Ministers pays penalty for another own goal

Senator Michaelia Cash at senate estimates in Parliament House in Canberra.

After the botched handling of AFP raids on Bill Shorten’s old union, the attempted smear of the Labor leader’s female staff, and the whiteboard farce, Michaelia Cash is now being blamed by employers for failing to stop the merger of the nation’s two most militant unions.

In June 2016 during the federal election campaign, Cash trumpeted plans to subject the planned merger of the CFMEU and the Maritime Union of Australia to a public interest test.

She insisted it would be a “priority election policy” and a ­re-elected Coalition government would act to have it passed as soon as possible. If legislated, Liberal MPs and their business allies expressed confidence the merger would be torpedoed.

But the government delayed introducing the bill into the lower house to last August and the Senate until October 17. With the ALP and Greens opposed, and the government unconvinced it had crossbench support, the Coalition refused to bring the bill on for a Senate vote.

This is despite the CFMEU and the MUA openly discussing their merger plan for more than two years. In the absence of the new test, Workplace Relations Minister Craig Laundy yesterday acknowledged the Fair Work Commission had “no option” but to approve the amalgamation.

Laundy defends the government’s inaction, pointing to the ALP-Greens opposition and the Coalition’s decision to set aside the balance of time in parliament late last year to the same-sex marriage legislation.

There were other factors. The citizenship debacle distracted the government while Cash’s credibility with the public and the crossbench was undermined by the fallout from the raids on the Australian Workers Union, including the forced resignation of her senior media adviser.

Whatever reason you chose to believe, employers confronting the reality of a cashed-up militant “super-union” are unimpressed by an outcome they largely attribute to government indifference.

Courtesy of a series of own goals, Cash has been in a world of political pain for months. Now she must deal with the Coalition’s biggest spruikers chiding her for being missing in action.