Mua Election Campaign

The MUA is dove-tailing its shipping and environment campaign

in with the upcoming federal election.

Polling in key marginal seats has shown that environment is going

to be one of the key issues swinging voters. And with the recent

success of the Slick/surfing events in Queensland and WA (see

p28) shipping campaign co-ordinator Sean Chaffer has asked branches

to sponsor local events, involve local surfing and sporting identities,

get together with Greenpeace and local community groups as well

as stage re-enactments of the oily surfer protest.

This is to highlight the failure of the Howard Government to protect

our coastline from rustbuckets, by deregulating the domestic shipping

industry via backdoor use of single voyage permits.

It is also to ensure a Beazley Government keeps its promise to

protect Australian shipping and our coast. The campaign will include

lobbying for adoption of the Morris Report recommendations.

Next stop Wollongong, September 29 where Jennie George is standing

for Parliament.

Meanwhile the Government has also been winding back many of its

failed initiatives and unpopular policies, at the same time shamelessly

buying key votes back from disaffected groups like pensioners

and small business.

And the PM has announced that his party will make industrial relations

(read union bashing) a centrepiece of his reelection strategy.

This is despite a recent NSW Labour Council survey showing that

most Australians would prefer to be a member of a union if they

could.

At his Press Club address on August 1 Howard said Australians

would be offered a clear choice between the two fundamentally

different philosophies. Claiming his party championed the virtues

of self reliance and independence, the PM accused the Labor Party

of being behest to the union movement.

"A major political battle ground of coming months will be industrial

relations," he said. "Our differences are profound. A Beazley

Labor government will hand back control of industrial relations

to the organised trade union movement,"

"Do the million or more Australian small businesses really want

a federal Labor government added to five state Labor governments

with all the massive increase in trade union power and union interference

in their businesses ...?" he asked.

And what of the new Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott?

In a report published in the Melbourne Age on July 26 ("Why workers

are saying no to unions: who wants to be organised in the way

dogs herd sheep") the minister has rote learned and regurgitated

the old lines used by his predecessor in the prelude to the mass

sackings of Patrick members: "It seems the use of industrial muscle

to defend workers earning up to $100,000 a year for a 27 hour

week..." Abbott whined. "Yeh, bullshit to you too Abbott!" said Paddy Crumlin.