Archbishop Peter Jensen, of the Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney, spoke out at Synod at the weekend on the proposed industrial relations changes. He said that suggestions that new industrial relations reforms were about making ‘Sunday the new Monday’ earned a stern warning. “If this is a consequence of the new legislation there won’t be time for relationships - and that’s what life is about, not merely the economy.”These statements are much appreciated in support of working families. Just they're fifteen years too late. Clearly, the Archbishop, like John Howard, is not aware of the great and significant changes that have occurred in the workplace over the last fifteen years with the trade-offs firstly of the Second Tier, then Award Restructuring and Enterprise Bargaining. Where was the church when retail trading hours and liquor licensing hours were being extended? Where was the church when seven day weeks and fourteen days on and seven days off were being negotiated?
I was a union official when the Full Bench of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission was going up and down the state holding hearings into an application for seven day trading in the retail sector. The system was quite simple. Anyone could walk off the street and say their piece to the Commission. The church was conspicuous by its absence - with one exception: a Catholic priest in Cairns. I came to the conclusion that the church clearly thought it only represented middle class white collar workers. It was so divorced from workplace reality. Then I wonder how many practising Christians (let's not mention the not-so-practising Christians) including those wonderful evangelical puritans of the Diocese of Sydney regularly go shopping on Sundays at their local shopping mall?
This time the Catholic Church makes sense with its spokesman John Ryan. John Ryan was a good and reasonable bloke when I used to deal with him in Queensland some years ago when he acted on behalf of Catholic Church employers. He seems just as reasonable to-day when he speaks for the Australian Catholic Commission for Employment Relations. Other denominations: please take note.
