May I commence by extending to you, the delegates, my greetings to 'this, the 1979 Biennial Congress of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. I extend a special. greeting to our fraternal delegate from the New Zealand Federation of Labor, Jim Knox, as he comes to us on this occasion in his capacity as the recently-elected President of the NZFOL. Jim, you have been a good friend for a long time; we look forward to many years of close co-operation with you. I also extend greetings to Jim Ellenberger, the Asian representative of the International Department of the AFL-CIO, who is in our region at this time.

On this occasion we have taken two initiatives in regard to the attendance of observers at our Congress, and 1 hope you will join enthusiastically with me in welcoming those involved. First, we _.have extended invitations to foreign diplomatic missions in our country, to be present with us this week. We have had. a wide spread response from Ambassadors and other members of missions. No doubt, part o€ your many duties is to report upon this much maligned animal - the Australian trade union movement. We believe it to be sensible that you should see the supreme parliament of that movement in action, rather than simply rely on the sometimes jaundiced impressions of others Representing as we do, more than two million Australian men and women, you will find us a microcosm of the general community - direct, even to the point of using tough language at times, but committed to the concept of "a fair go". We hope you will like us; we are certainly pleased to have you with us.

Second, and most important of all, we will have as observers throughout this Congress a total of just under two thousand students from fifty-eight secondary schools in this State. This is a magnificent response to our invitation; we thank all who have made it possible, and I ask you, delegates, to join with me in extending a very warm welcome to the first group of those students here in the gallery today.

May I say just a few words especially to you. Your presence is part of a conscious program we have undertaken since the last Congress to stimulate an interest and understanding within the schools of the trade union movement. For many of you, until now, that understanding would largely have been one of equating trade unions with strikes and all the inconvenience highlighted when these strikes occur. But I want to remind those of you who will be fortunate enough when leaving school to go into gainful employment that the income and conditions of that employment you will enjoy have not just occurred by chance or as a result of the abounding good nature of your employer - decent chap that he may be. Those wages and conditions embody the hard work of generations of trade unionists in the arbitration tribunals and in negotiations with employers' organisations. You will be the automatic inheritors of their commitment and their dedication.

If you hear any wage or salary earners say that he or she doesn't want anything to do with trade unions, remember that every time they take their pay cheque, their paid annual leave, sick leave and long-service leave, they are having something very precisely and beneficially to do with the trade union movement - they are accepting the hard-fought work and financial outlay of that movement. We have made our mistakes; when you join the' paid workforce, join your appropriate union and help us to do an even better job for your fellow-workers and the community generally than we have been able to do in the past.

Delegates, when we last met in Melbourne I commenced my presidential address to you on September 15, 1975 with the words:

"We meet at a time o£ the gravest crisis for the labor movement and the whole Australian community since the end of the Second World War."

I pointed out that for Australia the decade of the '60s had been a period of economic tranquillity, characterised by average rates of unemployment of 1.45%, economic growth as measured by Gross Domestic Product per employee of 2.5% and inflation of 2.5%; and warned you that the 1970's by contrast had already begun to emerge starkly as the decade of economic instability. I also warned of the possible emergence of an anti-union, conservative Federal Government before we should meet again in Congress.

It would be pleasing to be able to stand before you today and say that my perceptions and predictions then had been astray - that we had in fact merely been witness to a temporary aberration from the full, if not always wise, utilisation of our country's human and material resources. But you know that I can not say that; and, as I said then, I believe it to be my responsibility and your expectation that I should now speak frankly with you about the further deterioration in the economic environment which has occurred and which provides a basic part of the framework within which we shall, in this Congress, have to consider the challenge of the next two years.

The most tragic manifestation of Australia's debilitated economic condition is, of course, the high, and growing, levels of unemployment. Looking first just at the most obvious deterioration since we last met in 1977, numbers registered for work with the Commonwealth Employment Service have increased between July of 1977 and 1979 from 337,391 to 410,194; i.e. an increase in the registered unemployed as a percentage of the workforce from 5.3% to 6.4%. In the same period, the number of vacancies registered with the CES has declined from 19,086 to 16,712 -a reduction of 12%.

