By Catherine Brown
"I think the [government-owned] Australian National Line [ANL] is a heartland issue for the Labor Party; there are no more serious people in the labour movement than the Maritime Union of Australia, and there is no-one I think more central in the industrial movement to the psyche of the Labor Party." — Laurie Brereton, federal minister for transport.
"The Maritime Union of Australia, by [Paul] Keating's own admission, was a key factor in the re-election of the Labor government ... The Labor government has certainly lied to the union." — Paddy Crumlin, deputy national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia.
Wally Pritchard, WA branch joint secretary, explained to a Fremantle MUA meeting on March 9, "The history of the ALP is indeed tied in with the maritime unions. It was the great industrial action of the 1890s by maritime workers, miners and shearers that led in the end [to the formation of the ALP]. Now, 100 years later, that commitment is being put to the test."
Since June 1991, when the federal government moved to amend ALP policy to allow the sale of 49% of ANL, the relationship between the MUA and the ALP has been strained.
The MUA, Crumlin told Green Left Weekly, "had to support the ALP" in the last federal election, given the Liberal Party's more conservative industrial and social agenda. The union was still receiving letters of thanks from ALP politicians in marginal seats when, in June 1993, federal cabinet secretly reneged on commitments made to the union on the future of ANL.
The decision to remove restrictions on ANL's sale, and maintenance of Australian crews, breached ALP policy.
"The cabinet document was leaked. We put it on the public record and exposed the types of two-faced policy-making that was going on in the federal government. On the sale of ANL, the federal government, particularly the cabinet, has played a deceitful role", Crumlin said.
"The issue is without doubt about the retention of capital and resources within Australia to benefit the Australian community."
Crumlin argues that the privatisation of ANL will undermine the future of Australian shipping. "Without ANL, we would absolutely be in the hands of the international or multinational shipping owners."
If ANL was to be privatised, Crumlin believes that "cabotage" would be the next to go. Cabotage refers to the regulations governing domestic cargo carried by foreign ships.
The MUA, and formerly the Seamen's Union of Australia, fought and won high standards of safety and working conditions for their members. Currently, domestic cargoes can not be carried by foreign flagged ships with foreign crews.
Multinational companies are eager to get rid of cabotage to get access to domestic shipping. The MUA says they have an appalling safety record, often being flagged in Third World tax havens and employing unskilled crews on poverty wages.
"If ANL goes, then cabotage will go", argues Crumlin.
"With privatisation you will see a massive loss of jobs, but more importantly, the jobs that remain will be casualised; the maintenance work force will disappear and there will be a constant grinding down of workers' conditions within those enterprises."
Last month the federal government's Task Force on Asset Sales hoped to push through the sale of ANL. This was a blatant attempt to pre-empt a decision on ANL privatisation at the party's national conference in September.
But pressure from the MUA, helped by the Financial Review's exposure of the cabinet's secret attempts to breach ALP policy, forced the government on June 14 to guarantee that no aspect of the sale process would be carried out prior to conference.
The MUA is organising a major campaign to save ANL. This campaign is vital to both seafaring and wharfie sectors of the union. The sale of ANL would also affect Australian Stevedores, as ANL holds 25% ownership of it. The union's publicity material includes a $51 "note", representing the union's aim to keep ANL 51% government-owned.
The ANL issue is linked to other publicly owned assets the government wants to privatise, said Crumlin. The MUA and other affected unions are also gearing up for a fight to prevent the sale of the federal airports.
Crumlin explained. "If you can sell off your airports, and you can sell off your essential shipping lines, then it is not going to be very long before we are in exactly the same situation as the residents of the UK under Thatcher. Their water and power, all the absolute fundamental commodities of life, are given to multinational economic powers that only have the view of adding costs and making profits."