Outside Intervention or Necessary Evil?

By Anthony Forsyth

The Howard Government's highly interventionist approach to industrial relations regulation is in stark contrast to its rhetoric of getting government out of the way and simplifying the system.

Far from a "hands off" approach the whole policy framework of the Howard years has been to make the system extremely complex, and to step in at all levels when it proclaims letting the employers and employees decide, instead regulating in minute detail.

Forsyth uses four examples to illustrate this:

· the government legislative program

· non-legislative changes

· building industry reform attempts

· the government's position on the AIRC

(CCH Industrial Law News. issue 1 29 January 2004)