Accord
... in order to have a national collective bargain work, it has to be understood that it can't work between Kelty, Crean, Hawke and Keating. ... I've never entered into a side deal with Keating or Hawke. Never. And when people posture about these things, what they fail to understand is that the task the ACTU faces is to obtain, from where it stands, the involvement of the key unions. That's our task. Therefore, the Carmichaels, the Halfpennys and the Harrisons so far as the metal workers are concerned, the Ivan Hodgsons and Harry Quinns of the Transport Workers' Union, the finance unions, the Storemen and Packers Union, the Tom McDonalds and others of the building workers, they become people and organisations which have to become involved and committed. What you have to do is to deliver them collectively. Now that is what is so good about the recent negotiations on the accord because the unions are beginning to see that it is a process that is working and that is what is good from the ACTU's viewpoint. It's not Kelty and it's not Crean. What it is, is all of those unions acting as part of a national negotiating team. The same on tax. I have my own views on tax, but I must say that what's important is not for me to have my own little view but for the ACTU to have people like McDonald and Mansfield and that group of people working together as a team. I think what you're seeing from the trade union movement is a discipline and people perhaps didn't expect that discipline. You've got to ask yourself why you get that discipline, that collective commitment. You don't get it because people like Simon Crean or like me have them agree with our views, you get it because the system is producing something of substance.
Bill Kelty
Alfred E. Neuman
The Leader of the Opposition said, `I have got a lot of plans swimming around my mind. It will sort of dribble out.' He is a bit like Alfred E. Neuman of the Mad magazine—maybe his brains will drip out, too.
Paul Keating
Purchase Fine Lines
