The Australian Waterfront Dispute and Theories of the State

Abstract

In the first half of 1998 Australia experienced a major dispute on the waterfront. In April unionised workers in the employ of the Patrick group of companies were dismissed. They were replaced with labour supplied by Producers and Consumers, a company backed by the National Farmers Federation. Following an interlocutory injunction mounted by the Maritime Union ofAustralia, the unionised workforce was reinstated by the Federal Court of Australia and, on appeal, by a majority of the High Court. The courts also found that there was a serious question to be tried as to whether the dismissals constituted a beach of the Freedom of Association provisions of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cwlth). The dispute is of interest, among other reasons, because of the different and contradictory roles played by various parts of the Australian state. This paper is concerned with providing a theoretical explanation of such phenomena. After initially examining writings from political science and jurisprudence, the paper develops and tests what is described as a discrete statist theory of the state.