Bringing these statistics together, you see the darkening picture of 18 registered unemployed for every vacancy in 1977, having moved to the point now where for every vacancy there are currently 25 registered unemployed. And yet, faced with these official statistics, some apologists for this Government have the utter gall still to attempt to explain Australia's unemployment problem in terms of the totally objectionable "dole-bludger" syndrome - but more of that later. As the level of unemployment increases, so is the average duration of the period of unemployment rising - from 23.6 weeks in May 1977 to 29.4 weeks in May of this year - i.e. a 25% increase. (I use May figures because that month is the latest available for a 1977 ABS comparison - the latest figure for 1979 is 30.8 weeks in July.)

The Federal Government has attempted to confuse the unemployment picture by downgrading the CES figures and releasing alternative statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which, because of the nature of the sample survey from which they are derived, show absolute levels somewhat lower than the CES actual registrations. There is, however, no comfort for the Cabinet conjurors in the ABS figures. By this measurement, unemployment has increased between August 1977 and 1979 from 359,300 to 376,100 - i.e. an increase in the percentage unemployed from 5.7% to 5.8%.

Neither of these sets of figures conveys anything like the real dimension of this tragic problem. The labor market is so depressed that growing numbers of frustrated workers are dropping out o£ the workforce. Using the technical language, workforce participation rates have dropped between May 1977 and 1979 from 62.3% to 60.6%. Had the 1977 participation rate operated in 1979, unemployment would have been 581,000 or 8.8% of the workforce. The ABS actually conducts surveys which attempt to establish those who would have wished to work if a job was available, but due to economic circumstances are not, in fact, looking for a job at the time of the survey. From this most recent, official survey, conducted in March of this year, it is clear beyond question that if to the officially measured unemployed are added the officially recognised hidden unemployed, then this totally grim picture emerges - there are 750,000 Australians, or one in ten of those who would be available, who want to work and who are being denied employment in our country.

And if in this totally grim picture you look for the potentially most tragic element, you find it amongst our young people. In August of this year 15.4% of youths between the age of 15-19 years were unemployed, 22.3% of the girls, and 18.4% of that age group taken together - almost one in five of our kids not able to get a job, and, for girls, the ratio being slightly worse than that.

It has been necessary for me to put these aggregated statistics before you in order that you can perceive the magnitude of this disaster. But we should never allow these statistics, as important as they are for this purpose, to blind us to the fact that unemployment is not merely some unpleasant economic phenomenon - it is a human tragedy with profoundly disturbing implications for those human beings, and those dependent upon them, who go to make up these cold statistics of this insidious new feature of our post-war society.

In this respect, it is perhaps sufficient to mention two separate items in the Melbourne "AGE" of Tuesday of last week (4th September). The first refers to a 24-page statement, "Beyond Unemployment", approved by the Australian Roman Catholic bishops, which urges the Federal Government to scrap the unrealistic restrictions on the availability and levels of unemployment benefits. The item, says that the statement "describes unemployment as the most serious social problem in Australia today, and as a major factor in increased family breakdown, crime, alcoholism and drug abuse."

The secretary of the Catholic Commission on Justice and Peace which prepared the statement is quoted:

"We have to stop pussy-footing around with unemployment figures. They are just appalling."

The second item, under the heading "Side Effects and the Dole", quotes Dr. Geoffrey Syme, West Australian chairman of the Australian Psychological Society, who was making a national statement on unemployment authorised by a meeting of society members from all States. Dr. Syme is quoted:

"The Government keeps blaming the victims and this is doing immense psychological damage to the young unemployed. It is political cynicism of the highest order."

Dr. Syme said parents should be enraged at comments by Government spokesmen who suggested their children were unemployed because they were lazy, shiftless 'dole-bludgers'. "They should recognise this as an assault on the family, on the way they brought up their children, because all the evidence shows there are not enough jobs to go round ... I'd like the politicians to spend a week or two counselling the young unemployed - then they would discover the reality of the situation."

