Pod Insights ABC Rewind 06 | Conspiracy | All the way to the top About this episode Was the Howard government the puppet master of the Waterfront dispute? Host Jan Fran reveals new evidence that provides some answers to questions that’ve dogged Australian politics for 27 years.
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0:07 Speaker 01 A warning that this episode of Rewind contains strong language.
0:16 Speaker 02 Mr Riani, what does it mean to you to come through these gates?
0:19 Speaker 03 Oh, it's sensational.
0:21 Speaker 04 It's the 7th of May 1998 and the Wharfies at Patrick's have just got their jobs back.
0:27 Speaker 03 This is the third time in my working career I've ever been in a trench, but only the first time I've ever got my job back. It's like winning the grand final.
0:34 Speaker 04 After a month locked out of their workplace, of long days and nights on the picket line, it feels like a victory.
0:42 Speaker 03 My heart's racing. I feel butterflies and nerves, you know.
0:46 Speaker 04 It's bittersweet, though. The administrator has opened the gates to the MUA workers, but until a new agreement is fleshed out with Patrick's, they're working for practically nothing and the workplace they once loved, it'll never be the same.
1:00 Speaker 05 We went back into like skeleton place. Like it felt like a graveyard. It was a very eerie feeling for me, to be honest.
1:09 Speaker 04 Michelle's an apprentice electrician at Patrick's in Melbourne.
1:12 Speaker 05 The place was in a mess. They'd trashed our mess room. They'd trashed our lockers. So many things, our work utes.
1:20 Speaker 04 Michelle and her workmates have spent the last month facing off security guards in balaclavas with dogs, trying to stop the non-union workforce that they call scabs from getting through the gates.
1:31 Speaker 05 We were all speechless. We didn't know what to say to each other. Some people were angry. Some people were upset. We were very unsure what was to come next and we lost the trust factor. We worked with some bosses. We really trusted them and they let us down. They let us down. They didn't stand with us at the picket line.
1:54 Speaker 04 I'm Jan Fran. This is Conspiracy: War on the Waterfront. Episode 6: All the Way to the Top.
2:06 Speaker 04 Last time, a battle in the courts.
2:09 Speaker 06 Justice Tony North has ruled that there was an arguable case, there was an unlawful conspiracy between the government and Patrick Stevedores.
2:17 Speaker 04 The Maritime Union of Australia and Patrick Stevedores ended up in the highest court in the country.
2:23 Speaker 07 When the High Court decided in the union's favour, I just remember the jubilation.
2:28 Speaker 04 Then, days after the ruling, a cache of documents was leaked to the media. Well, St West, the company which recruited and hired serving and former soldiers to replace Unionists on the waterfront, has made good on its threat and released over 150 pages of documents, documents which it claims prove government involvement in Dubai. There's nothing there, quite frankly, that in any way would or should alter anything I've ever said about it. We didn't know about it, but, I mean, so what? The Howard government was under pressure to reveal just how big a hand it had in the largest industrial dispute in living memory.
3:09 Speaker 04 As we've said throughout this series, this is one of the enduring questions of Australian politics. Journalists at the time did a pretty solid job of uncovering the ins and outs of this extraordinary story, and a big shout out to a few in particular, the late Matt Peacock, Pamela Williams, Helen Trinker and Anne Davies. But we've uncovered a few more juicy morsels to add to the story. We've been told some interesting things from government insiders, a few more clues have dropped and some secret documents have been unearthed. So, how much did the government of the day know? And just who was pulling the strings here? We're going to lay it all
3:53 Speaker 04 out for you in this episode, and let you be the judge.
4:00 Speaker 04 But first, it's back to the docks. The Wharfies are stoked to be heading back to work. But now, the hard part. The Maritime Union has to sit down and negotiate a deal with Patrick's. And that's gonna take a while.
4:15 Speaker 07 The objective was not to protect unproductive, out-of-date work practices.
4:22 Speaker 04 Greg Conbay is at the table for the ACTU, the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
4:27 Speaker 07 That was not our objective. We were really upfront about it with the workforce. That was the goal, to get a job back and to preserve union organisation. MUA here to stay.
4:38 Speaker 04 It's tense at the negotiating table. The Wharfies are still working for peanuts. And Chris Corrigan, the managing director of Patrick's, his line of credit is running out. Months into the negotiations, he says he's summoned to a very bizarre meeting with 70 bankers. That's right, seven zero, at 10 o'clock on a Sunday night.
