Peter Costello and the H. R. Nicholls Society

The Hon. IAN WEST [6.54 p.m.]: I am about to speak about an extremist who has dedicated his life to the union movement. This thug, like so many dangerous ideologues, hails from Victoria. It has recently been revealed that he spent his early years flirting with moderation as an office bearer of the Labor Party-aligned Social Democrats at university. However, it was not long before extremist politics dominated his thoughts and his actions. He became obsessed with collective activity by workers and unionism, an obsession that would stick with him for the whole of his life. But this obsession with collectivism was not one aimed at the betterment of wages and conditions for working people; rather it was aimed at the betterment of Peter.

Mr Costello complains about the number of unionists in the Labor Party to the point of delusion, where he cannot tell the difference between a union member and someone who is employed by a union, but what Mr Costello does not tell us is that he spent his years before he became a member of Parliament as a low-level union-busting lawyer. He did junior solicitor work on a number of cases in the 1980s against workers and their union representatives. One example was the Dollar Sweets case, celebrated amongst bloody-minded employers because it opened the door for workers to be sued for taking industrial action. Costello also surfaced as a junior legal representative in the Troubleshooters case, which paved the way for companies to hire staff as contractors, thereby avoiding obligations to take out workers compensation insurance, provide staff with annual leave, sick leave and so on. I do not want to overstate Costello's role in these cases, as he was only a bit of a player. Poor Peter has always been the bridesmaid and never the bride.

Mr Costello was also a founding member of the H. R. Nicholls Society. Costello revealed to the Business Review Weekly in 1986 that the aim of the H. R. Nicholls Society was to pollute public discourse with their extremist ideology, to soften the public up so that the Liberals could adopt their radical policies and stay fashionable. The society's aims have been to bring to an end the Industrial Relations Commission, the so-called the "IR club", which it laughably saw as a hotbed of Marxism. The group may have seen itself as opposed to clubs but the record of who attended its inaugural meeting include some very clubby folk indeed. Amongst the attendees were: John Stone, former Treasury secretary; Hugh Morgan, a mining millionaire and future head of the Business Council of Australia; Ray Evans, Western Mining executive; Charles Copeman, mining executive credited with busting unions in the Pilbara; David Trebeck and Paul Houlihan, both former National Farmers Federation activists who were involved on the employer's side of the 1998 waterfront dispute; Ian McLachlan, a former National Farmers Federation president; Geoff Carmody, who has worked in the Treasury and for the International Monetary Fund; former Governor-General Sir John Kerr; and conservative columnist and former Howard adviser Gerard Henderson.

To give an idea of the whacko mentality of the H. R. Nicholls Society, a reliable indicator of where the Liberals are heading in their workplace policy, its current boss, Ray Evans, believes even WorkChoices is stained by the hand of Marxism. Do not forget: Finance Minister Nick Minchin was apologising to this group last year and promising more industrial relations reforms. While the current Prime Minister promises there will be no further changes to WorkChoices, people are entitled to wonder what will happen when the co-founder of this band of nutters takes over.

A former Prime Minister described the Treasurer as "all tip and no iceberg". Unfortunately for the families of New South Wales, Mr Costello's iceberg—should he be elected—will be further industrial relations changes. The only hope for working families will be the Treasurer's lack of backbone. Costello has lacked the backbone to seize the mantle from the Prime Minister and he has lacked the backbone to use his money to take on some of the genuine challenges Australia will face in the future. Despite the surpluses filling up the Government coffers Mr Costello has lacked the conviction to invest in the true drivers of productivity—skills and infrastructure.

Mr Costello has lacked the backbone to invest in our schools and hospitals. The Federal Government's own final budget outcome revealed that the State's total income from the Federal Government had sunk to its lowest level in 10 years. The so-called economic management of Peter Costello is no management at all. It is the equivalent of someone who stuffs all his money in the mattress while he lives in a tent, does not go to school, has missing teeth and requires heart surgery.