Australia has one of the most employee friendly IR arrangements in the World.
The problem for both sides of politics is that Australian salaries are to high on a global scale.We are just never going to compete globally in manufacturing or in a service industry with such a high minimum salary. However the government is just as culpable with such high levels of taxation and a vast array of government services. This argument goes back and forth over a few issues so it is not very definitive but we won't survive economically if we keep paying unskilled labour such high salaries. The reason the federal government makes business friendly arbitration is they know that salaries are to high already and if the labour are already on a high salary this drives other salaries and the cost of everything up.
As an aside it is an interesting to see on other public forums the amount of vitriol spewed out at the general cost of tradesmen/childcare/service industry. People who (I'm guessing are from Asian Heritage with the associated migrant work/study ethic) were told to work hard and study so that you don't end up in a manual labour job, end up paying a disproportionate amount of their hard earned salary to uneducated labour whilst the educated population gets hammered down with taxes, high cost of living, inflation and no real way forward whilst trying to compete with some guy from New Delhi with 3 degrees who costs 10% of your salary.