Australian Ministers Visit Highlights Importance of Good Faith

New Zealand's moves towards legislation that promotes good faith bargaining is a model for others to follow, according to Rob Hulls, Minister of Industrial Relations for the Australian state of Victoria.Meeting with union leaders in Wellington today, Hulls described his federal counterpart Tony Abbot, as a 'zealot who belongs in the dinosaur age of Industrial Relations', and said that, like New Zealand's former Employment Contracts Act (ECA), Australia's federal Workplace Relations Act was a 'flawed piece of legislation that needs drastic surgery'.

The effect of the Australian law as it stands was to pit worker against worker, and employer against employee, promoting disputation and conflict. Industrial relations could not function effectively, Hulls said, without two parties who can sit down and negotiate in good faith.

The kinds of changes introduced by New Zealand's Employment Relations Act were seen as crucial to bring about a culture change in workplace relations that involved good faith bargaining as its basis.

New Zealand unionists also spoke about the importance of the move away from the ECA model towards a good faith environment, and emphasised that there was still a long way to go.

Council of Trade Unions President Ross Wilson said that the ECA had been passed in the context of a massive deregulation of the New Zealand economy, as an attempt to eliminate political opposition.

While the ECA had failed absolutely to improve labour market efficiency, growth or productivity in comparison to the Australian economy, it had succeeded to some extent in weakening unions and forcing the collapse of collective bargaining.

The changes in the Employment Relations Act were very modest, and needed to be improved on, but they signalled a gradual change in culture and political atmosphere and a recognition that unions have a legitimate role in democratic government and society.