Senator O'BRIEN (1:12 PM) —Many people avidly read letters to the editor in the various newspapers and periodicals that are published around this country, and someone was good enough to send to me a copy of a very interesting letter that appeared in the rural newspaper the Stock Journal recently. It was written by a Mr Bill Hunt of Bordertown in South Australia. He told the editor of that particular paper:

It came as quite a surprise to wake up a few weeks ago to find that we, the farming population of Australia, had declared war on the wharfies.

Mr Hunt had some very interesting views in this article, which I would like to share with the Senate now. He did say that he found it very interesting that farmers, through the NFF, apparently were seeking to condemn collective bargaining while seeking to justify the collective bargaining the rural sector calls `orderly marketing' and the compulsory nature of single desk commodity exports. Mr Hunt asked the editor how farmers could condemn as `rorts and perks' the conditions won by the unions for their members, when farmers sought to maintain the special conditions that they had won—things such as tax averaging, sales tax exemptions, registration concessions and family trusts. Mr Hunt told the editor that it was the view of many people in the bush that the NFF action on the docks had compromised its political neutrality. He asked:

. . . is this really a business venture of the NFF, or a venture by a handful of politically ambitious "gung-ho" squatters, some of whom happen to be on the executive of the NFF?

Bill said one thing was for sure: they did not ask the farmers when they took this action. He told the editor:

If they had, they may have been surprised to find that, in comparison to all the other stuff that's going down here: like the collapse of the wool, beef and pigmeat industries; the wholesale closing down of country towns and infrastructure like banks, schools, railways and the like; the tenuous hold on services that we have in the bush; like the soon to be privatised Telstra, post and power; and like our alleged Minister for Agriculture who just sits Nero-like and watches rural Australia burn, that the few hundred lousy dollars saved per farm shifting containers is NFF all.

They are very interesting words from Bill Hunt because Bill Hunt certainly was right when he questioned the motives behind the National Farmers Federation waterfront campaign. It was not a campaign about economic reform or improved productivity; it was really a campaign against an industrial union. It was a campaign that was conceived and implemented by a small group consisting of past and present officers of the NFF who were about to draw on the authority of the organisation and the resources of government to try to get the MUA.

Bill was right when he said the NFF had lost its political neutrality. In fact that was gone the minute the NFF became an active player in the Reith-Howard waterfront plan. That occurred when the NFF signed up to the plan in Melbourne on 18 September last year. The organisation claimed that it was acting on behalf of rural Australia. But Bill Hunt was right again when he said that the NFF was not acting on behalf of the 100,000 farm families—it was acting on behalf of its president, Mr McGauchie, its former president, Mr McLachlan, its two former executive directors, Mr Trebeck and Mr Robb, a former industrial officer, Mr Houlihan, and its current industrial director, Mr Ferguson. What did Bill Hunt say about consultation? He said there had not been any. How do we know that?

The Western Australian Farmers Federation were asking why the NFF was attacking the MUA. The Western Australian Farmers Federation asked: `Why do we want a fight on the docks?' That federation said it had a good working relationship with the MUA. So, naturally, why were they being involved in a fight with the Maritime Union with whom they had a good working relationship? Mr Ian McFarlane, who is a senior agri-politician and an NFF councillor—indeed, part of the NFF, I might say, and now the Liberal party candidate for Groom—complained publicly that he found out about the NFF move from an ABC journalist. Yet he is an NFF councillor. Obviously, you had to be in the club to know what was going on.

The NFF initially tried to separate itself out from the plan and the P&C Stevedores operation. Executive director Dr Wendy Craik claimed that the only link between P&C and the National Farmers Federation was that they shared common directors. Unfortunately, her claim was somewhat weakened when it was discovered that the registered office of P&C was NFF House in Canberra. The NFF president, however, was far more up front. He said the NFF was going into the stevedoring business; this is a going concern. He was reported by AAP as saying that the stevedoring business was child's play. He said it would be easy to make money.

However, the reality was that the National Farmers Federation was part of the wider plan—this conspiracy—to generate a dispute, to sack a whole work force, and to quickly replace it with another. In fact, on 3 April, Mr McGauchie, Mr Houlihan and Mr Ferguson sat down with Chris Corrigan from Patrick to discuss how best to manage the mass sacking of the whole Patrick work force and, of course, the P&C workers were ready to go.

The plan was revealed in some detail by the senior counsel for the National Farmers Federation, Mr Jeffrey Meralls QC, in his submission to the High Court of Australia.

He told the court that P&C had no other contracts and that if they lost their contract with Patrick P&C would be destroyed. He said that P&C would either have to sack its workers or incur enormous costs. He said, `Either alternative will seriously threaten its continued viability or destroy it as a commercial enterprise.' That is Mr Jeffrey Meralls QC, the senior advocate for the National Farmers Federation in a submission to the High Court.

