Upending Australia’s industrial relations system: Workers first!

Here’s my ‘radical’ election policy to save Australian workers from the corrupted industrial relations system.

For quite some decades I’ve been involved in, observed, analysed, written about and commented on Australia’s industrial relations system. With the Federal election on 3rd May 2025 and with Labor, the Coalition, Greens and Teals all supporting the status quo of industrial relations, I’ve decided to issue my own industrial relations ‘election’ policy!

And yes, I’m sure that all aspiring politicians will rush to back my policy. (That’s a joke folks!) But heck why not. Someone’s got to put something different on the election policy table!

My policy is based on some understandings and principles.

• The current industrial relations system is a collusive, anti-competitive set up between select big business, big unions and big government who between them ‘manager’ and ‘manipulate’ the Australian hybrid capitalist/socialist/market economy of Australia. Australian workers are at the bottom of the heap in this set-up. (Yes, I’m a radical!)

• My plan seeks to move the industrial relations system toward an individual worker-focused system.

• By ‘workers’ I mean traditional employees, self-employed people and perhaps, surprisingly, ‘managers.’ After all, managers are (mostly) employees themselves. The task is to enable all workers to have maximum control over their individual work situations, experiences and incomes.

I’ve written this Substack post in two parts.

• First, the plan, setting out the actions required.

• Second, I explain the rationale behind the plan.

If you like my ‘election policy’ why not leave a comment that says ‘Vote 1’

Pus: Ive written extensively on this issue in this section of my Subtack.

Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash

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The Plan

Towards a local workplace relations system that empowers individuals

a) Commonwealth industrial relations laws

1. Repeal the Commonwealth Fair Work Act. This involves abolishing the current Fair Work Commission.

2. Create new Commonwealth industrial relations laws whose application is restricted to big businesses in the private sector.

• Big businesses that want to be part of the Commonwealth system must apply to enter it.

• Employees (including managers) of big businesses that apply must be given a vote to join or not join the Commonwealth system.

• Big businesses must re-apply every five years to remain in the Commonwealth system or be removed by default.

3. Create new Commonwealth industrial relations laws exclusively for government departments. Such laws to align with the Commonwealth government’s employment practices and policies.

b) State industrial relations laws

1. Return industrial relations laws to the states except for Commonwealth departments and large businesses as per (2&3) above.

2. Create industrial relations legislation in each state specifically designed for the small- and medium-sized business sector.

• These must be simplified, clear laws in ordinary person’s language.

• Small business workplace relations authorities be established in each state modelled on existing Small Business Commissioners operating in each state.

• Workplace disputes between business owners/operators and workers be handled through dispute resolution processes modelled on existing Small Business Commissioners’ dispute services operating in each state. Legal representation for either party banned. People must represent themselves, but support person allowed.

3. Create new state workplace relations legislation for state government departments. Such laws to align with each state government’s employment practices and policies.

c) Minimum standards

Each state and the Commonwealth decide the minimum employment standards they wish to apply in their jurisdictional area.

d) The right to be your own boss

1. Both state and Commonwealth laws respect and ensure the right of Australian workers to be their own boss, to be a self-employed independent contractor. This means ensuring that Australia complies with its obligations under the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) decisions on this issue. Specifically, this requires that:

• State and Commonwealth industrial relations laws only apply to employees as defined at common law, subject to rulings of the High Court (e.g., most recently the Personnel Ruling of February 2022.)

• Self-employed, independent contractors are subject to commercial laws and protections (ego, protections under Unfair Contract laws and similar consumer-like laws).

2. State and Commonwealth legislation to include sham contracting laws that prohibit a person who is really an employee being treated as an independent contractor.

e) Competitive Unions

Any group of persons to be entitled to form a workers’ union and represent workers. Current legal and administrative provisions that create barriers to the creation of new unions be removed. Any union can represent workers in any sector/business.

In other words, monopoly unionism—as is currently the case—be abolished and replaced with competitive unionism.

f) Workplace (industrial) relations to be subservient to competition laws

1. Competition laws be changed to ensure that industrial relations activities cannot be used as a tool or pretext to breach competition laws and principles.

That is, the competition regulator be given significantly increased powers to investigate and prosecute situations where unions collude or operate with businesses (large or small) to damage or disadvantage competitors. Stringent penalties should apply to businesses and unions and to individuals who run businesses and unions who engage in anti-competitive activity.

2. A dedicated competition regulator (or division of the competition regulator) be established to focus on the commercial construction sector.

g) Government contracts to ensure competition

1. Local, state and Commonwealth government contracts should be subject to oversight by the competition regulator to ensure that contracts do not enable or facilitate industrial relations practices that result in anti-competitive outcomes.

Government departments that let contracts that result in anti-competitive practices and outcomes should be subject to the same sanctions and level of accountability that apply to the private sector. In this respect, special attention should be given to contracts involving the commercial construction sector.

2. All government contracts should be fully disclosed, published un-redacted on easy-to-access government websites.

h) Superannuation

1. Workers should be given the option to convert employer superannuation contributions into their regular wage.

2. APRA-regulated superannuation funds (Industry, Retail, Corporate and Public Sector funds) should be subject to the same legislative governance standards that apply to listed companies.

More than that, these funds should be subject to transparency and disclosure requirements that exceed those of listed companies—for example, full listing on publicly accessible websites, with all share, property, etc, transactions and holdings available in real time.

3. Abolish industry superannuation funds’ existing legislative structure that permits, enables or creates ownership’ or control by unions and business associations.

4. ‘Trustees’ of APRA-regulated superannuation funds should be elected by the members of the funds rather than being ‘appointed’.

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

The Rationale for the ‘radical’

Send the system local—Return powers to the states

In 2005, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 created a national workplace relations system. This centralising of the system has to be seen as an abject failure.

