Turnbull government is running on empty
THERE are the real-world impacts when our government is absorbed in distractions like sex bans. Not paying enough attention to real issues has created risks to the economy, writes Peta Credlin.
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NAVIGATING the ship of state, like driving a car, requires good anticipation skills.
It also requires a number of separate tasks to be done simultaneously, with most of the driver’s gaze fixed ahead and occasional checks in the rear-view mirror. Governments that don’t handle the road well tend to take the bend too quickly and wonder why they’ve run off the road. They also forget to check the fuel gauge, with the inevitable result that they’re left trying to run on empty.
So too the Turnbull government.
During the election campaign and since, the Turnbull government promised to subject union mergers to a national interest test, in the same way that companies face merger scrutiny. In the commercial world, would-be mergers are frequently enough stopped or amended by the corporate regulator because they will lead to a reduction in competition or too much concentration of market power.
Of course, unions used to face a test, before Julia Gillard rewrote the industrial laws, and the Coalition was merely committed to bringing it back.
What’s fair enough for business should be fair enough for unions — right? Wrong.
Last week, the Fair Work Commission reluctantly approved the merger of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) with the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) to create a new super-union covering building sites, mines, ports and shipping.
As even the Fair Work deputy president noted in his decision allowing the merger, while the commission could not condone the CFMEU’s behaviour, and referenced recent Federal Court decisions against the union, it had no choice but to approve the merger under the laws as they stand.
That’s because the Turnbull government failed to do enough to get the legislation re-establishing a public interest test through the parliament.
By taking its eye off the ball, it has created significant risk right across the economy.
Despite the pleas of industry, the government didn’t get its legislative act together. After passing the lower house, the Bill sat in the Senate for months. Crossbenchers said last week that negotiations, if you could call them that, were cursory and half-hearted. In the end, the Bill wasn’t even put to a vote. One of the excuses from the government was that they ran out of time because the legislative agenda was busy. Rubbish.
Who can forget the farcical situation last year, when this and many other urgent bills were delayed because the government cancelled a week of parliament? There was also another week where the only issue debated was same-sex marriage.
Worse, former industrial relations minister Michaelia Cash, once a fighter, went into hiding after a leak to the media about a federal police raid on AWU offices. The source is not known but Cash’s office has copped the flak.
Following the December reshuffle, the PM also dumped industrial relations from cabinet and handed it to newbie minister Craig Laundy, who has done bugger all to progress the public interest test, even as the CFMEU-MUA merger loomed.
I don’t think it can get more cack-handed than this. This merger matters because, according to the head of the Master Builders Association, “the MUA and CFMEU appear to share a common belief that they are above the law and are renowned for using tactics such as bullying, intimidation and industrial thuggery on anyone who disagrees with them …
“Merging these two unions into one new, militant ‘Super-Union’ will see these illegal tactics become more prevalent, giving them even greater power to coerce business, put jobs at risk and bring the economy to a standstill”.
It’s that serious. For the Liberal-National Coalition, industrial relations used to be a matter of values and principle but now the government is not even prepared to put up legislation and have the fight. It’s no wonder so many of the Liberals’ core supporters feel let down. With more than $300 million in assets and $150 million in annual turnover, the CFMEU and the MUA have factored breaking the law and copping the fine into their business model. With pockets lined by ordinary members, the union just pays officials’ fines so the bully boys can continue to reoffend. Right now, 77 union officials are before the courts and in the last couple of years, over $13 million in fines have been imposed. In the end, all of us pay for this giant extortion racket.
Forget Trump’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminium. If you want to see Australian industry brought to its knees, wait for the first industrial action from this new mega-militant body that now stretches from the mining pit to the port — and right across Australia’s $200 billion construction sector, our nation’s second-largest industry.
These are the real-world impacts when governments lose focus, and become absorbed with internal debates, recriminations and complete distractions like sex bans and manufactured moral outrage.