Suddenly, Federal politics is no longer about health and education, but communications and industrial relations.
So now is the time for the Democrats to keep the bastards honest. Yes; the poor benighted Democrats who have just three years left to make themselves useful.
Australia is facing a Coalition majority in the Senate in July next year, when the senators elected on Saturday take their place. Worse, the Coalition could be one short of a majority and will have to rely on the Family First senator who could extract all sorts of unmandated concessions as a price of implementing Coalition policy.
We could see the Privatisation of Telstra and Prohibition of Stem Cell Research Act 2005 or the Small Business Can Sack Anyone and Sunday Shop Closure Act 2005 or the Packer and Murdoch Can Own the Lot and Medicare Will Not Fund Abortions Act 2005 and so on.
The Coalition and the Democrats have a comfortable majority in the present Senate with 42 senators. The Democrats’ role in life has been to ensure that governments stick to their mandate and to tone down some of the excesses. It has not been to block mindlessly.
The Coalition has now won three elections with some clear policies. We don’t count the first election it won in 1996 at which it had no policy – just We Hate Paul Keating.
Those policies included the privatisation of Telstra; changes to media-ownership laws; and changes to unfair dismissal laws and industrial relations laws generally. The Government should be allowed to give effect to those policies. With the result last Saturday the only question is not if the changes go through, but when and on what conditions.
It would be better for the Democrats to say to the Government you can have your changes now, with some mellowing provisions, rather than waiting nine months and having the changes go through rubber stamped (if the Coalition wins a majority) or bundled with a whole lot of things that are mandated only by the 2 per cent of the Victorian voters who voted Family First.
The Democrats would be failing in everything they stand for if they sit back over the next nine months and do nothing.
Take the sale of Telstra. The Democrats might be able to negotiate a stronger role for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in the post-privatisation world. They might even be able to achieve a splitting of Telstra’s infrastructure and wholesaling division from its retail division to ensure fairer competition. Given the wavering Nationals, the Coalition might be open to a Democrat deal.
Take unfair dismissal. On one hand, it seems offensive to equality before the law that an employee’s rights are determined not by some universal principles of dismissal but rather the size of the employer they happen to be employed by. On the other hand, small business finds it virtually impossible to defend unfair dismissal cases. Owners of small business cannot give up a day or more to attend a hearing. They usually have no legal expertise so face engaging lawyers. It is cheaper just to pay the claim however unmeritorious. And there is no justice in that.
The Democrats might be able to negotiate a simplified unfair dismissal law that applies across the board.
On industrial relations generally, enterprise bargaining and employment contracts have without doubt made Australia a more prosperous place. But the Senate has held up further reform. Rules that require the Industrial Relations Commission to approve enterprise agreements and ensure that employers are no worse off than the award are too restrictive. If employees in an enterprise (individually or collectively) and employers and happy they should not need union or commission approval.
The minimum conditions are too elaborate. The Democrats could negotiate a good minimum hourly pay indexed to average weekly earnings to prevent exploitation and some good enforcement procedures. Not much more is needed. Flexibility helps employers and employees. More people would be employed, for a start.
On media ownership, the Democrats could negotiate arrangements that increase, rather than reduce, diversity. In the past 30 years, political parties have been so scared of the big media players that every attempt to deal with media ownership has played into their hands.
This Government is early in its electoral cycle and could (for a change) deregulate on principle rather than regulate in a way that lines the pockets of the big players.
The present television rules are a disgrace. The ban on digital multi-channelling is absurd. It is only there to enhance the advertising revenue and reduce the costs of the oligopolists who own the existing channels. Having only three commercial channels makes Australia a laughing stock.
Let’s have some deregulation. And let’s allow foreign ownership. So what if a Korean company owns an Australian newspaper chain. They would still have to employ Australian journalists to make a commercial go of it. But they might bring in better printing technology.
Does it matter if a company has both a newspaper and a television station? It only matters while the law restricts Australia to a meagre three free-to-air commercial television signals. That should be increased to the full extent technology allows.
The Democrats could right now give the Government its mandate to deregulate the media. It can only be an improvement on the present restrictive, undiverse, oligopolies in broadcast and print. In doing so, the Democrats could negotiate better diversity and less power for present owners and perhaps some safeguards for the ABC.
And on the subject of media, the Democrats could negotiate with the Government over its proposed uniform defamation law. Uniformity is a fine ideal, but without Phillip Ruddock’s restrictive requirement that criticism be “reasonable” (i.e. limited) and without his absurd granting of rights to relatives to sue for defamation of the dead.
Arise to the relevancy challenge, Democrats. Or next election don’t even bother with the safety rope when you do the bungee jump.