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I n t e r v i e w  w i t h  F r e d  C h a n e y  5 / 0 3 / 9 0

My next guest, Shadow Minister for Industrial  Relations, ex Senator Fred Chaney ..... .

Don't laugh Ian, it was quite a sad thing having to  resign from the Senate to contest a House of  Representatives seat ....

Well that's what Janine Haines said as well ....

Yeah, sure.

and if the Coalition wins on March 24th, Fred Chaney  will soon be a member of the House of  Representatives and play a pivotal role. It will be  his task to deal with the ACTU and process

legislation that will decrease the power of the  Industrial Relations Commission to some extent at  least. Anyway, a very experience politician and one  of the key forces in the Opposition. Welcome to the  program.

Thanks Ian. Good to be here. .

Now you were listening to an interview I was doing  with Don Edgar from the Australian Institute of  Family Studies and there seems to be a bit of heat  in this right now because the Study came out if you

like the day before your Leader was getting out and  talking about child care.

Well, I guess we weren't happy about it because  essentially what Don Edgar is putting forward is not  just a set of statistics but also some value  judgements. I mean, we've supported right through  the period of the Labor Government,  the fact that  they have built on our family income supplement for

low income families and there has been quite a lot  of help given out to very low income families. What's wrong is that the family in the middle, your  average Australians, have just been kicked to death.  They've found their taxes going up, no tax relief

for having children and so on and they are actually  carrying the worst end of the stick.

Don Edgar's Institute of Family Studies proved that  in actioning (?) some figures they've brought out  over the last few years showing that people who have  been hit hardest under Labor are basically middle

income Australians doing the right thing, having  their families and looking after their kids.

COMMONWEALTH

PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY  MICAH

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Now our proposals in the Family Action Package are  certainly geared to give a fairer tax deal to all  people with children. We make no apology for that  and we say we will continue to support that  additional assistance for low income families,  that's a welfare measure but isn't it a worry that  so many independent families are falling into the  welfare net.

Welfare Agencies here in Melbourne have reported  over the last year that they are dealing with new  families. People who weren't welfare cases before  but they just can't manage any more with Labor's  high taxes and high interest rates. So we have  unashamedly set out to provide $2 billion worth of  tax relief to families with kids and I regard that  as tax justice, as fairness to those families and  not as a matter of welfare.

McMinn: Now he is talking about a figure of $42,000 and that's the figure if you like where people benefit  most. Now is $42,000 a little bit high.

Chaney: That depends on your family obligations but can I say that Don Edgar's own Institute of Family  Studies, pointed out that the family on around  $50,000 where they have got a couple of kids, is no  better off than a single income person just looking  after him or herself on average weekly earnings, in  other words,  the disposable incomes of people with  dependents at the level of $42,000 is less than the  disposable income of people without dependents way  way below about that - about half that level.  so

Ian, again it's a matter of fairness, isn't it?

What Australians see is that if you do the normal  things in Australian life, most of us wind up  getting married, having some kids, buying a house,  and doing a job. The terrible thing is that you get  hit hardest when you are at the most expensive time  of buying your house and having your kids. And we

say that those people are entitled to relief and  $42,000 for a two income family, and there are a lot  of two income families.

I met a two income family the other day with $30,000  joint income. There are plenty between $40,000 and  $50,000 and they are not having all that flash a  time. If they are trying to pay off the house and  bring up a couple of kids, why shouldn’t they get a  bit off their tax, so that people on the same income  with no children have got a lot more capacity to pay

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tax, because they have got a lot more disposal  income do carry a bit heavier share of the burden. I mean, I think that's a matter of social justice.  It's not a matter of welfare, it’s a matter of tax  fairness and I think most people in Australia would  agree with that.

McMinn: Now moving into your particular area, Fred, industrial relations. Now if you get in on March  24th, your really going to have your hands full  aren't you.

Chaney: Well that's heartland stuff. We expect a very good response from the Australian workforce, because they  have had seven years of Labor's accords and in that  time their wages have just gone down, down and down.  So they are feeling very locked in. It's not just  the interest rate and tax problem Labor's lumbered  on them, their wages are worth less in purchasing  power than they were in '83. What's the answer to

that, the answer is for Australia to be more  productive, more efficient. How do you do that? You clean up your industrial relations system. You give Australians a chance to work ....  more effectively ......

McMinn: Well Bill Kelty sitting in the very same chair you are sitting in, a couple of weeks ago, said to me  and I can remember the words quite clearly because  they were quite chilling in lots of ways. He said  to me "if that's what they want, we will say sure  you've got that mandate, but having said that we  will go out there and we will push for as much as we  possibly can because it's going to be the fastest

and toughest and the best that will win and we  intend to win".

Chaney: That's Bill Kelty pre-election chest thumping, anything to save the Labor Party speech and if he is  as silly as that after the election when we are  elected, then I don't think he'll last for very long

in his job. The fact of the matter is, that he  knows that the last time the unions behaved in that  stupid way, as Mr. Keating put it, the Metal Unions  carried 100,000 metal workers jobs around their  neck.

In other words, if Mr. Kelty is really saying that  he and his mates will set out to wreck not only the  economy, but the jobs of their workers, then he is  not nearly as intelligent as I believe he is, and as

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I think most Australians believe he is. Scare talk  before an election, Ian.

