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The ETU Supports Adam Bandt

Since the last election, the Labor Party has chosen to distance itself from the ETU even though, nationally, the ETU put more than a million dollars into the Kevin07 campaign, put a member of the ETU into the seat of Deakin and put more effort than can be measured into the Your Rights at Work campaign that was such a major factor in the 2007 Labor election win.

So, it should be no surprise that in this election the ETU has chosen to put its support behind the Greens candidate for Melbourne, Adam Bandt. Adam’s been a partner at Slater and Gordon, and is now a barrister dedicated to public interest and employment law. The focus of his legal career has been representing unions and fighting the exploitation of sweatshop labour in the clothing industry, and increasing the wages of our lowest paid workers.

Adam, if you win the seat of Melbourne you’ll be the seventh sitting member in its history. How will you be different?

I’ll be the first Greens member elected at a general election, and one of the key things I can do, that a Labor member can’t, is advocate publically and vote on core issues like climate change, social justice and workers rights. The Greens have a strong principled position on those issues and we’re able to avocate them whereas a Labor member will just be a number who will just fall into line on those issues.

If a vote for Labor is a vote for someone who will just toe the party line, wouldn’t a vote for you just be the same?

No. We’ve got a very strong platform on issues like workers’ rights and it is different from Labor’s. It’ll be my job to advance the Greens’ position and advance the interests of the people of Melbourne… We’ve got some core priciples that have been there since the inception of the party, and what you find when you look at our record is that we vote according to our platform…

You have a record of standing up for peoples rights and workers rights.

Yes, I’ve spent the last fourteen years being an industrial lawyer… I represented the CEPU nationally in taking the Rudd Government’s Fair Work Act to the U.N.’s International Labour Organisation for failure to comply with international treaties, especially the right to organise. I saw under Howard’s Workchoices not only individual workers having their protections stripped away but also the rights to bargain collectively being attacked as well. What Howard did was turn the industrial umpire into a policeman… especially in the construction industry with the ABCC. Labor changed some of the laws with respect to individual people’s conditions, but if you were in a union or a sector that was well organised Labor’s laws ended up being exactly the same if not worse… And it’s that failure to adhere to principle… and my commitment to those strong labour values that means I’m now with the Greens.

What do you see as the differences between Workchoices and Fair Work Australia?

Fair Work is better for workers who are in industries that are difficult to organise… If you’re working in a shop or café where it’s historically difficult to organise then the Fair Work Act probably gives you some better protections than Workchoices did; but if you’re in a well organised sector that’s had a history of getting gains for members, then the Fair Work Act is probably worse for you because there’s more restrictions on your internationally recognised right to organise.

The Greens say they will ensure the Fair Work Act has the power to resolve disputes; how can they do that?

At the moment we share balance of power in the Senate. When the Fair Work Act came up we moved a series of amendments; we moved to give Fair Work some greater powers to arbitrate and resolve disputes; we moved to remove the sanctions on peoples’ right to organise; we moved amendments to say the Act should be consistent with International Law. We were successful in getting some but not all; but the more Greens in both houses of Parliament the greater our chance of achieving some of those amendments… There’s every chance, after the election, of the Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate in our own right, and that gives us some pretty good opportunities to try and amend laws.

The Greens advocate the rights of employees to take industrial action and to protect legitimate union activity. Does that mean the Greens support being able to walk off the job without it being an illegal action?

I think that what’s happened over years is that they have turned the legitimate right to take industrial action into a crime and it shouldn’t be a crime. International Law recognises that you’re allowed to withdraw your labour. Often it’s the only thing that workers have to ensure their protection. The flip side, of course, is that you don’t expect to get paid for that period; but it is a braech of contract not a criminal offence, and those harsh sanctions need to be taken out and the ‘umpire’ given back the power to really settle disputes, not just hand out orders or launch prosecutions. 

How would the Greens set about abolishing the ABCC?

We’ve already moved in Parliament to get rid of the ABCC; to abolish it. It was us on one side of the chamber and Liberals and Labor, together, on the other side voting against it. We’ve already been there agitating for it, there’s just not enough of us in there at the moment to bring that change about. It would be my hope that if, together, in the upper and lower houses of Parliament, the Labor and Greens had a majority, we could again move that, and it would be up to Labor yet again to decide which side of the fence it stood on. At the moment it’s Labor who’s proving a road block to abolishing the ABCC.

The Greens advocate redirecting government support from polluting industries to green manufacturing jobs.

Yes. My first job as an industrial lawyer was representing workers and the unions down at Yallourn negotiating the first enterprise bargain after the privatisation; and what became apparent during that was that the multi-national companies that own these industries don’t care much about workers at all; they care about their profits and they will do whatever it takes to stay profitable. What I think we need is to stop leaving key decisions about energy and the future of communities, like in the Valley, in the hands of companies like that; instead, take it back and make it a public question and say government and communities should be working together to ensure that when we transition to a clean energy economy people are looked after. So that means a proper transition plan… The reality is that on the one hand we can’t keep going as we are, and the science is clear on that, and we have to offer people a transition out of that, and we should spend public money to do that. On the other hand there’s enormous jobs in moving to a clean economy. I think one of the real failures of leadership in this country, by the major parties, has been a failure to spell that out…

The Greens say they support public election funding to stop the practice of buying political influence; and they don’t accept political donations from big business. How is that different from accepting donations from a trade union?

What we want is a system of pubic funding of elections as they have in other countries where it’s open and transparent and people are able to contest elections on an equal footing… And that way third parties and interest groups can run their own ads but they can’t influence political parties. I think that’s the ideal. In the mean time, until we get there, we are in a position where we want and gratefully receive support from people who believe in the things we believe in. And there’s probably not that many big multi-national companies who have an interest in supporting the Greens… I’m very grateful and proud to have support of unions like the ETU… In my ideal, I think unions should consider moving to a situation where they’re not affiliated to political parties but support particular parties or candidates on the basis of whether they’re going to advance the interest of their members.

Finally, how can you be an effective ETU voice in Parliament?

I think things change when people take a strong stand on principle and then try and convice others around to that Point of view. I think that’s what leadership’s about. Historically, it has been people standing up, taking strong postitions of principle, and then gaining community support, that brings change about. The choice, in Melbourne, is between someone who will toe the Labor Party line, and we’ve seen what the Labor Party line on industrial relations and clmate change and so on is, verus someone like me who will be a strong advocate for change…  I think the next Parliament is going to be the one that has to deal with climate change and I think we want as many Green voices there as possible.