The dead couple of labour relations: who or what will follow them?

The agenda for the ACTU Congress, which Greg Combet unveiled this week, seeks to address labour market fragmentation. It is an important circuit-breaker and places the union movement at the centre of this shift to rethink work and start again.

Indeed, many unions are already addressing the issue - through industrial agreements that recognise the rights of long-term casuals and contractors; and in test cases to defend secure employment.

But the real void is at a political level. While the Howard government may be able to sail into office by defending our borders through the symbolic issue of boat people; it still shares a bed with TINA.

Last election Howard tapped the sentiment of Australian workers for his own purposes; but his free-market economic ideology will never address the underlying issues.

That will take more than just tinkering around the edges and will require serious political will; from the graveyard of workplace models we need to build a vision of work that strengthens communities rather than divides them.

But if any political party could articulate this vision into a coherent workforce policy, it wouldn't matter who was leading them; they'd be a shoe-in to win the next election.