Militancy uprooted:
labour movement economics 1974-1986

Rick Kuhn

First published as a Socialist Action pamphlet, December 1986

Introduction

The economics of the left in Australia have changed a lot since the mid1970s. Then the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) was talking about revolution, and the need to end production for profit. Communists and Labor Party lefts were at the head of the radical and rank and file controlled NSW Builders’ Labourers, Federation, the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union (AMWU) officials were leading strike campaigns over wages.¹

During the late seventies and early eighties the climate cooled as the idea of an alternative economic strategy became popular. But the proposals and perspectives involved in various versions of this strategy were still radical, looking forward to the start of a transition to socialism in the near future.

By 1983 most of that radicalism had evaporated. The mainstream of the left in the unions, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Communist Party had accommodated to the Accord and offered loyal, if mildly critical, support for a rightwing Labor government. They supported the wage cuts involved in the Accord, did little as workers in the South-East Queensland Electricity Board were victimised, condoned the Government’s attempts to smash the militant BLF and eventually started to endorse the erosion of job conditions in the interests of "national competitiveness". The shift was not sharp and well defined. The general line of the left did not change as it could between the thirties and sixties, through Stalinist backflips. But a significant change in the politics of the majority of the left did take place during the years of the Fraser and Hawke Governments.

The collapse of the left’s politics was not just a freak occurrence. It had its roots both in the objective circumstances of the period - recession, decline in the level of class struggle and a general drift to the right in Australian society - and in the nationalism of the majority of the left. This was particularly evident in the content of the alternative economic strategies. Crucial to the dynamic of the left’s politics from 1975 to 1983 was the relationship between a commitment to class struggle on the one hand and its nationalist, conspiratorial assessment of the Australian economy and parliamentarism on the other. These features of die left’s thought were not confined to the Fraser years. Left nationalism has. been more or less characteristic of the mainstream left since the Communist Party abandoned revolutionary politics in the early 1930s. But only on a few occasions, notably during World War II and under the Accord, has much of the left consistently condemned workers for struggling against their employers. A sustained criticism, in the form of analytical arguments and the more practical critique offered by the class struggle itself, will be necessary to prevent left nationalist ideas from reasserting their grip on the left when its. fascination with Labor in office dims. The following sections examine the development of the alternative economic strategy, which eventually facilitated the left’s support for the Accord, and its consequences. For a detailed critique of the Accord itself see the Socialist Action pamphlet Labor’s Accord: Why It’s a Fraud.²

1975 and Before

The Whitlam Labor Government was, like the Menzies Government, a reforming administration. It introduced a variety of innovations which benefitted workers. This was not due to any socialist vision but because Labor was committed to making Australian capitalism work more efficiently and was under pressure from the working class. Whitlam introduced Medibank, which partly transferred the costs of health care to the state. It pulled Australia out of Vietnam and recognised "Red" China. Funding for areas such as education, childcare and women’s services improved, A program of regional economic development was initiated. Labour market programs were started to improve the mobility of the workforce and to mop up unemployment created by the Government’s policies for modernising Australian industry.

The collapse of the post-war boom interrupted the realisation of the Whitlam. vision of a sanitised, humanised Australian capitalism. The international recession of 1974-5 combined with a wage push, which saw the profits share of national income fall from 13-15 to 10 per cent, sent business into a panic. Investment dwindled and unemployment shot up. Like other responsible Governments around the world, the Whitlam administration tried to shift the burden of the recession onto the working class. Wage "Indexation" was introduced to head off the wage push and especially the metal workers’ 1975 campaign, by diverting unions from strike action into arguing each quarter for a full flow-on of CPI increases. The 1975 budget, introduced by. Treasurer Hayden, betrayed the influence of right-wing monetarist economics, He cut back on public spending, especially on health, education and welfare, to rein in money supply growth. The capitalist class was not satisfied, believing that Fraser would do a more ruthless job, and generally supported the Liberal opposition’s blocking of supply and then Kerr’s constitutional coup.’

The left was critical of the Whitlam. Government. An article in Australian Left Review in 1975 criticised Jim Cairns in radical terms:

The struggles which were such a problem for the Labor Government, were led by Communist and many left Labor union officials. The CPA discovered "workers’ control" (counterposing it to "workers’ participation") even if it did not link this discovery with the struggle against capitalist state power.⁴ The rapid pace of the industrial struggle after 1969 was associated with the emergence of the most substantial revolutionary current in Australian politics since the early 1930s. This current had no organisational coherence or agreed politics. It included student Maoists, several Trotskyist organisations, the "Left Tendency", in the CPA as well as unaligned individuals. Some of the most impressive intellectual achievements of this current appeared in the journal Intervention.

The Industrial Wing

The mainstream of the ALP, with the Parliamentary Party leading the way, responded to the defeat of 1975 by moderating its policies. In other words by abandoning its enthusiasm for reforms and admitting that perhaps, ‘the Whitlam Government had tried to go- too far, too fast. The 1977 ALP Conference approved an Economic Platform reflecting conservative monetarist economic thinking. The short-term policy section twice emphasised the importance of the money supply.⁵ Economic nationalism, with its concern that Australlan, as opposed to foreign bosses should own as much of the country as possible, continued to be a feature of ALP policy.

Most of the left responded to the sacking of Whitlam and the recession by drawing back from revolutionary rhetoric. Many felt that there was a need to unite with more conservative sections of the labour movement against the threat of the Fraser Government. At the same time, the decline in the level of mass struggles made revolution seem less Plausible. There was resistance to this trend, most successful in some small organisations espousing revolutionary politics, the Socialist Workers Party and the International Socialists. Intervention held out for a while, before succumbing to the rightward moving atmosphere and suffering a horrible post-structuralist death in the early 19805.⁶ Terry O’Shaughnessy’s "Economic Notes" in Australian Left Review between 1975 to 1979 provided a refreshing contrast to the multinational-phobia that constituted economic analysis for the bulk of the CPA and ALP left.⁷ But by the mid-1980s revolutionary socialist politics was well and truly on the retreat

Despite the evaporation of reforming zeal in the mainstream of the ALP and the moderation of the left’s positions the influence of the left in the labour movement, if anything, increased. The last year of Whitlam Government and the Hayden budget had not endeared the politicians to many working class Labor supporters, even if they were prepared in November 1975 to defend them against Fraser and Kerr through industrial action. The credibility of the politicians and the ALP machine fell when, having called on ordinary workers to cool it during the 1975 election campaign, the ALP was defeated at the ballot box not only in 1975 but also in 1977. Nor did ALP heavies any longer have the prestige of leading a Party in power. For the time being, the trade unions offered a more plausible solution to the problems workers were facing. With the ALP looking weak, the unions could at least fight against wage cuts, erosion of conditions and other Fraser policies. There even continued to be outbursts of tank and file militancy, notably around the 1976 Medibank general strike and the 1977 Latrobe valley dispute, though both, largely thanks to the ACTU and, in the second case, the "left" leadership of the Victorian AMWU, resulted in defeats.

