Radical Labour Law Reform and the Demise of the Victorian Industrial Relations System

Abstract

In October 1992 the newly elected Victorian state government (a coalition of the conservative Liberal-National Parties) under the leadership of Jeffrey Kennett introduced its legislative programme for deregulating the Victorian state industrial relations system. The most important in a series of enactments was the Employee Relations Act 1992 1 (the ERA) which sought to implement a revolutionary new system of industrial relations inspired by the ideas of the "New Right" as they have emerged in Australia, and elsewhere, over the past twenty years (Mitchell, 1993a). These ideas, founded upon a supposed "economic rationalism", advocate the regulation of labour markets by voluntary agreement between employers and employees to the total, or at least substantial, exclusion of unions and state intervention