Assault on Cash the tactic of desperate thugs
IF the past week of politics has shown us anything, it’s that Michaelia Cash is the Wonder Woman of Turnbull’s Cabinet, and the CFMEU know it, Miranda Devine writes.
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THERE is something seriously wrong in Australia when the run-of the-mill practice of tipping off the media to a police raid is treated as a worse crime than union corruption which has a stranglehold on the ALP and big business, damaging our productivity, suppressing worker’s wages and delivering the highest construction costs in the world.
It is this union stranglehold the Turnbull government has been systematically dismantling, using legislation it took to a double-dissolution election last year.
Make no mistake, this is an existential crisis for the union movement and its political arm, the ALP. Their entire business model is being destroyed by Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, the Wonder Woman of the Turnbull government.
Cash has proved to be the toughest and most effective foe the union movement has ever faced.
Which, of course, is why they are trying to destroy her.
She withstood last week’s brutal Labor-driven media storm over her office tipping off media to police raids on the Sydney and Melbourne offices of the Australian Workers’ Union.
The raids were ordered by the new independent industrial watchdog, the Registered Organisations Commission, after the AWU refused to hand over documents relating to large donations of union money made by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten when he was AWU boss, $25,000 to his own election campaign in 2007, as well as $100,000 to left wing, job-destroying activist group GetUp!, allegedly without proper approval.
The fact that the AWU rushed off to the Federal Court for an injunction to shut down the investigation indicates it has something to hide, despite protestations.
But the media narrative followed Labor’s line, ignoring the story about union corruption and, instead, flagellating Cash after she erroneously told Labor Senator and union skill Doug Cameron in Senate Estimates that her office had not tipped off any media about the raids.
Even more inexplicably, at least two media operatives transgressed journalistic ethics by shopping Cash advisor David De Garis to Buzzfeed as the source of one tip-off about the raid.
He lost his job and Cash was embarrassed during two days of cross-examination by a suspiciously well-briefed Cameron.
The hypocrisy of all those fulminating about the leak is exposed when you consider their silence about the flood of malicious leaks against Cardinal George Pell, which were designed to deny him a fair trial.
Nothing to see there. But a tip-off about a police raid, the bread and butter of crime reporters, is treated as a breach of ethics so grave that Senator Cash must resign.
What a joke.
Wonder Woman Cash is a threat to the most powerful force in Australia, the corrupt cartel between the union movement and bosses, in which h workers’ wages and conditions are secretly traded off for dodgy payments to unions; or when small businesses are forced to pay bribes to unions in order to work for big construction companies.
We saw how the scam operated when brave souls came forward to the Heydon royal commission.
Plasterer Jian Yu He testified that he had to pay a CFMEU heavy $5,000 before he was allowed to work on a construction site.
Formwork company operator Elias Taleb testified that he was forced to pay $50,000 to the CFMEU to access job sites as well as signing up his tradies to the union, against their wishes.
Mike Kane, CEO of concrete company Boral, and one of the rare bosses to stand up to the unions, testified about the CFMEU’s “criminal conspiracy to interfere in the marketplace”.
Boral had defied CFMEU demands to stop supplying concrete to builder Grocon, which was resisting union control of its worksites. The CFMEU blockaded Grocon’s sites and blackballed its suppliers, including Boral, whose customers were heavied by the union to stop buying its products, costing the company $8 million and forcing it out of Melbourne.
Heydon’s final report detailed “deep-seated” corruption by “louts, thugs, bullies, thieves, perjurers, those who threaten violence, errant fiduciaries and organisers of boycotts”.
Some of those thugs now are facing criminal trials, as 93 referrals by Heydon of possible breaches of criminal and civil laws work their way through the system.
Meanwhile Cash is dismantling their business model, using Heydon’s blueprint to push legislation though the Senate.
First up was the restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission watchdog. Next came the Fair Work Amendment (Corrupting Benefits) Bill which established the ROC and criminalised the “giving or receiving of corrupting benefits in relation to officers of registered organisations”. Penalties include 10-year jail terms, and fines up to $5.25 million — and they apply to unions and employer groups alike.
She’s drawing tight the noose, and the union movement is responding with desperate behaviour, such as the incident, recently, when workers at Glencore’s Oaky North mine faced threats from CFEMU thugs including “I’ll f***ing rape your kids, c***”.
Watching union hacks like Shorten, Cameron, and Labor’s workplace spokesman Brendan O’Connor, the brother of notorious CFMEU boss Michael O’Connor, posing as paragons of propriety throughout the pantomime last week, you wonder how they could keep a straight face.
But keep a straight face they do because they know what’s at stake.
Originally published as Assault on Cash the tactic of desperate thugs
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