Mr Meralls was saying that, if P&C had to meet labour costs, the NFF company would have to find $8,700 a day—a big bill for Australian farmers for a political campaign, wouldn't you say? But farmers had no say in this campaign. It cost $8,700 a day and farmers around the country had no say in this matter, particularly when there were big bills that ought to have been run up on the issues that were of real concern for the bush. So Bill Hunt—

Senator Ian Macdonald —Who's that—Bill Hunt?

Senator O'BRIEN —Yes, Bill Hunt was right. After all the economic and social damage that the waterfront fiasco created, and the promises to Australian farmers that they would receive massive gains from the P&C exercise, and having promised nearly 400 workers—many boys from the bush, as we hear, and girls—that they had a bright future in the stevedoring business, where has it all finished up? Further waterfront reform is being negotiated by the parties and an agreement satisfactory to all parties has, in fact, been reached—just as it could have been and should have been in the first place. It is interesting to note that, in our recent inquiry, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee was told that there was basically an understanding that 217 waterfront positions could have gone if there had been funding from the government last December.

What about the P&C workers? Unfortunately, they have gone as quickly as they came. Many of them feel exactly the same as Bill Hunt and many of his colleagues do—that the NFF has let them down. Interviewed on the ABC PM program, one P&C worker, David Garrett, said he had given up a good, well-paid job to work for the farmers. He said he understood that he was offered three years work, and then some, by the NFF. He was asked whether he thought all the risks in the P&C exercise were on his side and he said:

Definitely, I don't blame the MUA for acting the way they did but I do blame our company for the way they acted. We never knew. None of us were ever told that this was going to happen. We thought we were only going to get a dock to ourselves, start working in competition, not actually take over the whole lot.

He was wrong, of course, as we now know. Although the NFF had led Mr Garrett and his colleague to that view, the plan was quite different. In fact, James Ferguson told the Business Review Weekly that the commercial success of the operation was not the NFF's main objective; the aim was to change the culture on the docks. Mr Ferguson also said that if productivity increased then the NFF would probably pack up its tent and go home.

Mr McGauchie's explanation for the failure of the P&C plan and the sacking of 400 workers was simple enough. He said it was the fault of the Federal Court, and I suppose the High Court. In other words, P&C would be okay if the 2,000 sacked workers had not pursued their legal rights through the court—P&C would have got away with it. If the courts had not found that there was an arguable case that the NFF, Mr Reith, Mr Howard and Chris Corrigan were parties to an unlawful conspiracy, perhaps they would have got away with it. Therefore, if there had not been an order to reinstate the whole work force maybe they would have got away with it and they would have been able to honour their commitment to the workers. But the court did not take that view and the NFF showed those 400 workers the door.

Not only is Bill Hunt being let down by the NFF; he and the rest of rural Australia are being badly let down by the National Party generally, and by the minister, Mr Anderson, in particular. The rise of One Nation in the bush has not been the result of a sudden failing on the part of the National Party or the Liberal Party. Both have been letting people in rural Australia down for years and simply taking their vote for granted.

While there has been recent speculation about how safe Mr Anderson might be in his seat of Gwydir, he has in fact been in trouble for some considerable time. While people in the bush quite reasonably expect Mr Anderson to work hard for them within government, the record shows they were sadly mistaken. In fact, he was in trouble from the beginning. Page 1 of the Northern Daily Leader of Wednesday, 8 May 1996, just two months after the Howard government term commenced, carried the headline, quoting Mr Anderson, `I won't quit.' It was a story about the minister being in breach of the Prime Minister's guidelines for ministerial conduct. Those guidelines, however, have now been abandoned by the Prime Minister.

But a few months later that same paper carried a headline `No time for complacency', with a subheading `National Party has forgotten country people'. The Manilla Shire President and National Party Branch President, Mr Jim Maxwell, was quoted as saying `the National Party has completely forgotten country people', that `he is angry and disillusioned', and that he is `particularly angry with John Anderson, the local federal member for Gwydir'. He is also quoted as saying:

John Anderson has completely deserted the people who put him there.

There's a lot of anger coming from people who believe John Anderson doesn't care about them, that he's ignoring the grass roots.

I am not the only one.

People out here are convinced the Nationals have forgotten anyone who lives across the range.

Mr Maxwell also said that the Nationals had become complacent, believing that `once a National voter, always a National voter'. He continues:

Unless the Nationals speak up now, on behalf of the rural people who are struggling to survive, it'll be the end of the Nationals.

This is July 1996. He was dead right, of course. Last year the Queensland grain growers called on the Prime Minister to replace Mr Anderson as minister just one day after they postponed a vote of no confidence in him. Mr McFarlane, the President of the Queensland Grain Growers Association, was also in that vein. (Time expired)