As unemployment rose, Indexation successfully reduced real wages, while employers took advantage of the recession to "rationalise" industry, with notable mass sackings at Chrysler (now Mitsubishi) in Adelaide and the shipyards in Newcastle and Whyalla. Employers also sought to change work practices on the shop floor; the level of disputes over ‘management policy’ rose significantly. Despite industrial defeats, the right-wing in the labour movement could not get its way. In December 1976 the ACTU Executive repudiated Bob Hawke, when he suggested a wage freeze in return for tax cuts. The economic defeats of the period between 1975 and 1978 led to a barn to politics in the class struggle, with industrial action not only over Medibank in 1976, but also against the export of uranium in 1977, to prevent the construction of the environmentally dangerous Newport power station in Melbourne and in support of the Queensland civil liberties movement in 1977 and 1978.

The turn to politics took another form - trade union leaders sought to present an alternative political program for the labour movement, as a means of overcoming the problems it faced. The AMWU, in which the CPA was still influential, was a major proponent of this approach. In 1976 the Victorian branch of the union issued a People’s Budget. Pretty tame in its proposals, it espoused essentially orthodox Keynesian economics and called for a reflationary deficit, involving increased social welfare expenditure and public works, to overcome unemployment. The pamphlet argued that taxation of the wealthy and corporations should be increased, indirect taxes reduced; and the thirty five hour week brought in. The politics involved can be summed up in the assertion that

The arguments in the People’s Budget did not offer a coherent analysis of the Australian economy’s problems or practical solutions. The approach lagged behind events. By the mid-1970s all but the blindest observers of the world’s economy accepted that the old Keynesian verities were about as useful as a professional economist at a lathe. The publication presented "alternative" policies as a way to restore capitalism’s health. Nevertheless the People’s Budget was an attempt to present a real critique of Fraser’s cuts, more hardhitting than that of the weak-kneed Labor opposition. The promise it held out for restoring the Australian economy within the framework of capitalism was to be a hall-mark of subsequent alternative economic proposals.

In 1977 the AMWU office produced Australia Uprooted, a very professional. mass distribution pamphlet Although the arguments were crude, it offered a much more comprehensive analysis of Australian capitalism than the People’s Budget. The problem with the Australian economy, it argued, was the influence of the multinational corporations whose unregulated activities were also responsible for the international crisis of capitalism. Fraser’s program was to restore profits at the expense of wages and public spending. He wanted to turn Australia into a quarry, allowing the multinationals to destroy Australian manufacturing industry. All of Use things had to be fought. The AMWU officials put forward a series of proposals for a "People’s Economic Prograrn" to the ACTU and ALP conferences of 1977, noting that

To achieve full employment, environmental protection .aM balanced economic development, corporations should be nationalised so that the Parliament could again effectively determine economic policy. "Democratic principles in work relations" should be. introduced into the public sector. Interest rates, foreign investment and credit should be more tightly controlled; the taxation system should. be made more progressive and government should provide assistance to small and medium business. Industry should be restructured under government direction, by means such as the use of public funds to update equipment, planned tariffs and quotas. Australia Uprooted also affirmed that the People’s Economic Program .needs to be developed in conjunction with the struggles and involvement of the people which will inevitably arise from the impact of the policies of the Fraser Government!’

The ALP did not adopt the People’s Economic Program, or the left nationalist proposals that succeeded it. But the idea continued to have influence. Moreover its main protagonists saw the Program, Australia Uprooted and its successors as part of a specific socialist strategy. A prominent advocate of this view was Laurie Carmichael, in 1977 National President of the CPA and Assistant National Secretary of the AMWU. He endorsed the economic analysis in Australia Uprooted, and argued that its economic proposals were part of a transition to socialism. This transitional strategy involved raising demands around which a mass movement could develop.¹⁰

Later versions of the alternative economic strategy filled in the details and added subtlety, but Australia Uprooted presented all the essentials: nationalisations, collaboration with some sections of business, conspiracy theory, nationalism (in the form of calls for government intervention to restructure and save Australia’s manufacturing industry) and verbal endorsement of the class struggle. It represented a retreat from the Australian Left Review position in 1975 that socialist involvement in trying to solve capitalism’s crisis was futile. But at least some commitment to supporting workers in fighting to defend jobs, wages and conditions remained.

The views expressed in Australia Uprooted grew out of the position of a section of the trade union bureaucracy. The more radical union officials were, and still are, an important part of the Australian left. Ultimately they and other officials owe their positions to capitalism, a system where wage labour is a commodity. Unions are organisations whose main function is wholesaling that commodity, negotiating its price and conditions of sale.

They are necessary for the defence and improvement of wages and conditions, but they are more suited to struggle within the system than against it. Union officials are, primarily, managers. Their jobs usually provide them with better pay and working conditions than those of the rank and file. To keep control over their organisations and to hold onto their jobs they have to maintain their credibility in they eyes of the members who elect them. If they are to operate successfully they also have to show the employers they negotiate with every day that they are in charge, that they can enforce agreements by holding down rank and file dissent So outbreaks of independent rank and file action can be as much of a threat to union officials as ernployers’ attacks are. Rank and file action jeopardises their status as the workers’ recognised bargaining agents - it makes them redundant.¹¹

Of course there are differences between left and right-wing union officials. The left is sometimes more prepared to support industrial campaigns. In their balancing act between bosses and workers, the left officials may lean more towards their rank and file than to the employers. Nevertheless, all officials, because of the nature of their jobs, perform this balancing act. And all have a vested interest in the continuation of trade union organisation as constituted under capitalism.

Australia Uprooted and the alternative economic strategies of the late 1970s and early 1980s represented a particular stage in the balancing act of left union officials and their political supporters. Nationalism, common to the mainstream left’s economic thought before and since, expressed their practical acceptance of capitalism. Verbal endorsement of the class struggle reflected a recognition that, despite the decline in militancy after 1975, Australian workers were stilt capable of taking concerted industrial action, independently of the officials if necessary.

