Union thugs pay for bully boy tactics

SHOCKED unionists in the building industry are just discovering they can no longer expect to be protected from the full weight of the law by compliant union-friendly Labor governments in Canberra. The union thugs are being chased down, prosecuted, fined — and in a new twist — actually being made to pay up.

Spearheading the overdue drive to ensure union heavies and their moronic members are given the same treatment as other criminals is Nigel Hadgkiss, the director of Fair Work Building & Construction (FWBC), who returned to the agency last October. A former assistant commissioner with the AFP and national director of intelligence in the Australian Crime Commission, he gained first-hand experience into union rackets as deputy commissioner of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) — the successful watchdog set up by the Howard government in the wake of the Cole Royal Commission into the industry in 2005. Seven years later, the Gillard government pulled its teeth, collapsing the ABCC into its timid FWBC. Those teeth have now been restored by the Abbott government and they are biting. Last September, 117 members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) who took part in unlawful industrial action on a West Australian business site in 2008 were fined more than $1 million. Federal Court judge John Gilmour found their eight days of unlawful industrial action had resulted in significant economic losses and project delays to a Woodside LNG project on the Burrup Peninsula. He said the action was in defiance of an Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) return to work order issued after the first day of the action. He ordered that $680,125 be paid within 60 days, with the remaining $387,875 to be suspended. Workers who obeyed the AIRC injunction and who did not subsequently break the law had 50 per cent of their penalties suspended for three years. The penalties were apportioned according to the number of days on which the 117 individuals had taken unlawful industrial action. When I called to see whether they had paid or whether they had ignored the Federal Court ruling, Hadgkiss said: “We have collected $488,125. This leaves $196,375 outstanding. “Thirty-three workers are yet to make any payment.” But he’s not giving up. “In relation to the workers with outstanding amounts we have commenced taking action,” he said. “Where we have been able to identify property — most commonly cars and houses — we have filed and served property search and seizure orders. “The bailiff is currently executing those orders. This has already resulted in further payments, plus additional amounts to cover costs. Where we could not identify property we are going to require those workers to attend means examination in the Federal Court. “Proceedings have been filed and are in the process of being served on the workers. Hearings in early May have already been scheduled by the court. This process is also likely to incur costs that will need to be paid by the workers, as well as their penalties. This is a warning to all workers that if they breach workplace laws, FWBC will not hesitate to enforce penalties imposed by the courts.” Yesterday, FWBC launched proceedings in the Federal Court in Brisbane against the rogue CFMEU and five of its officials over a picket that prevented work on the Common Ground Project site — a housing development for the homeless. On Wednesday, FWBC sought an urgent hearing in the Federal Court of Australia to prevent further disruptive conduct by the CFMEU at the $400 million Bald Hills Wind Farm construction site at Gippsland, in southeast Victoria. Last month notorious CFMEU boss Joe McDonald was banned by the Federal Court from Brookfield Multiplex sites for three years and fined $30,500 — with the CFMEU also fined $143,000 as a result of appalling bullying and intimidation by McDonald on Perth building sites. It’s a new ball game. With federal Labor out of office, union thugs and bullies can no longer run their protection rackets with impunity and those who want to work will be free to do so. SOMETHING ROTTEN IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA THE Australian Electoral Commission can’t explain irregularities which occurred at a pre-poll mobile polling booth set up for the re-run of the West Australian senate election, which is being held because the commission lost 1370 votes from the original senate election last September. That sounds like a government agency which doesn’t even know when it’s in trouble. The AEC has been responsible for lost votes, missing votes and bungling staff at a cost of millions of dollars. Another worrying anomaly in the WA poll, which casts greater doubt on the conduct of the election, is the registration of almost 30,000 new voters. The increase is well above the average growth in WA’s population, raising fears an extra 10,000 phantom voters may have been added to the roll since the September election. Electoral commission data shows jumps in WA enrolments of 21,000 before the 2010 federal election, 12,800 before last September’s election and 28,900 before tomorrow’s election. Australians for Honest Elections president Lex Stewart called on the AEC to “come clean” and describe the procedures and due diligence it has used to check whether this anomalously high number of extra enrolments were genuine, or were padding? “When were the last ‘habitation reviews’ conducted, and how far-reaching were they?” Stewart asked. “Or do we conclude that the AEC does not care about an accurate electoral roll?” Stewart noted that the Court of Disputed Returns is, almost unbelievably, forbidden by the Electoral Act from inquiring into bodgied electoral rolls and phantom false enrolments, a matter of real concern. The numbers don’t stack up. The integrity of the voting system is in doubt. Voter fraud is serious but there has been a lack of political will to tackle this blight on Australian democracy. A thorough review and the adaptation of a new, secure structure is necessary to restore the public’s faith in the system.