The legacy of the Accord

“They believed […] that they were on the right side of history […] Their ideas were irrefutably the right ones […] They were believers, a little company with special knowledge, they knew what the game was. They shared a belief in a new order, and that they were the ones who would lead us to it. There was an element of cleansing about it – cleanse the economy of government where prudent, cleanse companies of inefficiencies including people, cleanse people of outmoded thought, of false consciousness” – Don Watson 2003.

In February 1985, over a thousand electrical workers went on strike against the introduction of contract labour by Queensland’s Electricity Board. The Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, reacted by calling a state of emergency and sacking 1,002 workers. Soon after, he rushed through parliament some of the harshest anti-union legislation seen in Australia for over 50 years.

In Tom Zubrycki’s film, Friends and Enemies, then ACTU Senior Vice-President, Simon Crean, claimed that he could get ‘maybe 250 jobs back’. This was a lie. A lie told to ETU union organisers in Trades Hall which had been spray painted by rank-and-file knowing that the sell-out was on. Crean admitted as much when he told the ABC: “Their (union) requests for those talks have just been met with contempt by the government (of Bjelke-Petersen). They (the Qld government) refuse to debate the issues publicly with us. They (the Qld government) refuse to meet in private with us. We have no alternative but to take that action (a blockade).” The unions imposed a blockade which Crean, acting for the Keating Labor government, called off. Crean was all words, a poseur.

Government writs remained over the heads of power station operators for years to come. They were in fear of losing their houses. Lives of SEQEB workers and their families were destroyed, some committing suicide and others losing their marriages. Union bosses told power workers at Swanbank that if they turned the lights back on then SEQEB workers would be reinstated. This too was a lie.

“Workers at Swanbank Power Station voted to lift the ban (of turning off the power) on the recommendation of their union [Municipal Officers Association (MOA)] after leaders of that union met with Joh Bjelke-Petersen. They lifted the bans after being told by their union that, if they did, the SEQEB linesmen would get their jobs back with no recriminations. It was only after they lifted the ban that they realised that they had been mislead by their union.” – Neil Andrew Frost.

Bill Kelty and Simon Crean, backed by the Hawke-Keating Labor government, allowed Joh to defeat the SEQEB workers so that they could maintain the Accord. They were assisted by the old guard at Trades Hall and the leadership of the Electrical Trades Union at the time. This brought contract labour back into the electricity industry in Queensland and elsewhere. The economic rationalists, as they were called back then, had won.

“Despite all the efforts of the Hawke government, Kelty and Crean, the ACTU and sections of the trade union movement, who all wanted to accept sackings in the first few weeks, a well organised group of rank-and-file managed to continue action for 18 months demanding re-instatement of all the workers. Finally, the men decided that there was no possibility of winning the dispute. Hughie Hamilton (former Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU) official) announced in the Sunday Mail that it was over. The state ALP had promised the men that they would get their jobs back when the ALP government came to power. They are still waiting. The lesson learnt from the 1985 SEQEB dispute—BEWARE FALSE UNITY.” – After the Waterfront – the workers are quiet by LeftPress

After the dispute union officials like Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson and Tom Barton went on to become Ministers in state and federal Labor governments.

When Tom Zubrycki in Amongst Equals tried to tell the story of the union movement, Simon Crean and Martin Ferguson came out against the film. Yet the film was supported by the union movement, at least by sections of it (Jack Mundey (NSW BLF), Tom Hills (Waterside Workers Union), Jim Comerford (President of the Miner’s Federation from 1953 to 1973), Professor Lucy Taksa (Labour Historian) to name a few of the people interviewed in the film. I viewed Amongst Equals at the Queensland State Library and was immediately struck by the censorship and unfair criticism directed at the film by Simon Crean and later by Martin Ferguson. I was astounded that the state library would assist in the censorship by emblazing their remarks over the only print of the film that I could find (so much so that I wrote to the library but received no reply).