5:03 Speaker 04 And he said, "We'd like you to settle now." And I gave them full force. I said, "Look at you, you're sitting around like a bunch of fucking David Jones mannequins. You've got no idea what's achievable." And, you know, a lot more expletives, deletives involved. And I got up and walked out. And I went home and I said to my wife, "I think that's the end, I think they're gonna pull the plug."
5:33 Speaker 04 Luckily for Corrigan, they don't. Mick O'Leary is part of the MUA's negotiating team. And most days, he meets with Chris Corrigan in Corrigan's fancy office.
5:45 Speaker 07 He had an office on about, I think, the 17th floor of Kent Street in Sydney. And it had million-dollar views over Darling Harbour, right up the Parramatta River. It was just magnificent. And I go up to see him one day, walk in, he's got a polystyrene wig head on his desk with a balaclava pulled over it. And he's got his desk facing the wall. He's looking direct, he's got a million-dollar view behind him, and he's looking at the wall. And I said, "Chris, please, what's going on?" He said, "Mick," because he had an operation at Darling Harbour. He said, "Every time I look out the window and I think I'm paying those bastards down there, he said, "I feel sick, so I look at the wall."
6:28 Speaker 04 Finally, in August 1998, after three long months of negotiating, Patrick's and the MUA sign off on an agreement. But it's not exactly what the workers are hoping for. Around half of them are made redundant. The government fronts up the cash, but it'll later recuperate it via a levy scheme. Greg Conbay from the ACTU and John Coombs from the MUA now have the unenviable task of selling this agreement to members around the country.
7:02 Speaker 05 Well, the mass meeting in Melbourne, I'll never forget it. This was a really wild meeting. Yeah, it was incredibly tense, argumentative, at times aggressive. At one point, one of the members in Melbourne stormed up towards the podium wanting to punch John, and John shaped up. I don't know how it would have gone, he was a pretty big fellow that was coming towards him. It took about eight hours to get the agreement of the meeting to the settlement.
7:37 Speaker 04 Mick O'Leary runs the meeting in Sydney.
7:39 Speaker 07 They knew they were bad agreements, okay? But they knew we'd done our best. And my mate Jimmy Tannock and I did the meeting and we got a standing ovation at the end of it, right? And literally, these blokes had to eat a shit sandwich. And I was never prouder, never prouder. And I'm getting a tear in me eye now.
8:03 Speaker 04 And what else is in this so-called shit sandwich? Well, apart from about half the workforce taking a redundancy, the remaining workers will have less control over when and how they work. And the special added source? There's now a bonus system. The faster you work, the more you'll be paid. Chris Corrigan's pretty pleased with that part of the deal.
8:28 Speaker 03 So we turned them into entrepreneurs. To me, we liberated these people from a communist mentality to a capitalist mentality, where they could work for themselves and think for themselves and behave as decent human beings. And I'm extraordinary.
8:49 Speaker 06 Ordinarily proud of that achievement.
8:52 Speaker 04 Correg Kukagall and Arabamleman Thomas Mayo is a young union delegate working for Patrick's in Darwin at the time. He reckons workers start risking their lives trying to get that bonus.
9:05 Speaker 00 With that came guys wanting to crawl up the boss's arse, you know, and work through their breaks and do things unsafe and during the monsoon. And the risk is, you know, with walking around on steel casing, the lightning will strike and electrocute you. Something that was difficult to educate these guys. Actually, you don't have to go and do this. Let's just stick together. Yes, the boss is putting pressure on us, but let's stick together and be safe.
9:31 Speaker 04 The waterfront dispute's been one of Australia's biggest industrial fights. The MUA has shown it really is here to stay, but half the workforce is gone. So who are the winners here? Well, productivity is up on the wharves and within a year, Patrick's share price quadruples. So Chris Corrigan's feeling good.
9:52 Speaker 06 Did I do the right thing by the investors, by the shareholders? Yes, that was my job. It happened and along the way, I also improved the productivity on the waterfront.
10:02 Speaker 04 John Coombs from the MUA reckons the union won.
10:05 Speaker 00 Victories from our perspective are few and far between, but this was certainly, as far as the union movement was concerned, was a massive victory.