There is the reality, the tragic human reality and your Frasers and your Viners will have to dig deep in their barrels of prevarications, diversions and straight-out misrepresentations to paint the Australian Roman Catholic bishops and the Australian Psychological Society as a bunch of subversives who can't be trusted to speak with honesty about the condition of their country.

The real involvement of the ACTU with the plight of the unemployed has operated at two levels. On the one hand, we have been persistent in our submissions to the Federal Government for the adoption of less contractionary economic policies and a more enlightened approach to the restrictive practices surrounding, and the levels of, unemployment payments. On the other, we have established and maintained direct contact with these human dimensions of the unemployment problem by working closely and consistently with organisations immediately involved, such as the Australian Council of Social Services and representatives of unemployed groups.

But this is not enough. We must play a stronger part in educating the community to understand how this canker of unemployment is eroding not only its immediate victims, but society itself. We must be vigilant, from our position of relative comfort, to avoid the easy, immoral lapse into blaming those victims for being the architects of their own plight. We must be more positive in questioning the immorality of maintaining subsistence levels of unemployment "benefit" - the very word itself is repugnant - which have been historically justified on the basis that there has been work available for all who want it. As I have said in another place, if we cannot provide work for all, income distribution cannot continue to be based upon the assumption that there is work for all. An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute the living proof of the inaccuracy of the assumption.

There has been a concentrated attempt by Fraser Government spokesmen to portray you and the union membership of this country as being largely responsible for these problems. With their one-dimensional view of wages as a cost only - ignoring the fact that, for the overwhelming majority of Australians, wages and salaries constitute their only source of income - they attempt to divert attention from their own incompetence and promise-breaking. The facts are clear and irrefutable. Real average weekly ordinary time earnings have fallen by 0.9% since the last Congress and by 3.0% since the 1975 Melbourne Congress. Those earnings would need now to be $6.50 higher simply to have the same real value as four years ago.

However, as I reminded you in 1977, Mr Fraser in his 1975 policy speech insisted that the vital issue is the real after-tax position:

"A system of wage indexation cannot function successfully unless its benefits can be seen in real after-tax terms."

(Policy Speech, November 27, 1975).

In every wage indexation case since the 1977 Congress the Government has argued for "zero indexation". Equally, it has abandoned the unequivocal promise of full tax indexation. In the event, the real after-tax income of the single person on average weekly ordinary time earnings has fallen by 1.1% since June 1977, and the person with dependent spouse by 1.0%. For that married person there has been a loss of 8% "in real after-tax terms", or more than $14 a week since the 1975 Melbourne Congress. In Mr Fraser's very own terms, you have there in those figures the reason why the system is "not functioning successfully" and the proof that, far from causing the economic problems in this country, organised wage and salary earners and their dependants are the victims of his Government's incompetence and broken promises to which I have referred.

And the prospect is for more of the same.

The recent Budget papers refer to a predicted rise in average earnings of 9 – 9^1/2%, and inflation of at least 10%, a significant proportion of which will come about as a result of the Government's own deliberate decisions in regard to oil pricing and changes in the health and medical schemes. To ensure that wage and salary earners should suffer an even greater reduction in real incomes, the Government has just proposed that increases in the Consumer Price Index induced by such Government decisions should be completely discounted by the Arbitration Commission - a proposal which, on your behalf, I have already indicated to the Acting President of the Commission is totally unacceptable to the trade union movement of this country.

Bringing some of these strands together, in aggregate economic terms the growth rate of Gross Domestic Product between December 1975 and June 1979 has been 3.3% per annum, which is almost precisely half the "quite feasible" growth rate of 6-7% promised by Mr Fraser in that 1975 policy speech. The accumulated loss in G.D.P., in constant 1974-5 prices, through the failure of the Fraser Government to honor that promise, is $9,965 million. I suggest that it is extremely interesting to set that figure against the loss in G.D.P. attributable to industrial disputes in the same period. Using the average wages share of G.D.P. over the period (i.e. 64%), and again estimating in constant 1974/5 prices, the cost of G.D.P. lost through industrial disputation between March 1976 and March 1979 inclusive was $323 million – i.e. 3.3% of the loss due to the failure to achieve the growth rates promised by Mr Fraser in 1975.

