Meloz and 89

[CitizenXX]

Down the back,

I agree. If the girls had been included that night, there would have been far fewer, if any, resignations.

TTT,

I make no assertions that the behaviour of Hawke & Abeles was not a disgrace. Perhaps it was the worst chapter in Australian industrial relations history, but then there was the shearers' strike, and the docks fiasco of a couple of years ago, so maybe not.

What you need to accept though, is that's the way things happen in life. Take the US - Iraqi chest beating currently. Have the US yet said 'This is all about oil.' I don't believe so, yet it is. People in conflict rarely tell the truth because it doesn't suit their purposes to do so. Before you leap in here, I'm not in conflict with you, so therefore have no reason to misrepresent my position.

This comes under the category of 'That's Life.' If you don't like it, there is an alternative, but not a palatable one for most.

'That's Life' is described a little differently in what could probably be called the Australian adage - Life is a $hit sandwich; the more bread you have, the less $hit you have to eat!

Life, and particularly life working for an employer, is about someone imposing their will on you. You guys won't want to hear that, but that's what it is. Just as you impose your will on your crew, employing good CRM principles of course, but imposing your will nevertheless.

Incidentally, I am not, nor have been, nor ever will be, on the defensive for returning to work in early 1990. It's a decision I'm proud to have made, There is something for which I will be eternally ashamed, however, and that is that it took me so damned long to do it. I blindly followed our leaders up a dry creek bed. Fortunately I hadn't run out of water when I decided to turn back.

Even one of the sheep farming brothers from Tasmania (can't think of their names) told me that he'd put his future 'in the hands of people who weren't up to the job.' Isn't that a condemnation when one considerers how pro movement they were? I clearly remember one saying in AFAP HQ 'I can't tell you what we're going to do, but it'll F... them.' Well resigning certainly did that, but the 'them' wasn't the companies, it was the members !!!

I said earlier that I bear no animosity toward any who chose otherwise. It's such a shame that they didn't have the capacity to rationalize that once they had resigned, then the fight was all over. Nor do I feel sorry for them. They made a choice, and I made a choice - different choices, but I'm happy with mine, and from what you, Amos, KapM, etc., say, you're happy with yours, so why are you so angry? Do you see yourselves as losers?

Incidentally, I agree with somebody who posted elsewhere on this subject recently. If I could find a reason, any reason, to disagree with Hawke, I'd do it, but his statement that there was no industrial dispute because everybody had resigned was indeed impeccable logic.

I know you'll contend otherwise, and probably have done a thousand times in these forums, but those who did return were not scabs. They took no jobs belonging to workers on strike. There were no jobs of workers on strike available. Yes, I know your interpretation will be that 'there was an industrial dispute etc., etc.' but that does not fit the Oxford's specification. Sorry. As above, the dispute ended with the resignations. So sad.

I'm still proud of my actions, always will be, and looking forward to an Australian base with SQ. No Australian base though, and I won't bother. It's nice to have choices.

Back into the trench; I hear heavy bombers, one a 767 originating from Japan, and it's not Rice Balls at the pole.