Albanese is responsible for the monster that is the CFMEU

The Albanese government should end the Labor Party’s association with the construction union.

Aaron PatrickSenior correspondent

Jul 27, 2024 – 5.00am

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Lawbreaking in the construction industry is so organised – so ridiculously blatant – that this nation of rules and regulations should be ashamed.

While politicians try to work out how, or if, to eradicate a problem of basic workplace criminality, one man carries more responsibility than most for creating the conditions under which it is allowed to thrive: the prime minister.

The Albanese government should permanently end the Labor Party’s association with the construction union.

Anthony Albanese has run what looks like the most pro-union federal government since labour minister Clyde Cameron backed automatic economy-wide wage raises during the 1970s inflation breakout.

Last year’s abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) is one component of the Labor Party’s plan.

Other measures include: allowing multi-employer wage negotiations; pushing casual workers, contractors and food delivery drivers into the regulated system; forcing equal pay onto labour-hire companies, which could destroy them; giving union officials greater access to workplaces; and allowing employees to refuse to communicate with their employer outside regular work hours.

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These changes come into effect on August 26 – reversing decades of liberalisation that made Australia more prosperous and helped millions of unskilled, working-class people build careers. Simultaneously, the most regulated part of the economy and a no-go zone for law enforcement, the industrial relations system, now appears to have regressed to the pre-Hawke/Keating era.

Where is the ombudsman?

Construction is the most egregious example of how a friendly political environment can allow overly aggressive unionism to thrive.

The Fair Work Ombudsman was meant to take up the ABCC’s work. The agency has demonstrated as much interest in the CFMEU as a teenager in housework.

It hasn’t initiated one new case against the CFMEU; 30 per cent of the cases inherited from the ABCC have been dropped or partially discontinued.

A Fair Work Ombudsman spokesman argues, correctly, it isn’t allowed to investigate criminal conduct, and has fewer powers than the ABCC – which, of course, was Albanese’s objective.

Coalition frontbenchers have been influenced by private stories about union thuggery from business owners. Their sources won’t go public out of fear of retaliation, financial and physical.

There’s a view in the opposition that then-prime minister Tony Abbott got the 2014 union royal commission wrong. Retired judge Dyson Heydon pursued the Australian Workers’ Union, an investigation Liberals hoped would destroy Julia Gillard and Bill Shorten, a former prime minister and a would-be PM with reasons to avoid scrutiny of their murky union antecedents.

Victorian CFMEU leader John Setka last year.

Not a minute in Heydon’s witness box did sit John Setka, the Victorian CFMEU leader who traded mate-love texts with Mick Gatto. Gatto’s a freelance construction “negotiator” who once boasted to a builder: “I can stop anyone doing anything, mate.”

A former CFMEU national secretary, John Sutton, reckons a new group of officials, “some with a history of bikie gang activity and criminal involvement”, were hired after Setka took control in 2012.

Albanese expelled Setka from the Labor Party in 2019. The showy step had no effect. The CFMEU remained a Labor affiliate, which gave it the right to vote in Labor elections. Setka played kingmaker in the faction-riven Victorian division, a leverage that helped the union capture control of the state’s big civil construction projects.

Reports of CFMEU thuggery aren’t new. But the detail in the past two weeks’ news has shifted politics.

Coalition leaders believe Australians are ready for tough talk about union power. The Liberals have shaken their PTSD from the 2007 WorkChoices election loss.

“I think there will be an IR element to the next election in a way we haven’t seen since 2007,” says Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group.

On industrial relations, unlike economics, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s instincts are strong. Speaking this week in Melbourne, a naturally hostile market for the conservative, he drew a clear connection between union abuses and high housing prices.

On 3AW, he recounted a conversation with a builder. The company limited the size of buildings to avoid them falling under the CFMEU’s authority, Dutton said he was told. If the project was of a certain height, the union would move in and stipulate permissible crane operators and subcontractors. The consequence, Dutton said, were apartments which cost $200,000 more.

His shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, is promising an industrial relations campaign. “We’ll take the fight up to Labor on IR issues that impact Australians’ standards of living and this is one of those,” he told me.

The politics looks good for the Coalition – if it can persuade Australians the CFMEU’s conduct contributes to housing costs. A recent poll, by YouGov, put home prices above general inflation as voters’ top concern. Last week I overheard a Victorian paramedic complaining the ambulance service is underfunded because “the CFMEU gets all the money”.

A meeting of CFMEU members in Melbourne in June.

Bringing back the ABCC is a top Coalition pledge. Portfolio spokeswoman Michaelia Cash has made protecting the casual system a priority too. She wants more flexibility for contractors, and doesn’t want businesses dragged into other companies’ workplace agreements.

At the same time, Cash doesn’t want to push her chances. She is wary of changes likely to be vetoed by the Senate, which facilitated the Albanese government’s IR program.

Decent union members don’t need this

Putting aside politics, there’s an obvious reason to clean up construction. If Australia wants to be a nation of laws that apply equally to all, police forces, politicians and bureaucrats can’t ignore lawbreaking by men in high-vis vests just because they have political connections, or operate in the industrial relations system.

While the CFMEU’s construction division has become notorious, it is worth noting that the union movement is full of decent men and women who care about their members.

They work hard at thankless jobs, usually for less than they could earn in the private sector. They don’t deserve to be associated with bullies, biker gangs and “underworld figures”.

Which is why the Albanese government should permanently end the Labor Party’s association with the construction union. Let this corrupt, morally bankrupt organisation survive on its own.

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