Bob Nanva addresses ALP conference

National Secretary of the RTBU, Bob Nanva, gave a stirring speech at the ALP Conference, focusing in on the National Transport Commission and the fatigue shift limit legislation.

Read the transcript of his speech below.

Delegates,  this week has been dominated by a debate about values.

And after the avalanche of commentary, in which just about everyone seems to have weighed in at some point, I’d suggest as a movement we seem to reached general agreement that our values are not the Greens’ values.

So we know what we aren’t. We now need to work harder on who we are.

Because while it pains me to say it, as a party we often confuse the average Australian in terms of our identity.

In a recent national poll people were asked about each of the major parties and if they were ‘clear about what they stand for’. Only 28 per cent give the ALP the nod.

In comparison, 44 per cent said they were clear about what the Liberal Party stood for.

How can this be? Surely it is obvious what we stand for. Our origins, our history, even our name all leave little room for doubt.

We stand for working people.

If we are to stand for anything at all, we must stand for this first. It’s who we are.

Few parties would dedicate the time to work through the issues that we are right now in this prosperity and fairness at work debate.

Yet the public doesn’t seem so sure anymore. Despite our origins and our history and our name – they are confused.

Why is that?

Two recent experiences from working with transport workers have given me an indication of why people – particularly many workers – do not understand Labor.

The first concerns rail safety.

After the Waterfall rail disaster of 2003 – in which seven people, including the driver, were killed – the then NSW Labor Government introduced legislation mandating a maximum of 12 hour shifts for train drivers in this state.The new laws, as you can imagine, were popular. People have little trouble grasping the fact that we should have laws against making train drivers work excessive shifts of more than 12 hours at a time.

Yet, remarkably, not all states have such limits enforced by legislation.

But in NSW we do – a universally, popular, common-sense law to protect rail workers and commuters.

This year, the federal government reached the pointy end of its efforts to harmonise national rail safety laws across the states.

The RTBU had argued that the NSW example should set the way forward for all other states so that rail workers and passengers around the country could be protected by a 12 hour cap cap on shift lengths.

Yet the rail bosses bucked.

They argued that such restrictions might create rostering problems and administrative difficulties. They argued it would hamper flexibility – without providing one, single, solitary example how.

A Labor Party representing working people, when faced with a choice between a compelling case from a union about safety and a tenuous argument from industry about administrative efficiency, should not – you would imagine – struggle to choose.

Yet the industry argument somehow won through. The NSW benchmark, born out of real life experience and loss, will be disregarded. There will now be no 12-hour cap for train drivers across the country under the new harmonised laws.

A race to the bottom and a disgraceful sop to the bosses.

The only reasons NSW still has the cap on the books today is that the Liberal State Transport Minister stuck up for the laws. Yet rather than grant a permanent exemption, pressure was placed, deals were done, compromises struck, and NSW itself is now only immune from these draconian changes through a three year exemption.

A Tory state minister backing the interests of working people against a number of Labor representatives – be they Ministers, advisers or bureaucrats – that also sat in the damn room.

No wonder people get a bit confused.

The other experience that drilled home the point came last year when I was first elected as National Secretary of the RTBU.

I was making the rounds as you do, introducing myself to relevant individuals, talking about my general goals, how I might be able help, what help I might be able to use.

During a meeting with a federal cabinet minister I made a typical offer of friendship and aligned interests, I said: “If there’s a government announcement or initiative that is in the interests of my members and the public – let me know, and I’ll help publicly back it in.”

Not a particularly controversial offer, I thought at the time. Yet the response genuinely stunned me.

The minister’s staffer leaned over and said: ‘Listen Bob, no offence, but we’re actually trying to distance ourselves from the Unions.’

The minister did not flinch, let alone intervene.

A party defined by the interests of working people deliberately end explicitly distancing itself from Unions. Not an individual ‘Union’ in the RTBU – but ‘Unions’ in general.

A Labor Party distanced from working people and their representatives is a Labor Party in deep, deep trouble.

That doesn’t mean that Unions themselves don’t have work to do. There’s obviously a mountain of it.

Yet the core link to Unions must remain strong if the Labor Party is to retain relevance.

If recent history has taught us anything, it is that retaining popular political support is based on standing for something.

Standing up, for example, for the safety of rail workers as the Carr Labor Government did.

Lose that and you lose it all.

The Labor Party cannot and should not distance itself from Unions in general and expect to enjoy long-term success.

We are a movement that grew from uprooting Conservative orthodoxies, yet we now allow ourselves to be bullied by them.

People don’t have an inherent hatred of unions – that’s Conservative spin.

Yet boofheads like that ministerial adviser, in his sharp suit and shiny shoes, are often guilty of buying it.

And when that happens, we’re in a world of a pain. We cannot be scared of standing up for what defines us.

Every time Labor equivocates on the relationship with Unions we make ourselves a little bit weaker.

To think that the electorate will respect us, for distancing ourselves from what they believe us to be, is madness.

None of what I have said is to disregard the very real achievements that Labor Governments in Canberra and around the nation can claim when it comes to defending the interests of working people.

There is much, in recent times, for our Labor Movement to be proud of. It is simply to point out that we need to be far more strident in owning it.

If we allow our political enemies to demonise what defines us, then we have already lost.

As a proud unionist, and a proud member of the Australian Labor Party, I will not stand for it.

Bob Nanva addressing the ALP conference