This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A secretive review into the union movement’s federal election campaign has highlighted that it had the right policy ideas but the wrong slogan.

The review, conducted by Evan Moorhead, a former Queensland state Labor MP, and its recommendations were unanimously endorsed at a two-day Australian Council of Trade Unions executive meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The executive resolved to continue its political campaign, despite criticism from within the movement that they should refocus on workplace organising and the charge that it failed to eject the Morrison government despite spending between $17m and $25m.

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The determination to double down on political campaigning reflects the current ACTU leadership’s view that industrial rights cannot be restored without changes to legislation and that political and industrial campaigns are complementary.

Despite the review endorsing the Change the Rules policy aims of greater bargaining rights, security of work and raising the minimum wage, it concluded that the slogan calling for broad systemic change was not sharp enough to cut through in the election campaign.

The ACTU secretary Sally McManus told Guardian Australia in May that voters agreed with the campaign’s aims, but when the “promise of pay rises once removed” through the Fair Work Commission lifting minimum wages or better bargaining rights was put up against the perception people would “immediately be taxed more” under Labor, the fear campaign won.

The review defended the ACTU against the charge it put all its eggs in one basket by betting on a Labor win, arguing that changes to labour law will be a decades-long project and could not have been achieved in one electoral cycle regardless of the outcome.

Guardian Australia understands the review did not make recommendations about the amount spent on the campaign.

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An ACTU spokesman told Guardian Australia the union movement had “a long-term vision to improve workers’ rights”.



“The Change the Rules campaign is an ambitious and necessary campaign that is fighting for long-term solutions to the problems that three decades of trickle-down economics have wrought in our workplaces and in our society,” he said.



“We have made incredible progress in the last two years, thanks to the efforts of thousands of working people nationwide.



“The election was a milestone in the campaign to achieve this and the result gave us an opportunity to review our progress and strategy, so the campaign can continue to move our country towards fairness.”

Ahead of the internal circulation of the review, the Electrical Trades Union Victorian secretary, Troy Gray, said he hoped the union movement “doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” because the campaign “was never purely about getting rid of a conservative government”.

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He blamed Labor’s election loss on “unique factors” including Clive Palmer’s $60 million electoral spend and argued it would be wrong to say the union campaign was a factor in the defeat.

Gray credited the campaign with “revitalising the union movement in Victoria”, citing three mass mobilisations leading up to the election.

“The union movement doesn’t want to be like the political parties, eating themselves after federal election losses.”

Unions have heavily invested in political campaigns since the former ACTU secretary Dave Oliver introduced a permanent campaign levy on affiliates in 2015 to attempt to replicate the success of the Your Rights at Work campaign which helped unseat the Howard government in 2007.

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Tim Kennedy, the National Union of Workers national secretary, said in May that the 2019 campaign talked about “the right issues at the right time” but questioned whether Change the Rules was “a vague solution”.

“The movement lives and dies on whether people have hope to join and act in concert – you do that first and the rest follows,” he told Guardian Australia. “I think [organising] needs to be first, second and third priority.”

“The reality is a media political campaigning strategy is alluring because it is exciting – but nothing beats the fundamental relationship of organising.”

Tim Lyons, a former assistant secretary of the ACTU, criticised the campaign as “nebulous” and lamented that targeting blue-ribbon seats was a “hubristic vanity project”.