Former members of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission have attacked the Prime Minister's plan to strip it of the power to set minimum wages as anti-democratic and ideologically driven.
Paul Munro, a former member of the commission, said he believed John Howard had long wanted to reduce its role.
He cited a speech Mr Howard made to Parliament as the Liberal Party's industrial relations spokesman in 1992.
"As I have said before, we will stab them [the commission] in the stomach," Mr Howard said during a debate on industrial relations. "We are up-front about it."
The information package on the new system, which the Government released on Sunday, described the commission's processes as "arbitrary and artificial".
"That's dishonest, it's propagandistic, it contradicts the record," Mr Munro said last night.
"I think it is one of the unfairest and unkindest cuts of all to have this ignorant blather coming from ministers and prime ministers, some of whom have never even set foot in the place.
"They treated it with contempt. They should be held up to ridicule themselves for such dishonesty about an institution that, for better or for worse, was doing no more than applying the legislation with integrity."
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