Bert Kelly, “Poor Bruce doesn’t want to be left holding the baby,”
The Australian, August 5, 1985, p. 9.

The Royal Australian Navy has many fine traditions: one was that after each collision they got a new minister.

I had the honour to be its minister way back in 1969, and to this day if at some social occasion someone drops a plate with a crash, my immediate reaction is to say loudly: “They can’t blame that on me.”

I used to claim that this tradition of accepting blame was too harsh but Fred soon put me in my place. “You are quick enough in claiming credit when the navy does something splendid even if you had no part in it,” he said sourly, “so you should be prepared to take the blame when something goes wrong, even if it wasn’t your fault.” There is logic in this.

Well, that may have been the navy’s tradition but it does not apply to the Industrial Relations Club. I will shortly quote from a paper by Mr Bryan Noakes, the director of the Confederation of Australian Industry, the employers’ peak council. His predecessor was George Polites, a member of the Hancock committee.

Noakes paints a poignant picture of the faults of Bruce, our industrial relations dinosaur. He refers to the confusion between the State and Federal wage systems; its legalistic pontifications; the indifference of the Arbitration Commission to the economic consequences of its decisions; the foolishness of our comparative wage justice attitude; the fact that employers must abide by commission decisions but not employees; that our system encourages confrontation and not conciliation.

All these and other weaknesses Noakes brings out into the open, so I thought that poor old Bruce would be so overcome with remorse that one of his most powerful handlers should hold him in such low regard that he might be unwilling to ever face the rough, cruel world again.

However, Noakes then went on to say:

There is a widespread and erroneous view that industrial relations systems are themselves responsible for their outcomes, so that for example the “system” is at fault because it has failed to prevent industrial action, or because the rates it produces are considered too high or too inflexible. In fact of course, it is the participants within the system who determine, by their behaviour and their attitudes, how the system functions and what result it produces.

Clearly then the navy’s tradition does not apply within the IR Club. Its members only make the rules and administer them but when people out in the rough, cruel world point out how badly the system is working, we are told it is not the members’ fault. Well, if it isn’t their fault, whose is it?

For instance, the IR Club seems to agree with Hancock’s judgment about comparative wage justice, which has been soundly clobbered by no less a person than Clyde Cameron. He said recently:

While we have a social system that permits monopolies in control of essential goods and services to compel captive customers to meet the cost of sweetheart deals for over-award rates, there can never be such a thing as comparative wage justice without pushing comparative industries to the wall and causing loss of employment to thousands of honest hard-working trade unionists.

But this does not worry IR Club members. They know that comparative wage justice destroys employment opportunities in industries that have to compete in the rough, cruel world, but they say it makes for more contentment for those in work and, besides, altering it would not be industrially realistic because the unions would not like it. They insist that its continuation is not their fault. Whose fault is it?

The waterfront unions at Sydney and Newcastle have delayed the loading of 400,000 tonnes of wheat, costing NSW growers $50 million, to benefit the 320 workers, some of them grossing $70,000 a year.

No doubt the club members would say that this is very sad but it isn’t their fault, they only administer the rules. It reminds me of a Victorian football umpire claiming that he had left his whistle at home this week because only one side took any notice of him last week, so any succeeding massacres could not be blamed on him.

Someone really ought to corner Noakes and his fellow club members and insist on them telling us why our economic performance is so lamentable though our natural resources are so good, why people like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew can goad us for becoming the poor white trash of this part of the world.

Club members could properly claim that our trade barriers have encourages us to use our resources in the wrong way, but the main reason is that we have an industrial relations system that discourages us from working well, that encourages our unions to prefer a fight to a feed, that discourages extra rewards for extra effort and so on and on.

I suppose they would answer with Noakes: “There is a widespread and erroneous view that industrial relations systems are responsible for their outcomes.”

Well, if they are not responsible for their outcomes, who is? I bet they won’t answer, but will retreat into their club, have some brandy and continue scratching each other’s backs.