We like it here at RTWMatters when the nation’s leaders agree with us.

Julia Gillard has come out today to extol the virtues of partnership, calling on Australians to “Move beyond a focus on law changes to a new focus on cultural change in the workplace."

As RTW Coordinators struggling to promote cultural change in their workplace well know, convincing an organisation – and all the individuals within it – to commit to the partnership approach can feel like a Sisyphean challenge.

Just as you push that craggy boulder of cooperation to the top of the hill, it rolls right back down and you have to start again, from somewhere close to the bottom.

So we feel for Julia, whose job it is to convince a whole nation full of sometimes congenial but all too frequently cranky employers, unions and workers that it is in everybody’s best interest to go beyond the collaboration bare minimum dictated by law.

Gillard’s vision sounds admirable: Australia needs to “build partnerships between management and workers and their unions that operate for the benefit of all.” And we – thinking of the looming biffo over workers’ comp harmonisation, chime in with a hearty, “Hear, hear,” and a Mr Squiggle's blackboard-esque “Hurry up!”

More quietly, it crosses our minds to wonder whether there is any substance behind the partnership rhetoric, or whether Gillard’s “culture change” catch cry is simply good spin. After all, her comments came during an opening address to the 15th World Congress for the International Industrial Relations Association in Sydney this morning, following business disquiet over what some see as a return to adversarial industrial relations following the replacement of the previous government’s WorkChoices with Gillard’s Fair Work Bill.

What’s interesting about this debate, however, is that the focus is firmly on the relationship between the partnership approach and increases in productivity. John Denton, chief executive of law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, who recently chaired a closed-door forum of business leaders, union officials, bureaucrats and academics convened by Ms Gillard, told The Australian that he recognises a need to go beyond the industrial relations “rules” in order to tap productivity gains.

Jeff Lawrence, speaking on behalf of the ACTU seemed to agree. “Improving productivity is a shared objective of business, the labour movement and the government,” said Mr Lawrence, “and we are keen to continue the dialogue.”

This is good news. And even better is the fact that Ms Gillard seems to know that, although it sounds warm and fuzzy, promoting the partnership approach isn’t always an easy sell.

"Change of this sort is slower to take root than rapid structural reform…It is more dependent on intangibles, including the good will and motivation of those who take part."

RTW Coordinators of the world, take heart. Collaboration isn’t always easy, but pushing boulders up hills becomes a lot less strenuous when many hands are pushing in the same direction. It’s good to hear our leaders recognising the fact and spruiking the benefits or working together.