Rudd's poor business case

FEDERAL Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has seized on Sir Rod Eddington to mend the fences with a business community trashed by former leader Mark Latham.

Perth-born Eddington - a former head of British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Ansett who was knighted in 2005 by Tony Blair's administration for services to aviation - was first approached by Rudd's predecessor, Kim Beazley, a fellow West Australian. But the Bomber was blitzed before Eddington had the chance to take up his offer. Eddington says he's delighted to take up the challenge of helping the Labor side build a dialogue with business because he believes there hasn't been any since Latham made his disdain for business, large and small, so painfully obvious. Business, says Eddington, is the driver of the Australian economy and he hopes to be the conduit for discussion between Rudd and the business community. As a star-supporter recruit to the Labor team, Eddington - who said a week ago that he had his fingers crossed for a Labor victory - is in a different league from that of Latham's star-candidate recruit, Peter Garrett. Eddington's stellar record in international business (he's the Australian non-executive chairman of global investment bank JPMorgan and a non-executive director on a number ofboards, including those of NewsCorporation - owner of The Sunday Telegraph - and Allco Finance, which is part of the consortium bidding for Qantas) is vastly superior to Garrett's record as a rock star. And, unlike Garrett, he can probably also remember whether he voted in past elections. There are, however, clear conflicts ahead of him in his new role as Labor's business sherpa. Rudd and his deputy, Julia Gillard, have made no bones about their plan to tear apart the Government's hard-won industrial reforms on day one, should they ever win office. Rudd told radio comic Mike Carlton on February 1: "If rip up means get rid of, the answer is yes.'' The following day, Gillard confirmed that position in a television interview, saying: "This is a very silly debate, I think. "Whether it's rip, or rid, or replace, or repeal, or any other word you want to use, we're going to get rid of these laws after the next election.'' Asked about the more than one million Australian workplace agreements signed, Gillard said: "The AWAs will go. We won't have statutory, individual employment agreements.'' Then she added: "Well, if you're getting rid of something, I think we'll rip it up first and then we'll get rid of it.'' This sort of talk horrifies theCouncil of Small Business Organisations of Australia, which supports the Government's WorkChoices legislation - in particular, the unfair-dismissal changes that have freed small-business employers to make their own workplace agreements with their employees. At the big end of town, Heather Ridout, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, said she deplored that sort of megaphone politics from Labor. "It suggests there's no room for dialogue about the issue,'' Ridout said, adding that the ACTU policy endorsed by its congress was a wish list for every union dream. It would undo the Hawke-Keating reforms by introducing conditions that had never been part of Australia's industrial scene, she said. A spokesman for the Business Council of Australia, which Eddington belonged to before he left for Britain, said industrial-relations reform had been fundamental to the nation's economic prosperity. "We need to keep progressing, not talking about winding things back,'' he said. "AWAs are an entrenched part of the mining industry, for example, which has been essential to the nation's productivity growth, providing innovation and flexibility.'' Eddington, who won't say how long he's been a Labor supporter, adding that he prefers to debate the issues, not the politics, says he wants to help Rudd understand the concerns of business and help business understand Labor. But how effective an adviser can a knight be to a party that eschews such titles as relics of the monarchy, even when awarded by a Labour government (albeit one under investigation for rewarding financial supporters with peerages)? Will Rudd, whom Eddington first met when the Opposition Leader was a China-based diplomat, and the union bosses who bankroll the ALP have absolute trust in a business advocate who this month admitted his admiration for John Howard and Alexander Downer? With unemployment falling below the five per cent that economists formerly reckoned was as low as it would statistically go, and business crediting the industrial reforms for helping a record level of employment, it's difficult to see how a business leader could throw his weight behind a political party determined to reverse a principal factor in Australia's good fortune. Sir Rod, turn on your headphones. Ground control has an urgent message for you: don't help elect a party that's out to destroy the economy.