Shorten’s first lady has him firmly under her thumb

If Labor wins, get set for a new first lady. She’s bossy, with a Soviet comrade fashion sense.

Eric Lobbecke Op Ed cartoon for 10-04-2019. Version: Ozoped Artwork (1280x720 - Aspect ratio preserved, Canvas added)COPYRIGHT: The Australian's artists each have different copyright agreements in place regarding re-use of their work in other publications.Please seek advice from the artists themselves or the Managing Editor of The Australian regarding re-use.

Every first lady is different from the last one. Some are flashy. Others are more low-key. Some have a passion for education. Others choose health as their focus. If Labor wins next month’s federal election, strap yourself in for a first lady like no other. She is really bossy, with a fashion sense more Soviet comrade than pearls, pink frocks and heels. And, if history is a clue to the future, she will get her way with the new prime minister more or less at will.

Move over, Chloe Shorten. Sally McManus will become the first lady to watch.

Already the ACTU leader has cemented into the Labor Party platform policies that belong in the closed, controlled economy of the 1970s. A “living wage” is now Labor policy. Pattern bargaining? Tick. Get rid of the Australian Building and Construction Commission? Yes. Abolish the Registered Organisations Commission that lifted penalties, transparency and accountability for union leaders? Done. Restore penalty rates for workers that will kill jobs? Yes. Re-establish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal? Agreed. Regulate flexible employment, gig employees, labour-hire staff and subcontractors? We’ll do that too, says Shorten. An expanded right to take industrial action? OK, you twisted my arm.

This last one is political manna for a union leader with a shrinking base. It allows legally protected action in support of industry-wide bargaining and union protests about economic or social developments that McManus claims will harm union members’ interests.

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus speaks at the media at last year’s ACTU Congress in Brisbane alongside National President of the Australian Labor Party and former Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan. Picture: Glenn Hunt

In 1984 there were three million trade union members. Today, it’s half that in a labour force that has almost doubled to 12.6 million workers. Innovative work prac­tices don’t suit the McManus union model, so she needs to define flexible workers as exploited minions to warrant union control. McManus’s fixation on squeezing these workers into a 70s union straitjacket makes no sense in an open economy where workers actively seek flexible work arrangements from a variety of businesses.

McManus ought to be a bit player in Australian politics. Unfortunately, Shorten has rewarded her chutzpah with power beyond her base. Her orchestrated protests today show she is already gloating over her new position as comrade-in-chief in a Shorten government.

To understand the dark influence McManus already has, and what that will mean in a Shorten Labor government, return to her first televised interview after she was appointed ACTU leader in 2017. Asked by Leigh Sales whether she believed in the rule of law, McManus said she did. Given that, asked Sales, will you as ACTU leader then distance yourself from the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, which on 118 occasions has been found to have broken the law or acted in contempt of court?

McManus’s answer was firm: “There’s no way we’ll be doing that … I’ll tell you this, the CFMEU, when they’ve been fined for taking industrial action … it might be illegal industrial action according to our current laws but our current laws are wrong,” she told the ABC’s 7.30. McManus’s modus operandi is clear: when she decides that a section of a law is unjust, that law may be broken. It is the motto of an anarchist.

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus joins workers and unionists in a protest outside Parliament House in Canberra last year. Picture: AAP

Shorten should have taken her to task from the start. If he had said Labor will not deal with union leaders who support union militancy, endorse union law-breaking, workplace intimidation and contempt of court, it would have stamped Shorten as a gutsy and principled national leader rather than a union lackey.

McManus is not confronting a profound injustice like apartheid. She has a problem with some sections of the workplace laws, laws passed not by some anti-union right-wing government but by the Rudd-Gillard government.

Many people in politics have disagreed with Australia’s industrial relations laws through the years, from both sides of politics, and union leaders too. Only McManus has turned law-breaking into ACTU policy.

Instead of stepping up as an alternative national leader, the perception is of Shorten and his MPs grovelling to McManus by adopting her old-style union language about corporate fat cats, greedy bankers, evil big businesses and downtrodden workers.

The outdated McManus class war has become Labor’s campaigning bible. Her Dickensian language to describe capitalism as “trickle down” economics where greedy bosses throw a few crumbs to workers on the factory floor has become the go-to talking point for Labor MPs.

Sadly, Shorten has form when it comes to offering fawning obedience to strong women. Who can forget the best political moment of 2012 when Shorten was asked by Sky News supremo David Speers whether he supported what then prime minister Julia Gillard had said about Speaker Peter Slipper, who appeared to be in deep trouble. “I haven’t seen what she’s said but let me say I support what it is she said.” Pressed by an incredulous Speers to confirm his fawning statement, Shorten said: “I support what she said … My view is what the prime minister’s view is.”

That scary level of obedience has set the scene for Shorten’s menacing duo with McManus. Already, their political relationship reads like When Sally Met Bill, with Shorten adopting so many McManus policies, it puts a new shine to the famous line, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Some in Labor have cottoned on. Speaking with Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast on Monday morning, Tanya Plibersek was keen to tell listeners that Shorten had an MBA “so he understands business”. Next we will hear what Shorten scored in his HSC to prove he’s clever.

Touting your boss’s 20-year-old MBA when he is bending over for McManus is a political contortion too far. Speaking of political contortions, opposition assistant Treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh has more economic degrees than you can poke a stick at, yet he’s busy repudiating his own work. Fifteen years ago, his research found that every 1 per cent increase in the minimum wage would reduce labour demand by 0.29 per cent. Updating that to 2019, it means Labor’s living wage will kill jobs. Except now Leigh says: “I’ve never been so egotistical to think my word was the last word on the subject.”

With McManus calling on workers to flood the streets of the nation’s capitals today, she is not so much campaigning for Labor as reminding the man with an MBA just who’s in charge.

Last week, Donald Trump mocked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a young bartender and said if her Green New Deal became law, he deserved to lose the 2020 election. Find your inner Trump, Scott Morrison. The ACTU leader has an achilles heel waiting to be whacked with reality. Her claims about inequality are not backed up by evidence. And her kvetching over stagnant wages takes no account of the fact Australia has a wages system augmented by incredibly favourable conditions by world standards, making it more expensive for bosses to pay higher wages together with the follow-on costs. If the Coalition can’t get the measure of McManus, debunk her baloney, sell its message with stories that tell the truth about creating jobs and growing the economy, it doesn’t deserve to win.

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