Photo: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he is holding out an olive branch to business. (AAP: Alan Porritt)
Kevin Rudd may not be able to create peace between union and business interests, but he can work towards productive cooperation, writes Mungo MacCallum.
Kevin Rudd says he is holding out an olive branch to business - not exactly a pact, but at least a truce.
He is offering an end to class warfare, by which he means the sort of attacks on business in which the Bruce Springsteen fan, ex-treasurer Wayne Swan, used to specialise.
He is making it clear that the synergistic relationship Julia Gillard enjoyed with the trade union movement is at an end; the unions remain an important participant in discussions about industrial reform, but will no longer enjoy their former dominance. And his door will always be open to the employers and their representatives; indeed, meetings have been quietly taking place since he regained the prime ministership and he is looking forward to many more of them.
So far business has responded fairly positively; even Peter Anderson, the hard-line CEO of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, has said he is happy to listen to what Rudd has to say, although he is determined to stick to his core demands for changes to the Fair Work Act. And he is far from happy that one of Rudd's first acts as a born-again prime minister was to see the changes to toughen up the 457 visa legislation waved through parliament; for many of his peers the attack on the use of 457 visas was symptomatic of a knee-jerk anti-business approach in the Gillard government.
For his part Rudd says that he thinks the Fair Work Act has the balance between workers and bosses about right, but he is happy to continue to review it; and the same basically applies to the 457 visas, so no immediate progress there.
But on the wider front he wants both business and unions to join him in a serious effort - a crusade, almost - to improve productivity in Australia. Without actually spelling it out, Rudd seems anxious to make this the new climate change - the great economic, social and political challenge of our times. It is a bit hard to build the moral bit into it as well, but no doubt he is working on it.
Rudd has laid out his seven-point plan as a basis. Most of it is obvious, like engagement with Asia, more investment in infrastructure, and development of vocational education and training. But there are carrots aimed specifically at business: eliminating "rigidities" in the Fair Work Act which inhibit investment and jobs growth, safeguards from employers against excessive union interference in greenfield sites and getting rid of red and green tape - where have we heard that before? And to cap it off, there is one that will appeal to everyone: lower electricity prices.
Not a bad wish list, and one that can and should be pursued in a sprit of cooperation by both sides. But Rudd is stopping short of taking the next step: any attempt to resurrect the kind of accord Bob Hawke instigated in 1983. Thirty years later, Rudd admits that the system has become too adversarial and the participants too antagonistic, and he may well be right. But that should not preclude trying to learn from Hawke's great breakthrough, the one that made the universally praised economic reforms of the 1980s possible.
Admittedly, Hawke started with advantages Rudd cannot hope to emulate. His background meant he knew the whole industrial relations area back to front. His time as an advocate and then president of the ACTU gave him impeccable credentials throughout the union movement, but he had also, through his friendships with Sir Peter Abeles and others, made extensive contacts with business.
And the times suited him; Australia was struggling to emerge from a period of stagflation - unemployment and inflation were both stubbornly high. The economy and business and consumer confidence needed a kick start and the accord gave it to them.
But perhaps most important were the personalities involved. Cliff Dolan, the ACTU president, was a solid but unambitious figure always ready to defer to the charismatic Hawke, but in the secretary, Bill Kelty, Hawke found a brilliant and enthusiastic ally. Between them, the men swept the largely acquiescent employers up in the momentum.
Compare and contrast, as Gough Whitlam might say, the situation faced by Rudd. Although business is, as always, complaining, in fact the profit share is at an all-time high. Unemployment is still comparatively low. Neither of the leaders of the ACTU, president Ked Kearney or secretary Dave Oliver, is a great proponent of innovation and the employers are still suspicious of the party that gave them Fair Work Australia and more inclined to go backwards than forwards.
And vitally, both sides have their issues with Rudd himself. For business, he is the vandal who replaced their beloved WorkChoices with a system that gave the unions more power than ever, fumbled tax reform and led the ideological attack on capitalism. For the unions, he is the usurper who never understood their culture or respected their leaders and finally knocked off a prime minister who was their rusted-on ally and supporter.
So he is probably not the man to recapture the first fine careless rapture of a generation ago. But this does not mean that he cannot achieve at least détente - even a period of peaceful and productive cooperation. We may not emerge with a kinder, gentler polity of the kind he claimed to envisage on his return to power. But we can at least hope to get one that works. After the unedifying brawling of the past few years, that would do.
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.
Rudd is no Hawke, but business-union truce possible - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
