Do not let the ALP get anywhere near Govt in NSW!!!
How's this for a conflict of interest...the new Police Minister in Qld appointed by the Palachuk Government has associations with CFMEU...
This is worth a read...it is available on the Courier Mail web page.
A FORMER High Court judge has found serious union wrongdoing in the Queensland building industry and recommended criminal charges against a union boss with strong links to the Palaszczuk Government.
The Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption found there were bribes, extortion, secret commissions and “other unlawful payments’’ involving members of the CFMEU, a powerful union and Labor backer whose members in Queensland include Police Minister Jo-Ann Miller and Jim Pearce, the Member for Mirani.
There were no suggestions of impropriety by Miller or Pearce although Justice John Dyson Heydon’s interim report to Parliament was scathing against their union.
“The evidence indicates that a number of Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union officials seek to conduct their affairs with a deliberate disregard for the rule of law,’’ Heydon said.
“That evidence is suggestive of the existence of a pervasive and unhealthy culture within the CFMEU, under which the law is to be deliberately evaded, or crashed through as an irrelevance.’’
He said union officials “prefer to lie rather than reveal the truth and betray the union”.
“The reputations of those who speak out about union wrongdoing become the subject of baseless slurs and vilification,’’ Heydon said.
He recommended criminal charges against key CFMEU officials including Queensland secretary Michael Ravbar, a personal friend of several unionists who are now members of Parliament.
Heydon recommended Ravbar be prosecuted for breaches of company and workplace laws and extortion.
Ravbar is a vice-president of the Queensland Council of Unions which directs Labor policy and has a say in the appointment of Queensland Cabinet ministers.
Palaszczuk joined Ravbar and other union chiefs at a rally in Gladstone last year in which she made a speech praising unions, Green Left Weekly reported.
Palaszczuk also foolishly marched with the CFMEU in Brisbane this month and had a “selfie” taken with Dave Noonan, the CFMEU’s national secretary. He, too, is under scrutiny from the royal commission.
Was it unwise for the Premier to appear with the chief of a union accused of criminality? Of course.
However Palaszczuk’s Labor is indebted to the CFMEU. The Australian Electoral Commission last month released records showing the CFMEU donated $1.2 million to ALP branches, including Queensland, last year.
In more embarrassing news for Palaszczuk and Miller, the Fair Work Building and Construction Commission investigating alleged illegal union activities says 52 out of its 133 active cases are in Queensland.
The latest findings of union corruption place Miller in an especially invidious position. As Police Minister she controls the force helping to investigate the most serious charges faced by the union.
And how do these criminal allegations sit with “independent” Speaker of Parliament, Peter Wellington?
Pompous Peter says he won’t back the minority Palaszczuk Government on the floor of the House if there is any wrongdoing.
The royal commission has found plenty, including tens of millions in tainted money.
Wellington must now assure Queenslanders that the investigation into cash and favours in the Newman government extends to Labor and its union mates.
To exclude union cash-and-kind support for Labor’s election campaign would make Wellington a laughing stock. It would also amount to a whitewash in my view.
Wellington knows the ACCC is investigating the CFMEU for secondary boycotts. The royal commission found the conduct of CFMEU officers in Queensland and Victoria “may constitute the criminal offences of blackmail and extortion”.
It added: “The behaviour by officers of the CFMEU in Victoria and Queensland which may give rise to contraventions of the boycott, cartel and other provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act.”
And there was much criminality left unspoken.
I’m told a third volume of the commission’s interim report dealing with “grave threats to the power and authority of the Australian state’’ was kept confidential to protect witnesses and their families.
An extra 10 federal police arrived in Brisbane recently to take evidence from building industry figures.
UNIONS DRIVE UP HOME UNIT PRICES
STRIKES and union demands add $50,000 to the cost of every home unit in Queensland’s largest apartment blocks. So says Master Builders, the construction industry lobby group.
And it warns that taxpayers are paying millions more for vital infrastructure such as hospitals because of strikes, pickets, intimidation and inflated wage packages.
