The Business Council of Australia (BCA) which represents Australia’s biggest businesses as well as the ACCI, and other big business lobby groups are reported to be contributing up to $10 million for a new pro WorkChoices ad campaign to be run in the lead up to the federal election. The VECCI is reported today to have added another $750,000 to the business ad campaign kitty.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow said:
“It is an outrage for business groups to be spending large amounts of money on a pro-Liberal Party advertising campaign when these are the same groups that received almost $4 million from taxpayers to promote John Howard’s ‘WorkChoices’ laws when they were first introduced.
“Having received so much taxpayers’ money to promote the introduction of IR laws, it is wrong that they are now funding a pro-Liberal Party, pro-WorkChoices ad campaign in the lead up to the federal election.
“The Howard Govt’s ‘WorkChoices Employer Assistance Program’ (EAP) handed out over $40 million of taxpayers’ money to business groups including $600,000 to the Australian Mines & Metals Association and over $3.4 million to the state branches of the ACCI to ‘educate’ employers in using the new IR laws.
“The fact is that many employers used their knowledge of the new IR laws to rip off workers by removing penalty rates, overtime pay and other entitlements in the first year that WorkChoices was introduced.
“John Howard has been pressuring business groups to run an ad campaign in support of WorkChoices for a number of months and the fact that business groups are willing to put their hands in their pockets shows that they are just a mouthpiece for the Government.
“This big business advertising campaign is about nothing more than self-interest and ensuring that big employer groups hold onto their new-found power under the Howard Government’s unfair IR laws” said Ms Burrow.
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