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Currently the Australian Federal government is exploring the option of overtaking the state industrial relations systems through aggressive use of the corporations power contained in s51 article 20 {Link without Title} . This power allows the Government to make laws for the good governance of financial corporations formed within the limits of the Commonwealth, as well as 'foreign' corporations. The Liberal Government of John Howard has announced plans (as of May 2005) to use this power to override State systems and unify the industrial relations system under the Federal umbrella, while at the same time reducing the amount of reach that independent, constitutionally convened facilitative systems such as the Australian Industrial Relations Commission have in industrial affairs. Doing this has the potential to change the basis of Industrial Relations in Australia. While currently the constitutional root of the system is held in the notion of ordered and peaceful governance of industrial disputes, use of the corporations power effectively changes the locus of responsibility in industrial affairs to a relationship between the state and the corporations themselves. Instead of having at its centre the dispute itself, which assumes the involvement of at least two separate and opposed parties, new laws convened under s52xx would focus on the good governance of companies, without any constitutionally-based reference to the other disputing party/parties. This change is driven by an ideology which seeks to minimise the notion of dispute as the centre of the state's involvement in the industrial relations system, withdrawing state support and regulation from employees involved in industrial disputes in favour of legislating rules for the behaviour of corporations. SEE ALSO
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