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My Evil Twin

Co-conspirator and 'intellectual soulmate' Mark Duffy recounts the legendary 'Leaked Paper' Affair and how its predictions soon came to pass.

	Hair today gone tommorrow

*************

It's late 1989. The new Secretary of the Labor Council, Michael Easson, decided to have a weekend retreat with Labor Council officers to examine the climate, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats surrounding Labor Council and the national Labor movement. Michael Costa and I wrote a provocative strategy paper for discussion at the weekend. It was written especially for that weekend - its language was controversial but it was not written for public release.

The paper certainly provoked some serious discussion. Michael Easson sent us off to develop the ideas. He suggested we share the ideas with a few selected thinkers around the place - outside the Labor Council. The Herald got hold of a copy without a cover or any other indicator that it had come from within the Labor Council. Michael Easson had an opportunity to either disown it or own it. He chose to own it. The next day the Herald had it on the front page and Easson's phone was running hot in the morning with irate calls from Bob Carr, Bob Hawke and other senior players within the labor movement. All hell broke lose. How could anybody be a member of ALP or Labor Council and even "think" let alone articulate these views! Instead of defending any of the arguments, the focus was moved from what was being said to the question of how the document was leaked. This went on for a couple of weeks until it was established that it had been leaked by a former Labor Council industrial officer and, I thought, a 'friend' of mine. It was the greatest personal betrayal I had ever experienced and for reasons I still do not understand. I was sacked as a result.

Michael Easson survived, but was damaged. Michael Costa survived. The paper got a furious thrashing for two or three weeks in the media. Paul Kelly published it in full in the Weekend Australian with analysis of its national implications. Most events that we predicted came to pass. Costa and I wrote a book a year and a half later outlining in more detail and probably in more moderate terms the sort of arguments we were putting forward about the failure of the ACTU and the failure of the Accord, the free trade v industry policy debate and essentially the need to modernize industrial relations from a Labor perspective - exciting times.

The personalities of Michael Easson and his successors Peter Sams and Michael Costa ensured a more participatory, less 'top down' approach. The end of the cold war made it far easier for Labor Council secretaries to contemplate moves to reduce factionalism and broaden the Council.

I think what did crystallise as a result of the Discussion paper was the notion that the survival of the Labor Council, ultimately for NSW and for the NSW labour movement and for the national labour movement for that matter, was far more important than the standing of the ACTU. The kind of klutzy collapse of the national union movement that was being generated by a combination of events including the ACTU's manic desire to centrally control everything and to amalgamate away good unions and amalgamate good unions into bad unions, created a lot of stresses often damaging state based unions.

So looking back, but looking at the time as well, the ACTU was utterly unable to deal with the decline in trade union numbers and pursued policies that actually further damaged the union movement by creating large, essentially dysfunctional groupings of unions. I think anyone who follows the outcome now would realize that a lot of those amalgamations have been damaging, and at the best they have been stopgaps. The bottom line is the strategy never worked to stop the decline in trade unionism. The strategy was a failure.

I think both Michael and I were pretty crushed by the oppressive response that the ideas canvassed in the Discussion paper received. But Michael is a very strong personality and if I was in a jam I couldn't think of anyone I would prefer to be in it with!

We were both in our early thirties but Michael had probably been through more stoushes than me, plus he maintained his position at the Labor Council, so in some sense he probably coped with it better than I did. It took me a long while to get over the controversy and my public hanging. The document escaped innocently and ultimately all we were was a few months in front of where the labour movement was generally heading in relation to enterprise bargaining and about the recession that we predicted, which was a pretty good call in retrospect. As was our call about the ACTU's approach . The ACTU was strategically bankrupt at this stage and was essentially going for divvying up what was left rather than putting in proper defence strategies and building a vibrant trade union movement. They had given up those latter two, and just sought to divide what was here.

