IN what some commentators described as a surprise move, Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday announced that his government was shelving its anti-union Ensuring Integrity Bill as a sign of "good faith" to allow negotiations to proceed on a major overhaul of industrial relations laws.
Addressing the National Press Club, Mr Morrison said Attorney-General and Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter wanted union and employer consensus on a new streamlined IR system by September, just four months away.
He said he was heartened by the constructive approach both sides of the IR debate had taken during the coronavirus crisis.
But what I want them to focus on is an understanding that, if there's no business, there's no job. There's no income. There's nothing
PM Scott Morrison on Tuesday
The unspoken element, behind the scenes, was the lack of numbers to pass the Ensuring Integrity Bill into law. One Nation senators Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, refused to support it.
Jacqui Lambie's vote would have been enough, but it seems the Tasmanian senator's negotiating demands were beyond what the government was prepared to accept.
The present Enterprise Agreement system was conceived as a way of tailoring broad award conditions to individual workplaces.
But the necessary proliferation of agreements added complexity to the system, while a number of legal challenges were making it increasingly clear that some workers were losing out despite a "Better off Overall" test - the BOOT - that was supposed to stop this happening.
Morrison is a Liberal. There is nothing in his history to suggest unions are a prominent part of his political DNA.
And with trade union membership falling from 51 per cent of the workforce in 1976 to just 14 per cent a few years ago, the movement as a whole still enjoys a political pull well beyond its numerical backing.
Mr Morrison thanked ACTU secretary Sally McManus and other union leaders when he said in early April that "there are no more unions or bosses, there are just Australians now, that's all that matters".
There are no more unions or bosses. There are just Australians now, that's all that matters. An Australian national interest and all Australians working together
Scott Morrison, April 2
It was a line in one of the government's then-daily coronavirus briefings.
He referred to that co-operation again yesterday as a major departure from the usual adversarial approach.
If Mr Morrison is serious about embedding fairness into a new "fit for purpose" IR system, then those words need to be more than a handy line from marketing.
If he succeeds, his "no bosses, no unions" mantra could become the improbable lines for which a Liberal prime minister is best remembered.
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