The power of ideas should never be underestimated. Good or bad ideas will usually influence public policy – if not in the short run then at least over the long run. That is certainly true in the case of the labour market. Unfortunately, for much of this century, and in many countries, the ideas behind industrial relations laws were more often bad than good. Workers and employers alike suffered under philosophies that fundamentally misunderstood labour markets. For much of this time, New Zealand and Australia had two of the worst industrial relations regimes among western countries. More recently, labour market liberalisation has taken place on both sides of the Tasman. But the old, bad ideas have not disappeared, and are still widely promoted. If further labour market liberalisation is to proceed successfully, we must continue to combat those ideas and expose the fallacies behind them.