In the aftermath of the Victorian State election in 1992, the election of a conservative administration and the enactment of new State labour laws, momentum gathered within the labour movement to utilise ILO Conventions as a means of striking down the Victorian laws. The idea was: the ILO to the rescue; that the external affairs power of the Commonwealth Constitution together with legislation based on ratified ILO Conventions might be utilised to salvage some important trade union and related rights.
At different periods in the post-War histories of the Australian and Japanese labour movements, there have been calls for utilising International Labour Organisation Conventions in order to salvage some important trade union rights that those movements have fought to achieve over this century.