Liberal students urging party leadership to revive WorkChoices
In a signal many grassroots Liberals are growing more and more confident of an historic and massive electoral triumph in next year’s election, the University of West Australia’s Liberal Club has unanimously carried a motion urging the re-adoption of once controversial labour WorkChoices by the next Coalition government.
It came on the same day as the federal leader declared that the federal Coalition ought to aim for an even stronger result than the LNP in Queensland achieved:
“Obviously the Coalition did particularly well in Queensland at the last federal election.
“I think the LNP has obviously triumphed magnificently in the recent state election and I think we can do even better in the next federal election.
Many Liberals, not just in WA which is glorying in its soaring prosperity right now, of the younger generation are urging the federal party room’s more cautious leadership to “step up” on policy and to – use the Aaron Sorkin term that only coke-fuelled visions of George Stephanopoulos could have inspired – “take their numbers out for a spin” to seek a mandate on normally contentious issues like labour market deregulation. Calling WorkChoices labour market deregulation is generous considering its 1500 pages but it’s the symbolism of it that excites many young enthusiasts.
This view extends into the party room, with the “Young and the Restless” group in the federal Liberals, including Scott Ryan and Jamie Briggs, who apparently bonded over sausage rolls in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge in Canberra, who plan to ensure that “ideologically unsound” gents like the Liberal Lefty Joe Hockey and his notionally NSW Liberal Right but originally DLP leader Tony Abbott. Neither are keen on repeating the political “mistakes” of WorkChoices, having seen any hope of Howard winning in 2007 extinguished by the issue.
Both sides have a point with the Coalition’s likely victory at the next federal election seeming as close to locked in as any federal election since 1955, with the issue regarded by Labor and Liberal insiders alike as crucial to determining the 2007 result, which was much closer than most (leftish) analysts care to recall. There was a big swing to Labor but it was from a low base in 2004.
Some Liberals passionate for workplace relations reforms are being told to back off now by the Leader’s office with a promise to revisit issues after the election and by referring to the Leader’s public declarations of a big crackdown on the internal governance of trade unions to eliminate rorts of the kind for which the HSU in Victoria and NSW became infamous.
http://www.vexnews.com/2012/05/no-guts-no-glory-liberal-students-urging-party-le...
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