Coalition, builders clash over CFMEU

The Coalition pledge to deregister the CFMEU sparks fresh criticism from building employers which back administration.

Angus Taylor has committed the Coalition to deregistering the CFMEU’s construction division. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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Senior opposition frontbencher Angus Taylor has committed the Coalition to deregistering the CFMEU’s construction division if Peter Dutton wins the election, sparking fresh criticism from building industry employers which oppose deregistration.

In a video address to the H.R. Nicholls Society conference In Melbourne, the opposition treasury spokesman said a Coalition government would make “sure the CFMEU is gone”.

“It’s not enough to put them into administration. They should be deregistered,” he said.

Reiterating the opposition pledge to reverse Labor’s casual employment changes, Mr Taylor said a Coalition government would also be “winding back the worst parts of Labor’s more general workplace relations overreach”, but did not nominate specific areas.

Master Builders Australia chief executive Denita Wawn, who also spoke at the conference, told The Australian her organisation opposed deregistration and “administration is the best process for the control of the CFMEU”.

The Albanese government placed the union’s construction division into administration in the wake of serious allegations in July that criminality had infiltrated the union.

“If they were deregistered, they would still have the opportunity to be a bargaining agent under the current laws and, as such, it is a far more effective way to control their behaviour and to become a lawful union by administration,” Ms Wawn said. “We are seeing positive signs on the ground in terms of the changes being implemented by the administrator. Our focus now is ensuring that when administration is lifted in three years’ time that we have appropriate structures (and) laws in place to ensure that the decades of problems within the industry are not repeated.”

Ms Wawn called for a comprehensive inquiry, preferably by the Productivity Commission, to examine the nation’s “declining productivity and how we can best address that, including through industrial relations, to the betterment of both business and employees”.

“We believe there should be an appropriate review of the whole system to have debate about what is fair and give business some certainty going forward,” she said.

“The problem is IR is politicised and we need to get away from the politicisation of industrial relations.

“We are talking about the wellbeing of businesses, we are talking about the wellbeing of individuals that shouldn’t be utilised as a political football. Instead, we need a system that creates harmony in our workplaces as opposed to ongoing disputes and ongoing changes.”

Addressing the conference on Friday, Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association chief executive Steve Knott reiterated that former Howard government minister Nick Minchin was “bloody dead right” when he told the society in 2007 that WorkChoices “didn’t go far enough”.

He praised a new policy paper by the society that calls for major changes including the scrapping of awards; the exclusion of workers earning more than $125,000 from enterprise agreements; and a significant unwinding of unfair dismissal rights by increasing the small business definition from 15 to 50 employees.

Addressing the conference, opposition frontbencher Michael Sukkar said employment spokeswoman Michaelia Cash “has asked me not to leave the script too much or to wander off into gratuitous commentary”.