10:13 Speaker 04 John Sharp from the Howard government says we're all winners. Less strikes, greater opportunities for exporters, cheaper imports. It was a win for everybody in the end. But not everyone is spinning a victory yarn out of the waterfront dispute. Remember the non-union workforce? The guys who went to Dubai and the PCS workers backed by the National Farmers' Federation? What do you reckon happens to them when the wharffies get their jobs back?
10:41 Speaker 05 The farmer-backed waterfront company produces and consumers has started winding up its business and this morning it sacked its 300-strong workforce.
10:53 Speaker 04 Many of them feel like they've been played. It was a brilliantly executed deception.
11:01 Speaker 03 Get the suckers in, get them trained up, tell them this and they'll follow it.
11:05 Speaker 04 That's Glen Adams. He's the guy who went from riding the tractor on the family farm to riding the battle bus across the picket line.
11:13 Speaker 03 I don't like being used as a pawn in a big chess game. And we were just used to try and achieve an end goal that didn't turn out. Never mind the lives that impacted in between.
11:25 Speaker 04 So many of these workers are shattered. They thought they were starting new careers. They signed what they thought were watertight three-year contracts. And now they're out of work and their names are mud. They've been branded as scabs. And that makes it hard for them to get new jobs. James was a skilled stevedoring manager, working for PCS in Brisbane. Afterwards, he struggles to even find unskilled work.
11:55 Speaker 02 We just hunted around, looked for jobs. And I went and worked in a soap factory. My job was to pick up cakes of soap and put them into a box. And there was this very lithe-fingered lady beside me. She could pick up three cakes of these little cakes of soap. And here I am with my cumbersome hands. I've got pieces of coke and soaps and boxes going in all directions. I didn't last long in that job.
12:14 Speaker 04 Some of these workers take their case all the way to the top. Here's former Prime Minister John Howard, talking to us late last year.
12:22 Speaker 06 I do remember meeting several people who were involved in the alternative workforce. And I remember that some of them expressed intense disappointment that they'd been sort of left out to dry. And I sympathised with them. And it's something that's bothered me. Some of them said, "Aye, mate, you know, we were told we'd get jobs, but we weren't needed. What are you going to do about it?" And I said, "Well, I'm very sorry, but I can't do anything about it because I didn't engage you."
12:58 Speaker 04 The alternative workforce is getting nothing from PCS or Patrick's. So a group of them eventually sue the companies. After a stressful and chaotic court case, they end up with only $15,000 each and a very bitter taste in their mouths.
13:16 Speaker 03 There was a bit of depression. If there was any MUA workers that were sort of listening to this, I would have probably actually even looked and said, "Sorry, you know, because from us, it wasn't meant to play out that way. It was just a big bloody game of chess that..."
13:30 Speaker 04 We were both pawns on either side of the board.
13:38 Speaker 04 If we're to stay with Glenn's chess metaphor for a second, the game's abandoned before the MUA's lawyers get to checkmate. You know, lots of people wanted us to continue with the unlawful conspiracy case. And John and I said, no, that's not the objective here. That's like a tactic to use, right? To get to the end, to achieve our goals. The MUA drops its conspiracy case against the government. And even though he was on board with the decision, there's still a part of lawyer Josh Bornstein that asks, what if?
14:15 Speaker 00 If Peter Wreath had to get in the witness box and they lost a case about an unlawful conspiracy, their government was cactus. But they got off lightly. You know, Howard and Wreath in particular got off lightly, given what they did. It's my idea.
14:31 Speaker 04 And so, this alleged unlawful conspiracy between the government and Patrick Stevedores has never fully been tested in court, which means the government's never been forced to reveal how much it knew and when. And after all these years, we still have some questions. Now, if you've gotten to this point in the series, this is what you'll already know. The Howard government comes to power in 1996. It commissions a report into waterfront reform. Several scenarios are put forward. Prime Minister John Howard officially endorses the most radical, the interventionist approach. What his endorsement tells us is that he's prepared to intervene,
15:16 Speaker 04 to be involved in reforming the waterfront. The question has always been, how involved? Now, John Howard's always maintained that his government's role was to simply provide a friendly environment for Chris Corrigan's business decisions. And that's it. But we're not so sure about that. Which brings us to the first what the fuck moment of this saga. Dubai. When this story broke in Parliament on the 3rd of December 1997, the Minister for Workplace Relations, Peter Rees, flat out denied knowing anything about it.
