The Hancock Report was a report on the Australian system of

industrial relations Industrial relations or employment relations is the multidisciplinary academic field that studies the employment relationship; that is, the complex interrelations between employers and employees, labor/trade unions, employer organizations, ...

system by the central government compiled by Keith Hancock. The report argued for a centralised industrial relations system centred on award and argued against decentralisation and

enterprise bargaining Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole industr ...

. The report's findings were handed down in 1985 and started a long debate over industrial relations in Australia. Most of the report's recommendations were implemented in the Industrial Relations Bill 1987 (later reintroduced with minimal changes as the Industrial Relations Bill 1988). The Hancock Report's findings also led to the formation of the H.R. Nicholls Society, an

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...

strongly in favour of

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

and

decentralisation Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

References

{{Reflist Australian labour law