The Lucky Country

by Donald Horne

  Those who argue against development in the North base their case on purely economic calculation. However it seems morally wrong to Australians – when they think about it – that so few people live in the North and that its resources are largely unused. There is anxiety that Australia will not really have staked its claim to the ‘continent’ until it does something about the North; that the neglect of the North causes hostility in Asia. What is needed is a form of development that will add to Australian production, not merely duplicate at great expense what is already being done. Then an enormous amount of planning would be needed to coordinate migration, business plans, rural development and service industries. What Australians will not face is that if the North is to be populated it needs more than new crops to grow, more cattle to breed and more minerals to dig out of the earth. It needs more than the development of primary industry. It demands big new towns and cities. That is the only way to ensure a massive increase in population. ‘The development of the North’ really amounts to creating the second half of the nation.

  The unions

  If the ambitions of an ordinary Australian union member begin to prickle what can he do? (Assume that he’s not an ‘extremist’ or even particularly able: just an ordinary ‘moderate’ who would like to be a union official.) He must first learn how to talk about union business at union meetings and the more low-level and matey he can get, the better he may be trusted. He can talk about dirty lavatories, dismal lunch rooms, hot water that runs cold. He should keep a look-out for members of other unions trying to do jobs men in his union consider their right. He might pick up a working knowledge of the political slogans that are the fashion in his union, not too far ahead, not too far behind, not too ‘right’, not too ‘left’. He will have joined his local Labor Party branch.

  To become an organizer he now has to get the votes. If he can gain the favour of the men who run his union they may do this for him. If he is a ‘rebel’ he may allow himself to be talked over. If he can get any support on the side from the Communists he might use it. Once he is an organizer he has to learn how to talk to managements – without much knowledge of industrial law or the conditions of the industry, or indeed of anything. If he is any good, he will learn, but it might be hard going because there’s nobody to teach him. He may rely on Government inspectors and the Industrial Commissions to prop him up and do much of his work; and on intrigue to keep his position. He becomes a kind of policeman, ensuring that shops keep to awards: if he makes enough threats the employer will give in, or the matter will go to one of the Commissions. All his life he will have to keep his sails trimmed to the wind, as he follows the politics of his union. If he becomes Secretary he might gradually lose interest in union affairs, perhaps drink too much beer, and emphasize his reforming mission by dressing more untidily than his members. He might become more interested in the Labor Party Executive in his State than in his union, and get some feeling of power and purpose from this. If he’s lucky someone might give him a trip to Russia or America.

  This may seem a caricature. There are dedicated men in the union movement, many competent men, a few brilliant men, but the kind of man just pictured also survives, petty and conservative, and not very good at his job.

  After New Zealand, Australia has had the highest union membership rate of any democracy; Australian wage earners enjoyed more paid leisure earlier than in other countries. Yet despite this most Australian unionists are normally indifferent to their unions, and do not participate to a great extent in their affairs. Hardly any attend union meetings (although job meetings are better attended), less than half vote in union elections (sometimes much less) and they are often slow in paying union dues. The greatest enthusiasm is often aroused for some ‘unofficial’ strike or protest when men in a shop take action without consulting the union, or in defiance of it; this kind of action can still have some meaning for them. But often the very men who are indifferent to unions may go home to their suburbs, change their clothes and play a strenuous organizational part in local clubs. Their indifference may be partly a protest against the irrelevance of union ideologies to the life Australians now lead. The unions play little part in the things modern Australians are really interested in – getting homes, raising their children, going on holidays.

  Organizationally most unions are weak and amateurish. There are too many small unions trying to operate all over Australia; unions with less than 2000 members may have to sustain six state officers and a federal office. Payment to officials is stingy and in any except the biggest unions the maintenance of expert, sizeable staffs is not possible. Many of the able men are hamstrung by the inadequacy of union resources. Too often an able but overworked secretary must muddle through the best he can, without the assistance of the kind of experts that are at the disposal of the employer and the Governments. He may spend most of his time just running the office, answering letters, preparing for meetings, submitting reports, keeping the books. Unions where the State branches are stronger than the federal executive may duplicate all the overheads that might be better centred in the executive. There is no training programme for union officials. A dislike of education and expertise ravages the union movement. Its officials are often isolated from the main forces operating in the community and out of touch with the thinking of their own members. Many of them scorn the intellectuals who would be ready to help them. They may be indifferent to the apathy of their members, uninterested in trying to fabricate some meaningful rank-and-file participation in the union, even by the airing of grievances. In fact many of them like their union rank and file to be apathetic. There is no ‘interference’ from members and no trouble in arranging re-election in an apathetic union.

  If anything the calibre of union officials has declined. In the more exciting days of union history, gaining a union position was one of the few ways in which a talented young underdog could pull himself up; now he can get a university scholarship and become a professional man, or enter a business firm or a government department. And the inducement to sacrifice is less, except to the politically inspired; there is no longer a desperate situation of wage earners to which a man could feel that he could devote his life.

