The ACTU funded the anti-WorkChoices advertising campaigns, to little opposition from its members. Whereas you, the taxpayers, funded the former Howard government's pro-WorkChoices advertising campaigns.
The former Howard government spent more than $17 million on advertising its WorkChoices boondoggle in less than 10 months, and that's only until mid-way through 2007. We still don't know how much of taxpayers money Howard And Friends blew flogging WorkChoices from July 2007 through to the eve of the election, but it's easily another $15-$20 million.
Of course, Piers Akerman mentions all this absolutely nowhere at all in his one-eyed screed.
One very important point that both Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Mason leave out of their respective articles is the $6+ million spent by the Australian Business Council (ABC) on their anti-union and anti-labor campaign during the lead up to the election. Anybody with a basic understanding of the bitter campaign waged by both sides of politics during the election would understand that the campaigns run by the ABC and the ACTU were both entirely legitimate under Australian law, despite the disparaging obfuscation cast down by the Victorian Liberal Director, Mr. Brian Loughnane at the National Press Club last week, and parroted ad-nauseum by his Tory supporters in the Murdoch press.
With all this talk about shadowy 'third-forces' in Australian politics one has to wonder why the business lobby's weighty contribution to the election campaign is never mentioned? Why is organised labor any more an insidious force to be involved in politics than organised capital?
Despite the fact that workchoices has been rejected by both the Australian people and the Liberal Party, it seems the lunar-right commentariat is still trying to pedal a discredited line that the union movement has some kind of disproportionate representation in the Australian community and that the ALP is somehow subservient to their demands.
It becomes obvious as to just how tightly these bleating mules are tethered to their rigid, ideological hitching post when one takes but a cursory glance at the history of landmark compromises made by the unions to the ALP during their last term in office. Rather than being lackey's of the union movement (as anybody following only the Liberal/business campign during the election could have been forgiven for believing), the Hawke/Keating governments tamed the unions through policies such as Accord, which negotiated an outcome between employers and unions without any wage breakouts or subsequent inflationary pressures (unlike Howard's tenure as Treasurer, which saw massive wage breakouts and inflationary pressures that pushed interest rates to 21%).
The union movement surrendered a great deal during the 1980's (not least of all membership numbers) but their sacrifices in building the economy inherited by the Howard/Costello government has gone largely unforgotten during the last twelve years of Tory triumphalism.
One can't help but to feel that the Australian business community has wasted too many years promoting the Howard government's rigid ideological line that unions are somehow harmful to the economy.
Thankfully, not all business leaders agree with the extremist position taken by pro-Howard business lobbyists, such as the recently departed head of the ACCI (and new staffer to Liberal leader, Brendan Nelson) Mr. Peter Hendy. It seems some of the brighter sparks in the business community have a greater interest in advancing their business interests than in pushing an extremist ideological position that suits a small, narrow interested segment of society.
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