BY The Canberra Times

As Workplace Relations Minister, Joe Hockey never held a private meeting with the leadership of the ACTU, although he says he indicated he'd be willing.
He doesn't deny that when he followed Kevin Andrews into the job, relations were less than convivial.

"It was Balkanised by the time I took over," Hockey says now. Not surprisingly, there are differing views on who started the war but few will deny there was one.

Sure, there were some reluctant campaign platitudes about the importance and role of the union movement uttered in damage control after Hockey said unions were irrelevant and Tony Abbott suggested the dogged asbestosis campaigner, the late Bernie Banton, might have evil in his heart. But, in the end, the ACTU was seen as the enemy, pouring millions and millions of compulsorily-levied dollars into trying to bounce the government from power. Some in the Coalition are vowing to find out, eventually, exactly how much.

Now in a new job away from the nasty industrial scrap, Hockey doesn't want to say any more about past relations with the labour movement, not even about a revealing report published yesterday in New Matilda magazine suggesting our very own journalists' union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, had an active role in campaigning for Labor's Mike Bailey in his own seat. Hockey could be forgiven for being somewhat annoyed. Some journalists who believe in not taking sides certainly will be too.

But while it may not be all sweet forgiveness, the Liberals do appear to be taking a slightly different approach to relations with the old enemy.

New workplace relations shadow minister (that must be hard to get used to) Julie Bishop was asked on Thursday whether she might actually seek a meeting with the nation's union leadership. "I intend to meet with all relevant stakeholders and that will include the ACTU," Bishop said, while almost in the same breath accusing unions of strong-arming business since the election and calling the early signs "ominous".

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson wasn't asked the same question, but ventured a "me too" response anyway.

"It's certainly my intention to meet with everyone in this country that's got something to say that needs to be heard, from the ACTU through to all of the business organisations," Nelson said.

So, are we headed for a new bipartisan era of workplace cooperation? Or is this just a short armistice in an old war? And if so, whose position will the new Government of self-described economic conservatives end up having to take? While the unions certainly contributed substantially to the conflict over WorkChoices, both throughout the election campaign and in the lead-up, they would argue the Coalition started the fight.

Indeed, even some of Howard's biggest backers say he overplayed his hand in dismantling workers' rights, determined not to repeat former prime minister Malcolm Fraser's mistake in squandering the opportunities which came with surprise Senate control. There's ongoing debate among commentators as to whether Howard embarked on his industrial odyssey knowing his changes would drive wages and conditions down at the lower end. Significant observers are convinced he did, justifying ratting on his battlers by convincing himself that removing virtually all the industrial strictures on business served the greater economic good.
He clearly did not anticipate the potency of the battler backlash.

"Almost certainly, the official post-mortem will attribute defeat to the poor politics of WorkChoices, which was 'sprung' on voters after the government unexpectedly won control of the Senate," the compulsory confessor, former health minister Tony Abbott, wrote in his Sydney Morning Herald column this week.

And the politics certainly were poor.

They were driven at least in part by Howard's rage over the money and political network the union movement routinely provides the Labor Party. In response to the ACTU's massive Your Rights at Work campaign, which began almost a year out from the election, the former Howard government strong-armed business organisations into running and funding a partisan advertising campaign in its defence.

What's more, the government took the view that business organisations were either with it or against it. And the view of those seen to be against it was dim indeed.

The most significant to resist joining the advertising campaign was the Australian Industry Group and its chief, Heather Ridout. While Ridout certainly mounted a strenuous defence of WorkChoices, she nevertheless declined to follow the likes of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other representative groups in diving into the coffers to defend the empire. Ridout took the view that this was not her organisation's role, especially not in the hot-button pre-election atmosphere. And she said so, publicly. She copped considerable government flak for her trouble. But she argued that she had always tried to work cooperatively with the unions.

With her constituents largely manufacturers with highly unionised workforces, that's not entirely surprising. Regardless, her stance will doubtless serve her member companies well now. But senior Coalition figures still haven't forgiven her. They continue to believe she should have put her money where her arguments were.

Still, within the Liberals there's now some confusion over how strenuously to continue to defend the old policy. Nelson has said he particularly wants to ensure the old unfair dismissal laws are not reinstated and Bishop is under similar pressure from her deep-pocketed constituents in Western Australia, folks who now rightly feel their donations should at least buy them a stake in decision-making after the fact.

Flushed with victory, the unions themselves are offering business an olive branch, if a small one.
"One message we have got today for Australian employers is that we are here to talk to you," ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said this week. "And we expect that Australian employers will recognise that the climate has changed, that the government has changed, that WorkChoices has been rejected and that they should sit down now with unions and work out appropriate arrangements for the future."

Of course, they're even keener to work out appropriate arrangements with the new Federal Government. One Cabinet meeting down and no sign, yet, of the draft abolition legislation. Likewise, Labor's national secretary Tim Gartrell did not include the unions in his acknowledgments when he deconstructed the recent campaign at the National Press Club this week. At least, not until the omission was pointed out. ACTU President Sharan Burrow is saying, as nicely as an impatient union leader can, get on with it.

"Everyone would want the laws abolished yesterday but we know the machinery of government is slower than that. But come February in that Parliament, we clearly want to see laws in place that draw a line in the sand," she said on Tuesday. "No more AWAs. That needs to be a priority."

Managing expectations may be Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's greatest New Year challenge.
Karen Middleton is chief political correspondent for SBS Television.

----------------------------------------------------------------------