Buildings hit by costly strikes in recent years include the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, the QUT Kelvin Grove Creative Precinct, the Gold Coast Hospital and high-rise apartment blocks at West End, Fortitude Valley and the Gold Coast.
“The union holds the entire industry to ransom,” John Crittall, a Master Builders director, said.
He said a single day lost to strikes could cost a developer tens of thousands of dollars.
“There have been millions of dollars in losses in disputes over enforcing union EBAs (enterprise bargaining agreements).
“It’s such a hostile union. The royal commission (into corruption) has made some findings which are extremely disturbing to the industry.”
The children’s hospital lost nine weeks to industrial disruption and the QUT creative arts building, six weeks.
“They suffered enormous industrial unrest with multiple strikes and many days of lost production,’’ Crittall said.
“The union has acted with legal impunity.’’
The CFMEU has around 30,000 members in Queensland including carpenters, steel workers, form workers, concreters, scaffolders and crane crews including riggers and dogmen.
Other members are from the finishing trades and include painters, tilers, bricklayers, plasterers and plant operators.
“The new deal has a carpenter on $145,000 – but it will cost the boss $188,000 to put him on the ground,’’ Crittall said. “Union costs are so much out of whack that unit owners pay $50,000 too much.
“The non-union sector on smaller jobs has 30 per cent less costs.’’
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WHERE THE MONEY GOES
CFMEU members were being milked by their own union, according to the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.
There was an “absence of proper disclosure” around several “welfare” funds set up for its members.
“There is a real problem with this,” said Justice John Dyson Heydon in his interim report to Parliament.
And vast sums remain unaccounted for.
The royal commission raised questions about the union’s workers’ redundancy fund, a welfare fund and a training fund. “The CFMEU receives many millions of dollars as a result of arrangements with these entities,” the report found.
Investigations centre on BERT, the Building Employees Redundancy Trust. “Various employers engaged in the construction industry in Queensland have paid money into these funds to cover the cost of subsequent redundancy payouts to employees,” the report said.
“The income generated from the investment of these funds does not go to the employees, but is instead held by BERT and spent at the direction of the BERT shareholders, including the CFMEU.”
Training grants were paid to the CFMEU but there was no adequate disclosure to members, it found.
It added: “The income generated by BERT is valuable to the CFMEU.
“Hence the CFMEU has a strong self-interest in promoting BERT.
“It does so by seeking to have employers sign enterprise bargaining agreements on terms which oblige the employers to pay into BERT.
“The CFMEU’s self-interest has sometimes led its officers to procure employers to sign enterprise agreements on terms which include a BERT clause by unacceptable means.
“Indeed those means have extended to possible criminal conduct and extortion.”
The royal commission found BERT might have committed a “serious breach of trust” in August 2012 by paying money out of the BERT fund to provide financial support for workers engaged in “unlawful strike action” at the Queensland Children’s Hospital site.
“This possible breach of trust occurred because Michael Ravbar and the other union appointed directors of BERT may have breached their duties to BERT,” it said.
“Some employees who are BERT members are treated unfairly. They do not enjoy the full range of welfare benefits that are funded by the profits generated from the investment of their own redundancy monies.
“They are excluded from these benefits because they are not union members.
“The non-union shareholder and directors want to remedy this obvious deficiency in the system, but Mr Ravbar and the other union- appointed directors have blocked any change.
“They refuse to agree to any change because, under the existing system, the CFMEU uses these benefit programs as selling points for union membership. They are deliberately acting against the best interests of the members of the BERT fund generally in order to secure an advantage for the CFMEU.”
The report found Ravbar and the other union-appointed directors “appear to be either unaware of, or unwilling, to meet the obligations owed by directors of a trustee corporation responsible for tens of millions of dollars in trust for members”.
There was also a drain on money allocated for training courses.
“The vast bulk of it is earmarked to meet estimated administrative and other costs of the CFMEU itself,’’ it said.
DES HOUGHTON
THE COURIER-MAIL
MARCH 28, 2015 12:00AM
