Rudd dodges dust from old policy

FEDERAL Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has put a knife to the throat of big and small business with the ALP's new industrial relations policy, but has ducked all responsibility for his position.

He outsourced the decision. "Look, on the detailed elements of the drafting of matters put before conference, that's something that you should put to some of my colleagues,'' he told the ABC's Insiders television program on Sunday. "I'm concerned about the overall integrity of the document.'' Details, details, details, spare me the details, says Rudd, a renowned control freak who apparently also outsources control of his diary to ensure that he will never know who arranged for the disgraced former Western Australian premier Brian Burke to organise the now infamous dinner at a leading Perth restaurant, or who was responsible for giving the Department of Foreign Affairs, the RSL and Seven's "Sunlies'' program the impression that he would attend a false Anzac Day dawn service at Long Tan. So much for a new broom, a resolute leader claiming to be in charge of a new and rejuvenated Labor Party with well thought-out policies, a leader eager to embrace the new politics of positivism while devoting himself to negative personal attacks. The best Rudd can offer to the hundreds of thousands of workers affected by the ALP's proposal to institute compulsory trade unionism by stealth is to weakly acknowledge: "We've got some work still to do in our discussions both with business and with employees. We'll do that in the period ahead. "Specific timeline? Haven't sorted that out yet. We'll do it when we're good and ready.'' How reassuring for all the big and small businesses nervously considering the devastating effect a Labor government would have on their operations, and how straightforward for all those workers making decisions about families and mortgages based on Rudd's tremulous uncertainties. Rudd has been meeting with business leaders but he hasn't been listening. Further, contrary to the perverse view Labor stalwarts may have of business, neither big nor small business organisations could be called politically active. While the trade union movement, which represents some 16 per cent of the private sector work force, is spending hundreds of millions in its attempt to install a Rudd Labor government, business has been sitting on its hands. Except when it has been cajoled into buying tickets for Labor fundraisers. Rudd is being marketed by Hawker-Britton, the skilled lobbying firm which stands to make millions should their operation succeed, but even Hawker-Britton can't disguise the fact that their client is not New Labor. He's as Old Labor as the Faceless Men who most Australians had thought had been dispatched to the outer fringes of ALP history. Rudd likes to portray himself as a modern democratic Christian socialist in the mould of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, but he's picked the wrong mould. Rudd's subservience to the antiquated trade union movement shows that he is stale old mould, not the fresh figure his marketers wish him to be, and no amount of fancy footwork will change that fact. Blair swept to office in 1997 after he dumped Clause 4 of the UK Labour Party's Constitution, which was a commitment to "secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange ...'' In essence he embraced the fruits of the revolution Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had put in train and resolved that he would not lead the nation backward. Most importantly, he had the support of his deputy, Gordon Brown, in taking that step and making New Labor a winning brand. Rudd's deputy is Julia Gillard, who, no disrespect intended, is as Old Labor as is possible for a woman of a certain age to be, and it was to Old Labor's Gillard that Rudd outsourced the ALP's IR platform. No wonder he didn't want to know the details, he probably didn't want to throw up over the delegates at the weekend's national conference, the overwhelming majority of whom were union flacks and party hacks. How much more convenient to say his deputy was responsible for the train wreck? Blair realised that Britain was better off for the Thatcher reforms, just as Prime Minister John Howard realised that Australia was better off for the economic reforms that were achieved by the Hawke-Keating Labor governments. Rudd doesn't have the ticker to come to the same conclusion. He has convinced himself that the historic levels of employment are an accident of history, that the unprecedented wellbeing enjoyed by middle-income earners has been achieved through some sleight of hand. He lacked the backbone to stand up to Gillard and her trade union mentors. Unlike the Blair-Brown team, he and his deputy were on opposite philosophical tacks and he rolled over. He claims to know what the workers want (they clearly don't want trade unions) and what business wants (they don't want his outdated IR practices) but he doesn't know what either wants because he has outsourced his intelligence gathering and his decision making to a museum piece.