The Liberal leadership saga has overshadowed growing unrest within the Government over industrial relations, which the Prime Minister will again avoid this week. Some backbenchers fear Julia Gillard’s proposed industrial relations legislation is too similar to Work Choices. Last Tuesday, while Brendan Nelson was being dumped, New South Wales senator Steve Hutchins was telling a restive Labor caucus that the legislation was “Work Choices lite”.

Labor’s substitute for WorkChoices, which it calls Forward With Fairness, is no counter-revolution. In a way, it’s more an attempt to make WorkChoices more efficient, the sort of prescription that John Howard might have gone for had he not been overwhelmed by the desire to leave behind a profound ideological mark.

The Workplace Relations Minister will not readily admit it, but a fair slab of the Howard Government’s Work Choices regime will remain: things such as restrictions on the content of union bargaining claims, no industry-wide strikes and no arbitration of union wage claims except in exceptional circumstances.

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.

In a speech today titled ‘Introducing Australia’s New Workplace Relations System’, Julia Gillard threw down the gauntlet to the Coalition, arguing the Rudd Government had a mandate to introduce the next wave of legislation to end the previous Work Choices regime.

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson will shortly announce a $30-a-week increase to the singles rate for pensioners and a bonus payment of about $500 a year to be paid shortly. The Coalition is trying to capitalise as the Rudd Government ties itself in knots by conceding pensioners can’t live on what they are paid now. The Coalition resisted pressure to lift the pension rate in the dying days of the Howard government - including rejecting a push by then minister Mal Brough.

Federal Education Minister Gillard claims the debate about resourcing is over. She echoes political opponents who haven’t given a damn about educational equity since the Menzies era. The debate, according to Rudd and Gillard, is now about values and tough love — which means tough times for many government schools.

Kevin Rudd fought the election by promising “fresh leadership” that would make our lives better without involving unpopular change. Indeed, he promised to retain vast swathes of John Howard’s policies. In short, he promised change without change. The public’s slowly growing disillusionment with the Rudd Government represents its dawning realisation that change without change isn’t possible.

Julia Gillard flagged Labor’s intentions in school education during an interview on the ABC in August. At the moment state and territory governments, supported by teachers’ unions, refuse to provide meaningful statistics. So it is impossible to determine which schools are achieving the best results and which are the best managed.

While the construction union last night said the Australian Building and Construction Commission had a record of attempting to smear building workers with false allegations, Industrial Relations Minister Julia Gillard said the abuse of ABCC inspectors was “grossly unacceptable” and that the industry’s “tough cop” would be retained.