Table Of ContentHow Labour Built Neoliberalism
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Studies in
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volume 126
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How Labour Built Neoliberalism
Australia’s Accord, the Labour Movement
and the Neoliberal Project
By
Elizabeth Humphrys
leiden | boston
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Cover illustration: Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher --
at 10 Downing Street, London in 1986. With kind permission of Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Humphrys, Elizabeth, author.
Title: How labour built neoliberalism : Australia’s accord, the labour
movement and the neoliberal project / by Elizabeth Humphrys.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Studies in critical
social sciences, ISSN 1573-4234 ; volume 126 | “This book draws on my
Ph.D., which I completed in the Department of Political Economy at the
University of Sydney”-- Author’s acknowledgments. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038577 (print) | LCCN 2018044459 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004383463 (E-Book) | ISBN 9789004349001 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Australia--Economic conditions--1945- | Labor
movement--Australia. | Neoliberalism--Australia. | Australian Labor Party.
| Australian Council of Trade Unions. | Australia--Politics and
government--1945-
Classification: LCC HC605 (ebook) | LCC HC605 .H775 2019 (print) | DDC
320.51/30994--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038577
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1573-4234
ISBN 978-90-04-34900-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-38346-3 (e-book)
Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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Contents
Acknowledgements IX
List of Illustrations X
List of Abbreviations XI
1 Introduction 1
1 The ALP & ACTU Accord 3
2 The Social Contract’s Gala Dinner 6
3 Neoliberalism’s Corporatist Origins 8
4 A Hegemonic Political Project 10
5 Corporatist ‘involucro’ 12
6 A Note on Method 13
7 Structure of the Book 16
2 Theorising the State–Civil Society Relationship 19
1 Introduction 19
1.1 Some Preliminary Comments 20
2 Marx’s Critique of Hegel 22
3 From Critique of Politics to Critique of Political Economy 27
4 From Marx to Gramsci 28
4.1 Lo stato integrale 29
5 Gramsci contra Marx? The Limits of Integration 32
6 Conclusion 34
3 Corporatism in Australia 36
1 Introduction 36
2 Understanding Corporatism 37
3 Panitch’s Approach 38
4 Corporatism and the Accord 41
5 The Context of Arbitration 45
6 Conclusion 50
4 Destabilising the Dominant Narrative 52
1 Introduction 52
1.1 Conceptual Diversity 53
2 The Dominant Narrative 54
2.1 Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism 55
2.2 Klein: The Shock Doctrine 58
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vi Contents
2.3 Peck, Theodore, Tickell and Brenner: ‘Neoliberalisation’ 59
2.4 Destabilising the Dominant Narrative 62
3 A Class Approach to Neoliberalism 64
3.1 Harvey: ‘The Restoration of Class Power’ 66
3.2 Davidson: ‘An Entirely New Political Regime’ 68
3.3 A Hegemonic Political Project 70
4 Conclusion 72
5 Periodising Neoliberalism 74
1 Introduction 74
2 Periodising Neoliberalism in Australia 75
3 Proto-neoliberal stage: 1973–1983 77
3.1 The Economic Crisis 77
3.2 The Whitlam Government 81
3.3 The Fraser Government 88
4 Vanguard Neoliberal Stage: 1983–1993 93
4.1 The Impasse of the 1970s 93
4.2 Developing the Accord 97
5 Piecemeal Neoliberalisation Stage: 1993–2008 101
5.1 Howard’s Piecemeal Neoliberalism 104
6 Crisis stage: 2008 Onwards 106
7 Conclusion 107
6 The Disorganisation of Labour 109
1 Introduction 109
2 The Accord Agreement 110
3 Wages and the Accord 113
3.1 The First Accord (1983) 114
3.2 Accord Mark II (1985–1987) 116
3.3 Accord Mark III (1986–1987) 118
3.4 Accord Mark IV (1988–1989), V (1989–1990) & VI
(1990–1993) 119
3.5 Accord Mark VII (1993) & VIII (Draft Only) 122
4 Wage Suppression 124
4.1 Labour Disorganisation 127
5 Conclusion 129
7 An Integral State 132
1 Introduction 132
2 Accord Divergences 133
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Contents vii
2.1 The National Economic Summit and Communiqué 133
2.2 Prices 138
2.3 ‘Big Bang’ and Other Neoliberal Reforms 140
2.4 Trade Liberalisation 142
3 Privatisation 143
4 Social Wage and Contested Understandings 145
4.1 Medicare 147
4.2 Superannuation 148
