This paper examines recent attempts to quantify the effects of some major microeconomic reforms on the Australian economy. These micro reforms improve competitiveness. Such measures, however, would apparently do little to raise the share of the manufacturing sector in national product despite induced improvements in competitiveness. The relationship between micro reform and the balance of payments is explored. Some attempts to measure the impact of specific micro reform on the environment are also analysed.

There is general agreement that the economy is in slump. There is also general agreement that the slump is the product of macroeconomic policy. In an attempt to redress the adverse balance of payments public policy has dampened economic activity through tight fiscal and monetary policy. The need to contain the growth in imports will have a vital bearing on the economic growth facilitated by public policy in the short and medium term. The paper details the factors determining the appropriate levels of growth in the short term which will enable a “soft” landing for the economy. However, the paper doubts that this “soft” landing will be achieved. The paper also examines the longer term prospects. It argues that, given the appropriate policy framework, a period of prosperity is achievable.

The major focus of contemporary industrial relations is award restructuring. This restructuring, with its potential to facilitate a better skilled, more flexible and more efficient workforce is integrally related to the National Wage determining process and the ACTU-ALP Accord. It is also a key to international competitiveness and the wellbeing of the manufacturing sector. In recent years the wage determination process has attempted to reduce those normative forces which industrial tribunals have institutionalized — in particular comparative wage justice and real wage maintenance. This attempt has created a number of tensions: control versus flexibility; cost of living versus productivity; centralism versus decentralism; paid rates versus minimum rates; supplementary payments versus over award payments; equity versus efficiency. The system’s capacity to resolve these tensions without merely returning to established wage settlement practices will determine the efficacy of the restructuring exercise. It will also shape the contours of industrial relations for the next decade.

This paper examines the evolution of monetary policy in Australia since the mid 1980s when financial markets were rapidly deregulated. The paper discusses the conduct of monetary policy within the framework of monetary targeting and how deregulation affected this framework. Alternative strategies for conducting monetary policy are discussed. However, it is argued that since 1985, monetary authorities have often changed the focus of monetary policy with no specific framework within which the policy is implemented.

Deregulation has forced interest rates to become the main focus of monetary policy. But, since the deregulation of financial markets, the transmission mechanism by which interest rates affect the economy, has changed significantly.

The central objective of the Opposition’s industrial relations policy is to provide an enterprise focus to the current industrial relations system. Deregulation will be achieved by introducing voluntary unionism and creating an alternative industrial relations stream of enterprise-based voluntary agreements alongside the existing system. The new agreements will have the status of awards but will not be within the purview of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC). Over time, the alternative, deregulated system would become the predominant one as employers recognised its benefits and opted out of the centralised system. Greater flexibility would lead to greater productivity without the problem of wage break-outs.

The Australian economy has increasingly come under the influence of international factors. This has placed greater pressures on Australian businesses to be more competitive. This requires changes in both management and union practices, and changes in the institutional arrangements in which industrial relations are conducted. The paper argues the case for the general movement to enterprise bargaining. This will necessitate a major overhauling of bargaining structures and of trade union and employer association structures and practices. The award restructuring brought about by National Wage Case decisions provides but a preliminary step in the movement to an enterprise focus which will be critical to internationally competitive industries.

In recent years National Wage guide-lines have attempted to facilitate the implementation of a system of “administered flexibility”. The Efficiency and Restructuring Principle adopted in March 1987, and the Structural Efficiency Principle adopted in August 1988, have been the major instruments of this attempt. In different industries and enterprises these principles have resulted in differing outcomes and approaches. In some industries, such as the chemical, steel and aluminium industries, restructuring has taken place at a company and/or enterprise level. In other industries such as metal fabrication, road transport, building and construction, a “blue-print” industry approach has been adopted. This paper examines award restructuring in such a “blue-print” industry.

Government policy has sought to counter a deteriorating current account deficit by a regime of high interest rates. This paper analyses this policy prescription and argues that less reliance on monetary policy is essential for containing external debt.

The Accord has been a feature of the Labor Government's economic and industrial relations management since 1983. It has had both its critics and supporters. The paper assesses the Accord on a number of economic and non-economic criteria.