After the publication Of Australia Uprooted, a variety of discussions and publications developed the idea of alternative economic strategies. The Sydney TransNational Co-operative organised a series of workshops on labour and the economy in May 1978. Papers from Ted Wheelwright and academic, Tom Uren MHR and five union officials offered support for the contentions in Australia Uprooted. Ted Wiltshire of the AMWU advocated a "total package which includes a commitment to Australia having a viable manufacturing industry". Components of the package would be increased public ownership, controls on private finance, restructuring of manufacturing industry through government intervention (mergers, consortiums and public ownership), shorter working hours and trade union rights to information and to intervene in companies.¹² Another federal research officer, Roger Jowett of the ARU provided an inspirational conclusion to the collection of papers. On the job struggles by workers, he argued, had to he an important part of a Labor strategy which challenged the major economic powers: Japan, the USA and the EEC. But Jowett questioned the ability of wages struggles to "mobilise, unite and educate workers": after all, wages had not even been mentioned at the last ACTU Congress. Instead workers had to take the offensive with their own plans and to engage in the "progressive conquest of power"¹³, meaning involvement in making capitalism operate as efficiently as possible.

Australia Ripped Off, produced in late 1978 as sequel to Australia Uprooted, offered a convincing analysis of the nature of income and wealth distribution in Australia, including a brief exposition of the labour theory of value.¹⁴ It pointed out that the distribution of income between wages and profits depended on the level of struggle. Yet the explanation of economic crisis was essentially the conspiracy theory of Australia Uprooted. "The rules of this economic game are set by the largest corporations and the few thousand Australians who control them." The decisions and plans of multinationals and the Fraser Government were responsible for the problems faced by Australian workers.¹⁵ The pamphlet made a rousing call for democratic socialism and, with its more extensive references to the need for on the job action was probably a step to the left compared to Australia Uprooted. Yet the guts of the strategy proposed was a summary of the policies at the end of Australia Uprooted, beefed up with exhortations to action, including organisation on the job over technology, redundancies and shorter hours. In conclusion workers were urged to attend conferences, demos and Miles over jobs, wages and social services. So, despite some left rhetoric, the action proposals were still directed to supporting parliamentary governments - a point subtly made throughout the pamphlet in the form of quotations from Labor politicians, including Bill Hayden.

The absence of higher wages from the pamphlet’s list of demands around which shop floor action should be organised was indicative of an approach which focused on parliamentary and pressure group politics, rather than die power of ordinary workers. Rank and file action on wages might have jeopardised Indexation, which union officials had learned to live with. They were afraid of a serious mobilisation of ordinary unionists, the only alternative to state guaranteed, but often discounted wage adjustments. As the ‘resources. boom’ improved the bargaining power of the unions, the rank and file put pressure on the AMWU leaders for action to improve their living standards. The union officials preferred a decentralised hours campaign, which was not contrary to the Indexation guidelines, to a united assault on hours and wages. Carmichael made clear the role of the hours campaign as a safety valve for Wage Indexation:

The alternative economic strategy, like the leadership of the AMWU represented common ground between the CPA and left wing of the ALP. Members of the ALP left tended be more explicit about the political mechanics of an alternative economic strategy, placing greater weight on the role of a left Labor government than CPA members. ALP academic Bob Connell offered his own version of an alternative strategy in 1978. He argued that "Only a move towards a socialist objective offers a real chance of solving the current crisis of capitalist society’.¹⁷ The economics of that move boiled down to public ownership of profit making companies, "to give real leverage on the problems of underinvestment and unemployment". He assumed that state ownership could somehow overcome the problems of capitalism. In Connell’s vision the capitalist state itself, with the ALP in office and under the pressure of a mass movement, was to be the instrument of the transition to socialism.

Winton Higgins, who had earlier been a member of the left tendency of the CPA, expressed a preference for the "The Left Social Democratic Challenge" and Eurocommunism over revolutionary politics. He espoused the view that Sweden was achieving socialism thanks to the power of its central trade union federation. and provided left nationalists and these sceptical of the Labor Party’s left wing credentials with a concrete model for their strategy - a syndicalist reformism which admitted a role for struggle, or at least trade union influence, as a balance to the ALP.¹⁸

Other academics took up aspects of the alternative economic strategy. Andrew Theophanous MHR, a former political science lecturer expressed the agreement of sections of the Victorian Socialist Left with this approach.¹⁹ In a double issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy devoted to alternative economic strategies Frank Stilwell, Andrew Hopkins and Richard Curtain argued for mass mobilisations as a key element in a socialist campaign centred on a Labor government Unlike other left nationalists Stilwell conceded that only under socialism would economic crises be eliminated. In common with many others, he drew on Stuart Holland’s concept of a "revolutionary reforrn".²⁰ In practice this was a defence of parliamentarist and was counterposed to views that saw capitalist state power as a fundamental obstacle tosocilaism. Hopkins and Curtain called for labour movement participation in the restructuring of industry, to ensure it took place in the working class’s interests. To counter the suggestion, that this might incorporate unions in the rationalisation of capitalism they claimed that since arbitration had not brought about such incorporation, their proposals wouldn’t either.²¹ But incorporation is not an onloff switch, it has different degrees. Salutary lessons in the reality of union incorporation can be learnt by attending a few strike meetings where, typically, officials argue that a campaign should be called off, in order to go back to the Commission or because of the threat of deregistration. The widespread support among union leaders for the deregistration of the BLF hardly betokens independence from the state. The various tripartite bodies set up under the Accord to facilitate union involvement have certainly raised most union officials’ awareness (i.e. more successfully incorporated them) of the need for orderly industrial relations and responsible economic management to, promote the growth of Australian capitalism

Ted Wheelwright and Greg Crough of the Transnational Corporations Research Project at Sydney University presented the most developed "alternative" analyses of the role of foreign capital in Australia. Crough has worked in deputy ALP leader Bowen’s office and Wheelwright was a member of the Jackson committee of inquiry into Australian manufacturing industry. Their publications and others of the research project brought together a large amount of useful empirical material. But especially in their less academic works this material was embedded in a theory of multinational conspiracy against the Australian nation. Essentially they argued that the Australian state had been captured by the transnational corporations. The domestic bourgeoisie could not protect its own interests against the multinationals, which were set on deindustrialising the country. So the ALP and the unions had to build up local industry and in the process build socialism.²² The ‘resources boom’ of 1979-81 gave the deindustrialisation and multinational conspiracy arguments an, added veneer of credibility. But after 1981 the feverish pace of mining and related developments, in Australian and elsewhere, gave way to a quite predictable decline in world mineral prices as the intemational recession bit. With the virtual cessation of new projects, it became less plausible to argue that Australia would be turned into a quarry overnight.

