Shorten, Smith vow to fight IR laws

Wednesday, November 17, 1993 - 11:00

MELBOURNE — "We gotta get rid of the Howard government", Bill Shorten, the national secretary of the Australia Workers Union, told a mass meeting of 900 AWU and Health Services Union members at the Dallas Brookes Hall on November 4.

Stephen Smith, federal Labor shadow minister for industrial relations, told the meeting that he would "take the fight up day by day". He said the anti-unions laws were "un-Australian" and would produce a US-style working poor.

Smith said that the ALP would "win the 2007 elections and we will tear up the laws".

"We will fight fire with fire", said Shorten. "We will use all means possible. We will fight the laws in factories, in homes and at elections. Our aim is the removal of the Howard government."

James Vassilopoulos

From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.

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From GLW issue 648