INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: THE ORIGINS AND NATURE OF THE 1985 QUEENSLAND ELECTRICITY DISPUTE

Abstract: An examination of the origins and nature of the 1985 Electricity Dispute in Queensland is the principal concern of this paper. The evidence suggests that the outbreak of the dispute can only be fully understood if due weight is given to certain important international, national and local changes in the political, economic and industrial relations spheres which took place in the 1970s and 1980s. The response of the Queensland government to the dispute, while in part explicable in terms of these changes, must be comprehended within a wider framework which also recognises the governing National Party's traditional ideological rejection of the principles of organised labour. The paper concludes that the nature and circumstances of the dispute pose a continuing, and a significant, challenge to "consensus and stability" interpretations of Australian history.