At its 1979 Congress the CPA essentially adopted the alternative economic strategy, affirming that parliamentary "left governments" would be central to the transition to socialism. The Party regarded wages struggles, as important, but argued they were defensive and workers needed to fight around alternative plans for their industries.²³ As late as 1981 the CPA could still affirm that

But this position was soon to change.

A Real Alternative?

The main characteristics of the alternative strategies were usually an analysis of economic crisis which gave pride of place to multinational conspiracies; an identification of socialist reforms, undertaken by Parliament with econonic recovery and national economic development (equated with the salvation of the manufacturing sector); and an endorsement of mass action as a complement to parliamentarism.

The central problem with alternative economic strategies and "People’s Programs" was expressed by one of their advocates, Bruce Hartnett an ACTU official:

Such an alternative economic program was to be implemented under capitalism and would aim to achieve sustained full employment and rising living standards. Yet the organisation of capitalist production around the imperative to accumulate, replacing living with dead labour, means capitalism is inherently crisis prone. It is workers and not machines who create new wealth. With employers spending more on equipment compared to outlays on wages there will be a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Australia is inextricably involved in the international organisation of production and exchange. Attempts to withdraw from the world economy can only lead to lower living standards. The alternative economic strategies did not come to terms with Australia’s necessary economic. relationships with the rest of the world. They attributed most of Australia’s problems to conspiracies by transnational corporations rather than die reality of international accumulation, production and exchange.

Interventionist and nationalist policies have not eliminated crises even in the most statified of the world’s economies, such as Russia, Cuba or Albania.²⁶ Australian living standards are heavily and, given the small size of the population unavoidably, dependent on international trade. The import of a wide range of commodities, from raw materials and machine tools to much of our clothing. not only sustains local industry but also our personal comfort. Attempts to solve unemployment by eliminating these imports can only result in an inferior quality of life, and would still fail to eliminate the cause of unemployment in the dependence of production on the rate of profit. Additional measures of protection would both raise the cost of protected goods and provoke retaliation against our mainly primary exports, resulting in a further decline in living standards.

Multinationals’ investments have extended the scope of Australian industry and employment in the past. If the country is to survive without infusions of overseas capital while industry and employment are maintained, then the social rate of savings would have to be increased That is, the amount available for workers to consume will have to be cut. This would especially. he the case as capital equipment, produced by protected local industries, would be more expensive than imported capital goods. Any strategy, no matter how much nationalisation it involves, which fails to confront and challenge this reality could not be realistic or credible, let alone achievable,

The alternative economic, strategies not only assumed that greater state intervention could isolate Australia from the problems of the rest of the world but also that substantial sections of the Australian capitalist class had an interest in this solution. Even if compensation for nationalisations were provided "where warranted" it is unlikely that these capitalists (or for that matter the armed forces, judges and senior bureaucrats) would sit by, applauding, and that the multinationals and their home states would continue to trade with Australia. The capitalist class is more coherent than that. The alternative economic strategies basically assumed that state power abided in Parliament.

The strategies played down the importance of wage struggles, giving pride of place to struggles which sought to restructure Australian industry in a "progressive" direction. In other words struggles which helped to realise Australia’s national interest by bolstering the manufacturing sector. Given that the question of state power was unaddressed, i.e. "Which class rules and therefore defines the national interest?", this goal meant trying to help manage Australian capitalism and therefore pursuing the dominant class.

A common element in justifications of the Australian alternative strategies was reference to Stuart Holland’s ideas about "revolutionary reforms".²⁷ Holland had visited Australia in 1977 and argued certain reforms could be stepping stones to socialism. There is, of course, nothing wrong with the struggle for reforms, so long as the emphasis is on the struggle as a means to building working class combativity and confidence. But capitalism has been capable of incorporating a variety of ‘revolutionary reforms, including shorter hours, wage rises, improved health services, pensions etc. Those reforms can become an obstacle if they are valued above the self-activity of the working class. Stilwell’s conception of the arbitration system and the tariff, both momentous reforms in their time (even if they were never in the working class’s interests), becoming "bridgeheads of socialism" fell into exactly this trap.

The most positive element in the alternative economic strategies was their insistence that struggles outside parliament, including industrial action on the shop floor and mobilisations in the streets, were important At least the left still endorsed the progressive nature of class struggle, even, at a pinch, struggles over "economic" issues. But other key features of the strategies worked in the opposite direction. Theories about multinational corporate conspiracies were associated with the idea that there was scope for collaboration with Australian bosses. The nationalist defence of manufacturing industry established a further common interest with sections of the bourgeoisie. The strategies’ reliance on a left parliamentary government, whatever qualifications were made, offered a substitute for working class action. In fact the attractiveness of the strategies in part depended on their characteristics as radical-sounding alternatives, not only to Fraser’s policies but also to a perspective which gave an absolute priority to the class struggle. For union officials the development of the strategy could be a substitute for leading struggles around economic questions. But in the absence of sustained class struggle around economic questions workers were not self-confident enough to fight for more wide-ranging demands embodied in alternative programs, no matter how "open ended". Eventually the contradiction between endorsement of the class struggle and die other components of the alternative economic strategies could not be sustained. The effects of the recession from 1982 and the class interests of the union bureaucratic elements of the left determined the way in which this contradiction was resolved.

Alternative Economic Strategy versus Incomes Policy

Bob Hawke was already prepared to sell the class struggle and wage increases for a mess of tax cuts in 1976. The ACTU Executive repudiated the idea. The strength of the right was greater in the ALP than the unions. But, mirroring initiatives left union officials took in the formulation of policies in the late 1970s, right union officials played a prominent role in changing the policies of the right wing of the ALP. Hawke, with his theories of consensus, was the most prominent of these officials.²⁸ The Economic Platform Committee for the 1979 ALP Conference was dominated by the right and chaired by Hawke. The most prominent politician on it was Ralph Willis, federal shadow minister and an economist. The Committee’s report recommended that a prices and incomes policy should be part of the ALP platform. In presenting the report Willis not only called for "government intervention in the process of prices and incomes formation. . . to control inflation’, but also for die restructuring of industry and expansion of manufacturing exports. A month earlier he had explained to the Labor Economists Conference that

Fraser’s incomes policy was not working. Labor, Willis implied, could win the support of the unions for its prices and incomes policy by promising to .control prices and guarantee real wages. Only with union support could the policy succeed. Moreover, the survival of a Labor government, to implement other policies, was dependent on this success.²⁹ At the 1979 Conference, the right supported the Hawke-Willis proposals. Party leader Bill Hayden, however, vacillated.

