Page 3342 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 1994
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INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION
Ministerial Statement
MR LAMONT (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Housing and Community Services, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport), by leave: Madam Speaker, this year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the formation of the International Labour Organisation. Australia is one of the 171 member countries which are celebrating this anniversary. It is important that the Assembly and the people of the ACT are aware of the ACT's role as a partner in the Australian system of State and Territory support for our national role in the ILO. It is for this reason that I wish to make the following statement.
At the outset it is important to clarify the role and nature of the ILO, as it appears to some people to be misunderstood. The ILO arose as an aftermath of the First World War. It was formed, at the time of the peace conference in France in 1919, as an agency of the League of Nations. It brings together governments, employers and workers as partners of equal status in common action to improve social protection and conditions of life and work throughout the world. It is no coincidence that it is the only United Nations agency with a tripartite structure and the only United Nations agency which has continued from the formation of the League of Nations until today. The ILO, obviously, has evolved over time. Its initial motivation was humanitarian. There were serious concerns about the conditions of workers as the pace of industrialisation increased. There were also economic and political motivations. But at the heart of the ILO is the concept that universal and lasting peace can be achieved only if it is based on social justice. No other international agency has the capacity to bring together the social partners in an endeavour to shape policies and programs built on this fundamental principle of human rights.
The organisation is not, as commonly thought, a body of trade unionists. Rather, it is a well-functioning tripartite body capable of delivering broad-based backing for integrated social and economic policies. In Australia, the ILO has strong support from the major employer bodies as well as the Australian Council of Trade Unions and governments. At the same time as the ILO celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Philadelphia is being celebrated. This declaration is the Charter of Universal Human Rights and Freedoms, which launched the ILO into a new era of action for the welfare of working people throughout the world in 1944. The declaration was identified by United States President Franklin Roosevelt as a landmark in world thinking, and it anticipated and set a pattern for the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration opens with a reaffirmation of the fundamental principles on which the ILO is based - notably, that labour is not a commodity; freedom of expression and of association is essential to sustained progress; and, most importantly, I believe, poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere. The declaration then elaborates the cornerstone statement of the 1919 ILO constitution, as follows:
All human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity.
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