Coming almost 10 months after the Labor Party was swept to power on a promise to tear up the WorkChoices laws, the Workplace Relations Minister’s speech fleshing out the details of the Rudd Government’s replacement industrial relations regime was met with anger from unions, particularly over the revised unfair-dismissal rules.

If both parties can come to agreement it raises the prospect of a bipartisan report that for the first time in the country’s history recommends the introduction of legislatively mandated caps on campaign spending. The model that has committee members most interested is the “cap and gap” system used in Canada.

Union leaders have unveiled plans for a three-week advertising blitz highlighting the fact that the Australian Building and Construction Commission is empowered to fine individual workers up to $22,000 for stopping work, or jail them for six months for simply refusing to answer questions about union activities.

The states are expected to resist the push by the Federal Government to take over industrial relations, while the unions have complained that too few details have emerged to date on the shape of the proposed system. However, ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said a national system could still be delivered within the framework of the government’s existing Forward with Fairness policy.

It’s all very well to talk up co-operative industrial relations but if one party, in this case Telstra, a very big and powerful employer with a massive amount of market share, does not want to co-operate, you won’t get where you want to go. It takes more than good intentions, gently delivered.

Recruitment proposals include offering hugely discounted union fees to student workers and linkages to better-paid jobs in unionised workplaces. Unions said the federal and state Labor governments should consider taxpayer funding for the program because the strategy was designed to make young people aware of their rights at work.