Kevin Andrews

The Australian Building and Construction Commission was established following a Royal Commission into the commercial building industry.

That Commission found that commercial building sites were rife with a culture of thuggery and intimidation.

The worst were in Melbourne and Perth where the CMFEU and the ETU ruled with an iron fist.

Remember the dozens of workers who all left the troubled Mandurah railway project in Perth having simultaneously contracted a mysterious “Blue Flu”?

Remember the rampage by unionists through the corporate headquarters of a Melbourne company that left offices destroyed and staff fearful for their lives?

And remember the antics of union bosses Dean Mighell and Joe McDonald?

Both the CMFEU and the ETU are now pressuring the union movement and the Rudd government to abolish the Commission immediately.

ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence talks of apprentices, migrants and women being intimidated by the ABCC.

He conveniently overlooks the fact that apprentices and young workers were regularly intimidated by shop stewards and others on building sites.

‘Do what we say or get a job elsewhere’ was the mantra of the building unions.

For years, these same unions resisted women working on building sites. It was an old-fashioned, ‘might means right’ culture.

The same people still run these unions and are itching to assert their muscle once again.

If they do, we will all pay.

Productivity in the commercial building industry was appalling.

Strikes and walk-offs were commonplace. Builders and developers factored the additional costs into their prices.

It is well-known in the Victorian building industry, for example, that the Melbourne Commonwealth Games village cost about 50 per cent more because of a sweetheart deal with the unions.

If the same practices that have existed in the commercial building sector ever flowed through to domestic housing, prices would sky-rocket.

But the commercial building costs indirectly flow on to all of us, with higher development expenses, sales prices and rent.

State Labor ministers acknowledged the problems but would do nothing about them. They wouldn’t take on the unions, the biggest donor group to the Labor Party.

When possible offences were referred to the States after the Cole Royal Commission, the States sat on their hands.

The presence of the ABCC has changed the practices on worksites. Costly strikes and industrial action have all but disappeared.

Major projects in Victoria, such as Eastlink, have been completed without costly delays.

This was unheard of in the past.

The ACTU’s appeal to occupational health and safety is disingenuous.

It was ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, who was filmed saying that the union movement needed the grieving family of an injured or dead worker to assist their campaign!

Occupational health and safety is important for all workers. It could be improved if we had one national system across Australia, rather than the costly, complex and confusing systems currently in place.

But that is a separate issue to the reason the ABCC was established.

If the ACTU was prepared to tackle rogue unions and if State governments were willing to stand up for ordinary workers against bullying and intimidation, they would be more believable.

Australians may have concerns about untrammelled corporate power.

That does not mean they endorse untrammelled union power in the modern workplace.

Kevin Andrews