After the inquisition Michael and I decided to put our ideas into a book 'Beyond the Bonsai Economy'. Michael probably waited for me to get a few chapters organized to see whether I was seriously going to do it, and once we got the flow and he could see the structure, he plugged in and put in some really solid work on it - particularly in the latter half. But it was a real joint collaboration and for me the one really positive result of the whole controversy.

It was a huge amount of fun writing it with him because we both wanted to continue to be members of, and be seen to be members of the labour movement, but we also wanted to argue that some of the stuff that was going down - and most particularly the ACTU's position on a whole range of issues was fundamentally damaging the labour movement and fundamentally damaging the Labor Council. Our perspective in the book was broader than just the labour movement or the Labor Council, it was really about economic policy nationally and the requirement for an effective Labor Government to manage through the sorts of changes we were going through at the time.

I think by and large our big calls were validated by events. I think the notion that you can have an open trading nation with a centralized wage fixation system, apart from safety nets is pretty absurd now. I think our analysis about the lack of explanation for why amalgamating unions should offer better services and shouldn't lead to dis-economies of scale has never been rebutted and of course has proven correct in practice.

And I think the outcomes have vindicated the essential thesis of our book. I think the ACTU is still struggling for relevance. I think the Labor Council on the other hand has been a party - a significant leader really, particularly with Michael Costa there as Secretary - in breaking down a lot of the factional and other divisions within the trade union movement generally.

I'm not saying factionalism is dead, but certainly it is a much more open and broad-based NSW labour movement now than it was when Michael became Secretary - and that is a huge achievement. The Labor Council has also been important to the stability and success of the Carr Government. You only have to think of the overwhelming success of the Sydney Olympics compared to the destructive turmoil the Victorian union movement generated during Melbourne's bid for the previous games.

I think once Michael settles in and learns the new rules to the new game he is involved in, he will be an excellent MP and he will be a senior contributor to the front bench of a Carr government as time progresses. I don't think there is any question about that. He has had an enormously wide experience - in fact when you look at Michael's history - when you look at the number of organisations he has been on boards of - he comes to the Parliament extraordinarily highly qualified. He has seen the electricity industry; he has seen workers compensation; he has seen the water industry, he has seen the transport industry, he has seen industrial relations under both Labor and Conservative governments - and he has been deeply involved in all the major policy debates over the period - so he has seen a lot close up.

He is very well qualified to be a Minister and there is no question that he will be as effective a Minister I think, as he has been a Secretary of Labor Council. But for me the real test for Michael is whether he gets 'comfortable and relaxed' or whether he pursues a reformist agenda. There is still so much to be done at the state level. Michael gets bored easily. He seems to be happiest when he is up to neck in a big reform agenda. I wish him all the best - he is one of NSW Labor's finest sons.

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  Issue 112 contents

»	Muslim Schools Targets of Hate Attacks
»	Up, Up and Away � Where Does Howard Stand?
»	Revealed: Anderson Ignored Ansett Early Warnings
»	ACTU: Administrator Had to Go
»	Union Official Tragic Victim of Ansett Collapse
»	Entitlements Version 7.0 Still Falls Short
»	Pasminco Latest Entitlements Scare
»	WorkCover: Privatisation Still On the Books
»	Fatigue a Life Threat
»	Egan Faces Prod Over Maternity Rights
»	Patricks Workers in Job Security Win
»	Safety Fears Go Through the Roof
»	Ragged Trousered Scientists
»	Tougher Safety Legacy of Tragedy
»	Stellar Drops Unionism Ban
»	Paint Workers Hit With Injunctions
»	Rort-Friendly Proposals Draw Fire
»	More Sackings But 20,000 Faults To Fix
»	Howard Erects More Voting Hurdles At Eleventh Hour
»	Activists Notebook

»	The Soapbox
»	The Locker Room
»	Trades Hall
»	Tool Shed

»	In Defence of Kiwis
»	UK Unions Mourn Knox Loss
»	Premature Analysis
»	Belly's Turn
»	Rally for Peace
»	John Wayne is Dead

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