15:57 Speaker 06 No, we're not involved and it was news to me until the Labour Party told us that question time.
16:03 Speaker 04 Even to this day, Prime Minister John Howard denies knowing anything about Dubai.
16:09 Speaker 06 Oh, I think I found out about it about the time that the public found out about it.
16:13 Speaker 04 And Chris Corrigan reckons he gave them nothing.
16:16 Speaker 03 But I didn't discuss with the government the details of the plan. I kept them, I wouldn't say in the dark about that deliberately, but I didn't want them to be overly knowledgeable about what we were thinking.
16:30 Speaker 04 Except, that's not what former Howard Minister John Sharp told us. Remember this, all the way back in episode one?
16:39 Speaker 06 In late 1997, so you remember a meeting in Peter Rees's office in Melbourne that I attended with the NFF and Chris Corrigan. And they came forward with this plan to train an alternative workforce to do it in Dubai.
16:57 Speaker 04 There it is, Dubai. Mentioned in a government meeting in the office of the Workplace Relations Minister, months before anyone set foot on a plane.
17:07 Speaker 06 Look, I can't remember who was first talking about Dubai. I'm not quite sure where that idea came from, but I remember it was part of the discussion. And it was a fairly new and very radical idea. It could have made sense. I mean, going to a port in Australia would have meant instantly that this would have been a controversial thing, where there would have been industrial action to stop any training from taking place. So the fact that it had to be done overseas was an obvious thing. Dubai had an excellent port, very few.
17:38 Speaker 04 So, just a reminder. That's former Howard Government Minister John Sharp. And this is former Howard Government Minister Peter Reith.
17:49 Speaker 06 I don't think I even knew Dubai was a port, you know. Shocking ignorance, I suppose. I just hadn't done enough flying, I suppose.
17:57 Speaker 04 These two were at that same meeting. One gives a detailed account of the suitability of Dubai's port. The other claims he didn't even know it existed. There are other discrepancies, too. Here's what Peter Reith thought about Chris Corrigan after that meeting.
18:13 Speaker 06 In September 97, I thought Chris Corrigan was going to do nothing. And I've got a memo written by my chief of staff saying... I mean, basically, the memo says, "These guys are hopeless."
18:25 Speaker 04 Now, listen to what John Sharp thought of Corrigan after the meeting.
18:30 Speaker 06 And I remember thinking to myself, "Chris Corrigan is the man who will do this." "Chris Corrigan has got the intestinal fortitude to withstand what will be a very difficult time."
18:43 Speaker 04 Huh. Look, it's possible John Sharp might have misremembered that meeting 27 years ago. Except, he's not the only one who reckons the government knew about Dubai before the story broke.
18:55 Speaker 06 Look, when I spoke to Chris Corrigan, we mentioned Dubai. It was a location that had suitable, you know, training grounds, suitable workforce.
19:04 Speaker 04 That's John Sharp's ministerial adviser, Greg Bondar. He's talking to Frank Kelly in 2008 for the Howard Years series. This bit didn't make it to air.
19:14 Speaker 06 I would have briefed John on that possibility. And we looked at the case for and against the stevedore employing non-union labour. And I suspected John would have taken that to both Reith and the Prime Minister.
19:28 Speaker 04 Bondar has more to say.
19:30 Speaker 06 Well, the stevedores mentioned to both John Sharp and myself and to Peter Reith that if they were going to take on a fast-track interventionist approach to waterfront reform, who's going to pay for it?
19:41 Speaker 04 He says government money was put aside to help out the stevedores. Not redundancy money, that's a whole other thing. But money to help with the cost of reform. And possibly, the training of an alternative workforce.
19:57 Speaker 06 That cost, there was a figure around about $10 million at the time that was sort of pushed around in government circles. I mean, the Cabinet did sign off. I did hold meetings with the Finance Minister, in particular to make sure that there were funds available for the waterfront reform strategy. As to how much was eventually signed off by Cabinet, I'm not privy to. But as I said, there was a figure of around about $10 million that was going to be workable to compensate the Stephenors for a number of costs that they would have had to incur in ensuring waterfront reform. But also, I suspect, also to perhaps pay for the training of an alternative workforce.