I hope that in the light of these figures we may start to see some sense of perspective in the accusations of a Prime Minister who is ever-read to lay the blame for his own shortcomings upon others.

While it is our responsibility to understand and expose the Federal Government in this way, it is, I believe, equally our responsibility to understand that our economy is subject to certain fundamental changes that are occurring in the world of which we are part. Those changes can have profound implications for us and we should recognise that fact. I deal, briefly, with the two most important and related of these changes.

First, we are part of a period of technological revolution. This revolution has surged from manufacturing industry by way of microprocessors, automatic writing machines and electronic data transmission systems into the service industries, hitherto regarded as some almost infinitely elastic reservoir able to take up people displaced in other sectors. These developments pose a basic dilemma for us – on the one hand jobs, on the other the need to remain competitive while our people, as the vast majority do, perceive their well-being in terms of the consumption of those goods and services which conventionally determine the standard of living in our community. I thank them for their input and recommend to you, both close consideration of the policy document before you and your keen involvement in the debate we will be having on this subject.

Second, we are part of the area of East and South-East Asia, the eight market economies on which have experienced amongst the highest rates of growth in the world in recent years. As we pointed out in the Crawford Report, if the present rate of development in those economies continues, that region collectively will be, within four or five years, as important in world trade as Japan is now. The economic and trading expansion of China will also be a dominant feature of the years ahead. In referring to these countries we are no longer speaking merely of areas with the comparative trading advantage of very low wage rates, but of countries which have married to that factor the most modern technology. In return for the purchase of our mineral and rural products, and whatever other commodities we may with advantage be able to develop, these countries will be pressing to sell Australia an increasingly wide range of sophisticated manufactured goods. Again we have the same dilemma – we have to protect employment and we can’t opt out of the world. Once more I ask you to consummate the work we have done with our affiliates in this matter by following, and involving yourselves in, the relevant discussion later this week.

Clearly, the context I have set for you is, and must be, even more sombre that that of four years ago. Since then, and particularly in the two years since our last Congress, I have not contented myself on your behalf with mere negative criticism of the Government. Together with my fellow officers we have advanced alternative policies calculated to get the economy moving and to create more employment. But more than that, we have said that we do not have any monopoly of wisdom in these matters. We believe that Australia does face unprecedented postwar economic and social problems. We have indicated that we are prepared to sit down with Government and employers, with all the facts on the table, in a constructive attempt to achieve what is best for the people for this country.

We have offered co-operation and have been given confrontation. Every offer I have made to have such a conference has been rejected by the Government as it has steadily enlarged the armoury of punitive and restrictive powers to invoke against Australian working men and women and their trade union organisations. If that is the course the Government desires, so be it; but let everyone understand the inevitable logic of this position. If the Government is going to reject the opportunity of consultative co-ordination of interests and put its faith in the “free-play-of-the-market” philosophy for business and the professions, then the trade union movement will accept and attempt to play those same rules. As you the Government, virtually dismantle the Prices Justification Tribunal, we will not accept your double standards; unregulated freedom, on the one hand, for employers to set the prices for what they have to sell, and on the other hand, in respect of those who are employed in both the private and public sector, increasingly savage restrictions upon their freedom to obtain a fair price for the only thing they have to sell – their labour. If the standard of living of our members is reduced as the business and professional sectors set their prices to cover, or more than cover, increases in their costs, we will seek to do the same. If this can not be done in the Arbitration Commission, we will seek to do it in the market. Clearly, as I have already indicated to you, powers of regulation exist in this community over the level of wages; we say to Government – of any political persuasion – that it is pointless to talk about wage restraint or an incomes policy if real powers are not exercised over all relevant non-wage and salary elements.

