
Issue No 31		17 September 1999

Republic

Tarred With the Same Brush

Neville Wran asks why it is that the most fervant monarchists are also the most eager union-bashers.

In the context of this great national debate on the Australian Republic, I'd like to make a general comment about the Australian trade union movement.

In the coming weeks leading to the referendum on November 6, we'll be hearing a great deal about long-established institutions. We'll hear a lot about the way old and well-tried institutions help keep the fabric of the nation together.

Well, the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that, in any list of authentic Australian institutions which have substantially shaped the Australian way of life, the organised union movement stands right at the top. After all, when we talk about the union movement in Australia, we are talking about a continuous unbroken development of more than one hundred and fifty years - far older, for example, than the Australian Constitution itself.

Now I don't suggest for a moment that mere age guarantees anything.

And I've had my fair quota of stoushes with unions.

But I want to take Australian conservatives head on, and at their own word.

Because, by and large, the people who are most vocal about keeping the monarchy as Australia's Head of State, by virtue of its being an old established institution, are the very same people who are most venomous against the Australian union movement.

And those people will never acknowledge the fundamental role played by the union movement in maintaining the stability and the steady forward march of Australian society and Australian democracy - something it has done for more than a century.

It is the typical double standard - the pretence, on the one hand, about conserving established values and traditions, and the reality, on the other hand, of a radical attack aimed at destroying one of the great anchor institutions of this country, the trade union movement.

And you are entitled to ask just why it is that this new and destabilising attack on trade unionism should come at this particular point in our history?

Why now, after 16 years of unprecedented responsibility and restraint on the part of the trade union movement?

Let me quote an editorial from the most conservative journal in Australia, the Financial Review. Only last Friday, 10 September, the Financial Review said this:

"The union movement deserves credit for the important part it has played in the transformation of the Australian economy in the past few years, with labour market reform ensuring moderate wages growth, greater flexibility in the workplace and low levels of industrial disputation, fostering strong growth in productivity."

Now, friends, this is the true picture of Australian unionism in the 1990s.

Yet, by its attack on the basic principles of unionism-indeed, an attack on their very right to exist-Peter Reith seeks a return to the confrontationism of the 1950s.

And I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, there is a lowest-common denominator in his attitude to both industrial relations and the Republic.

It is this hankering after the 1950s; this refusal to accept that Australia and the world have moved on since the fifties; that the unions have changed; the needs and aspirations of the people have changed.

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

But I'm not at all embarrassed in saying that we also want the support of true Australian conservatives, as well-that is, the support of everyone who genuinely wants to protect Australia's institutions and the Australian style of democracy.

More and more, true conservatives are coming to realise that far from safeguarding the stability of our society, an absentee Head of State undermines it.

In what conceivable way now, as we enter the 21st century, does a Head of State chosen from among the descendants of Queen Victoria, provide Australia with a symbol of national unity or national identity, or even a focal point for traditional values and loyalties?

And the organised monarchists have no answer to this question.

They didn't try to answer the question in their campaign for the Convention on the Republic in December 1997.

They didn't try to answer it at the Convention in Canberra in February 1998.

And they don't attempt to answer it now in 1999.

In fact, the monarchists never mention the monarchy. There's not a word about the monarchy in their case being sent out for the referendum.

Talk about Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark!

And stripped of all the scaremongering and red herrings, their argument now boils down to a single proposition.

It is the line provided for them by the Prime Minister. And it runs as follows: "The Constitution isn't broken, so why fix it?"

This is now really their only argument, the case for the status quo in a nutshell.

And, of course, it completely misses the point. Because, when the monarchists say: "The existing system has served us well", they are not talking about the monarchy at all.

They are talking about the parliamentary system and the Australian Federal system.

And the Monarch of the United Kingdom has absolutely nothing to do with the actual operation of the Australian parliamentary system, or the success of Australian parliamentary democracy.

The fundamental reason for the success and stability of Australian parliamentary democracy is that we have built a strong and effective party system.

And I have yet to learn of any contribution made to that success and stability by any of the heirs and successors of Queen Victoria.

This is an extract from the Whitlam Lecture presented by Neville Wran in Adeliade this week. For a full transcript visit the ACTU's site : http://www.actu.asn.au

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  Issue 31 contents

Interview: Sadly Vindicated
Labor�s foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton has spent the past year warning that East Timor would explode without a UN peacekeeping force. Now he�s had to watch his predictions come true.

International: In the Bunker
One of the last reporters to leave East Timor, Workers Online's HT Lee remembers the week that Dili burned.

Republic: Tarred With the Same Brush
Neville Wran asks why it is that the most fervant monarchists are also the most eager union-bashers.

Unions: Hard Labour
Prisoner educators argue more attention needs to be given to rehabilitation through teaching, but they�re facing an uphill battle to convince authorities.

History: Labour and Community
A history conference in Wollongong next month will look at the changing role for labour into the next century.

Review: Bobbin' Up - 40 Years On
Forty years after its first publicaton and several European translations Bobbin Up, a classic of industrial fiction, is coming home.

Satire: East Timor Poll Triumph: Support for Jakarta Up 21 Per Cent
The Indonesian Government has declared that it is pleased with the result of the independence referendum in which 21% of East Timorese voted in support of maintaining links with Indonesia.

» Asylum Call for Independence Supporters

» Nurses Collect Vital Medical Supplies

» Industrial Faction for Pre-Conference Caucus

» Lees Backs Freeloader Laws

» Outsourcing Decision - Banks Under the Gun

» Reith Forces Truckies to Speed

» He Talks the Talk - But Can He Walk the Walk?

» Commission Tells AGC to Get Into the Nineties

» Cost-Cutting Puts Clinical Waste in Landfill

» Prisons Reject Free Computers

» US Defence Giant Eyes Welfare Sector