A Brown Union Thanks Professor Tim Flannery

Following Professor Tim Flannery's address to the 2007 Biennial AWU National Conference on climate change, National Secretary Bill Shorten offered a vote of thanks.

Tim, I'm not sure the last time some of the faces before us sat in a science lecture, but I know they appreciated it.

Tim, our union is about softening the pain in life. Our union is concerned about the satisfaction of the deeply-felt needs of our members and their families. For this conference, standing up for working families, the topic of the climate change, like industrial relations, like skills, manufacturing, water and regional development is a future issue that we have to be preparing for now.

Climate change goes to the sustainability of the jobs of our members and I think that the future job security of many of our members is enhanced by dealing with the agenda which Tim Flannery laid out today. It is not only jobs, we need to look at less polluting technologies.

Despite what the Prime Minister says, new sources of energy are sensible. Despite what the Prime Minister would say, the promotion of bio-fields is sensible. Carbon trading will arrive. If Arnold Schwarzenegger can have a look at it, I predict we can. If Arnold Schwarzenegger is the terminator, then our Prime Minister is the acrobat.

Having more fuel efficient cars, well, that is going to come. Greater efficiency standards for electrical appliances, gee that's a subversive communistic notion! Funding research, that will kill jobs won't it?

This union and all of you know every day that change is inevitable. We see when our mates get badly injured or killed at work, we see companies after the event, after the funerals, they spend 10 and 20 times the amount of money after the tragedy than they did before the tragedy.

The point about climate change that when bad things happen, companies spent 10 or 20 times than they could have now. We know that industry needs to be hurried along and that's the agenda of this union. We know the history of Australia at war or the history of the Australian merchant seafarer. We would send these people to war and conflict in underfunded circumstances with not the right weapons and not the right ships. Then of course when tragedy strikes then we make the effort. Why does it take disaster for some people to wake up and do something? That's why we've got Tim Flannery at this conference.

We also know, covering manufacturing, that many companies in Australia love tariffs, but they didn't use tariffs to re-invest in new technology. They kept cutting the profits and then when the tariffs left, they left too. So when some industry says it rejects the agenda of climate change and tries to scare our members, ask yourself is that because this company is spending millions and millions of dollars on new technology or is it just dividing up the dividends to shareholders and when the music stops they leave?

We firmly support steel, love our steel, love our aluminium, love our glass. We love all the industries which use energy. We are not a label. We're a brown union. We like our extraction. We like to see things being built. I know many of you love the big trucks. We like the processes, but we are also going to do something else here. Apart from the merit of the issue and the merit of the agenda which we've heard discussed here for us to contemplate, I would suggest to you that we have another obligation in light of Tim's talk.

We must be vigilant to make sure that, on the one hand, the Prime Minister, the Johnny Come Latelys, that they don't polarize the issue and just simply scare people and say 'change or jobs'. On the other hand, we've got to be vigilant against the tree-huggers, the Bob Browns who'll say that within three years there should be no coal. He does a great disservice to the climate change process because he plays right into the Prime Minister's hands. He's interested in the 5% of inner city greens who will vote for whatever, who most likely want to go back and live in a cave with no electricity - try that for a while.

So between those two extremes of reaction and craziness, this union has an obligation to walk a moderate middle of the road path, a strong path promoting change. We must not allow this allow this issue to be simply polarized into two joint positions. I also have to say that apart from the merit of the issue, something which William Spence said: "The working man must take his proper place in the nation" and our union has a role in that.

Our union is not a university of scientists or intellectuals. We're union reps in the real economy looking after working families but in this role, we have to understand that to look after working families, we must protect our democracy. You might be thinking what about democracy in the context of what Tim Flannery's been saying. It's simply this and you can see it in today's newspapers.

The problem with scientists and intellectuals of this country is that they are confronted with very serious problems. The Prime Minister has managed to instill suspicion about the future into the public by dangling before their eyes the danger from without it. Remember the parents on the ship when he accused of throwing their kids overboard when in fact the boat was sinking? Remember when it was the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Now what he does is he tries to scare us. He tries to make us smaller than what we are by saying that talking about some of the reasonable agenda of climate change in Western Australia will cost jobs.

This conference, I suggest to you, and this union, we might think as union reps we don't carry this responsibility, but I suggest to you we do. We have a responsibility to follow our conscience. We have a responsibility to carry through a discussion of the inherent problems in Australian society, so we make it easy for our members and their families to understand and be empowered in their communities.

I think that this conference and Tim's talk is a proper source of congratulation because industrial relations or climate change, we, despite the views of the government in Canberra, have a forum here free of the suggestive power of the political fascists and fads of the Howard Government. We provide an environment where ideas can be debated. We employed John Curtin who led the debate against conscription in World War 1. We employed him in our union. We gave him a job when he lost his seat in 1931. This union had Mary Gilmore who was a leader for the popular views in the 1920s that were shared in the Women's Page of The Worker. Henry Booth was the editor of The Worker and his ideas were very inflammatory and mainstream press would thunder about the conduct of some of our representatives. We in this union have always stood for the free discussion of ideas, regardless of the political fashion of the day and I think that is the cornerstone of what it is to be Australian in our democracy.

We've always stood for good jobs, friends. We stand for jobs which are high paid, which are safe, which are skilled, but may I suggest to you that another aspect of a good job is that the job is a sustainable job. So thank you, Tim Flannery, for giving us some ideas how we can sustain our jobs and carry out our mission to ensure that the working of Australia can take its proper role in society.