UNIONS are preparing a High Court challenge in response to the Federal Government’s push to introduce a national workplace relations system when it gains control of the Senate on 1 July
by Craig Donaldson
UNIONS are preparing a High Court challenge in response to the Federal Government’s push to introduce a national workplace relations system when it gains control of the Senate on 1 July.
Unions NSW has enlisted the services of former NSW Attorney-General Jeff Shaw, who is currently working with a legal team to examine whether the Federal Government’s plans are unconstitutional.
Based on the Constitution’s corporations power, the Government plans to override state industrial relations systems and bring up to 90 per cent of employees under a single federal system.
Shaw would argue that the corporations power extends only to the regulation of corporations and was never meant to extinguish state industrial relations systems.
“Our advice is that there are limits to federal powers in this area and a hostile takeover of state industrial laws could well step over the line,” said Unions NSW secretary John Robertson.
“While we have not seen the detail of the federal laws, if they attack the rights of NSW workers they could well be invalid.”
NSW Premier Bob Carr also indicated he would join other Labor-controlled states in a High Court challenge to the proposed federal takeover of industrial relations laws.
“We’ll formally announce some time down the track what we’ll do, but I would think it very likely that we will be in the High Court of Australia with others, challenging what they do,”he said.
Current NSW Attorney-General Bob Debus is seeking legal advice on the Federal Government’s proposed laws, which Carr predicted would not pass the Senate before October.
The Federal Government even faces opposition from the West Australian Liberal Government, which has withdrawn its support for a single industrial relations system over fears that it could hand control to unions under a future federal Labor government.
“One day the Howard Government will lose. There’s always changes of government,” said WA Liberal leader Matt Birney.
“When there’s a federal Labor government, and only a federal system, then business will have nowhere to go and seek shelter from that system.”
Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Kevin Andrews lashed out at any proposed High Court challenges to a national workplace relations system, claiming such opposition was “opportunistic and hypocritical”.
“The legal campaign being run from New South Wales is nothing more than a political campaign by unions desperate to defend a state system which gives a privileged position to the unions on which NSW Labor MPs rely for patronage and preferment,” Minister Andrews said.
He also claimed Jeff Shaw told a Business Council of Australia Forum in 2000 that “the corporations power has been liberally interpreted by the High Court and can sustain legislation designed to regulate the employment relationships between a corporation and its workforce”.
“Mr Shaw is now being retained by NSW unions to produce advice that the corporations power cannot be used in this way – advice that he himself knows not to be correct,” Minister Andrews said.
Federal Labor IR spokesman Stephen Smith took the Minister to task and said the Federal Government was seeking to introduce an incomplete and complex system.
“Despite his own admission that the corporations power does not give complete coverage and that there are ‘still hurdles’, Kevin Andrews is boxing on anyway – boxing on for an incomplete and complex system without the cooperation of the States,” Smith said.
Minister Andrews has cancelled meetings with the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council, which includes state industrial relations ministers, since May 2004, Smith said.
“John Howard’s and Kevin Andrews’ message is clear – when the Government gets control of the Senate it will embark on a divisive and extreme approach to industrial relations,” he said.