  What keeps the show going sufficiently well to give a sense of achievement to unionists is a mixture of Arbitration and Conciliation Tribunals and occasional intervention by State Governments. This highly complex and legalistic mess is unpredictable. There are both State and Federal Arbitration and Conciliation Tribunals. The Federal Tribunal usually points the way but State governments can legislate directly. The New South Wales Labor Government had several times produced industrial legislation on the working week, annual leave and long-service leave that forced the issue throughout the rest of Australia. This muddle means that a whole section of economic planning in Australia is all over the place.

  And the Federal Arbitration Tribunal, said to hold more power over the conduct of industry than any other instrumentality, is simply a body of judges who make their decisions irrespective of other government policy, and are not expert in their field. In 1961 this quasi-legal, de facto planning authority declared: ‘We are not national economic policy makers or planners.’ It has no economic intelligence unit to guide it. It settles big economic questions piecemeal. There will not necessarily be any economic coherence in its three judgments. It is sometimes suggested that the only consistency to be found in the tribunal’s findings is a desire to conciliate parties sufficiently to preserve the arbitration system.

  Proceedings are conducted in a legalistic manner that often keeps away expert witnesses; outrageous claims are made by parties. (In the 1964 basic wage hearing the unions asked for an extra $5.20 a week and the employers offered 60 cents.) ‘Each party to a case will endeavour to prove that expert witnesses called by the other party are incompetents, liars and cheats.’ There is little discussion or probing by the judges of the expert submissions. There is some reference to sacred texts (including articles planted by either side in economic jour
nals) and there are references to productivity that are as expert as references to astrology charts. It is almost as if a medieval ecclesiastical court took over the economic planning of Australia.

  Other countries also get themselves into a mess with the regulation of wages and conditions of labour but they usually do not set up quite so many institutions to do it. There seems to be a belief in Australia that if an administrative process is wrapped up in sufficient legal trappings it will somehow or other provide a ‘fair go’. The ‘fair go’ is as arbitrary as any other method of decision but the rhetoric associated with it suggests otherwise. Both employers and employees are cynical about this system. Collective agreements might produce more realism in bargaining and produce more good faith over settlements by both parties, but to be effective they would have to be accompanied by an improvement in the calibre of union officials.

  The whole system may be nearing breaking point now that an increasing number of professional groups are also using it. It is hard to pretend that there are standards by which a quasi-legal tribunal can judge what a professional engineer or a professor of Latin is ‘worth’, but tribunals have attempted the task, and thereby strengthened the wage spiral. When professional men in government departments are given big increases they may receive more than the heads of their departments; if the heads are given a rise the ministers and politicians might get a rise, too. If this happens the rest of the community puts in for another rise. If the politicians can get away with it, so can they. Everybody has his fair go in turn. A real attempt by the professional and white-collar associations to use all the blue-collar union tactics in the arbitration system may finally wreck the system. Nowhere else in the world is there a wages system of such automatic compensation. As soon as one group gets a rise every other group puts in for one. Now that men who may get rises of $2000 a year have joined the system they may reduce it to absurdity.

  There are a number of things that unions could be doing in Australia that most of them ignore. They do not usually consider providing the general social benefits for their members that are often provided by American unions; there is little discussion on joint consultation in industry, in providing experimental beginnings for the introduction of democracy in the field of life where people spend so much of their time; there is no employment policy; and only a rhetorical concern with productivity. There is something of a hoax in some of the successes that are obtained. The wage rises are sometimes illusory, when costs also go up. What unionists really want is higher purchasing power. They want this even more than increased leisure. There are already a few small awards where employers have agreed to pay a bonus week’s wage in lieu of an extra week’s holiday. And men of thirty who find themselves qualifying for three months long-service leave would often sooner have the money.

  The conservative clinging to old-fashioned small craft unions litters industry with all kinds of restrictive practices and weakens union strength by involving unions in a great number of demarcation disputes and much bitterness. Despite its proliferation and its success, one of the remarkable things about the Australian union movement is its institutional weakness. Employers band together on an industrial basis; unions attempt to do so, but their effort is much less convincing. The Australian Council of Trade Unions, bargaining body for the blue-collar unions (including the 180 000 strong Australian Workers’ Union, which joined in the 1960s) runs on the cheap. Its officials are badly paid – and there are only four of them anyway – to handle the affairs of about a million members. Its annual income is little more than $40 000. Its power over member unions is purely diplomatic, sometimes strong, sometimes weak. In States where there is a Labor Government, union leaders, through their control of the party machine, can force concessions for their members in provisions for leave, workers’ compensation and factory standards. This is their greatest single strength. The rest of their gains come more from the system than from union brilliance or even strength.