McMinn: Well, what his saying is, that you've won the mandate to go into enterprise based bargaining, to  if you like, denude some of the powers of the  Industrial Relations Commission and if your prepared  to do that and you win the support of the Australian  people fine, that's your mandate, but watch out.  That's what he's saying.

Chaney: Well, I think that's for a start a mis-statement which is the sort of thing that he promotes about  what our policy is. Our policy isn't a free for  all. Our policy is in fact for a centralised system  which continues for employers and employees,

including unions that want it. In other words,  nobody is being conscripted into any new system. What we are saying however, is that the present  system is a straight jacket and that plenty of  employers and employees who could work together,

improve the efficiency of what they are doing and  share the proceeds fairly between boss and employee,  or to be free to do that, if that's what they want.

Now, that's a very sensible prescription for  improving the living standards of Australian-  workers. What Mr Kelty is doing, is tying the whole  thing up in so much red tape, that it just doesn't  work. I mean why, or how can you say the system is  working, when real wages have fallen, over the  period of the Accords, and at the same time, we've  got this exploding international debt, which is  putting the whole country and the whole economy at

risk. It simply hasn't worked, and I think that  post-election what we'll be doing, is talking to  trade union movement that will be just as anxious as  the Liberal and National Parties, to improve living

standards, and pay off the debt. They were just as  anxious not to have a growth in unemployment and I  mean, that's what's happening now.

You saw on the front page of The Australian today ,   the big drop in jobs advertised and so on. The  Keating policy of kicking the economy to death is  starting to work. There’s a real risk of  unemployment and I think in fact, wiser and cooler

counsel will prevail post-election because Mr Kelty, I think, is too smart to want to do the sort of  damage which he is talking about. Now, if he  doesn't, Mr Kelty says, I'm going to declare war on  the Australian people, that's a very serious sort of

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threat in a democracy isn’t it? Here, you've got a  Government elected which has been talking about  industrial relations for a form in very clear terms

since 1986. If we get some elements of the trade  union movement behaving like bandits, then we will  have to be very firm in the face of that. But I  think self-interest will dictate a more co-operative  attitude and we’ll be approaching the trade unions

in a positive way.

I've already publicly announced that within a month  of the election we'll invite them to sit down with  us to look at what is possible for the Australian  workforce. I think it is a crying shame that  Australian workers have lost so much of their  purchasing power under Labor. Now, I can't cure

that with a stroke of a pen, I'm not like  Paul Keating. I'm not going to sit down and draw up  a bit of paper and say "magic 7%". What I'm going  to do is sit down with Mr Kelty and say look, if we  want to get real wages up, put more purchasing power

in the pockets of your members, you've got to make  this show work better. Here are the things we're  suggesting. Give us your suggestions, but don't  think it will be like the old days, we won't let the  bosses tell us what to do, we won't let Kelty tell  us what to do, we will do what is best for the  people of Australia.

McMinn: On that point we'll take a short break.

The environment, now here is a situation which it is  possible that you could lose the election because  you don't get the support of the various lobbies  there.

Chaney:  I think most people are waking up, that if they simply move away from Labor and then go back through  their preferences then they are not doing what they  really wanted to do. So I think actually, we'll do  pretty well on the preference front. But  environmental issues, are important of themselves.

I think if you get away from the question of where  the votes lie for a moment, I think what most people  don't want is for the whole thing to become a  conflict ridden and a political football, which I  think has been the pattern particularly this last  year, with the prospect of the election.

So, we're going forward with, for a start a very  good record. Whether you look at saving whales or  saving Fraser Island or saving the Barrier Reef.

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Some very good proposals. I mean some novel things  like getting into urban waterways and looking at how  we can renew those and restore something that’s very  important.  Doing some thing about soil  conservation.

McMinn: Not uranium enrichment though?

Chaney: Well, I mean the Uranium thing, again I think that the conservation argument on that, I think it  reaches a hell of a long way in Australia. But go to  France, which is an important atomic energy country,

I mean for peaceful purposes now. You’ve got, I  think, like 80% of their electricity production, and  indeed, they’re exporting electricity to other  European countries, from using nuclear power.  Look  at the problem of the use of coal, of acid rain, of  the problems we've got with our purity of our  atmosphere.

And you’d have to say, I think, there's room for  more measured and scientifically oriented debate in  this and I do think that again, these discussions  are probably best away from the heat of the  political campaign where people try to make shortÂ­

term advantage over conflict. I mean, I don’t think  there are simple answers to the green house effect,  to the energy problem that the world faces, but to  simply go off goal on an anti-uranium binge, is I  think, a mistake.

W e ’re getting a more peaceful world, there's been  genuine progress towards disarmament over the last  two years, in a way none of us I think, would have  even imagined possible. I think time has come for a  bit more sobriety in these things and a bit less  politics.

We’re totally committed, let me make it clear,  totally committed, to a strong pro environmental  ...... I think the way Andrew Peacock puts it, is right, the environment isn't something you inherit

from your parents, it's something you've borrowed  from your children. That has to motivate our every  act, but let's get away from some of the sort of  slick nonsense that I think is despoiling the  political environment at the moment.  Just cheap  point scoring, and far too much conflict.

McMinn: Alright, we've run out of time unfortunately, if you're in Melbourne, over the next 3 weeks ....

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Chaney: Victoria as you know, is a very important state in  this election and I hope there will be a chance to  talk to you again, perhaps at greater leisure.

Chaney: Yep, I look forward to it as well.

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