At the weekend, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten declared that, after consultations, he would restore the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT) which this year set pricing rules that would have put out of business some 35,000 owner-driver truckies, often forcing them to sell their home.
It would have caused the Transport Workers Union to dominate road transport in Australia, generating a huge increase in union and ALP funds. The principle of Commonwealth control of small business pricing, which the tribunal tried to implement, can be used just as effectively in other industries to achieve union domination.
The building unions have long wanted control of home building and will be looking to duplicate the TWU game if Shorten restores the RSRT.
Again, vast numbers of small homebuilding subcontractors and builders will be put out of business in favour of the CFMEU and other building union members.
Like transport, the cost of building homes will soar. And once the principle of small businesses being priced out of the market in favour of union domination is established, it, theoretically, can be extended throughout the nation.
Bill Shorten will say that such devastation will never happen under his government. John Howard said the same thing about his industrial relations legislation. But the union television advertisements aired during the 2007 campaign brilliantly stoked that fear.
In the case of Work Choices, the unions used actors to show what might happen to families if John Howard was re-elected.
In transport, Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce can use real people as distinct from actors, which will be far more devastating. They can also extend the tribunal threat to small businesses in other industries using actors.
In the case of the RSRT, its price schedule operated for a couple of months before Grace Collier picked up the devastating damage in The Australian (TWU can bring nation to its knees with ‘safe’ truckies rates, March 19-20) and I followed it up with eight commentaries and later there was wider coverage.
My first commentary (Truckies on the road to ruin, March 29) showed the power of this issue and started with the words “About 35,000 people, mostly men, drive their own long-haul trucks. They have borrowed about $15bn from Australian banks and other financiers to fund their vehicles. Most of the loans are also secured on the family home”.
The crossbenchers supported the legislation that abolished the tribunal but in the period leading to abolition extensive damage was done to owner-drivers.
In TV advertisements those people can graphically describe what happened to them. Already they are considering suing the individual members of the tribunal for damages running into the tens of millions of dollars.
It’s important to repeat what the tribunal did. On the basis that the Commonwealth Government has power over pricing (and any restoration of the tribunal will see that challenged in the High Court), the tribunal required owner-drivers to charge two and three times market rates.
Customers who used owner-drivers had to pay these higher rates or risk being fined along with any owner-drivers who charged rates lower than what had been stipulated by the tribunal. The owner-drivers were set to be put out of business.
By contrast, members of the TWU could charge any rate and take all the business. That gave market power to the union and big transport companies, although the pricing tribunal was so savage that the large companies who benefited opposed what it did.
The pretext for the TWU preference and price hikes was that this would help road safety. It was a very dubious claim because there are now so many technological developments to stop bad driving that there is no need to put owner drivers out of business in the interests of road safety.
Similar ruses can be devised for just about any industry to wipe out small business in favour of union-dominated work forces. Accordingly, the building unions would love the idea that a home building pricing tribunal would quickly follow the one introduced for transport.
Accordingly, I can’t think if a better election campaign material — it has actual threats to small business via trucks and potential treats to home building and other industries.
The TV script could highlight the prospect of huge areas of the small business community being savaged. And it can be backed with a truck at every ALP meeting. Scott Morrison’s first budget will be aimed at helping small business, so it all ties in.
Work Choices was powerful. This is super powerful. The tragedy for Australian democracy is that when it comes to union matters, the ALP and The Greens are so dependent on union cash that they must do what they are told.
It’s doubly sad for Australian democracy because in other areas the ALP has innovative policies. Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen has done a lot of work in the lead up to the election.
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Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce have been given an unprecedented opportunity to win the 2016 election — they can duplicate the methods used in the ALP’s incredibly successful ‘Work Choices’ campaign that devastated John Howard in 2007.