20:35 Speaker 04 I'm going to bring in our series historian, Dr Geraldine Feller. Geraldine, did the government pay for Dubai?
20:43 Speaker 02 Well, that's an interesting question, Jan. Look, this $10 million to assist with training was absolutely canvassed within the government, where it's talked about as a kind of guarantee or letter of comfort. So basically, Corrigan wants a guarantee that if the government pulled the plug, so if they decided for whatever reason not to go ahead with their plans for reform, then they would compensate him for his efforts.
21:07 Speaker 04 Right, and how do we know this?
21:09 Speaker 02 We know this because I found a brief in Peter Rees' diaries, and it's from Rees' office to Defence Minister Ian McLaughlin. It's dated the 27th of November 97, so about a week before Dubai breaks in Parliament. And in that letter, it lays out the plan for offshore training and Corrigan's request for this, you know, $10 million to be put aside essentially for him on the off-chance that it all falls through.
21:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, put aside is one thing, but Bondar, who worked for John Sharp, I mean, he said point blank that Cabinet approved that $10 million. So there was clearly a process, according to him anyway, that it must have gone through. But here, in the brief, you're sort of suggesting that maybe it was just put aside?
21:55 Speaker 02 Look, Jan, ultimately, we just don't know. So we have a government adviser in Bondar saying one thing about that $10 million, we have Minister Rees saying another. Really, what this is, is another example of people in the Howard government struggling to keep their stories consistent. But even putting that aside, it's worth considering, why was this $10 million even being canvassed when this is a plan that the government claimed it knew nothing about?
22:26 Speaker 04 And speaking of inconsistent stories, here's another one that we briefly touched on in episode three. Remember Chris Corrigan's Plan B after Dubai goes bust? Patrick's working with the National Farmers' Federation? PCS, training on WebDoc? Here's how Corrigan explained the origin of that plan at the time.
22:46 Speaker 03 They approached us, is my recollection of it. I wouldn't frankly have known who to approach.
22:51 Speaker 04 But last year, he told us the opposite happened.
22:55 Speaker 03 And so I looked then for an organisation and I found that the Australian Farmers' Federation were very enthusiastic about the chance of change and they decided they'd take on a role.
23:10 Speaker 04 This inconsistency, although it doesn't seem huge, it did get our antennas up because it's a crucial detail to get wrong. And we also know, from digging through the archives, that there was some confusion about this very thing on the part of the National Farmers' Federation at the time too. So, we haven't quite got into the bottom of this one. Whose idea was it to train a non-union workforce on WebDoc? Chris Corrigan's or the NFF? We reckon there's one person who can definitively answer that question. If only we could find him.
23:50 Speaker 03 Stephen Webster, a mystery man and the ghost.
23:53 Speaker 04 Stephen Webster. He was quite a secretive, almost furtive, character that had just appeared from somewhere and would disappear somewhere else when it was all over. Here's what we know about Stephen Webster. In mid-1997, he's working in John Sharp's office. A few months later, he's in Reeve's office, working out a way to implement the interventionist plan. He writes a report. Now, as far as we're aware, this report has never been seen by anyone except for a handful of government insiders. In fact, journalist Pamela Williams reported at the time that Webster's report was so confidential, anyone working on it had to sign confidentiality clauses
24:38 Speaker 04 because it was covered by the Official Secrets Act. I mean, if we couldn't find Stephen Webster, what are the odds of finding his top-secret report? Quite good, actually.
24:53 Speaker 04 Okay Geraldine, tell us everything. How did you find this document?
24:58 Speaker 02 So I've been looking at Peter Wreath's diaries and papers from the time. Not many people have looked at these and it's in among his scribbled notes, clippings and printouts that I found a few pages of the Webster report. What the report shows is that there are parts of this saga that the government was involved in, far more than it's led on before. And I've really come to the view from the report and from going through the diaries that the government really had a hand in every stage of this.
25:29 Speaker 04 Including in Plan B. After Geraldine uncovered Webster's report, the inconsistency over whether Corrigan approached the NFF or whether it was the other way around, it started to make a bit more sense. The report presented another option for what may have happened, that a third party brought the two together. And that party was the government.
