Last week the people who run Qantas staged a strike. The company’s chief executive officer, presumably with the approval of the company board, decided to ground the Qantas fleet.
The grounding was for purely political reasons in that it was a strategy run by management in a bid to outflank those unions who, as part of their campaign for better wages and conditions, had been subjecting the airline to a long period of incremental disruption of the airline’s services. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the union campaign and the Qantas management response, the sudden and dramatic incursion of industrial relations onto the national political agenda at the beginning of November has had a big impact. Since the election in 2010, that debate has been dominated by Tony Abbott and the Liberal-National coalition opposition that he leads. In that time, Labor and its leader, Julia Gillard, assisted Abbott with a series of policy debates that were either unpopular (the carbon tax), exposed administrative ineptitude (asylum seeker policy) or a combination of both.
All through this period, Mr Abbott was able to make great headway by drawing attention to the government’s failings. In the background were to be heard critics of Abbott who warned the erstwhile leader that, at some point, he was going to have to get out of campaign mode and suggest to the community that he could also develop policy. Abbott refused to heed the advice, and now, events have transpired to expose his weakness as an opposition leader capable of projecting himself as an effective creator of public policy. Two important things happened in the national debate last month, both of which assist Labor as equally as they exposed Mr Abbott and the opposition to criticism that they don’t have the policy gravitas to establish their claim as being an alternative government.
The first momentous development was the passing of the carbon tax through the House of Representatives. While the tax may yet prove to be unpopular, the immediate consequence of the passage of enabling legislation was to take the matter off the government’s agenda and allow it to talk about something else (priming peoples’ superannuation with receipts from the forthcoming mining tax, for instance).
Interestingly, the sense of inevitability about the carbon tax has actually resulted in pressure being put on Abbott in that he has been forced to explain exactly how he would carry out his promise to dismantle it if elected to government. This has proven a difficult task, for the new scheme comes complete with tax breaks and funding commitments to politically popular schemes. Abbott has found it difficult to convince observers that he can dismantle with minimal administrative effort and minimal financial pain. As if this wasn’t bad enough, along came the lock-out of Qantas staff and a grounding of the Qantas fleet by CEO Allan Joyce, and suddenly industrial relations was back on the political agenda. Make no mistake about this: the coalition is very vulnerable on industrial relations. While Australians don’t like militant unions, they don’t like militant managers either, and the Qantas dispute brings memories of the Howard government’s ham-fisted attempts to eradicate unionism from the workforce flooding back.
Tony Abbot has spent much of his time as opposition leader trying to distance the current opposition from Howard adventures such as the water-front ‘reform’ and the introduction of ‘Workchoices’. Even before Joyce and Qantas made their contribution to reviving the political fortunes of Julia Gillard and her Labor government, Abbott was already under pressure from industrial ideologues within his party and in some sections of business to revive the Howard reforms. The Qantas dispute has simply reminded the public what radical approaches to industrial relations reform can lead to, as well as bringing the spectre of Workchoices back to haunt Mr Abbott in particular. Recent opinion polls are showing a swing in voter support back to Labor.
The turmoil created by Qantas has clearly helped Labor revive its fortunes, and, at the same time, put Mr Abbott and the coalition under renewed pressure. It’s now up to Abbott to respond. If Abbott can reassure the community that he will not preside over a return to Workchoices, then the Labor revival may be a short-term phenomenon. If a major slide in support for the opposition were to occur, however, Abbott would be in some political difficulty. Thanks to Qantas, there is turbulence ahead – primarily, for the opposition.
* Dr Nick Economou is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Monash University.