Federal election 2016: we’ll all win if Turnbull stands up to unions

“Is this a union thing?” asks a stunned George Clooney in his latest role as flashy TV show host Lee Gates in Money Monsters. Gates is taken hostage on air at gunpoint by a scruffy looking bloke but it’s not a union stunt. Unlike the very real union thing in Victoria. The United Firefighters Union is holding a political gun to the state’s head, aided and abetted by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.

The union’s brute takeover of all firefighters across Victoria, both professional and volunteer, goes to the heart of the July 2 federal election. Pipped only by its own messy economic contradictions last week, the UFU scandal is Labor’s second worst nightmare. Hence Bill Shorten’s bogus call that Malcolm Turnbull should stop meddling in a state issue. Hence Labor’s industrial relations spokesman Brendan O’Connor asking whether the Prime Minister will next get involved in NSW council amalgamations? Actually Shorten did that the next day, ­offering $20 million to pork-barrel plebiscites about a state issue.

And then there was the smug assurance from Julia Gillard’s former speech writer Michael Cooney who told Chris Kenny 10 days ago that Turnbull’s “faux” populist “I’m on your side schtick” got him through the morning but “I’m not sure it got him through the afternoon”.

Cute, but not even close. Ten mornings and 10 afternoons later, the UFU’s grubby power grab continues. There’s nothing faux about opposing the UFU’s monster-­tactics and exposing the pusillanimous Victorian Premier who wears union love on his sleeve. There’s nothing populist about Employment Minister Michaelia Cash explaining how a Turnbull government will protect volunteer firefighters who put their lives on the line for others — for no pay — from “objectionable terms” inserted into enterprise agreements by power-hungry unions.

Labor and chaps like Cooney want the electorate to look away from the Victorian union contest. Just as they want us to pay no attention to union money that pulls ALP’s policy strings. The CFMEU, at the centre of so many repugnant royal commission findings, sent $139,350 to the Victorian Labor Party to fund the election of Andrews and a handy $195,000 to Labor’s federal war chest. In 2013-14, almost 70 per cent of Labor donations came from unions. Add in union affiliation fees and that’s why union representatives have secured 50 per cent of seats at ALP state conferences. It’s a nice deal. Just imagine if big business donated funds to the Liberal Party in return for half, or even any, seats at the Liberal Party’s policy table.

Union leaders are shrewd. In 2007, UFU boss Peter Marshall broke ranks with Labor to direct UFU money to Adam Bandt in his first tilt at the seat of Melbourne, held by Labor’s Lindsay Tanner. For being one of Labor’s more sensible heads, the UFU put a target on Tanner’s back. Lately the unions have redoubled efforts at this double game: in 2013-14 union donations to the Greens totalled $600,000, with $125,000 from the CFMEU and $360,000 from the Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union.

This is how the unions instruct Labor to deliver up. It’s why the Victorian Premier knelt before the UFU before the 2014 state election, promising to recruit 450 extra firefighters, 350 to the CFA. Labor’s policy was a sugar-coated union takeover of the CFA. In return, suited-up union firefighters doorknocked for Labor, handed out Vote Labor pamphlets and stood outside polling booths telling voters to put Liberals last. In an email to Labor MPs, UFU boss Marshall said: “Internal polling conservatively estimated a 4.5 per cent swing in seats where there was a firefighter presence — and up to 7 per cent in some marginal seats.” In other words, we get you elected so look after us.

Alas, the UFU underestimated the CFA resolve to protect its 60,000 volunteers who work at 34 integrated fire stations in Melbourne and outer Melbourne, and at the hundreds of CFA-run fire stations across Victoria. The UFU’s preferred enterprise bargaining agreement is an Andrews approved stitch-up to control the CFA. A “consultative committee” comprised of four UFU members and four CFA members gives the UFU effective veto over any changes to internal business rules, directions, standing orders, standard operating procedures, operational instructions and “any like document”.

Willing to do whatever it takes to pay back the UFU, the Andrews government sacked the CFA board last Friday for opposing the EBA. Yet just after 2pm that same day, the Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria secured a court injunction preventing the new CFA board appointed by Andrews from voting on the EBA until June 22. By insisting the CFA board signs the EBA, in the face of this injunction, the Andrews government is in potential contempt of court.

Witness too the interference by Victoria’s Industrial Relations Minister, Natalie Hutchins, who misled parliament by claiming she had assurances from Fair Work Australia president Iain Ross about the EBA. Ross gave no such assurances and Hutchins had to apologise to parliament.

In 2012, as workplace relations minister, Shorten cooked up a conciliation, again involving Ross, when the CFMEU refused to comply with court orders to end illegal pickets on Grocon’s Melbourne building sites. Ross’s involvement was curious given a court had already fined the CFMEU and directed it to return to work. And notice how the federal workplace relations minister wasn’t concerned about interfering in a “state” issue back then.

The Australian American Association dinner in Sydney last week honoured two men: former PM John Howard and Boral managing director Mike Kane. Howard said this of Kane: only two people in business have manned the barricades, planted the flag to defend the rule of law, to fight union abuse of the law and union intimidation: Chris Corrigan and Mike Kane.

Kane, who grew up in the Bronx, learned early about the sinister and self-serving power of the teamsters. At Boral years later, he refused to be bullied by the law-breaking CFMEU which demanded Boral stop supplying construction materials to Grocon. A gutsy call to uphold the rule of law in the face of brute union intimidation.

“Mike has earned a place in the pantheon of industrial relations warriors,” Howard said.

There are too few business leaders like Kane. There are also two few political leaders like Howard who, along with Peter Reith, stared down union violence. It’s time for Turnbull to step up, remain focused on exposing toxic union power, and drive home why we are voting at the double dissolution election. If he does, it will be win, win, win. A win for civic-minded volunteers intent on manning what Edmund Burke called those little platoons of civil society that bind us together. A win for Turnbull by proving his leadership mettle. And a win for the country, if union power is prevented from taking further hold.