25:57 Speaker 02 It's my view that that's exactly what happened. So the Webster report outlines a few different scenarios for reform. So scenario one, Patrick's training a workforce offshore. Scenario two, the farmers training a workforce. And then it outlines scenario three. And this is the important scenario. And that's these two parties coming together and working together to replace the MUA on the waterfront. And what's really important here is who brought them together. And now I'm just going to read really quickly from the report, Jan. So it says, "The decision was taken to facilitate a meeting." And we know that meeting was between Patrick's and the NFF. "With a view to seeing if there might be some common ground,
26:43 Speaker 02 a meeting was held on September 9th with positive results."
26:47 Speaker 04 Right, so here we have somebody from the government saying that they're going to put Patrick's in touch with the NFF. In fact, it's already happened and things are looking good. And this is all taking place well before any of this saga plays out.
27:02 Speaker 02 That's right. And that's someone who puts them in touch is Stephen Webster.
27:06 Speaker 04 Stephen Webster, according to this report, came up with Plan B. This is an addition to the major role that he had in Plan A.
27:17 Speaker 02 So here in the report, it says that recruitment for this overseas training operation is underway. And we know that that overseas training operation was Dubai, and it was Stephen Webster who set that train in motion.
27:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, of course, he is going to know that the recruitment is underway. He's the one that introduced Kilfoyle and Wells to Corrigan.
27:36 Speaker 02 Exactly. I mean, this report was really a template for the dispute. It was a blueprint for what was going to happen, and everything played out pretty much to the day.
27:45 Speaker 04 And all the while Webster's on the government payroll. So I guess, I mean, the question here is, you know, if Stephen Webster was this involved, how likely is it that his boss, Peter Rees, knew nothing?
27:56 Speaker 02 Look, Jan, I think it's really unlikely. From going through his diaries, it's pretty clear that Peter Rees was all over every stage of this. The planning, the execution, the outcome. This was not a ministerial office. This was not a minister that was waiting in the wings for the Stevedores to move on reform. And it's my view that at points they were actually initiating and leading the strategy for reform, a process that resulted in the Dubai affair and the sacking of the 1,400 MUA members in April. Look, Rees's diaries show that all through the first half of 97, so long before the lockout, he is constantly talking to people about how to make big change on the wharves. He's
28:39 Speaker 02 talking to all kinds of, you know, big business names like Dick Pratt about exactly what should happen. And then, once we get to the dispute, his granular detail of what is happening is incredible. Like, he knows the exact road that the police are going to marshalise.
28:57 Speaker 02 To try and break the picket line on the 17th of April in Melbourne. He has this very intricate, detailed knowledge of exactly what's happening on the ground. This is a minister who is certainly not waiting in the wings. And I think that the diary has some real insights into, I guess, the mindset or what I might call the ideological position of the government on this dispute and on the MUA. And I think the really clear example of that for me was as the dispute is wrapping up, Reith and Corrigan are in constant communication. And when Reith finally gets the numbers about how many wharfies will be made redundant, he scribbles in his diary, "700 bludges weeded out."
29:42 Speaker 04 And he used that word, "bludges."
29:45 Speaker 02 He did.
29:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, that's telling, isn't it?
29:48 Speaker 02 I think it's really telling and I think it's important because the government always claimed that this wasn't ideological, that this dispute was just a kind of technical question around efficiency. But saying "700 bludges weeded out" is a pretty ideological statement and it says a lot about how that government viewed the Maritime Union of Australia and viewed wharfies.
30:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, bludges is very different to workers and very different to wharfies.
30:16 Speaker 02 That's right, it's a very demeaning term.
30:19 Speaker 04 There's one more document we've uncovered and it's one that goes all the way to the top.
30:26 Speaker 02 I found a letter buried in some correspondence files. It's a letter from late September 1997. And in it, it outlines the state of play in waterfront reform. It says, "The Webster Report is coming." It outlines the strategy that we know will play out in the first quarter of 98 with the lockout of Webdoc and then in April, the lockout of Patrick's workers across the country. And it talks about reactivating the training of Australians offshore. But this isn't the most interesting part of the letter. What's most interesting is who it's addressed to. And who's that? John Howard.
31:04 Speaker 02 So this was a letter written to John Howard by his Chief of Staff, Arthur Sinodinos, in late September 1997. And it shows that not only did Howard know that there was a plan afoot to train Australians offshore, it shows very clearly that Corrigan is actually seeking his direction, seeking his permission to press the button on that plan. And I think this is really important because Howard government ministers and Howard himself have always kind of given the impression that they merely created a sort of friendly environment for the Stevedores to undertake reform. They were kind of waiting in the wings for Corrigan to make his move and they would support him then.