The left and especially the union left was vehemently opposed to a prices and incomes policy. After all, they were already having to cope with the problems of such a policy in the form of indexation. The resources boom was beginning and the economic recovery was improving workers’ bargaining power. Left union officials had no need to fall back onto a deal with die Labor Party to secure real wages. They knew that handing over control of wages to a government, no matter how good the deal, meant giving up the tight to fight for reasonable pay increases, the only guarantee wage rises would actually occur.

Hayden recognised that Willis was right: a prices and incomes policy’s success did depend on union support. So he came down in favour of a compromise between the left and right positions which in practice rejected the prices and incomes policy.³⁰ This compromise got the numbers, irritating Hawke, NSW Labour Council supremo John Ducker, Neville Wran and other representatives of the right. The weight of the unions thwarted the first concerted attempt to introduce an Accord.

Despite the defeat of the prices and incomes proposal at the 1979 ALP Conference closer collaboration between the ALP and the ACTU, necessary if such a policy was ever to be successful, had been reestablished during 1979. Before the ALP Conference the Australian Labor Advisory Committee was reorganised. The Committee only met twice during the Whitlam Government, but had played an important role in the implementation of Curtin and Chifley Governments’ incomes policies in the 1940s. No doubt the revival of the committee assisted the gradual rehabilitation of the ALP’s credibility in the labour movement. This process was also assisted by Whitlam’s transition from has-been ALP leader to "elder-statesman" after losing his second election in 1977, the rise of some younger federal parliamentarians, such as Willis and Chris Hurford (another ex-economist, and chartered accountant) and the dimming of memories of the 1975 fiasco (including the 1975 Hayden budget).

During the early 1980s the right continued to campaign for a prices and incomes policy. Chris Hurford advocated "managed change" in economic policy as opposed to approaches based on the "free market" or "resistance to change" (i.e. the left’s proposals). The Parliamentary Labor Party, he said, was working on a package which included close relations with the unions "to achieve a satisfactory prices and incomes policy". An ALP government’s industry policy would include trade union invotvement in decision making, greater state intervention to secure. restructuring and, even. direct public investment in productive activities. Wage restraint, through cooperation with the unions, was not yet the centrepiece of Labor’s economic policy but it was pan of the Parliamentary Party’s policy in 1981.³¹

The likes of Hurford found support from some unexpected quarters. "PostKeynesian" economists Geoff Harcourt and Prue Kerr argued for "a once-and-for-all measure’ of wage restraint to help secure economic stability.³² They saw this restraint as a trade-off for improvements in the social wage, increased government intervention in private investment decisions and more, profitable government enterprises. In this way the problems of inflation and unemployment could be minimised and manufacturing restructured to be more internationally competitive. Harcourt and Kerr shared the left’s concern about multinational corporations but turned the left nationalist preoccupation with the growth of the mining sector on its head: "die inevitability of an expanding mineral sector" could be the basis for restructuring manufacturing around mineral refining. Private capital, they maintained, would be prepared to comply with extra controls which led to a more stable economic environment.

Harcourt and Kerr’s perspective shared certain features with the various alternative economic strategies., enthusiasm for state intervention in the economy and state ownership, concern about multinational corporations and the fate of the manufacturing sector. Unlike the alternative strategies, however, they did not concede any relevance to die class struggle and subordinated everything, to the Well-being of the Australian economy, secured through government policy.

Nixon Apple, currently working in the AMWU research centre, and Michael Wright, like Winton Higgins, drew lessons from Sweden for Australia.³³ They concluded that where in Britain the union movement had responded weakly to incomes policies, in Sweden unions had taken initiatives and been able to ensure such policies were implemented on their own terms. This syndicalist perspective on incomes policy was certainly more attractive to union officials than that of the right of the labour movement, which gave more emphasis to the role of government. Arguments like those of Wright and Apple or Harcourt and Kerr probably helped to reduce the suspicion with which the left regardQd talk of incomes policies. Yet the period 1979 to 1981 was one of the destruction of one incomes policy (Wage Indexation) through industrial struggle, rather than its replacement by another.

Jan Marsh, an ACTU Advocate, lamented the declining viability of Indexation because its practice did not live up to its acceptable theory.³⁴ Centralised wage-fixing which avoided the need for struggle was fine. The problem was that Indexation had cut real wages, without significantly reducing inflation and unemployment. The economic recovery stimulated by the resources boom improved working class self-confidence and resulted in an escalation of industrial activity. Federal public service clerks engaged in their first sustained campaigns of industrial action., struggles for shorter working hours spread; and eventually campaigns over wages by Telecom technicians, transport workers and storemen led the Arbitration Commission to abandon Indexation as unworkable, at the end of July 1981. The ACTU called for wage equity and a recovery of the real wages lost since 1975.³⁵ A series of unions won substantial wage increases.

Many union officials were scared by the demise of Indexation. Real wages may have been cut under Indexation, but at least the system had guaranteed regular increases in money wages, without the need to go out consistently mobilising the rank and file in struggle. Such mobilisations can have undesirable consequences for the officials. In the course of industrial disputes it becomes easier for rank and file unionists to take the initiative, through mass meetings and on the picket line. Even if only temporarily, the experience of their, collective strength can lead union members to wrest control of events from the hands of employers and union officials where it normally rests. Such a shift in control is less likely, if not impossible, when the Commission is the scene of "struggle!’ and professional advocates are the main protagonists.

AMWU officials found a way around this problem. The 1981 Metal Trades Agreement was a collective bargain between the metal unions and employers, soon endorsed by the Arbitration Commission. It provided for a 38 hour week throughout the industry, an immediate $20 wage rise and another of $14 in six months. In return the unions agreed to make no further claims for twelve months. In other words the officials undertook to prevent workers from entering disputes, even when they were confident of winning. So the mechanism of stronger groups of workers providing a fighting lead and inspiration for weaker ones could not come into play. Here was an incomes policy which looked. a little like the "Swedish model". The Arbitration Commission defended its authority in wage determination by endorsing the Agreement.

The Accord

The second half of 1982 saw the Australian economy start to slide into recession. The prospects for securing the kind of advances made during the resources boom declined. This shattered union faith in a recovery "just around the corner".³⁶ With a decline in their bargaining power, unions, including those on the left, warmed to a deal with the ALP which would exchange industrial peace for the maintenance of real wages and the election of a Labor government. The political expressions of the union left, the CPA and ALP left, fell into line.

