Natalie Hutchins

Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations, Robert Clark

Victorian employers can have no confidence in the fairness and impartiality of Daniel Andrews’ Industrial Relations Minister after she threw her support behind a militant union campaign targeting one of Victoria’s leading companies.
The ETU and other militant unions have been running a campaign completely outside the Fair Work Act, involving threats and intimidation to try to get their way.
Yet instead of condemning this lawlessness and telling the unions to take their case to the Fair Work Commission, Minister Natalie Hutchins has been urging on their campaign of picketing and disruption.
The job of an Industrial Relations Minister should be about resolving disputes within the law, not inflaming disputes by supporting unions trying to take the law into their own hands.
Minister Hutchins’ public backing of this militant union campaign sends an appalling message to any business thinking of setting up in Victoria, or deciding whether to remain.   It tells business that if unions decide to stand over them with threats and intimidation, the Victorian government will be on the unions’ side.
How can any Victorian employer expect to get fair and impartial support and advice from the Andrews Labor Government given Natalie Hutchins’ behaviour?
What makes the Minister Hutchins’ behaviour even more extraordinary is that the laws she is supporting the unions to by-pass are the Fair Work laws put in place by Labor’s own Federal Leader Bill Shorten.

Media contact: James Duncan   0457 758 018    james.duncan@opposition.vic.gov.au