to blacken Australia's name in the global community, it is a deeply sinister development.The ACTU may claim it is merely providing information for its members to disseminate at barbecues but that response underestimates the collective intelligence of the average Aussie barbie.When the union stooge starts trumpeting the benefits of union membership and the ALP from a prepared set of question-and-answers most sensible people will see through the garbage and move the conversation on to more relevant issues - the weather or Paris Hilton.

The threat implicit in the ``we known who you are and we are telling you to vote Labor - and we will check back on you'' is absolutely scandalous. According to the ABC's Canberra chief, Chris Uhlmann, if union members contacted by the ACTU's goons do not seem to have made up their minds after the first call, they can expect two more phone calls and perhaps a home visit. He reported yesterday that the ACTU operative's first call will be to determine the member's voting intention and his or her key issues of concern, including whether the Federal Government's workplace laws would be enough to swing the member's vote away from the Coalition. If an undecided voter is detected, the ACTU stooge will be given a goal of making three phone calls plus a door-knock visit ``prior to the election''. ``It may be despicable to you that the member may agree with some of the Federal Government's policies,'' he said the ACTU manual advised, ``but avoid getting into heated arguments; such debates are likely to make the member dig their heels in.'' The unions and leading Labor figures including Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were badly caught out when they attempted to deny targeting the owners of Goulburn's Lilac City Motel with false accusations about the terms of employment enjoyed by their staff, all of whom were employed on Australian Workplace Agreements. Rudd's multi-millionaire wife Therese Rein was also sprung when it was shown she had personally approved individual contracts for workers employed by her company. Ms Rein buckled before her husband's political ambitions and agreed to sell the Australian arm of her multinational job placement organisation. The union movement has been campaigning against IR reform for almost 18 months and plans to spend at least $50 million to elect a Labor government. Gillard yesterday denied the campaign showed Labor was too close to the unions, saying the ``ACTU made its own decision about industrial relations''. That response farcically ignores the reality that the trade union movement controls the agenda of the ALP national conference and that nearly 70 per cent of the federal Labor frontbench are former trade union officials. The ACTU's big brother approach is an affront to democracy and the concept of a secret vote, but the trade union movement has historically preferred ballots which can be manipulated through intimidation _ a culture so ingrained even federal parliamentary officials have humiliatingly been forced to show their ballot slips to factional enemies to ensure back-room party deals are not ratted on. The ACTU's intimidatory ``how-to-vote'' has exposed Labor's true, ugly face.