Out-of-touch union bosses will have Pauline Hanson laughing all the way to the polls with their latest tone-deaf crusade, writes PETER VAN ONSELEN

By PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICAL EDITOR, AUSTRALIA Published: 02:09, 26 June 2026 | Updated: 02:09, 26 June 2026 In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into racism against Indigenous Australians, the ACTU has called for a new national Indigenous representative body. Sound familiar? With One Nation surging in the polls and voters screaming out loud that the political class refuses to listen to them, the peak union movement has decided what the country urgently needs is another lecture on treaty, truth-telling and January 26.  That's right, those are the themes the peak union body raises in its submission. There are political miscalculations, and then there is the ACTU exhuming the Voice debate and declaring war on Australia Day.  We don't usually have to put up with change the date discussions until January rolls around. Instead, the ACTU is gift wrapping another culture war right at a time One Nation’s support is at its zenith. The Australian people were asked a clear question about the Voice just three years ago. It was annihilated nationally and in every single state.  A rejection so absolute that only the most insulated political operators could mistake it for unfinished business. The ACTU is gift wrapping another culture war right at a time One Nation’s support is at its zenith (Sally McManus pictured) You couldn’t design a better recruitment pamphlet for Hanson if you paid her to do it herself.  And you thought the union movement's peak body was meant to be about representing workers' rights! The ACTU is demanding a national Indigenous representative body, whether it’s constitutionally entrenched, legislated or rebadged as a ‘treaty negotiating assembly’, whatever that means. It wants truth-telling architecture, a new curriculum (as if the education system isn’t already biased enough) and January 26 abolished as a national day, because it reinforces ‘structural racism’. There really must be nothing left to do in the workers rights space for the ACTU to throw itself into this debate. It radiates contempt for the recent referendum result, which means that Sally McManus and her team are also showing contempt for voters. It drags Anthony Albanese, who has spent three years crawling away from the wreckage of the Voice campaign, straight back to the crash site for a replay. The union movement will claim this is simply a principled submission to an inquiry on racism. But politics is not a sociology seminar.  To millions of voters who had their say, the translation is unmistakable: We didn’t listen when you voted No. We still think you were wrong.  And we still think you are structurally racist, by the way, if you don’t agree with us. Hanson doesn’t even need to exaggerate the situation to take advantage of it. She just needs to hold up the ACTU’s submission and quote from it. It fuses every live wire in Australian politics in one document: distrust of elites, exhaustion with moral scolding, and the lingering suspicion that the broader Labor movement views the electorate with thinly veiled disdain. A political party and union collective that is more interested in urbane elite ideas than the rights of workers. The ACTU is not an obscure campus collective issuing press releases from a basement. It’s meant to be the beating heart of Labor’s policy ecosystem. Affiliated with Labor, no less. That is what makes this so lethal for Albo.  It lets Pauline Hanson (pictured) pose as the defender of ordinary national pride against an elite that views the country as morally contaminated The PM has spent his time since the failed referendum pivoting Indigenous policy toward economic empowerment, as an act of political survival. It also happens to be the better way to go about trying to close the gap.  The ACTU has just made his pragmatism look like a temporary hostage note. It reminds us all that beneath Labor’s cautious messaging sits an institutional left that learned absolutely nothing from the failed referendum, other than sneering at voters for getting it wrong. The demand for a body ‘whether constitutionally enshrined, legislated, or a treaty negotiating assembly’ is the sound of a movement refusing to take No for an answer.  If the Constitution can’t be amended via a referendum because voters don’t agree, just legislate it and damn what voters think. Voice sceptics warned this is exactly what would happen next, and the ACTU has just vindicated their prediction in writing. Of all the issues to throw back into the national centrifuge, changing January 26 is the most politically suicidal.  Should unions focus on Indigenous rights or stick to improving workers' pay and conditions? What's your view?Telling Australians that celebrating their national day perpetuates colonial violence isn't a persuasion strategy - it's pure provocation.  It lets Hanson pose as the defender of ordinary national pride against an elite that views the country as morally contaminated.  Australians know our history is complex and Indigenous disadvantage is real.  What we refuse to accept is being lectured to, yet again, by people who comprehensively lost the national argument less than three years ago. A smarter union movement would focus on Indigenous employment, wages and housing, which actually fall within its remit.  It would speak the language of material improvement, knowing dignity comes through economic security. Instead, the ACTU has indulged itself yet again, highlighting why a declining quotient of the workforce bother to join unions anymore. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. 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