• The system is legalistic and complex.

• It neuters individual worker power.

• It concentrates power, influence and control in the hands of a union–big business partnership.

And : It is smashing small business. In 2006 small business contributed:

• 40 per cent of GDP with

• 53 per cent of private-sector jobs.

Today (2025) small business contributes:

• 33 per cent of GDP

• 42 per cent of private-sector jobs.

In the words of the Commonwealth Small Business Commissioner “We are sleep walking into a ‘big corporate’ economy.”

It must be recognised that this collapse in Australian small business aligns with the centralisation of the industrial relations system in Canberra. This is just one major negative consequence of the centralised system. To reverse this trend— small business collapse, disempowerment of workers, legal complexity, and the concentration of power and control in the hands of the union–big business partnership—the national system must be broken up.

The plan is to narrow the field of the Commonwealth’s industrial relations laws to include only

• Commonwealth government departments.

• Big businesses that operate nationally and seek a national system.

  And return to the states industrial relations laws covering

• Most businesses.

• State government departments.

The aim is to push the industrial relations laws back down to the local level as much as possible so that local people can decide what’s best for them. It’s a simple fact: The culture, work environment and needs of people in northern Queensland are vastly different to the culture, work environment and needs of people in inner Fitzroy Melbourne.

Let the systems compete for the best outcomes

Unions: It’s obvious that unions are in a membership death spiral. Viable unions are important for workers. The current system delivers monopolies to select unions to represent workers in select sectors. The system blocks unions from competing against each other and blocks new unions from forming. The system must break up the monopolies and allow new unions to emerge and existing unions to compete. This will be good for workers and will make unions better.

Minimum standards: Workers are entitled to have minimum standards. Each state must be free to decide on the minimum standards they want in their state. This will allow each state to decide what minimum standards are best for their culture, work environment and people. To repeat the comparison, the standards needed for northern Queensland are likely to be quite different from those needed for inner Fitzroy in Melbourne.

Recognise the difference between big and small

The current national system is built around the concept that the ‘employer’ is a bureaucracy. This is destructive for small- and medium-sized businesses.

True workplace relations are about interpersonal relations between people. In small- and most medium-sized businesses the people who own and operate the business are ‘on the ground’ working in the business. The working relationship between themselves and the people who work in the business is mostly personal and direct. When people have issues they mostly try to work it out in a personal way. Only very occasionally (and rarely) do they need outside intervention.

In big business and government departments the relationship is between individual workers and a complex bureaucracy with complex, legal rules and processes. The processes and systems might pretend to be ‘human’ but are in fact highly impersonal.

The current national industrial relations system is built around the idea of bureaucracy. It imposes on small- and medium-sized businesses a complicated, legal bureaucracy. This destroys good interpersonal relationships in small- and medium-sized businesses. It’s bad for people.

By returning industrial relations for small- and medium-sized businesses to the states, the centralised bureaucracy is broken as a first step.

The next step is for the states to provide simple systems for small- and medium-sized businesses that are based around interpersonal relations. The aim is to ‘de-legalise’ the system. Fortunately, the states have models that can be expanded—namely, the Small Business Commissioners.

For state and Commonwealth departments, each state and the Commonwealth have specific industrial relations systems that fit the needs of their specific bureaucratic–people relationship needs.

Secure the right of people to be their own boss

People have a right to be self-employed, independent contractors. This is the ultimate path for people having control over their working lives. This right must be respected and secured at both the Commonwealth and state levels.

‘Own boss’ workers have available to them ‘protections’ similar to consumers, such as unfair contract laws and so on. They have access to simplified dispute-resolution procedures through the states’ Small Business Commissioners.

Stop corruption

When industrial relations are used as a tool to give one business an unfair competitive advantage over another business, this harms workers. It harms workers in just the same way as the rorting of competition harms consumers. But more, the rorting of competition laws through the current industrial relations system enables corruption. It’s not just corruption of competition. It ultimately leads to white collar criminal corruption to and mafia and bikie gang-style criminal corruption.

Making all industrial relations laws subservient to competition laws is an important and critical step in the quest to suppress criminal activity.

Critical also to the prevention of corruption is the requirement for government contracts to be totally transparent. The claim of ‘commercial confidentiality’ is an excuse that does not ‘wash’. If a private-sector business wants to undertake a contract with government and make use of, and benefit from, public money, they should only do so if there is total transparency.

There is a simple rule: ‘Where there is secrecy, expect corruption’

Total transparency of government contracts should be of highest priority in the commercial construction sector.

It’s the workers money—superannuation

Superannuation money is workers’ money. Workers should have total control of their money. Workers should be able to decide if they want their (superannuation) paid to them or used as savings.

For young people in particular, the greatest period of expenses in their lives is when they are trying to buy a home, raise a family, caring for loved ones and building their future. No matter a person’s life situation they have a right to their money. To deny young people their money and force the money into ‘savings’ is vile and does young people a massive injustice. They should have the right to decide how they use their money.

The secrecy around the operations of the APRA-regulated superannuation funds should be a huge scandal. But instead, the secrecy is ‘accepted’ as ‘reality’. This should raise major questions about the integrity of the operations of the APRA-regulated funds. Full transparency is required.

The ‘ownership’ and control structure of the Industry Superannuation funds—typically a partnership between unions and big business associations—should not be allowed. This legislated ‘partnership’, combined with the secrecy and non-transparency of the funds’ operations, raises issues of collusive activity directed against the interests of workers.

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Aust Work Issues : Here’s my Substack study/commentary on the ‘revolutionary new labour laws of 2022-2024. Plus the strange happenings with the radical construction union the CFMEU and more.