A new receptiveness to a prices and incomes policy or social contract was especially evident amongst metal industry unions, hard hit by the recession and, after the experience of indexation, without the strong shop floor organisation necessary to put up an effective fight. As a CPA publication A Strategy for the 1980s in the Metal Industry pointed out the Metal Workers’ union "shop floor organisation has not expanded during the decade... there are few if any effective self-acting shop committees".³⁷ The pamphlet presented a standard left nationalist account of the condition of the Australian economy. It concluded with many of the proposals of the alternative economic strategies of the preceding years, alternative corporate plans and state intervention in. manufacturing industry, though the demand for nationalisations had gone. Moreover a new demand was added, the call for the metal unions to

In early 1982 an article by Bill Mountford in Australian Left Review repudiated left opposition to an incomes policy, arguing that a prices and incomes agreement with an ALP government could be "a viable interventionist alternative" which defended living standards even if it restrained some sections of the workforce",³⁸ i.e. the pacesetters. He also advocated a restructuring of industry along lines favoured more by the right wing of the ALP than the left, specifically calling for an increased specialisation of Australian industry, more research and development and reduced protection. Tripartite bodies should be involved in implementing both these income and industry policies. The nationalisations, large scale state interventions and emphasis on struggle of the alternative economic strategies were gone. Mountford’s rhetoric included support for a working class mobilisation to back up a social contract. But the whole point of such a contract was the avoidance of struggle and reliance instead on the good offices of the state to guarantee real incomes. If working class mobilisation was both necessary and possible in any case, why bother with the social contract. All that remained of an alternative economic strategy in Mountford’s proposals was a commitment to the prosperity the Australian economy and faith in a (now not so left) Labor government.

The CPA’s Congress in June 1982 took a dim view of workers fighting to maintain and improve their incomes:

Reflecting the interests of union officials, trying to divert attention from their inability to lead wages struggles in the declining economy, the CPA emphasised mobilisations around industry policy and the social wage rather than the paid wage. Such interventions would aim to secure government policies that encouraged the expansion of industry and full. employment. Nationalisations were not mentioned, however, and, unlike Mountford, the Party as whole was still committed to the "maintenance of a diverse industrial capacity". Union initiatives in the formulation of the ALP’s incomes policy, it was thought, could both counter. the right’s efforts to cut wages and lead to socialist challenge to the Australian ruling class. In a flight of enthusiasm for the Metal Trades Agreement the CPA endorsed the principle of trade-offs. It believed industrial relations and perhaps. even economic policy could be left to collective bargains, bypassing the Arbitration Commission. The CPA also condoned trade-offs in an agreement between an ALP government and the unions, to secure union involvement in industry policy in return for concessions on incomes.³⁹

In August 1982 the ALP Conference wrote a prices and incomes policy into its Economic Platform. The policy was to guarantee the maintenance of real wages. It was to be a key element in the next ALP government’s approach to industry restructuring, which was to be determined through tripartite consultations.⁴⁰ The ALP and ACTU announced they were working on an agreement on incomes, policy.

A draft of the Accord had been produced by the Australian Labour Advisory Committee in June 1982. It did not include the discussion of industry policy that found its way into the final document. The Accord of February 1983 specified the establishment of tripartite industry bodies and emphasised the importance of restructuring industry and the maintenance of manufacturing industry.⁴¹ The left had secured from the Labor right an explicit commitment to industry policies designed to secure the viability of Australian capitalism. The right, in any case agreed with these. Tripartite bodies were an important component of the Accord as they offered an additional material inducement for union officials’ support. It should be emphasised that the Accord undoubtedly had a powerful attraction for workers unable to defend their wages and conditions during the recession. It seemed to offer a magical solution to their problems: in return for industrial peace, the government would guarantee their wages. The durability of the Accord was achieved through efforts to sustain the illusion that wages were maintained (the Medicare fiddle, the deal on superannuation); the insistent message that any small sacrifices which may have been necessary were in the national interest; promises of wage rises in the future; and the tenacious support of the bulk of die labour bureaucracy.

The left’s endorsement of the Accord was consummated when leading lefts in the Parliamentary ALP agreed that Hayden should be dropped as leader. His replacement by Hawke was a rightward move. But Hawke as the architect of the Accord had developed an image to match and was the man to implement the policy.

The End of the Alternative Economic Strategy

The alternative strategies had been presented as "open-ended", in practice this meant they were subject to rightward revision, to accomodate the left’s abandonment of their most positive feature - a willingness to support, at least verbally, workers defending their wages and conditions. With the Accord all that remained of the nationalist left’s principles, embodied in the alternative economic strategies, was their reliance on the state and their nationalism. Increased state ownership, as a short-term demand, had dropped by the wayside. Although the Accord had committed the government to "a diversified manufacturing sector",⁴² the Hawke Government’s policies reflected more orthodox economic thought, that Australia needed more specialised, competitive manufacturing industries. This approach had something to offer Australian capitalism: a degree of rationalisation so that local industry could compete more effectively with overseas competitors. The left partly accepted the (capitalist economic) wisdom of this approach, adapting its hostility to the multinationals to a modified purpose,⁴³ contrasting the Labor Government’s policies to the evil intentions of foreign corporations. With the onset of the next economic downturn in 1986, the nationalist left returned to its strident advocacy of economic isolation, state intervention and import controls as means to overcome the recession. At the same time the ALP right, recognising that the recession could not be avoided started to consider these policies as possible short term responses to a balance of payments crisis.

Left ALP Parliamentarian Arthur Gietzelt offered the Accord as opening the possibilities of a "statist" road to socialism.⁴⁴ Other apologists for the Accord have used the rhetoric of socialism too.⁴⁵ But the key element in any serious socialist commitment - support for workers in struggle today - was absent. Socialism and the struggle for it have been put off into the indefinite future. One left nationalist, for example, has argued that "external forces ... will move the Australian economic and social system towards socialism.⁴⁶ The only section of the labour movement to reap real benefits from this hiatus in the class struggle has beent he labour bureaucracy. For many union officials and some academics nationalism pays better than class struggle. When it came to making a choice between the two, their decision was hardly surprising. Thanks to their sinecures on tripartite bodies, union bureaucrats have gained status, travel and perks. Union officials filled 62 consultative positions associated with the Department of Industry Technology and Commerce and connected with the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations in 1985.⁴⁷ Some other officials and adherents of the left have made careers as public servants, selling government policy to the unions.⁴⁸

There have been criticisms of the Accord from left nationalists. These have not generally focused on particularly leftist issues. but rather a commitment to greater protectionism and state intervention than the Hawke Government has pursued. Such an approach could unite union officials, ranging from the "left" to John MacBean the right-wing Secretary of the NSW Labor Council, in urging Government support for the old BHP management against Robert Holmes A Court’s takeover bid in March 1986.⁴⁹ George Campbell, Assistant National Secretary of the AMWU and Convenor of the Broad Left Conference made clear the nature of the left nationalist ‘critique’ of the Accord at the Conference:

This view was also expressed in more detail in Andrew Theophanous MP’s Paper, "The Reindustrialisation of Australia" prepared for the Federal ALP Caucus. It presented a strategy for the revitalisation of Australian capitalism through a greater reliance on state intervention in the form of quota protection, bilateral trade arrangements, industry agreements and government equity in enterprises.⁵¹ No nationalisations were called for. Ignoring the dependence of workers’ living standards on Australia’s integration with the world economy, the left nationalist approach to economic policy still clung to a utopian faith in the potential of the local mark" unrealistic assessments of the potential of trade relations with "progressive" countries and fetishised the power of the state to cure problems inherent in capitalism.

