Thatcherite Michaelia Cash can give unions run for money

Malcolm Turnbull has said he doesn’t want to “wage war” on the unions, but in Michaelia Cash he has appointed to the industrial relations portfolio a dyed-in-the-wool free marketeer who summons as her inspiration Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister famous for smashing unions.

In a speech to her high school alma mater in 2011, Cash cited Baroness Thatcher as an inspiration in her professional life.

“She was a great stateswoman and an icon of our times. She was a woman of conviction who stood by her principles and put them into practice in what were very difficult times,” she said.

The speech, faithfully reported in the Iona Presentation School magazine’s spring edition, was personal and empowering, heavy on “personal freedoms” and “free enterprise”.

Haunted by the spectre of WorkChoices, the Coalition has shied away from debate on workplace relations.

The conversation is mired in what Cash calls a “sad predictability”.

Short on political capital, Tony Abbott’s plan was to brandish the findings of the Productivity Commission report and the trade union royal commission when seeking a mandate for change at the next election.

Cash has so far followed the same script. But in an interview with The Australian she also talks of her “fundamental belief” in reforms to curtail union power and says changes to penalty rates will help our “global competitiveness”.

While the government has been branded variously “cautious”, “timid” and “fearful” by its traditional supporters for its reticence on IR, that’s not a look that Turnbull or Cash appear comfortable with.

So while Turnbull tells the nation he is neutralising the IR debate, with Cash’s appointment he’s supercharged it.

And Canberra might have its own iron butterfly.