Specifically, I say to this Government: this double standard jungle of non-consultation and unplanned non-cor-ordination of the use of our resources, and of claims upon those resources, is an absurdity. It is your choice. Do not seek to blame us for the inevitably disastrous consequences of your deliberate decision. There is a better way and we stand ready to co-operate if you abandon your double standards. This Congress must now, however, proceed about its business and make its decisions upon the basis of this choice which you have made.

The work of the ACTU in the two years since our last Congress is detailed in the Executive Report before you for your later consideration, and it is not my practice to cover that ground in this address. I would, however, make two points. First, the traditional workload area has been heavier than in any earlier period an dour physical resources have been strained beyond reason. Your elected and appointed staff have been magnificent in meeting these demands, and I know that you will join with me in thanking them for their dedication and productivity. Second, we have been able to make three significant advances of particular importance to women:

As a result of an enormous amount of work which resulted in possibly the best prepared and documented case ever put to the Arbitration Commission, we were able, through Jan Marsh, to achieve the provision for maternity leave in federal awards;

with the assistance of a grant obtained through the Minister for Social Services we will be operating by early next year, in a Melbourne industrial area, the first pilot ACTU Child Care Centre to provide care for twenty-five young children of working parents; and

we have completed the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken detailing all discriminatory provisions in all federal awards and determinations.

I believe the ACTU is providing a continuing demonstration of its real commitment to the ideals of the Charter which you have adopted; we are indebted to the representatives of our affiliates who, together with our own staff, have made this possible.

In the area of our economic enterprise I report that Bourke’s-ACTU, while continuing to attempt to operate, as we have successfully from the outset, as a restraining element upon the level of retail prices, has experienced difficulties associated in large part with the general downturn in economic activity and restrained movement in retail sales.

ACTU-Solo has continued to operate effectively in a market beset by product shortages and inflationary crude oil prices increases. Although its growth has been limited by these factors it remains the largest independent marketer. Prior to the shortages, ACTU-Solo was able to generate the highest degree of competition experienced in the oil industry in its history. Although that effect has been diminished by the factors I have outlined, the enterprise continues to be the major factor in the retail market maintaining fair and reasonable prices. This effect is demonstrated by the facts that:

• The operations of ACTU-Solo have saved consumers at least $100 million dollars over the past two years.
• The relationship between retail and wholesale prices is now comparable with other countries; and
• If the retail margin which existed prior to the entry of ACTU-Solo was maintained, prices in major metropolitan areas would be well over 30c per litre.

In 1978 the ACTU formed a new partnership with Jetset Tours to promote travel both within Australia and overseas. You will recall that during the embryonic stages of the new enterprise we were confronted with an attack on our integrity by the Minister for Transport, Mr.Nixon. We were able to demonstrate that the attack was not merely comical, but that the Government itself was involved in double standards and that the activities of ACTU-Jetset were, without question, totally legitimate. That exercise in itself became a catalyst for long overdue reductions in international air fares.

The success of ACTU-Jetset, even at this early stage, is measured by the fact that, despite the air fare reductions, the numbers of unionists travelling via ACTU-Jetset are continuing to increase. In less than a year, over 10,000 members of affiliated unions have used the facilities of ACTU-Jetset and have been able to collectively save over one million dollars as a result of the lower cost travel arrangements.

In looking back over our experience of the past two years, I could not let this occasion pass without reference to three people for whom this Congress will mark the end of a long and valuable direst association with the ACTU. Rob Jolly became an assistant research officer with the ACTU in 1972, and after Ralph Willis’ election to the Federal Parliament at the end of that year, was appointed our chief research officer and advocate. From that point until his election as an ALP member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly last May, he served the ACTU and all Australian wage and salary earners with outstanding capacity and single-minded dedication. This quiet, almost diffident, demeanour covered a personal and intellectual toughness that operated unrelentingly for the interests of your members and became universally respected within the arbitral tribunals of this country. Rob, we thank you, we wish you well in your new field of endeavour on behalf of the people of this State where, I believe, there is no limit to the position of eminence you can achieve.