As the Australian economy again slipped into recession during the second half of 1986, some left nationalist leaders started to justify not only lower wages and subsidies to manufacturing employers but also the destruction of working conditions. Peko Wallsend’s attacks on "work practices" at its Robe River iron ore operations in Western Australia drew much condemnation for jeopardising the Accord. But there was less opposition to its complaints against conditions workers had won in the past or were using to make life at work more bearable - the real meaning of "work practices". The Hawke Government called for the revision of work practices, drew up guidelines for employerlunion "consultations" over them and gave an example by attacking the conditions of its own employees. John Halfpenny of the AMWU endorsed the call for more rational work practices in his bid for an ALP seat in the Senate. He said

Halfpenny no doubt agreed with Winton Higgins’s conclusion that "the government steel plan is a spectacular success".⁵³ The plan involved a dramatic restructuring including of work practices. BHP’s profitability rose dramatically as a result - shame about the thousands of workers who lost their jobs and were out of work for years. Given the new recession on top of the relative stagnation since the mid 1970s, the Promise of being retrained and relocated for a new job, after your old one is abolished to make way for bigger profits, was hardly enticing. No wonder even the Financial Review noticed that

Opposition to cuts in health, education and welfare expenditure were now the only "left" policies to survive the left nationalists’ support of the. Accord.

The industry policies of left nationalists are now laying the groundwork for exactly the conditions the Liberals and employers want In his reply to the 1986 Budget Liberal leader John Howard stated a goal that many union officials on the left and right are actively, working towards - the identification of the - interests of employers and workers.

Far from strengthening the influence of workers over national econonic policy, the Accord, supported by the nationalist left, undermined the, influence of organisation where it is most important, on the shop floor.

The strategies of the Labor right, the Liberals and the "new right" were realistic enough to offer a way forward for one class - the employers. Their proposals. all explicitly presented the bourgeoisie with means of cushioning the effects of the economic downturn at the expense of workers. They differed in the extent to which they sought the co-operation of union officials in doing this.

In practical terms the left nationalist approach, as advocated by Theophanous, Halfpenny or in the new journal Mainstream Unionist (published by the Metal Workers for the obviously non-mainstrearn left nationalist unions) offered Australian bosses as little as.. it, did Ausiralfaii workers. But as an ideology whose main audience is `In. the labour movement, it serves employers by helping to disorientate workers.

Over the next couple of years disillusionment with the Accord and the Hawke Government will probably grow. Out of this process the left will be reconstituted as a force more independent of the Labor right and more significant than it has been since 1982. Some of the mainstream old left, less compromised than many by the Accord and the Hawke Government, or having revised their positions early enough, will argue for a return to the principles that inspired the alternative economic strategies. for the soft and ultimately disastrous option of opposing foreign economic influences and reforming Australian capitalism gradually and prosperously into socialism. They will have a ready-made base in sections of the labour bureaucracy. But if the fate of the left during the early 1980s is not to be repeated, then such an orientation must be rejected in favour of the principle that the class struggle is the key to socialist politics.

Notes

1. See T. O’Lincoln Into the Mainstream the Decline of Australian Communism Stained Wattle Press, Sydney 1985 pp. 139-146 and A. Kahn "The Fraser Years" International Socialist 11 1981.

2. L. Ross, O’Lincoln and G. Willett Labor’s Accord: Why It’s a Fraud Socialist Action, Melbourne March 1986.

3. "Viewpoint" Australian Left Review July 1975 p. 4. Also see Communist Party of Australia "1974 Congress" in Documents of the Seventies p. 45:

4. See "1974 Congrss" op. cit. p. 56 and O’Lincoln op. cit. p. 148.

5. Australian Labor Party Platform, Constitution and Rules Canberra 1977 p. 13.

6. For the survival of revolutionary perspectives in Intervention into the late 1970s, see especially A. Game and R. Pringle’s "Reply to Carmichael" Intervention 10/11 August 1978 pp. 107-12, a critique from a Leninist perspective of Carmichael’s Intervention interview discussed below, and T. O’Shaughnessy "Some Recent Conflicts in the Ruling Class"s Intervention 10/11 August 1978 pp. 40-58, who pointed out that Fraser was "not presiding over the wholesale dismantling of manufacturing." For the final death-throes of Intervention see J. Alien and P. Patton (eds) Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx Intervention Publications, Sydney 1983.

7. See, for example, T. O’S."Economic Notes" Australian Left Review 53 1976 pp. 26-31, on the relationship between "economic" and "political" class struggle.

8. Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union (Victorian State Council) The People’s Budget Melbourne, July 1976, Part 2 (no pagination).

9. Amalgamated Metal Workers’ and Shipwrights’ Union Australia Uprooted Sydney 1977 pp. 18.

10. For Carmichael’s views see "Multinationals and the Crisis" Australian Left Review 48 September 1975 pp. 11-6, "A People’s Programmed",an interview with him in Intervention 9 October 1977 pp. 42-53 and L. Carmichael "A Transitional Programme to Socialism" in G. Crough, E. Wheelwright and E. Wiltshire (eds) Australia and World Capitalism Penguin Ringwood l980. The CPA’s November 1977 A New Course for Australia took a similar line to that of the Metal Workers’ union.

11. For a more detailed account of the nature of the union bureaucracy see T. Cliff and D. Gluckstein Marxism and Trade Union Struggle: The General Strike of 1926 Bookmarks, London 1986.

12. E. Wiltshire "The Australian Manufacturing Industry’ in TNC Reportback No. 3: Labour and the Economy TransNational Co-operative, Sydney 1978 (unpaginated).

13. R. Jowett "Labour and the Economy -Towards a Counter Strategy’ in TNC ibid.

14. Amalgamated Metal Workers’ and Shipwrights’ Union Australia Ripped Off Sydney 1978 pp. 11, 20.

15. ibid. pp. 46.

