Rights at work

New job for IR extremist Peter Hendy in Liberal HQ shows WorkChoices still alive & kicking

By the ASU - fighting for your rights at work

The appointment of long-time industrial relations extremist, anti-union agitator and big business lobbyist Peter Hendy to Opposition leader Brendan Nelson's office confirms that WorkChoices is still alive and kicking in the Liberal leadership says the ACTU.

Peter Hendy previously helped John Howard write 'Jobsback', a precursor to WorkChoices, and was the chief of staff to former workplace relations minister Peter Reith during the Howard Government's disgraceful attempt to smash the wages and conditions of waterfront workers in 1998.

Mr Hendy was also with Reith during the 2001 children overboard affair after Reith moved to defence and later refused to give evidence to the Senate committee on the matter.

More recently Peter Hendy has been a Liberal Party apparatchik working with the big business lobby group the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI).

The ACCI instigated and co-ordinated a pro-WorkChoices advertising campaign by the so-called 'Business Coalition for Workplace Reform' that was hastily pulled off the air in September after two actors posing as union officials in an advertisement were exposed in media reports as notorious criminals.

It was reported that two of the 'actors' in the ad had been convicted of serious drug charges and one has been charged with sexual offences against under-age girls.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow said:

"Peter Hendy's new job shows that the announcement by Liberal leader Brendan Nelson yesterday that 'WorkChoices is dead' was just a charade.

"The Liberals under Brendan Nelson clearly have no intention of listening to the Australian people and moving on from their hard line approach to industrial relations.

"Hendy's apparently seamless shift from big business lobby group ACCI to Liberal HQ also confirms just how close is the Liberals' relationship with big business.

"The Liberals have just suffered one of the biggest ever election losses because the public rejected WorkChoices and the Liberals' extremist anti-union IR agenda.

"Now they appoint a long-time industrial relations extremist and big business lobbyist to their inner circle.

"This shows that the Liberals under Brendan Nelson have learnt nothing from the election and are deaf to the desire of the Australian people to have their rights at work respected and who support the role of unions."