Pat Clancy will not be recontesting a seat on the ACTU Executive. Pat has adhered tenaciously to a political philosophy which relatively few of us would share, but in the tradition of Jim Healey, Tom Wright, George Seelaf and Alex McDonald, he did not seek on the ACTU Executive to ram that philosophy down our throats but to serve, according to his lights, the interests of the group he represented on the Executive. No-one who has witnessed the great difficulties Pat has recently experienced, in attempting to discharge his responsibilities in a condition of near-blindness, can have anything but admiration for his courage, and we share your hope and expectation, Pat, for a significant recovery in your sight.

Finally in this regard, but by no means least, we say farewell at this Congress to John Ducker, our Junior Vice President, and Secretary of the Labor Council of New South Wales, State branch of the ACTU. John was a member of or Executive for eight years, including two years as Vice-President. For reasons which are personal and compelling to him, and therefore necessarily acceptable to us, John, after twenty-seven years as a full-time official in the trade union movement, has decided to server his official positions in that movement and the Australian Labor Party. Friend and foe alike recognise the unique pre-eminence he achieved in those fields and that we are unlikely to see another John Ducker in our time.

He fought unremittingly for the welfare of the labour movement according to the convictions he held so strongly. These were not convictions which blinded him to other points of view and, on our Executive, he was a man who sought consensus where he thought that to be reasonably possible; when decisions were made at the national level, he sought to give effect to those decisions in the largest branch of the ACTU. John Ducker is not with us for Congress but I know you will join with me in expressing the hope that he finds satisfaction in his new work and the opportunity for himself and his family of experiencing a degree of serenity that is not always available in our movement.

This is an historic Congress, for it marks the definite emergence of one central trade union organisation in this country. We have, as an ACTU, been closer to that ideal than most other countries in the western world. Nevertheless there has been a significant white-collar grouping in the form of the Australian Council of Salaried and Professional Associations (ACSPA) and unions in the Council of Australian Government Employee Organisations (CAGEO). ACSPA has now virtually dissolved, by the affiliation of all but one of its constituents to the ACTU – and we welcome them to us. Proposals are well advanced and will be put before you to achieve by our next Congress the same position in regard to CAGEO.

I am aware that this afternoon there will be considerable debate – which I deliberately do not now canvass – on precisely how we handle this matter constitutionally, but, whatever the outcome of that debate, the process itself is irreversible. It means, I believe, that as a result of this and the 1981 Congress we will go into the 1980’s as one united, and powerful, trade union organisation in Australia. It is good for Australian wage and salary earners and it is good for the country as a whole that we shall speak with one voice – and again I thank all who have made this great achievement possible.

As you will understand from everything I have said to this point, there has never been a time in our history of greater need for such unity and strength of purpose. We must be prepared to face the challenge not only of a hostile government but, even more fundamentally, the challenge of our changing times. I have indicated elsewhere that we do not have to be afraid of change, for it can provide the opportunity for better standards of life and the release of abundant human talents confined by the drudgery of unimaginative work – not only for Australians but to enable us to contribute to the well-being of others less fortunate then ourselves. But the correlative of optimism as to technological change, I have insisted, must be preparedness of our community to embrace social change and a greater role for the intervention of the public interest in the economic decision-making process. We will all have to put into question and debate the whole issues of work patterns, education, training, and to some extent, the very work ethic itself. We will have to undertake the greatest adventure of all – to think new thoughts.

May I be allowed to conclude on a personal note. There has been considerable speculation as to my future. I had thought it would be good, if possible, to make a statement of intention in this speech. For several reasons that is not now possible and, in any case, any statement would, I think, tend to detract public attention from your important deliberations and decisions during this week. May I simply say this: I have now swerved the ACTU in a full-time capacity for twenty-one years and you have provided me in that period with a unique opportunity for self-development and service to my fellow Australians. That is a privilege for which I thank you and it is not one I will lightly forego. Whatever my decision – and it will be announced before the end of this month – I will attempt, as honestly as I can, to base it upon a conviction of how I can, into the future, best apply that privilege to the benefit of the people we all represent.

R. J. Hawke, ACTU Biennial Congress - Melbourne, September 10,.1979.