Arbitration, Legislation and Industrial Peace: Queensland in the Reconstruction Years

Abstract

There is a wide consensus in Australian historical scholarship which supports the thesis that 'the Australian states have traditionally displayed an exceptional level of state regulation designed to institutionalise industrial conflict'.1 The focus here on the State level of government in the Australian federation is appropriate. Within their borders, State parliaments have been free to decide their responses to industrial relations issues. National governments, on the other hand, have been constrained in these choices by constitutional considerations. This focus also exposes varying patterns of regulation which require analysis and explanation before a completely satisfactory definition of the role of the state in Australian industrial relations is possible. This regulation has taken several forms, the most important of which were direct legislation on industrial matters and the development of systems of conciliation and arbitration. The legislation which established these systems was also used to regulate industrial relations directly in that it often specified statutory minima in certain working conditions and the like. An identification of the regulatory patterns requires an explanation of the principles adopted by arbitral tribunals, how legislative initiatives were taken and how governments decided the mix between the use of legislation and reliance on the processes of arbitration in influencing the pace and direction of change in industrial relationships. Such a task is clearly beyond the scope of one paper. Individual studies can, however, provide the material for subsequent comparative analysis. In discussing the development of arbitration in Australia, Gill Palmer called for 'more studies of the different factors affecting the separate State systems'.2 This paper thus examines the ways in which the regulatory issues were addressed in the particular case of Australian Labor Party (ALP) governments in Queensland under the premiership of E.M. Hanlon. The outlines of a political economy of the arbitration system in Queensland in the reconstruction years after World War II emerge from this analysis.3 One dimension of this political economy is