Adjudication No. 20 (September 1977) [1977] APC 15

ADJUDICATION No. 20 (September 1977)

Mr. R. E. Rathborne, the General Secretary of the Gas Industry Salaried Officers' Federation, has complained to the Australian Press Council of an editorial headed "Laughing Gas" in the Sydney Daily Telegraph of 31st May, 1977.

The subject of the editorial was a log of claims served by the Federation on a number of employers, seeking wages and conditions of work for the members of the Federation.

The editorial recited some of the claims and its accuracy in this respect is not denied. They were claims for unisex saunas, a 10 minute smoko every hour, 20 cents an hour for each floor worked above ground level, a wrist watch maintenance allowance, fully equipped gymnasiums with sparring partners provided, effigies of bosses and politicians to burn to let off steam, bosses to call union representatives "sir", and a wage of $654 for 271/2 hour week.

The editorial ridiculed this log, remarking sarcastically that there was no demand for a chauffeur-driven limousine to take each clerk to work, and adding that the log was one filed "for serious consideration by the employers and the Arbitration Commission, which would be humorous - if it were not so laughable".

Mr. Rathborne does not complain of the ridicule, but he does complain of the following paragraphs:

Any lingering doubts that Australia has become the loony land of labour relations surely must be over.

Three examples today show how close the men in white coats must be to descending on some of our union leaders.

Those who are most obviously suitable cases for treatment are the leaders of Australia's 8000 gas industry clerks.

These words Mr. Rathborne takes to mean nothing less than that the leaders of the Federation were of unsound mind. He says that that was "alleged - not inferred", and he invites the Council to make an adjudication on the matter. The paper offered the Federation a right of reply but it was not availed of.

It is doubtless true, as Mr. Rathborne insists, that the log was what is known as an ambit log, that is to say one which contains a series of very wide claims not all of which the union concerned intends to press immediately or perhaps at all, but the purpose of which is to create a dispute over a wide area within which the union may move in pressing claims from time to time for an award or a variation thereof.

It is obviously possible for even such a log to be so extreme in its claims as to invite derision; but the question here is whether the Daily Telegraph added to derision of the log an assertion of actual insanity on the part of its authors.

The Council is unable to read the editorial so literally. In its opinion the statement that the Federation's leaders were "suitable cases for treatment" by "the men in white coats" (presumably psychiatrists), when read in the context of the whole editorial and particularly of the opening comment about Australia having become "the loony land of labour relations", could not reasonably be understood otherwise than as a striking way of saying, in accordance with a very familiar method of speech that the claims selected for comment were so ludicrous that their inclusion in a document having a serious legal purpose, and therefore not intended as a joke, could not be defended on rational grounds.

Such an opinion the Daily Telegraph was entitled to offer its readers, and in the view of the Council it did not overstep the bounds of ethical conduct by doing so in the emphatic terms that it used, in poor taste though they may have been.

The complaint must be dismissed.