4.3 Worth the Cost? 152
5 The Concord of Neoliberalism and the Accord 153
5.1 A Brace against Neoliberalism? 154
5.2 Theorising the Corporatism–neoliberalism
Connection 159
5.3 An ‘Informal Accord’? 161
5.4 The Accord as Involucro 163
6 Conclusion 166
8 How Labour Made Neoliberalism 167
1 Introduction 167
2 From Worker Agency to State Agency 168
2.1 The Shift to Support the Accord 169
2.2 Planning as a Solution to Crisis? 173
2.3 Consultation on, and Support for, the Accord 174
2.4 Sticking with the Accord 176
2.5 Industry Policy and Australia Reconstructed 179
3 Managing Dissent and Disorganising Labour 185
3.1 Civil Legal Action against Labour Disputes 185
3.2 Deregistration of the Builders Labourers’
Federation 189
3.3 Pilots’ Dispute 191
4 Enterprise Bargaining and the Antinomies of the Accord 195
4.1 Hegemony Unravelling 199
5 Conclusion 205
9 A Return to the International 207
1 Introduction 207
2 A Brief Detour in the Antipodes 209
3 The British Social Contract (1974–1979) 211
4 The Carter Administration (1977–1981) and Prior 214
5 New York City Council Fiscal Crisis (1975–1981) 217
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viii Contents
6 Contemporary Finland 220
7 Conclusion 221
10 Conclusion: Neoliberalism at Dusk 224
1 Internal Relations 224
2 Antinomies and Residues 226
3 Neoliberalism at Dusk 228
Appendices 231
Appendix A: List of Australian Governments 231
Appendix B: Timeline of Predecessors to the AMWU 231
References 233
Index 262
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Acknowledgements
I acknowledge the assistance of the Noel Butlin Archives at the Australian Na-
tional University, and the University of Melbourne Archives. For permission to
access collections, I thank the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the
Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) and the National and Victorian Branches
of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU). For access to oth-
er materials, I thank the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library, the National
Archives of Australia, the University of Sydney Library, Frank Stilwell, Paul Fri-
jters and Robert Gregory. In 2013, I received the University of Sydney & WZB
Fellowship at the Berlin Social Science Research Centre and I thank John Ke-
ane. I thank Dieter Plehwe for his support and friendship while I was in Berlin,
and in the years following. I am also grateful to the Varuna National Writers’
House for two residencies. Thank you to Lisa Adkins and the participants in the
Neoliberalism’s Complexities workshop at the University of Newcastle (Sydney
Campus) in December 2017, as their presentations and feedback on my paper
provided excellent motivation for revisions on the final chapter of this book.
Thank you to Peter Thomas, Colin Barker, Jenny Haines, Humphrey McQueen
and, more sadly, Frans Timmerman (1947–2014) and John Kaye (1955–2016) for
advice during my research. I acknowledge the assistance of Kieran Latty in cre-
ating Figure 6.2, Margie Tubbs for proofreading and Amy Thomas for the index.
My colleagues at the University of Technology Sydney have provided incred-
ible support while I was writing this book: thank you to Chris Ho, Liz Giuffre,
Sarah Attfield, Lucy Fiske, Ben Abraham, Devleena Ghosh and Maryanne
Dever. This book draws on my Ph.D., which I completed in the Department
of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. I thank Gareth Bryant and
Adam Morton in particular. My Ph.D. supervisor, Damien Cahill, and associate
supervisor, Bill Dunn, were unfailingly generous. I am particularly indebted to
Damien for his guidance, astuteness and for our friendship over many years.
This book also benefitted from the thoughtful feedback provided by my Ph.D.
examiners, and I thank Alfredo Saad-Filho, Andreas Bieler and Carol John-
son. Thank you to David Fasenfest, Jennifer Obdam and Judy Pereira for their
thoughtful guidance and the opportunity to publish in this series.
Finally, thank you to my friends and family for their support. Thank you
to Tadeusz Tietze for everything he did that made the Ph.D., which this book
draws on, possible. Thank you to Frank Humphrys, Susan Humphrys, Fiona
Collison, Luke Humphrys, Rachael Humphrys, Katerina Kraenzel-Paneras,
Martin Kraenzel, Clinton Hill, Claire Parfitt, Eve Vincent, Jessica Whyte, Ihab
Shalbek, Inger Mewburn, Tom Barnes, Rory Dufficy, Elena Gomez, Zoe Bow-
man, Frances Lockie and Devina Potter.
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