16. L. Carmichael "The Campaign for a Shorter Working Week" Australian Left Review 73 March 1980 p. 16.

17. R. Connell Socialism and Labor Labor Praxis,Publications Sydney 1978 p. l.

18. W. Higgins "The Left Social Democratic Challenge" Intervention 10/11 August 1978 pp. 87-96, "Working Class Mobilization and Socialism in Sweden" Intervention 13 October 1979 pp. 5-18.

19. A. Theophanous Australian Democracy in Crisis Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1980, especially pp. 380-382.

26. F. Stilwell "Towards an Alternative Economic Strategy" Journal of Australian Political Economy 12/13 June 1982 pp. 40-59.

21. A.Hopkins and R. Curtain "The L~ Movement and the Protection versus Restructuring Debate: A Proposal" Journal of Australian Political Economy I2J13 June 1982 pp.74-92.

22. Their most sustained popular argument is in G. Crough and E. Wheelwright Australia: A Client State Penguin Ringwood 1982. Also see G. Crough ‘Transnational Corporations and Australian Manufacturing’ in Australian Left Review 75 September 1975 pp. 6-13. Bob Catley and Bruce, McFarlane’s Australian Capitalism in Boom and Depression Alternative Publishing Co-operative, Sydney 1981 purveyed the deindustrialisation argument In contrast to their earlier approach in From Tweedledum to Tweedledee, a critique of the Whitlam Government they now regarded Australia as an essentially underdeveloped country. They thought the achievement of "a new national consensus and sense of strategic and egalitarian purpose" was important for the left.

23. Communist Party of Australia Towards Socialism in Australia: Program of the Communist Party of Australia Sydney 1979 pp. 46, 49.

24 Comunist Party of Australia The Workers; Movement Sydney 1981 p. 15. For some other statements of the CPA position see "Comment: Resources Boom" Australian Left Review 76, June 1981 pp. 2-5.

25. B. Hartnett "Towards a Counter-Strategy for Labour" in Crough et al. op. cit. p. 252.

26. For an account of cyclical crises in the "Communist Bloc see C. Harman Class Struggles in Eastern Europe Pluto, London 1983 pp. 288-305.

27. E.g. in Carmichael "A People’s Program" op. cit. cit., Stilwell "Towards an Alternative Economic Strategy, op. cit. Hopkins and Curtain "The Labour Movement and the Protection versus Restructuring Debate" op. cit., Connell Labor and Socialism op. cit.

28. R. L Hawke The Resolution of Conflict Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney l979.

29. R. Willis The Coming Wage/Price Trade-Off Labor Forum 1 (4) June 1979 pp. 1-6.

30. L Oakes Labor’s 1979 Conference, Adelaide Objective Publications, Canberra 1979 pp. 16-22. F. Gruen, a conservative Labor economist. thought Willis’s proposals impracticable in 1980, partly because he took Willis’s rhetoric about income redistribution too seriously, partly because, he implies, unions would not, be satatisfied with more employment as a as a quid pro quo for wage restraint, "Economic Policy: Problems in the Eighties" in J. North and P. Weller Labor Directions for the Eighties Ian Novak, Sydney 1980 p. 230.

31. C. Hurford "Structural Change: The Options for the Labor Movement" in G. Evans, J. Reeves and J. Malbon Labor Essays 1981 Drummond, Melbourne 1981 pp. 138-139.

32. G. Harcourt and P. Kerr "The Mixed Economy" in North and Weller op. cit. pp. 184-195.

33. M. Wright and N. Apple "Incomes Policy and Industrial Relations: Britain, Sweden and Australia" Journal of Industrial Relations December 1980 pp. 451-475.

34. J. Marsh "Wage Indexation: AN ACTU Perspective" in Evans et al. 1981 op. cit. ppo. 88-89, 103-105.

35. M. Wright "Wage Policy and Wage Determination in 1981" Journal of Industrial Relations March 1982 p. 75.

36. J. Hearn "Back to Basics. Australian Unionism, 1982" Journal of lndustrial Relations March 1983 p. 92.

37. Communist Party of Australia A Strategy for the 1980s in the Metal Industry Sydney 1982.

38 B. Mountford "A Wages and Incomes Policy" Australian Left Review March 1982 pp. 34-8. Mountford’s call for a more specialized manufacturing industry was in advance of both CPA and official ALP policy.

39. Communist Party of Australia Documents of the 27th Congress Sydney June 1982 pp. 14-15.

40. Australian Labor Party Platform, Constitution and Rules Canberra 1982 pp39, 117.

41. Statement of Accord by the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Council of Trade Unions Regarding Economic Policy in Advisory Committee on Prices and Incomes Third Report Department of Employment and Industrial Relations AGPS Canberra 1984 p. 135.

42. ibid. p. 132.

43. See National Metal Trades Union Campaign Committee Australia on the Brink March 1985. This publication was a direct descendent of Australia Uprooted, but the transformation in the politics of the "left" Metal Workers; union leaders had gone so far that a joint ppulbication on economic policy was now possible with all the metal trades unions, including the right wing Federated Ironworkers Association.

44. A. Giezelt "Paths to a socialist Australia" Labor Forum 4 (4) December 1982.

45. See particularly Communist Party of Australia Australian Socialism: A Proposal for Renewal and Socialist Perspective on Issues for the ‘80s resolutions of the CPA 28th National Congress 1985.

46. "Interview: Lindsay Tanner" Labor Forum 8 (1) March 1986 p. 31. Tanner is a member of the Victorian Socialist Left and President of the Victorian ALP’s Economic Policy Committee and a member of its Administrative Committee.

47. See the 1985 Annual Reports of these Departments.

48. See Australian Financial Review 31February/85 pp. l, 4 for Ted Wiltshire’s role in educating union officials on the costs of industrial unrest to Australia’s export performance.

49. See Tribune 12March/86 p. 5 for a detailed and favourable report of MacBean’s position.

50. G. Campbell notes distributed at the Accord Panel of the Broad Left Conference, Sydney 29March/86 p. 2.

51. A Theophanous "The Reindustrialisation of Australia: Some Suggestions for Government Policy" March 1986.

52. Age 26/8/86.

53. W. Higgins on "sunrise or Sunset: the inviting Future of Australia’s Manufacturing Industry" Background Briefing (ABC Program) 24/8/86 Transcript, Parliamentary Library Canberra p.18.

54. Australian Financial Review 10/9/86.

55. J. Howard "Reply to the Budget" House of Representatives Canberra 21/8/86, office of the Leader of the Opposition p. 6.