Since Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard took the leadership of the Australian Labor Party on 4 December 2006, the ALP's website has been changed to remove any upfront commitment to repeal John Howard's anti-worker laws.
Under Labor's previous leader, Kim Beazley, the ALP's commitments were vague, but at least the ALP website featured, on its front page, a picture of Beazley tearing up the Howard legislation, and it was easy to find on it speeches by ALP leaders promising the repeal the legislation, even if they were evasive about the ALP's alternatives.
All that has gone. There is no link from the front page directly to any commitment or even comment on Work Choices. The entire "policy" section of the website has been scrapped and replaced by three speeches by Kevin Rudd.
Rudd and Gillard have not scrapped outright Labor's commitment to repeal Work Choices, and - especially given that Work Choices is very unpopular - they are not likely to. What they have done is scale down the issue, and nibble at the edges of the ALP's previous (vague) commitments on AWAs, independent contractors, and unfair dismissal (see other postings on this site).
Also indicative, though sadly not at all new, is the Labor leadership's invitation to business people to pay $7500 to become "business observers" at the forthcoming ALP conference.
400 elected delegates from trade unions and ALP branches are due to attend the conference at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre in Darling Harbour from Friday 27 April to Sunday 29 April 2007.
At the ACTU congress in Melbourne in late October 2006, a strong policy was adopted for restoring workers' rights, and union leaders across the spectrum signed up to fight for that policy at the ALP conference. If the unions hold firm, they can assuredly win at the ALP conference.
The question is, will they? So far Rudd's denunciations of socialism, and his nibbling at the edges of the ALP's previous weak commitments, have received no answer from the unions.
