Paul Starick: Premier Peter Malinauskas’s balancing act between business and unions
Accused of betrayal by the militant CFMEU, Premier Peter Malinauskas has a tricky tightrope to walk, Paul Starick writes.
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Attacks from the militant CFMEU won’t do Premier Peter Malinauskas much harm but he faces a long-term juggling act to placate demands from both business and unions.
The construction worker conflict is the Premier’s second bout with the union movement – he stitched together a compromise in June over workers’ compensation changes.
Mr Malinauskas, the shop assistants’ union state secretary before entering parliament in 2015, will face ongoing pressure in a cost-of-living crisis to look after this worker base with improved conditions and wages.
But he signalled his embrace of the private sector ahead of the March 19 election, when he vowed business leaders would be invited into the heart of a Malinauskas Labor government for regular monthly cabinet briefings to present ideas for economic reform and growth.
Union leaders have not been issued a similar invitation. Business SA addressed cabinet in May and subsequently hailed the Premier’s “open-door collaborative approach” as an “immediate and positive outcome for the South Australian business community”.
By contrast, Mr Malinauskas’s order to the ALP to relinquish a $125,000 CFMEU donation triggered the construction union to accuse him of “a significant betrayal of the CFMEU members who supported (Labor) during the election campaign”.
Mr Malinauskas will shrug off attacks from a union whose fist-punching hierarchy chanted “union power” after taking over the SA branch last Wednesday. Most voters will be repelled by this aggression.
But the issue of Labor’s reliance on a union movement that represents less than 15 per cent of workers nationally is not going away.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in late July faced an intense grilling during his first Question Time as Prime Minister over Labor’s links with the CFMEU and the federal government’s decision to strip the construction watchdog of its powers.
In SA, the state’s biggest worker bloc, public sector unions, will be expecting some joy from a Labor government during wage talks, particularly as inflation and interest rates surge.
But Treasurer Stephen Mullighan sent a blunt message ahead of his June 2 state budget that excessive wage claims should be avoided.
“We don’t want to leave workers behind in a high inflationary environment but, at the same token, we’re not just going to roll over and give them everything they want, because that means we’ve got less money to deliver services that the community expects,” Mr Mullighan said.
This is the balancing act facing Mr Malinauskas and his government, who cannot serve two masters.
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Originally published as Paul Starick: Premier Peter Malinauskas’s balancing act between business and unions
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