“We don’t want the film to go out” Mr Simon Crean, the former ACTU president, said this week, “we don’t want to be seen to be censoring, but, on the other hand, we believe we have got a positive message to sell. […] We expect to get what we asked for […] We didn’t get to the last big chapter (the achievements of the Accord)” […] – Zubrycki’s Press Kit

Mr Zubrycki told the audience […] that Mr Crean had been upset that the final part of the film opened with a scene of the Prime Minister Mr. Hawke being derided by unionists […] He said Mr Crean had also been upset that Western Australia’s Robe River dispute and the 1986 (sic) SEQEB dispute received coverage – both were defeats for the union movement. “I can’t just ignore the defeats”, Mr Zubrycki said. (Lyons, Sunday Age (January 13, 1991, p. 5))

Both Crean and Ferguson followed the same line they had during significant opposition within the union movement against contract labour and neo-liberal policies introduced by the Hawke Labor government (Robe River, SEQEB, & Dollar Sweets Disputes). People like Crean, Hawke, Ferguson, Kelty and Halfpenny, like many other Labor Party union officials, believe they own the Labour movement and are willing to to go to any length to preserve their hegemony over workers and their struggles.

Zubrycki had this to say at the October 2018 revival screening of Amongst Equals – the work-in-progress for Melbourne Cinematheque, 30 years after Australia’s bicentennial year:

“It’s still a shame this film was never completed. Amongst Equals was made at a particular historical moment when the trade union movement was collaborating with a newly elected Labor government in the interests of the recovery of the Australian economy. The Prices and Income Accord, as it was known then, was a historical precedent and both sides had a vested interest in making it work.

“My film came along at the wrong political moment because it served as a reminder that there was a long history where conflict played an important role in advancing the cause of workers’ wages and conditions. The two things were incompatible, hence the dispute. However, times have changed, and a new project could be initiated, looking at the thing anew and creating a genuinely critical film history of the Australian trade union movement. This is a project that I felt was long overdue when I pro- posed it in 1986. It’s even more overdue now.” – Tom Zubrycki.

Nepotism

Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson and Kim Beasley had fathers who served as ministers in Labor governments. Their sons ever became Prime Minister but both became ministers in the Hawke-Keating cabinets (1983-1996). They did not come from the shop floor. Crean led a privileged life in Melbourne and Canberra. Even though he became the general-secretary of the Storemen and Packers Union and Crean was never a storeman or a packer; he graduated from Monash University and worked for the Labour Party from then on.

The Accord and Union Amalgamation

He was the president of the ACTU when they started to completely transform the trade union movement by amalgamating all these trade-based unions into much bigger, amorphous groups. – Laura Tingle ABC, 27 June 2023.

Massaging the truth

The Canberra Press gallery and the ABC presents a different picture of the accord and of the legacy of Simon Crean. Laura Tingle, speaking to Phillip Adams on Late Night Live, ABC, 27 June 2023 had this to say: “But I’ve reflected on it, as I’m sure a lot of people who lived through the Simon Crean era has today, and I’m just astonished by the fact that this man was part of so much of Labor history in particular, but of Australian political history, from the 1980s right through to the current day, Philip, I mean, there’s been a lot of talk about the fact that he really heroically stood up against the war in Iraq. And that that was obviously a huge thing to do at the time.

Ms Tingle did not mention that over 64% of Australians opposed the war in Iraq and about a million marched in the streets against the war and that Australian soldiers committed war crimes in Iraq. No mention that Simon Crean and his fellow Labor ministers supported the American war in Afghanistan where even more war crimes were committed by Australian soldiers.

Laura Tingle, the chief political correspondent of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, went on to say: “But this was a guy (Crean) who was at the center of the Accord. Now, a lot of people might not even remember the accord now. But this was the beginning of Labor’s transformation, which made it the success it was politically and which helped transform the Australian economy. He was at the center of the accord with Bill Kelty.”

Tingle, the current president of the National Press Club summed up: “He, he was at the center of the industry plans, the steel industry plan, the textile clothing and footwear plan, the car industry plan, he was the president of the ACTU. Through all of these plans. He was the president of the ACTU when they started to completely transform the trade union movement by amalgamating all these trade based unions into much bigger, amorphous groups.

He then went on to be part of cabinets which had to deal with the outcome of the 1990s recession. He was the employment minister, who had to try to find ways as getting people back into work after that recession. He was an arts minister, who is revered in the art sector to this day, and of course, went on to do other things, including trade, which sounds very dull to most people” …

The remarks by Phillip Adams and Laura Tingle on the ABCs Late Night Live, at best, show a lack of critical inquiry; at worst, are a complete fantasy, at least for workers and the union movement.

As architects of Labor’s accord, Simon Crean, Bill Kelty and Martin Ferguson oversaw the decline of the union movement in Australia.

That is the legacy their Accord left workers in Australia.

Ian Curr
28 June 2023