Hewson, Howard Sinking The Boot Into Workers - Keating
The Age
Wednesday May 27, 1992
The Prime Minister, Mr Keating, yesterday accused Dr John Hewson and Mr John Howard of being ``a couple of scrubbers from western Sydney" who had joined the establishment and now put the boot into ordinary people.
Attacking the coalition's industrial relations policy, Mr Keating said Dr Hewson, the Opposition Leader, and Mr Howard, the Opposition spokesman on industrial relations, had both ``come from the wrong side of the tracks".
``You are so committed to proving to the blue-bloods that your blood is bluer than theirs that you have to sink the boot into ordinary people," he said in the House of Representatives.
The Opposition's policy would ``tear away at the guts of Australian unionism".
``You will remove the right to collectively bargain. You will take away federal awards. The only protection that people can get for their rates of pay and their conditions is through the award system, but you want to take that away," Mr Keating said.
``And who is doing it? Not the people from the Western Districts or the Toorak blue-bloods or even our mate over here from South Australia (Mr Alexander Downer) but a couple of scrubbers from western Sydney who basically have taken out Liberal Party tickets and have said, `Right, we are now in the establishment and we have been fitted out for the pinstripe suits. Let's get our boots out into the ordinary people."' Mr Keating said he, in contrast, was ``still representing the people who have nothing to represent but their labor".
Answering a question from Mr Howard, Mr Keating called the Liberals' industrial relations policy spiteful and malignant. ``The spitefulness of it is to rob people of things like occupational superannuation. The malignancy of it is to attack their rights to organise and to bargain for their rates of pay and conditions of work." To a Government MP's question, Mr Keating said 26 of the 93 measures in the One Nation package had been implemented. Another 13 were ``on track" and would come into effect next financial year or beyond. The rest would be implemented as legislation was brought forward or negotiations were completed.
Mr Howard hit back at Mr Keating, saying he had ``deserted the western suburbs of Sydney" and needed a street directory to find Bankstown (in Mr Keating's electorate of Blaxland).
``This defender of the working men and women of Australia, this paragon of egalitarianism ... apparently regards it as in some way dishonorable to be a scrubber or, indeed, anybody else from the western suburbs of Sydney.
``If ever a man exhibited an obsession with class, an obsession with background, a total insensitivity to his remarks and a total inability to understand what makes the modern Australian nation, it was the Prime Minister today."
© 1992 The Age