31:48 Speaker 02 But what we see here is that the Prime Minister was actually intricately involved, intricately aware, and to an extent, directing the plans for reform and in this case, the training of Australians offshore.
32:02 Speaker 04 And there is that really interesting word there, 'reactivate', which sort of suggests prior knowledge.
32:08 Speaker 02 It certainly does, Jan. It suggests that this is, you know, a long, a long-term conversation that the Prime Minister is very much party to around the training of Australians offshore to create a non-union workforce to replace the MUA.
32:25 Speaker 04 The thing is, John Howard has not only denied knowing about Dubai, he's also denied knowing anything about a workforce being trained anywhere overseas. Here's what he told Frank Kelly in 2008.
32:38 Speaker 03 I mean, there were some things that came out later about the training of people in other parts of the world, of which I had no knowledge.
32:45 Speaker 04 But how could he have had no knowledge of people being trained in other parts of the world when he was specifically told about offshore training in a letter written to him by his Chief of Staff, well before that training ever happened? And before you suggest, well, maybe Howard didn't read the letter, oh, he read the letter. We know this because we asked him. See, we uncovered these documents after our initial interview with him. We went back to him for comment multiple times and he said he had nothing more to add other than to confirm that he'd seen the letter. And so, we're left with many unanswered questions about this new evidence.
33:28 Speaker 04 If the government didn't know about Dubai, as it has always maintained, why would John Sharp say it did? Why would his adviser say Cabinet approved $10 million to go in part towards training a non-union workforce? Why would that $10 million figure appear in a briefing note from Minister Reith to the Defence Minister, along with the word 'offshore'? Why would Chris Corrigan seek John Howard's direction to quote 'reactivate training of Australians offshore'? Why would Webster, a man working in a ministerial office, introduce Chris Corrigan to the Dubai recruiters? And that's just Plan A.
34:12 Speaker 04 Plan B, if Webster's report is anything to go by, was the government's plan, initiated by Stephen Webster, who was working for Peter Reith. All the evidence we've set out here and in earlier episodes points in the direction of the Howard government being far more involved than it let on, right throughout the waterfront dispute, that it was pulling the strings, from the planning stage to Dubai to the creation of PCS. Which raises an obvious question: Who was pulling the strings on the night of April 7, 1998, when Corrigan's security guards sacked 1,400 workers in one night?
34:58 Speaker 04 The questions in this series, all these loose ends, are part of the biggest question of them all: whether or not there was an unlawful conspiracy between Patrick's, the NFF, and the Howard government to destroy the Maritime Union of Australia. That remains an open question.
35:25 Speaker 04 The night of the 7th of April, 1998, was a watershed moment in Australian history.
35:35 Speaker 04 Of the dozens of people we featured in this series, it was the comment of one fairly innocuous person that struck me as particularly poignant. It was a woman in episode four who called a talkback programme at the time and said, "I woke up this morning and thought, what country am I in?" The waterfront dispute was never just about the waterfront. It was never just about workers and employers. It was never just about the dogs and the balaklavas. It was always about power. Power clashing and shifting in the most cataclysmic of ways. And ultimately, it was about us. About Australia.
36:20 Speaker 04 About who we think we are. The stories we tell ourselves. What we value. What we're prepared to fight for. And prepared to give up.
36:43 Speaker 04 Conspiracy: War on the Waterfront is an ABC Rewind production. It was made on the lands of the Gadigal, Bungala, Wurundjeri, Woiwurung and Darug peoples. Conspiracy was produced by Kirsty Melville, Geraldine Feller, Claudia Taranto and Michelle Rayner in association with Macquara University. Russell Stapleton is our outrageously talented composer, sound designer and engineer. Thanks to Anne Flavin from ABC Legal, Michael Osmond and Michael Nayland from ABC Archives, Joe Lay, who created our artwork, Danielle Cahill and Tiger Webb. And a big thank you and grateful hat tip to Helen Trinker and Anne Davies, who wrote the book Waterfront: The Battle That Changed Australia.
37:28 Speaker 04 I'm Jan Fran and this has been Conspiracy.
37:41 Speaker 04 You've been listening to an ABC Podcast. Discover more great ABC Podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.
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