Media bosses censor union campaign

Sue Bolton, Melbourne

The implications of the Howard government's draconian new workplace laws have dominated the airwaves over the last couple of weeks. You would therefore think that the decision by a meeting of 1800 union delegates to support a mass workers' protest on June 28 against the new laws would be big news.

The delegates' meeting on March 29 was followed by a march of 2000 unionists through the streets of Melbourne protesting Howard's Work Choices legislation. The delegates' meeting and rally were well covered by the electronic media but the newspapers tried to bury the story.

The next day's Herald Sun had two paragraphs on the delegates' meeting in an article with a general industrial relations headline at the bottom of page nine. There wasn't even a photo of the protest to indicate that there was a unionists' march in Melbourne on the previous day.

The March 30 Age did a bit better. Although its article on the delegates' meeting and rally was pushed to page six and the headline was about the workplace relations minister, at least there was a big photo of the protest and most of the article was about the delegates' meeting.

However, the delegates' meeting and the union protest weren't obvious in the online versions of either the Herald Sun or the Age because the article headlines didn't indicate anything about a union campaign or union response to the laws.

This is a change from last year when the Melbourne papers gave prominent coverage to the mass delegates' meetings with big photos.

Murdoch's Australian and the Sydney newspapers ignored the Melbourne delegates' meeting despite covering similar meetings last year.

In Brisbane, 1000 workers gathered for a Queensland Council of Unions-organised Workers Breakfast with speakers on March 29 to protest against the new federal laws. Brisbane only has one daily paper, the Courier Mail, and there was not a single word about the protest despite it being the most significant news event in Brisbane that day.

The media bosses' censorship of or downplaying of articles about the union movement's response to Work Choices indicates that they are scared of the potential of the workers' movement in Australia in case the sleeping giant wakes up and takes the path of the French workers and students.

From Green Left Weekly, April 5, 2006.

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From GLW issue 663