Unions vow to fight after PM says industrial relations high on election agenda

Extract from The Guardian

Malcolm Turnbull is paving the way for a double dissolution election unless both houses of parliament pass legislation to curb the influence of trade unions

Malcolm Turnbull at a press conference on Wednesday. The minister for employment, Michaelia Cash, (right) said the Liberal party would happily fight an election over trade union corruption and misconduct. Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images

Shalailah Medhora

Thursday 31 December 2015 17.21 AEDT

Unions have vowed to “throw everything including the kitchen sink” at an election fought on industrial relations, after the prime minister warned the issue would be front and centre of the Coalition’s campaign unless certain bills were passed.

On Wednesday, Malcolm Turnbull paved the way for a double dissolution election on workplace reforms unless both houses of Parliament passed legislation aimed at curbing the influence of unions by establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission and a new national regulator for registered organisations.

The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, reiterated that sentiment on Thursday.

“We are more than happy to fight trade union governance, corruption, misconduct and not standing up for the worker. We will happily fight that at an election,” she told Channel 7.

Unions have blasted the formation of the two bodies and have pledged to fight the proposed measures.

“We will throw whatever we can, including the kitchen sink ... at opposing the obnoxious Coalition attack on workers,” assistant national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, Ian Bray, told Guardian Australia.

Acting general secretary of the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives’ Union, Judith Kiejda, said members were not going to simply “sit back and accept” Coalition proposals to change workers’ pay and conditions.“Be that at their peril, if they try that,” she warned.

A union campaign on industrial affairs harks back to the 2007 federal election, when the John Howard-led Coalition lost a bruising battle on WorkChoices laws. The unions’ response to WorkChoices, the Your Rights at Work campaign, was a major contributor to Howard’s election defeat.

Bray said the issues highlighted in the Your Rights at Work campaign were still present.

Workers in 2007 were concerned about job insecurity and a reduction in pay and conditions, Bray said.

“Those issues are as relevant today as they were in 2007,” he said.

National secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) Dave Noonan said “demonising” trade unions plays well with conservative voters.

Noonan said the Coalition would use “fear and loathing to demonise the trade union movement” in the next federal election.

“It’s red meat to the zoo animals,” Noonan told Guardian Australia. “It may help them with their base ... [but] is it going to be a vote changer?”

Anti-corruption expert Adam Graycar said limiting the election debate to trade union corruption could backfire for the Coalition.

“My guess is that there are bigger issues of concern [to voters],” he said. “If the prime minister were to fight on simple black and white terms, that would not resonate. It needs to be bigger than that.”

He said society needed to have a broader conversation about ethical leadership and corruption in business and non-government organisations, too.

Turnbull highlighted instances of corruption within trade unions in delivering the government’s response to a royal commission into the topic, which issued its final report on Wednesday.

Opening up old Coalition wounds on industrial relations could have a negative impact on Turnbull. The prime minister’s polling success has, in part, hinged on differentiating himself from his predecessor Tony Abbott, who instigated the royal commission in the first place.

“Turnbull has not changed a full stop or comma in any of the Coalition’s policies,” Kiejda said. “It’s all just marketing.”

“For all his talk about being different, he’ll just toe the line of Tony Abbott,” Labor’s employment spokesman, Brendan O’Connor,said. “He wants to continue the ideological bent [against unions].”

“The prime minister is being pushed to this by extreme ideologues within his own party,” the acting national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, Michael Wright, said. “When Abbott and the hard right say jump, Malcolm jumps.”

Bray agreed. “It’s not the leader, it’s the party,” he said. “A leopard doesn’t change its spots.”

O’Connor warned focusing on trade union corruption was the “mother of all distractions”, taking the focus away from cutting penalty rates and other proposals put forward in the recently-released productivity commission report into industrial relations reforms.

Some union officials have expressed concerns that the government’s focus on trade unions is designed to cut the movement off at the knees so that future battles, like one on penalty rates, were harder to fight.

“The intention [of the royal commission report] is to introduce laws that limit unions’ ability to campaign politically,” Noonan said. “What other institution in society is going to stand up for these industrial issues?”

“A lot of the Liberals haven’t forgotten or forgiven 2007,” he said.

The money to fund large campaigns from union membership is also drying up, with the percentage of workers who are in unions falling from 20% in 2009 to 17% in 2013.

In May, delegates at the Australian Council of Trade Unions congress voted to create a $13m “war chest” designed to make the peak union body a permanent campaigning organisation. The money was to be raised by charging union affiliates an additional levy.

“If there’s an early election we’ll be ready but this is about unions campaigning on the issues that matter to working people permanently, regardless of who is in government,” ACTU secretary Dave Oliver said.

The ACTU also announced in March that it would employ full-time campaigners in 20 marginal seats to fight against the re-election of the Coalition, a strategy rooted in the Your Rights at Work campaign. Shorten, used Twitter to declare Labor was ready to fight a campaign on industrial relations.

Labor has proposed its own set of industrial relations changes aimed at stamping out trade union corruption, including increasing the penalties for officials who breach civil or criminal law and giving the Australian Securities and Investments Commission greater powers to investigate registered organisations.