Conservatives are mad (again) about IR reform. What happened last time?

The demand for legal advice will soar as affected parties figure out how to interpret and work with the numerous legislative amendments likely to be passed before the end of the year. Lawyers will get rich, some unionists and workers stand to gain, but many firms and individuals will be adversely affected by what Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke misleadingly describes as closing loopholes.

So predicts Judith Sloan in a piece in The Australian titled “Get ready for a lawyers’ picnic as IR changes kick in”. This is in response to Labor’s “same job, same pay” reforms, aimed at stopping employers from using subcontracting arrangements to drive down their wages bill.

Sloan is not the only one worried about Labor’s plans. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton told Parliament last November: “The government said it would support workers and that it would work to support all Australians — instead it will sacrifice them at the altar of unionism.”

Opposition employment and workplace relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash fretted on Sky News at the absence of the word “productivity” in the ALP agenda, and executive director of Self Employed Australia Ken Phillips wrote in The Spectator that the changes represented “Albo’s secret plot to destroy the Aussie tradie”. Employer groups have even launched an ad campaign against the proposed changes.

Must be some pretty out-of-the-ordinary proposals from Labor to merit this kind of response, right? Labor’s Fair Work Act has been in place, largely untouched until recently, for well over a decade. Let’s take a look at how News Corp and the Liberals reacted to those changes at the time.

2007: Joe Hockey warns that scrapping the Liberal’s “WorkChoices” industrial relations laws will cause a rise in unemployment.

WorkChoices is dead, and there is an overwhelming mandate for the Labor Party’s policy of tearing up WorkChoices. We will accept that. I think there are a number of people in the Liberal Party that grieve for the fact, [who say] that there will be significant job losses, and I think that they’re right.

2008: Jamie Briggs, then-MP for Mayo, on the ALP’s new fair work bill:

… The economic consequences of these changes will hang around the government’s neck like an electoral albatross. It is a bill written for those who represent only 14% of the Australian workforce. The Labor government is putting the interests of the union movement ahead of working Australians and the Australian economy. This bill will damage job opportunities at the wrong time for our economy

He cites a piece by The Australian’s Paul Kelly — adding bizarrely that Kelly is “hardly known for his conservative leanings”, perhaps mistaking him for the singer-songwriter. Kelly wrote:

A bizarre fate has befallen Australia. At the precise time it faces a global crisis, a business downturn and rising unemployment, the Rudd government is recasting workplace relations to increase trade union powers, inhibit employment and impose new costs on employers.

2012: In 2012 opposition leader Tony Abbott claimed: “We have a significant workplace relations problem developing: there is a flexibility problem, there is a militancy problem, and above all else there is a productivity problem.”

Despite these predictions, the Fair Work Act didn’t destroy anything much (except the right to strike).

During the global financial crisis, Australia did not experience the same rise in unemployment, or decline in economic growth rates, as many other countries in the industrialised world. The Productivity Commission found that, initially, the Fair Work Act had delivered strong labour productivity growth.

By 2017, the Coalition government (and the government’s friends) was arguing onerous penalty rates were stymieing retail and hospitality; the hospitality sector, however, was employing more people than ever. Regardless, penalty rates were cut that year, and it turned out to be a dud — it didn’t create any jobs.

As for the idea that this was legislation written by and for the union movement, it’s worth noting days lost to industrial action in Australia had been trending downward for the previous five years — and 10 years, and beyond. To this day, the conditions that must be met for a union to legally strike are almost as strict as they were under WorkChoices.

So we might want to take this current round of warnings with a grain of salt.