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Unionist served Whitlam, workers

Date: December 18 2012

When Joe Riordan made his daily phone call to his wife on June 3, 1975, the federal Labor Party's caucus was about to vote to fill a vacancy in cabinet.

''I don't have the numbers,'' he told Patricia Riordan.

When the vote was over, a few hours later, he called back.

''I'm sorry love,'' he began. ''You didn't make it, Joe,'' she said. ''Never mind.''

But the politician's wife had misunderstood. Riordan had made it. He was sorry only because it meant that he would be spending less time with his wife and their six children.

Riordan joined the Whitlam cabinet as minister for housing and construction at a time when the government was struggling over unemployment, inflation, internal disorder and relentless attacks by Malcolm Fraser's Coalition opposition.

His ministerial career was cut short by an old mate from industrial law - the then governor-general, Sir John Kerr - who dismissed the government on November 11, 1975, confounding the convention that a governor-general should accept his prime minister's advice. Riordan and senator Jim McClelland were unofficial intermediaries between the governor-general and the prime minister. They believed that Kerr deliberately deceived them over his intention to sack the government.

Riordan was familiar with struggle. He grew up during the Depression, left school at 15 to support his family, joined a union and fought communism. A staunch Catholic, he opposed abortion law reform. He fought employers who opposed the 1983 Occupational Health and Safety Act he drafted for Neville Wran's NSW government, which became the model for other states. And he fought four High Court challenges to his Industrial Relations Commission judgments, winning them all.

His readiness for struggle could even extend to children's football. When son Bernie played hooker in a junior team, Riordan taught him how to win scrums using an illegal loose arm.

''What kind of a father teaches his kid to cheat?'' Bernie asked. ''It's called skills acquisition, son.''

Joseph Martin Riordan was born on February 27, 1930, to Martin Riordan and his wife, Anne (nee Kearns), who lived in Zetland, the inner Sydney suburb. Joe went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel primary school in Waterloo and Marcellin College, Randwick. The family could afford to send only one of the three children to university and, since John Riordan was thought to possess more academic gifts, he studied law and became a leading lawyer while Joe left school with the Intermediate Certificate.

Working as a clerk, he joined the Labor Party at 17. Five years later, he surprised many by defeating the communist ticket to become assistant secretary of the Federated Clerks' Union's NSW branch. Riordan was a member of the ALP industrial groups that challenged the communist leadership, arguing that union elections should be conducted by the industrial registrar. He became NSW branch secretary in 1954.

He married Patricia Watkins in 1955, the year in which arguments over communist influence in the labour movement finally brought the Labor split.

Several state branches of the clerks' union joined the Democratic Labor Party, while Bishop James Carroll led the push for NSW Catholics to stay with the ALP. The DLP helped keep the Coalition in power until 1972. Some of Riordan's opponents claimed, wrongly, that he had joined the breakaway party.

Riordan became federal secretary of the union in 1958 but resigned from the ALP, fearing expulsion moves by his anti-Catholic opponents. The union more than doubled its membership during his years as federal secretary to 1972, partly through his campaign for wage justice for women, and he earned a reputation as one of the most able federal union leaders. He was elected to the executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions in 1963.

Back in the ALP and inspired by John F. Kennedy's advice, ''Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country'', Riordan stood for Phillip in the 1969 federal election, losing narrowly to the sitting member, Bill Aston. He took the seat from Aston, speaker in the House of Representatives, in the further swing to Whitlam Labor in 1972.

Determined that the most was made of technological progress if there was the least possible dislocation to workers, he warned in his first speech: ''This is a society where machines have more importance and are given greater significance than the men and women who operate them, where material possessions are the very criteria of success, where job satisfaction and purpose in life have come to be regarded as almost irrelevant.''

He described many corporations as ''faceless, impersonal - a callous and cynical machine … with no concern for those who work for them, for those who produce the wealth of the organisation, and certainly no concern for the families of these people''.

Some of his most significant work in Parliament was as chairman of the committee on MPs' pecuniary interests. The committee was concerned, he said, ''with interests held by the individual which may conflict with the execution of his or her public responsibility. We … seek recommendations which will protect and uphold the dignity and honour of parliamentarians and public officials''.

The Hawke government ultimately introduced a registry of pecuniary interests.

Believing that the housing industry was vital to a healthy economy, Riordan backed the Whitlam program for public housing for those most in need. After Labor's defeat in 1975, he returned to industrial relations. As vice-chairman of the NSW Electricity Commission, right-wing Riordan faced Doug Cameron, of the socialist Left and now a senator. Threatened fireworks turned to mutual respect.

''Joe Riordan helped to humanise me,'' Cameron said.

Appointed head of the NSW Department of Industrial Relations in the Wran government, he worked with his minister, Pat Hills, to make workplaces safer.

He was senior deputy president of the Industrial Relations Commission from 1986 until 1995, the period when the accords between unions and employers were developed. The labour movement sought to advance the social wage, with superannuation, minimum wage rates and enterprise bargaining as part of the wages trade-off, and the commission was part of the necessary framework. He was chairman of NSW WorkCover from 1997 to 2004.

Joe Riordan was made an officer of the Order of Australia in 1995. He nursed his ill wife for some years before succumbing to dementia. Patricia survives him, with their children, John, Peter, Michael, Bernie, Cathy and Maureen and 14 grandchildren.

Tony Stephens


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