Economists tend to have a bias towards faith in market forces. For many economists this is re-enforced by a libertarian social philosophy. Professional judgements made by such economists often reflect their social philosophy as much as the conclusions of purely economic analysis.

While the 1980s saw major changes to the Australian tax system which sought both to reduce avoidance and evasion and to reform the base structure of income tax, there are design deficiencies in some of these changes which must be attended to. Also a much closer approach to comprehensive and consistent taxation of investment income should be attempted. On the side of indirect tax the replacement of the wholesale sales tax by a broadly based value added tax is highly desirable, but is unlikely to be achievable politically unless lpart of a strategy which combines sales tax reform, tax mix change and income tax reform. In any case, meaningful and durable reform of the tax system requires a basic community consensus which cuts across sectional interest groups and political parties.

In the past decade there has been a retreat from full employment and a fundamental change in the labour market away from physical production work and towards the service sector. There have been changes in the structure of industry and the workforce, and changes in arrangements under which work is performed. There is emerging a secondary or marginal labour market in which both full-time and casual, temporary and part-time workers are confronted with a situation where they are required to decide whether or not to enter work arrangements geared to the flexible organisational needs of the business enterprise rather than their own needs. Tensions between employer demands for flexibility, and for a largely unregulated use of the workforce, and employee concern to ensure job security and minimal protection in employment (including health and safety) means that employment law today has to respond to organizational relationships in determining whether or not to intervene between the parties to new work arrangements. The question is whether or not the principles of traditional employment law are flexible enough to become the legal framework of a technological society.

This paper examines the defeat of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) in the 1989 pilots’ dispute in terms of strategic inertia. In challenging the Government, the Commission, the ACTU and the airlines over the wage fixation guidelines the AFAP failed to take full account of the current industrial relations context. A successful attempt by the Federation to achieve increases outside the indexation buidelines in 1977–78 ever one of the significant examples of AFAP strength in past campaigns which may have led the Federation leadership to emulate previous strategies. The AFAP thus limited consideration of tactical options in 1989. Its reaction to legal action initiated by the airlines was to organise the mass resignation of members, weakening its bargaining position. Both US air traffic controllers in their 1984 dispute and the AFAP maintained inflexible courses, ignoring every opportunity to retreat and regoup in the face of major defeats. In contrast, Qantas pilots and Australian Air Traffic Controllers gained significant salary increases within the guidelines. Having lost exclusive coverage of pilots, the Federation’s future may now be dependent on closer links with the trade union movement and amalgamation.

The 1980s was a decade in which federal governments tackled the problem of massive tax avoidance by corporations. Taxation Reforms have reduced tax avoidance but have not been totally successful. This paper develops five propositions designed to bring about a tight and economically efficient system.

This paper summarises the conclusion of an OECD-based study on the nature and dynamics of change in industrial relations. A number of industrialised market countries are examined, six of which — Australia, Japan, Britain, the United States of America, West Germany and Sweden — are the focus of a detailed study. Successive parts of the paper examine the experience of change, the agents of change, factors facilitating change, and barriers to change. The paper concludes with several generalised propositions about the macro change process drawn from the experience of the countries reviewed, and a review of policy options.

The Trade Union movement enters the 1990s at the height of its political strength. The Accord relationship has proved to be flexible enough to accommodate the political and economic needs of both Accord partners. The trade union movement’s strategy for the 1990s has been formulated within the protective umbrella of the Accord.

The trade union movement has both a vision of the future and an ambitious set of strategies aimed at securing its position within Australian society. The key challenge facing the movement is the reversal of the decline in trade union participation rates. Trade union amalgamation leading to the creation of 20 large efficient union federations will generate scale economies which will free up resources for recruitment campaigns and additional services.

The strategy of the trade union movement requires critical examination in the light of structural changes to the economy, the diversity of the labour market and new management approaches to human resource management. These factors require that unions adopt a number of diverse strategies to secure the future of the union movement. New and more decentralised union structures may be required to unionise workers in non-traditional areas. The union movement needs to constantly review its strategies to ensure they remain relevant to changing realities.