Abbott has his work cut out on IR reform

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This was published 12 years ago

Abbott has his work cut out on IR reform

Failing to take control of the issue will leave the Coalition badly burnt.

By Michelle Grattan

A reluctant Tony Abbott has pledged, after Peter Reith's assault on his reticence to talk about industrial relations reform, that the opposition will take a ''strong and effective'' policy to the election. Abbott's office swore he wasn't saying anything new. Other participants in the debate - from Reith to the ACTU scaremongers - saw his comment on Tuesday as a significant development.

The reality is that the IR issue is on Abbott's plate and it will become very hot. He must take control of it, or it will badly burn the Coalition.

But doing so will be tricky. The opposition will have to define carefully the extent and nature of the changes it will propose, and stare down the inevitable ''back to WorkChoices'' accusations from the government.

That campaign would have come anyway, even if Abbott tried to insist in 2013, as he did last year, that he would make no alterations in his first term. Not that a do-nothing stance was ever going to be practical - Abbott simply could not have a blank page on IR in his policy book again.

No doubt he knew this himself, when he said business would have to make the case if it wanted changes. But he has been desperate not to open a debate that would draw attention to the Coalition and derail his very successful attack on the government. Post Reith, however, it is crystal clear that he can't step his way round it.

Abbott has to paint himself as moderate on IR rather than a zealot who would go back to Howard's harsh blueprint. In this, he has some things going for him. When the cabinet debated WorkChoices, Abbott was on the softer end of the spectrum. Howard wrote in his memoirs: ''Tony Abbott expressed general concern about making too many changes.''

Going back further, when he was in the workplace portfolio, Abbott did not come across as having extreme views. (Admittedly he was following Reith, who had done the first wave of changes, and the Senate at that point was a block to anything very radical.)

The line coming from business is also potentially helping Abbott. The message this week from both the Australian Industry Group and the normally tougher Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry was that the system needs changes, but not overturning. Abbott can use this to argue that he wants fine tuning. Of course, what to one person is fine tuning is to another a fundamental assault on industrial rights.

Whatever the opposition proposes, there will be losers; the unions would be the biggest losers of all, and would naturally kick hard. There is no politically painless way for the opposition to have an IR policy - it is a matter of minimising the downside.

What sort of changes do Liberals think should be contemplated? Jamie Briggs, a backbencher who was Howard's IR adviser in 2004-07 (WorkChoices period), says: ''The present system is too inflexible. It's weighted in the direction of bringing in unwelcome third parties [to the bargaining process] - the unions, Fair Work Australia - which affects the outcomes across Australia.''

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He says the unions get substantial pay rises from the big companies and these flow through, which is especially the problem in the two-speed economy. ''Small businesses suffer, and they are voiceless in this debate.'' Briggs has previously suggested reforms to unfair dismissals provisions, restoration of the right to have individual statutory contracts, and a ''re-weighting'' of the bargaining process to reduce union power.

One suggestion floating around Liberal circles is that Abbott should get together an advisory panel from business to provide information on how the system is working and suggest changes. A variation is that the brief should be to address the wider question of how to improve productivity. It would be a good idea. But a panel would need to be broadly based, and balanced.

There are plenty of people who want to grab this debate and herd Abbott into a position. The right-wing HR Nicholls Society has revived; Reith has proposed to the Institute of Public Affairs, a free-market think tank, that it set up a unit dedicated to IR. If Abbott doesn't get on the front foot, he will find (as he did this week) that hands are there shoving him in the back.

At the same time, he can't afford to have IR intrude too much at the moment on what he wants to be saying about the government. He's been reminded all week of the dangers. The fallout of the Liberal federal presidency battle - to which Abbott contributed disastrously - continues, with a letter surfacing from right-wing powerbroker Nick Minchin. Minchin wrote to shadow treasurer Joe Hockey, forcefully rejecting Hockey's account of what Minchin had said on IR years ago.

Abbott was predictably pressed about IR yesterday - he simply stonewalled. It was an unconvincing performance, bad enough for a one-off and certainly not sustainable for any length of time. He has to get himself more comfortable on this vital ground.

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Michelle Grattan is The Age's political editor.

Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU

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