Royal commission ready to fling mud

September 12, 2001
Issue 

BY TIM GOODEN

MELBOURNE — Wild allegations and mud slinging are expected to come thick and fast during the first weeks of the federal government's royal commission into allegations of corruption in the building industry, due to begin in early October.

Industry sources have told Green Left Weekly that government representatives will seek to air all the accusations early, before there's any chance to test or examine them, in order to ensure that the federal government has plenty of ammunition during its federal election campaign. The accusations can be proven false later — after the elections.

A number of investigators have already been hired to snoop around building sites and pubs looking for anything that might constitute "inappropriate conduct".

Workers meanwhile have pledged to down tools while investigators are on construction sites and not to talk to anyone connected to the commission.

Even though the only claims of corruption referred to police have been in New South Wales, the royal commission will be based in Melbourne.

Announcing the commission in July, minister for workplace relations Tony Abbott said "Melbourne, of course, has been a long-time hotbed of industrial disputation in the construction industry. We've had recent outbreaks of industrial anarchy, here in Victoria, not all of them associated with the [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union], but often encouraged by the CFMEU."

Victorian construction unionists are in no doubt as to why they are being targetted.

Building unions in Victoria last year won a 36-hour week and an increase of 15% in pay over three years in an enterprise bargaining campaign. Other conditions like improvements to long service entitlements were also won in a separate campaign. These gains represent the best conditions in the industry in Australia.

Victorian construction unions have also been prominent backers of militant protest action outside the industry, giving vocal backing to the S11 and M1 anti-globalisation protests, for example.

The CFMEU has stated: "It is widely accepted in the Australian community that the Howard government's decision to launch a Royal Commission into the building industry is a cynical political manoeuvre.

"The decision smacks of a government seeking to indulge in the tired old union-bashing formula in the run-up to elections later this year, in the hope that it can extract some political mileage."

The royal commission is to be headed by a former NSW Court of Appeals judge, Justice Terry Cole, QC. Cole has appointed Colin Thatcher as secretary of the commission, along with 30 solicitors, five barristers and three Queen's Councils, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $100 million.

The commission's eight terms of reference are all pointed solely at union operations, including "inappropriate practice or conduct relating to inappropriate management, use or operation of industry funds for training, long service leave, redundancy or superannuation".

Responding to the appointments, the CFMEU has said, "In this political environment the Royal Commissioner Justice Cole faces a significant challenge to conduct a fair and impartial inquiry. In particular, the CFMEU has concerns about the capacity of the secretary to the royal commission, Colin Thatcher, to act impartially, given Mr Thatcher's record of employment as assistant director of the Business Council of Australia, and as a senior bureaucrat in the Court and Borbidge governments [in Western Australia and Queensland] overseeing anti-union industrial laws."

The union has said, "We are committed to doing our utmost to try and steer the inquiry away from union-bashing and onto the real issues that plague the industry", listing the security of workers' entitlements, underpayment of workers' compensation premiums and the industry's appalling safety record among them.

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