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A Stack of Hypocrits

By Neale Towart

Ballot rigging, sanctioned by the courts, sponsored by the government were a Liberal Party and Bob Menzies speciality - and they introduced legislation to legalise it.

"Ballot irregularities on a grand scale." Justice Dunphy's statement on the Ironworkers ballot was used far and wide to implant the idea that no trade union ballot is honest; that they are all rigged.

A pamphlet, apparently produced by the CPA and printed by G Wheeler of 16 Corr's Lane, Melbourne, puts the case for the CPA in union ballots, and clearly points out the flaws in the processes introduced by Menzies, with support from the Groupers who benefited from them. The legislation was an amendment to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act.

The Menzies government, in its Communist Party Dissolution Act (rejected by the High Court and by referendum) included a "scheme by which the trade unions would become mere appendages to the State - would be led by officials who were nominees of the government."

The employers and Menzies carried through the secret ballot legislation separately. Menzies' legislation said that if 10% of members of a union made a request to the Court, the Court must order a government ballot.

The government, employers and the press waged a long-term campaign against workers' rights (following World War II in the context of the realignment of powers following that conflict). The influence of communists was the big demon factor, and the FIA battle between Thornton and Short was the focal point for some time.

The secret ballots were always depicted a means of defeating the communist rorters. This pamphlet asserts that real secret ballots would increase communist influence.

The ALP groups, eventually defeated by Evatt, were "fostered and developed" by the Security Service; "they put their own men into them: they enlisted some of the people already active in them: they provided funds: they enlisted the aid of the newspapers."

The employers and the government, in their new -found concern for fairness and democracy, claimed it was only corrupt ballots that kept the groups out. Thus it was "impossible for the authorities to allow the militants to win in a Government ballot. If the militants had won, it would have destroyed years of work on the part of the government - work in to which they had thrown the whole resources of the press, the courts, the security service. It would have exploded for ever the lie that trade union ballots are rigged."

Menzies' acting Minister for Labour, Mr McBride, stated categorically that "by the end of 1954, there would have been a full round of Court controlled ballots and that would mark the end of "Communist control"." The pamphleteer asks; "how could he possibly know" that? All evidence at the time pointed to the opposite. The left were being very successful in union ballots, in unions whose election processes had never been the subject of rorting claims even by the most rabid of the groupers.

The pamphleteer sets out the ballot process under the Menzies rules:

"There is no single polling day. The ballots have in each case been open for a full fortnight. There is no polling place: there are no scrutineers. How would it be if in the next Senate election, or election for members of the Federal House of representatives, or a State Parliament, the ballot was open for a fortnight, ...the candidates had no scrutineers - no one knew where the ballot papers were kept ". No appeals against decisions in the government ballots were allowed.

Ballots were by post, with:

� no supervision of the printing; no scrutiny before counting;

� no safeguards on the papers,

� no supervision at the Post Office on behalf of candidates;

� no one on behalf of candidates knew where the papers were kept or what is done with them after they are returned; and

� information about the ballot was given to candidates from the groupers, whose campaign material arrived at members homes at the same time as the ballot papers.

The cost of running all these elections and the challenged elections all return to the union too, so the government attempted to bleed the unions with this legislation.

The results of the government ballots, conducted after the union ballots, almost all exactly reversed the votes with the two-thirds/one-third majority swapping to the groupers side.

A detailed look at the government ballot in the ARU Victorian Branch election indicated the rejection of any safeguards suggested by the ARU, which were aimed at preserving the anonymity of voters and the integrity of their postal ballots.

Malpractice was also observed, according to this pamphlet, with many members not receiving ballot papers, many having their mail interfered with, papers arriving or being discovered in the paddock next door, papers arriving after polling day.

The pamphlet's position is:

Some ballots were rigged internally, it would seem chiefly by left officials. The processes set in place by the government were designed to keep the left out, and made it certain that this would happen by allowing ballot rigging, in secret, with no recourse to challenge, the very process that allowed Short and others to overturn the FIA ballot.

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  Issue 80 contents

»	It's Official: Union Leaders More Trusted than Bosses!
»	Reith Isolated on Workers Entitlements
»	Light for Shafted Woodlawn Miners
»	ATO Workers Stand Up to Bullying Bean-Counter
»	Schweppes Lockout Bubbles Internationally
»	Online Registration Takes Hold
»	Bush Apprentices Face Breadline
»	ALP Council Faces Workers' Wrath
»	Local Action to Back Burma Sanctions
»	WorkCover Needs First Aid Help
»	Shier Under Fire � At Your ABC
»	Social Charter Puts Heat on Howard
»	Wattyl Make 'Em Fair Dinkum?
»	International Union Aid Jobs on Offer

»	The Soapbox
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Tool Shed

»	Botsman Off Beam
»	Botsman Off Beam II
»	Fatherly Advice
»	Concerns on Fundraiser
»	Let's Be Frank about Frank!

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