The first option is to continue relying on Labor to end neoliberalism, a strategy that has seen the union movement decline precipitously. The second option is for the unions to rebuild ground-up industrial power and fight for the change they want to see.

Rebuilding industrial strength will necessitate confronting a hostile Labor government. Employers and the media will also seize on a resurgence of militancy to attack Anthony Albanese’s Australian Labor Party (ALP). Consequently, the unions must choose between defending the ALP’s interests or their members’ interests — they cannot do both.

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Labor abandoned the wide-ranging platform of industrial reform that it took to the 2019 election, including the reintroduction of industry-wide bargaining, demanded by unions. “Business, workers, and unions have to work together,” declared Albanese in September 2019, “each in the recognition that both the ingredients and fruits of success are shared.”

In reality, however, this success has not been shared. Between 2016 and 2021, in real terms, corporate profits increased by a staggering 256 percent while wages grew by only 7.5 percent. Today the share of national income going to business has never been higher. Clearly, the unions must challenge Labor’s industrial peace strategy if they are going to reverse this trend. Despite a few notable exceptions, this is not what the union movement has done.

In fact, the peak union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), supports Labor’s industrial peace strategy. Following Albanese’s lead, in 2019, the ACTU scaled back its calls for overhaul of the industrial relations system. The following year, during the height of the pandemic, the peak body struck a deal with the Business Council of Australia to fast-track union-approved enterprise agreements, even if it meant some workers would be worse off. More recently, ACTU secretary Sally McManus hailed Albanese’s wage commitment as the “key moment” of the election campaign.

In short, the ACTU made its thinking clear: to help Labor get elected, it would support industrial peace. This choice, however, comes at a cost.

https://jacobin.com/2022/08/unions-actu-political-contributions-labor-party-albanese

Prime Minister Antony Albanese has announced a referendum on whether or not an Aboriginal “Voice” to parliament should be written into the constitution. 

The word “referendum” is recorded in English since 1744. It comes from a classical Latin source word behind which is the idea of “refer.” 

So, a “referendum” is a decision being referred by the government back to the people of Australia. 

When our foundational document, the Australian Constitution, was written the intention was that it should be difficult to change our Constitution (otherwise we’d see it being changed, and then changed back again, week after week, or, at least, year after year). 

That’s why our founders decided that politicians should not be allowed to change the Constitution themselves—instead they had to “refer” such a move back to the people. And a change can only be approved, under our Constitution, with a majority of votes in a majority of states. 

That makes doing anything by Constitutional referendum a slow, tortuous, and expensive way of acting. 

Which is why it puzzles me that advocates of the indigenous “Voice” want to do this by referendum. 

I have written (at length) elsewhere about how this could be done (immediately!) by legislation—an act of parliament. We are told the “Voice” will be an advisory body. Well, there are lots of advisory bodies, and all of them have been established by legislation. None of them were written into the Constitution. 

So, the “Voice” doesn’t need to be. Instead of “referring” this back to the population, thus making it a permanent part of our Constitution, why doesn’t the Albanese government just legislate to create the “Voice”? End of problem!