Beware the great union comeback

Unions are using their influence over the ALP and it won’t take long for the public to understand the ramifications.

Our two major parties, the ALP and the Liberal-National coalition are beginning to develop very different attitudes to the structure of Australian business, both at the federal and state levels.

Because this change is at an early stage, I do not believe the Australian community fully understands what is taking place. And nor does the Reserve Bank.

If the ALP policy thrust gathers momentum it will boost Australian inflation as industry after industry develops a higher cost structure.

The Coalition business culture is now very clear and Malcolm Turnbull is making a determined thrust to push small business and entrepreneurship, and the higher productivity and employment it delivers. But he rarely contrasts the Coalition policy with the opposition.

The ALP would say they are a party that supports small business and there is no doubt that has been their traditional stance. But a disturbing new culture is seeping into the party and the ALP is becoming a party of big unions, often linked to big companies or government organisations. Let me give you three examples — one nationally and two in the states.

Federally Bill Shorten has declared he will restore the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, which the Parliament abolished after it set up a transport fee structure that would have bankrupted some 35,000 owner truck drivers and replaced them with employed members of the Transport Workers Union (Truckies saved after Turnbull remembers how business works, April 19).

The tribunal’s idea was that if you charge a lot more for road transport there will be a fall in the level of road accidents. If that was ever true it is certainly not true today because low cost modern technology enables a driver’s eye/drowsy patterns and driving speeds and distances to be constantly monitored.

In Western Australia, they have been very successful in regulating transport to prevent accidents and WA Treasurer Mike Nahan has declared that if Bill Shorten becomes Prime Minister and tries to fix WA road transport charges, the WA government will challenge the matter in the High Court on constitutional grounds.

The essence of the Tribunal’s strategy was to set higher charges for entrepreneurs (owner drivers) so that employed union members could undercut them and wipe them out. If Bill Shorten’s ‘road safety’ Tribunal is re-established and if it survives the High Court Challenge, then the precedent will be set to fix the prices charged by entrepreneurs in other industries, led by home building where the CFMEU wants to extend its influence.

Using the transport ‘safety’ model it would be very easy to establish higher rates for small contractors in carpentry, bricklaying etc allowing union members to undercut them (The Coalition can take a leaf from Labor’s electoral playbook, May 2).

In Victoria, pressure for the same big union-big employer structure we are seeing federally takes a different course. The Premier, Daniel Andrews, wants firefighting in the state to be controlled by the union. Under the plan agreed to by the Premier and the fire union, members of the union need to attend every fire.

There are some 60,000 volunteers available to fight fires in Victoria via the CFA and they are one of the best firefighting organisations in the world. Under the Premier’s plan volunteers will be controlled by members of the union or somehow unionised.

The cost implications are enormous and the reduction in fire protection in the state frightening. But, as in transport, it extends union power — this time into an industry dominated by volunteers.

The Victorian Premier is being opposed by the minister in charge of fire protection and by the board of volunteer body, the CFA. But there is enormous pressure on them to resign, leaving the Premier free to implement the plan.

In Queensland, there has been a merger of government-owned energy companies that makes redundant large numbers of electrical workers. A new division is being formed where these workers will compete against small electrical firms.

If the road pattern is duplicated they will attack the small operators by cutting the price but later their high cost structure will be recouped.

Outside the public sector, union membership in Australia has been on the decline but the unions dominate the ALP and are using the power of their political wing to make a comeback. But it’s step-by-step and the public does not notice.

They will when prices rise.