  To understand the Australian union movement one must recognize the importance of Communists in it. The Communist Party of Australia is little more than 3000 strong and its membership has been declining; it is a highly factionalist party, often consumed with internal struggles in which ideology and policy are thrown up as symptoms of the power struggle; it has built-in tensions between the various States and between its few intellectuals and its union activists; its voting figures in State and Federal elections are less than 1 per cent; its doctrines are usually so out of touch with the wishes and attitudes of ordinary Australians as to appear ludicrous; its adventurism occasionally throws it completely off balance; there are some able men in it but much of its membership is of very indifferent quality, merely sustained by the changing certainties of party lines; it has split into pro-Peking and pro-Moscow parties. Yet it is a force in Australia because of its penetration of the union movement and its subsequent influence over parts of the Labor Party.

  It shows considerable organizational skill (it has a bigger staff than all the political parties put together) and some Communist union officials have earned their position through efficiency. But it is not mainly through its own strength that it has achieved success – despite its unscrupulousness if it were faced with strong opposition it would be obliterated – but through weaknesses in the situation in which it exists. The apathy of union members, the growing gap between rank and file and leadership, the obsolescence of much union ideology and old-fashioned emotional ‘leftism’, the laziness and worthlessness of some union officials (who stay in power with Communist organizational support – for a price) … factors like these allow Communist success.

  In the ACTU Communists have sometimes controlled up to a third of the voting and they have sometimes controlled the voting of the ‘moderates’. With their strength they could influence the Executive and at Congress provide most of the activity. At the 1959 Congress altogether 222 resolutions were on the agenda; they came from only thirty affiliated unions and, of these thirty, eight were Communist controlled and twelve were Communist influenced. The resolutions were along the same lines as those taken by the Party in the preceding months.

  The kind of atmosphere engendered by such a situation was nicely brought out in the issue of the levies for overseas ‘trips’ that shook the Australian union movement. Albert Monk, then president of the ACTU and as experienced a survivor as Sir Robert Menzies, had established himself as a go-between with the Menzies Government and as part of his system of patronage he dispensed free overseas trips. The Russian, Chinese and American governments also dispensed trips. In 1956 when the idea of sending two Australians to China was raised at an ACTU Executive meeting it met opposition; but when the delegation was increased to five the idea was accepted. After that almost the whole Executive had a free trip to Russia, China or both. Monk himself went on more than fifty overseas trips. When the ACTU decided on a compulsory levy to finance reciprocal visits between Australia and Communist countries the explicitly anti-Communist unions revolted, and in 1961, seventeen of them, including the powerful Ironworkers’ and Clerks’ Unions, and the Australian Society of Engineers, were excluded from the ACTU Congress because they refused to be levied. The Communists played it quietly; if the ACTU was wrecked they would lose the main ‘mass organization’ they could influence; a compromise was effected. This dispute was the principal concern of the union movement for several years.

  The Communist penetration of unions helps make reform of the Australian union movement more difficult. The Communists are ‘activists’ in the unions. They often set the pace of action and the tone of rhetoric. The effect of this is to give a nineteenth-century flavour to union affairs that does not help in the task of redefining the responsibilities of unions to their members. Far too much of the time of the ablest men is taken up fighting Communists. And by the process in which Communists and Labor Party men share the fruits of office in a particular union, some Labor Party union officials become captives of the Communists and do their work for them.

 
7. MEN IN POWER

  Who runs Australia?

  There is no evidence that there exists in Australia a small clique of people – certainly not a whole ‘class’ of people – who ‘run’ the place. When applied to a society such as Australia in which there are so many conflicting areas of power (and where so many of the areas of power are in any case further fragmented into State areas of power) tight conspiracy theories of society can be demonstrated to be untrue. A lot of the people who make decisions in Australia just never meet each other.

  At the heart of affairs there are always uncertainties, muddles, misunderstandings; people who sit in the seats of power create patterns that attempt to give coherence to the mysteries and absurdities of their own decisions; they try to hide their confusion from other people – and from themselves. They emanate around themselves an aura that suggests that they know what they are doing. And those who are not at the heart of affairs are also likely to create illusions of decision (of good or evil decision, according to taste), a mirage of rationality that makes events shine with more sense and cohesion than events ever possess.

  These mysterious processes are not a great feature of Australian society. Many Australians see life as a muddle – or at least a lottery – and, since the spreading of mass consumption, they have seemed less and less inclined to see life as a grand conspiracy, although some of the socialists maintain this belief. They have become indifferent to how it all works: the results seem good enough so they let it go at that. A minority still seek conspiracies. And of course there are conspiracies but the usual mistake is to confuse a lot of different conspiracies with a grand conspiracy. There are powerful Australians who devise and connive and exert power conspiratorially; some of them know each other and many even work together. There have been some memorable wire pullers and standover men. But as a whole it doesn’t add up. It’s just individuals or groups powerfully tugging here and there. The strong divisions of interest between the States, the fragmentation of Australian social life and the religious differences have so far made grand conspiracy impossible. To suggest that in Australian society there is a self-perpetuating and ideologically cohesive class that monopolizes privilege is simply ridiculous.