The Slow and Agonising Death of the Australian Experiment with Conciliation and Arbitration

Abstract

For most of this century Australian industrial relations has been regarded as distinctive because of the prominent role performed by industrial tribunals in regulating disputes between the parties. The role of the mainstream federal tribunal was possibly at its zenith in the period 1983 to 1990, in implementing and policing an ‘orderly system’ of industrial relations regulation. By the latter part of the 1990s the role of this tribunal had substantially diminished. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission had come under increasing attack in the early 1990s over its failure to endorse a move to a new system of regulation known as enterprise bargaining. Both the Australian Labor Party and the Howard coalition government, after its election in March 1996, introduced legislation to reduce the Commission’s ability to perform its traditional functions. The paper draws on theories of regulation, in particular the insights of Joskow and Wilson, to explain the slippage and increasing decline in the role of the Commission.