Tony Abbott must make a stand on IR

TONY Abbott is caught between electoral expediency and policy purity, and the choice he makes could define his political future.

The issue is industrial relations.

He went to the last election pledging not to make any changes to Labor's Fair Work Act - the replacement legislation for Work Choices. Now sections of his backbench are starting to agitate for changes to unfair dismissal laws so the Coalition could better look after Australia's 2.5 million small businesses. Abbott made a commitment not to amend the Fair Work Act ahead of the last election. Not out of ideological good faith, but because he feared the anti-Work Choices scare campaign Labor was set to mount.

It was a sign of Abbott's priorities. He was willing to compromise long-held convictions aimed at sharpening Australia's competitiveness on the workplace front in order to sharpen his electoral competitiveness ahead of a tight political showdown.

It was surprising stuff from a man who has described himself as the political love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop. You would be hard pressed to find a more committed advocate of IR reform than Howard.

But campaigns are a stage in the electoral cycle where policy purity sometimes needs to be trumped by practical realities. All the good ideas in the world mean nothing if power is unattainable. Abbott determined that so soon after the 2007 election he could not win a poll where workplace relations was again a top order issue, and he was probably right.

I remember the importance of the IR issue well because in the first week of the 2010 campaign I had a story I was working on that could have been extremely damaging for the opposition. A senior conservative claimed to me that he was at a small gathering in Queensland where Abbott insisted that while he had to commit publicly not to adjust Work Choices, he would in fact look to do so once he had the advantage of incumbency, assuming the Coalition won the election - just as Howard did with the Goods & Services Tax after he won the 1996 election.

What wasn't clear was whether Abbott planned to do as Howard did in 1998 and only implement what he had pledged to "never ever" consider after winning a mandate at another election. Or whether he would do as Julia Gillard is now doing (with respect to a carbon tax) and be prepared to action what he had pledged not to at the election in the following term of office.

So I contacted Abbott's office and the Opposition Leader not only assured me he wouldn't be amending the Fair Work Act in this term or (interestingly) at any other time if he won office, but he also disputed ever having had such a conversation with a small group, as my source had claimed happened. Unable to get the story confirmed, and given Abbott's strong denial in our telephone conversation, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn't write it up.

Fast forward two months and Abbott has a choice: either stick to his campaigning guns and rule out workplace reforms of the sort that Liberals have championed for generations, and as he told me he would never again seek to amend. Or go back on his word and grow a backbone on the IR front.

This is one of those moments where breaking a promise is the lesser of evils, especially because Abbott would be doing it as an opposition leader, not as a prime minister.

Oppositions by definition are entitled to revisit their campaign manifestos. They lost an election fighting on such positioning, and should therefore re-examine the core elements of the agenda to see what needs tweaking.

Some conservative cheer squad members in the commentariat might still be in a state of denial about the Coalition having lost the recent election - but that doesn't mean that the parliamentary party should act like a de facto government and shy away from recalibrating the sales pitch.

Industrial relations is just the sort of policy area Liberals should be prepared to fight over. Labor is at risk of not knowing what it stands for in this term of office, and that could morph into the opposition's political opportunity.

But if Abbott won't take a stand on IR and argue the case before the Australian people - albeit under fire from a disingenuous scare campaign that he will return to Work Choices - what will he stand up for? Why call himself a Liberal leader? He might as well change the party's name to the Conservatives.

If Abbott won't fight Labor on the IR front he will be selling out Liberal values, the small business constituency Liberals rely on, and the best interests of the national economy. He will also be acting contrary to what the more erudite of his backbench want to see happen, and that's where this debate really spices up.

IR reform rose to national prominence again yesterday when The Australian's front page noted that Liberals are urging Abbott to take on Labor over its unfair dismissal provisions. Former shadow cabinet member Steve Ciobo - himself unfairly dismissed from the frontbench in the latest reshuffle simply because Abbott has never liked him - is leading the debate and calling on Liberals to better look after their small business constituency. No doubt upset about his demotion, Ciobo will at least now be free of executive solidarity and therefore be able to publicly argue for policy imperatives he strongly believes in.

Perhaps Abbott should have thought about that before dumping one of his more articulate frontbenchers.

Unfair dismissal provisions aren't the only aspect of IR laws some Liberal backbenchers want amended. A return to AWAs, options for shorter casual working hours and more flexible negotiating of workplace conditions are all changes that Abbott's colleagues believe would enhance productivity.

You would think that a former workplace relations minister such as Abbott would be prepared to put policy ahead of politics and heed some of these requests, even if the heavy lifting in IR reforms during the Howard years was done before (Peter Reith) and after (Kevin Andrews) Abbott held the portfolio.

If he doesn't, questions will start to be asked.