Mr McCLELLAND(7.46 p.m.) —I rise to speak to the principal objects section of the legislation. The government's proposal is based on a fallacy, that is, it can have fair and effective agreement making without fair and effective bargaining. It assumes that there is an equality of might in the bargaining process between employers and employees. Regrettably, that is quite simply not the case.

Practitioners in industrial relations, whether they be trade union, employer organisation or legal practitioner, know it is a fallacy to assume that an industrial conflict is initiated by one side or the other. It is true that the existence of trade unions has facilitated the taking of collective industrial action. But it is quite fallacious, however, to say that unions have caused industrial conflict.  Indeed, that is recognised in the current legislation to an extent, in that the definition of industrial action includes the concept of an employer initiated lockout.

The employment relationship is not static. There are constant changes arising primarily from economic circumstances, technological change and, increasingly, social change. Those changes create, and will continue to create, tensions and, if inappropriately addressed, those tensions can quickly lead to conflict.

It must also be said that both employees and trade unions on the one hand and employers and employer organisations on the other have on occasions acted irresponsibly. Any experienced industrial relations practitioner will tell you that when you are speaking of intense industrial disputation, you are speaking of an environment which is one of the least likely to obtain reason and compromise. You are often talking about substantial amounts of money, often millions and millions of dollars, depending on the outcome. You are always talking about the assertion of power and you are frequently talking about hidden political agendas, not only within union ranks but also within the ranks of management.

It is ignorance in the extreme to assert, or even contemplate, that those realities will disappear because sanctions are introduced, which is what this bill fundamentally hangs its hat on. The existence of sanctions in the Commonwealth Industrial Peace Act 1920 did nothing to solve the strike action at the Rothbury mine in 1929, when Norman Brown was shot during coercive police action which was trying to break up the strike. While there were no television cameras in those days, we do see on television ugly situations resulting from industrial conflict. Such scenes have fortunately become less frequent as a result of the more cooperative approach to industrial relations that has developed, but they are still abhorrent to the average Australian.

Even conservative governments have in the past realised the futility of coercion in industrial relations. This legislation will introduce, however, the concept of interlocutory injunctions into industrial conflict. Those injunctions are obtained without an employer having to discharge any onus of proof but merely the balance of inconvenience as a result of the industrial action.

The legislation is reminiscent of the old bans clause tactics leading up to the gaoling of Clarrie O'Shea in 1969. Before that practice, in 1955 there were only three fines imposed on trade unions to the value of $2,500. At the time of the gaoling of Clarrie O'Shea, there were 150 fines against trade unions as a result of breaching the bans clause.

As commentators have mentioned, a major problem with such injunctions was that employers increasingly showed a propensity to hide behind them rather than to bargain with unions. That is precisely what will occur with the present legislation. It is based on conflict and it is based on penalty. The legislation is quite simply dangerous. It reflects what Jeff Shaw, the Attorney-General of New South Wales, warned against, and that was creating a huge gulf between the theory of the law and the practical conduct of Australian citizens.

Regrettably, if this bill is passed, in the very near future we will see members of our police force being directed to use paralysing neck pressure point holds to break up striking workers—workers taking the only course available to them, direct action, because the commission is being deprived of the ability to adjudicate in their disputes.

Aside from civil war, it is difficult to contemplate anything that so threatens the rule of law as widespread unsolved or unsolvable industrial conflict, and that is precisely what will occur as a result of this bill, because the commission is being deprived of the ability to actually resolve disputes.(Time expired)