decentralized determination of wages and conditions and different degrees of
government enforcement of minimum rates of pay and worker‘rights’. How-
ever, Australia is clearly unique in that no significant comparator country has
wages determined by tribunals to the extent that Australia does; and no
significant country has such extensively legislated national standards.
While Australia was, in many ways, a leader in pursuing labour market
reform in the 1980s, it has now gone into reverse and is falling behind other
countries (Fraser 2015). The current government has shown little stomach for
tackling these trends to reregulation of the labour market. It looks, therefore,
as if Australia’s industrial relations will become increasingly irrelevant at best,
or a severe brake on economic growth at worst, in a service-based economy
which requires increased labour marketflexibility.
References
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org.au/about-the-actu/history (accessed 20 November 2015).
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Engineering and Associated Industries Award 1998, http://www.airc.gov.au/consoli
dated_Awards/AP/AP789529/asframe.html (accessed 20 November 2015).
Burtless, G. 2002.‘How can supply side policies reduce unemployment?’,Australian
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Cabalu, H., Doss, N., and Dawkins, P. 1996.‘Employers’compliance costs’, Discussion
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DBIS (Department of Business and Innovation Skills). 2015a.‘Trade union membership
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DBIS. 2015b.The National Minimum Wage, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/
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ment.gov.au/documents/agreement-making-australia-under-workplace-relations-act-
2007-2009-0 (accessed 20 November 2015).
Fraser, J. 2015.‘Australia’s log-term challenges’, Economic Society of Australia Conference
of Economists, Brisbane, 7 July, http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/
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Phil Lewis