Comment

Unions, b-grade politicians and mole hills

By Richard Denniss
Updated April 24 2018 - 9:20pm, first published January 1 2016 - 4:48pm

It is often said that good policy and good politics reinforce each other but in Australia it is a long time since we have seen either. Take, for example, the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Coalition's war with the union movement. On the one hand conservatives work tirelessly to diminish the significance of the union movement by focusing on the small proportion of the private sector which is unionised. But at the same time they place industrial relations reform and union governance at the heart of their "economic agenda". So are unions a big deal or a small issue? Which is it?

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