Rudd's $14m debt to ACTU

LOST in the Christmas rush was the warning sounded by Liberal Party federal director Brian Loughnane over the ACTU's activities during last month's election campaign.In a measured address to the National Press Club, Loughnane noted that the ACTU had spent more than $14 million on television advertising during the 12 months before election day.

This, he said, was more than either of the major parties spent on television during the campaign. It demonstrated the emergence of a third external force, with resources greater than either of the major political parties, in the political process. In Loughnane's view, this "is an extremely unhealthy development'' and he called for the ACTU to publish a report detailing its allocation of $30 million, said to have been spent over the previous 18 months. Without suggesting the union campaign was in any way illegal, Loughnane pointed out that the Your Rights At Work campaign had dovetailed into the ALP's campaign and given Labor enormous flexibility in deploying its resources. This was certainly observable in key marginal seats, where the ACTU funded more than 20 full-time campaign workers for more than a year, and in individual workplaces, as well as in state government enterprises. Loughnane also mentioned the campaign run by GetUp!, a well resourced group based on an American model, as another adjunct to Labor's campaign, which went largely unscrutinised. The highly charged activitiesof the ACTU demonstrated the trade-union movement's fear that the election represented its last chance to remain relevant to Australians. With national union membership down to the low teens and falling, the anti-WorkChoices campaign set about creating anxiety in the minds of public-sector and blue-collar workers. Particularly targeted were older Australians with concerns about the security of their children and grandchildren, should the Howard government go even further if it won the election. Labor's election victory has validated the ACTU's decision to put its money on the table, and the union body will now be able to make demands on Kevin Rudd's government. ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence has already expressed displeasure with the timetable set for Industrial Relations Minister Julia Gillard's rollback of WorkChoices' wrongful-dismissal provisions, and has rejected Brian Loughnane's call for a report on the ACTU's dispersal of its $30 million war chest. Not since the days of Bob Hawke's presidency of the ACTU has the union body enjoyed as much potential for power as it does now - but it must be remembered that the power Hawke wielded after succeeding Albert Monk in 1969 was not always wielded wisely. Although Hawke had been a very successful advocate for the trade-union movement, here and in Papua New Guinea, his forays into other areas when he was president were abject failures. As keen as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is now, Hawke harboured great ambitions for the ACTU and studied successful union ventures in Israel and elsewhere before launching a partnership with Solo, an oil company, and a retail venture with Bourkes, a Melbourne department store. Both were as successful as the later attempt by the NSW Trades and Labor Council (under NSW's current Treasurer, Michael Costa) to launch a computer company, all sinking without trace. The modern ACTU has had to endure its humiliations, too, not least being the disgraceful attempt by former president Sharan Burrow to drag Australian politics into a meeting of the International Labor Organisation (ILO) in Switzerland last year. Burrow stuffed delegates' mailboxes with ACTU leaflets, leading to complaints from other ILO delegates as she attempted to ensure that Australia was ranked with some of the worst nations in the world, including Bosnia, the Congo, Djibouti and Colombia, where 72 trade unionists had been assassinated. In one complaint to the ILO secretariat, a delegate said Burrow's material had been removed once by conference staff, but was redistributed later the same day - and again removed. The ACTU also passed a motion of support for Venezuela's dictatorial leader, Hugo Chavez, and sent a delegation to explore areas of mutual interest with Venezuelan unionists. With the election of former ACTU secretary Greg Combet and former Australian Workers Union chief Bill Shorten to federal parliament, the trade-union movement will have powerful friends to guide Kevin Rudd when he falters. One issue they will be anxious to raise is the demand that trade unions be given an automatic right of access to any enterprise, even when they have not been invited to address employees and regardless of whether the particular organisation employs trade-union members. After enjoying a period with the lowest level of industrial disputation in years, Australians will again learn to live with disruptive strikes as unions fight to sign up new members from a generation that has found it doesn't need to pay for union representation to win employee benefits. Having paid $30 million for its seat at the table, the ACTU is determined to seize the right to determine the Rudd government's industrial agenda.