Australian politicss
It’s not just about the CFMEU: it’s about a dysfunctional construction industry
Partisan politics and crime stories have obscured a more important issue: the construction industry is crying out for reform.
Nine Newspapers’ revelations of the behaviour of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union and the resignation of John Setka as its secretary have unleashed a flurry of further allegations, claims, defences, and opinions. The ABC’s Sarah Maunder assembles the views of six parties in a 6-minute interview on PM: CFMEU says it will investigate allegations of corruption and criminal ties. Writing in The ConversationMichelle Grattan has given her own views on the issue: If it’s serious about CFMEU, Labor should decline its money.
Also writing in The Conversation Anthony Forsyth of RMIT University has a more descriptive account of the situation, going back to on again-off again history of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and its 2005 predecessor: All eyes on Labor as alleged corruption envelops CFMEU. Here are the government’s options.
We can learn a little about the CFMEU from this report, by the ABC’s Nick Dole, of a gathering of New South Wales CFMEU members. Click on the video, and see what it tells you about the gathering’s gender mix and its representativeness of a multicultural Australia.
The journalist who has been uncovering the allegations, Nick McKenzie, outlines his findings in a 4-minute videoclip, describing the extraordinary power of the construction branch of the CFMEU, specific allegations of criminal infiltration, and the culture of fear and intimidation in the union and among those who deal with it: Exposing the rot infecting Australia’s building industry
Comment about the issue has a strong partisan tone. To the Coalition, the purpose of the ABCC was to crack down on unions, as part of its macroeconomic policy of suppressing wages. To Labor, the problems in the construction industry, while serious, do not need a special body: they should be able to be handled by the Fair Work Ombudsman and by the general criminal law in relation to allegations of intimidation, bribery and standover tactics.
Never missing an opportunity to raise political tension, Dutton has demanded that the government de-register the union. In a 5-minute interview on the ABC Anthony Forsyth explains why that would not be necessary, why it would let the union off the leash of control within the industrial relations system, and how it would deprive innocent members of representation, possibly invalidating awards. The wisdom and effectiveness of the Commonwealth’s move in appointing an administrator, rather than deregistering the union, is confirmed by John Flood of Griffith University in an interview on PM. He points out that the Commonwealth is following proper legal procedures in dealing with this issue, avoiding any interpretation of its response as a politically-motivated reaction.
Sky-high wages
Dutton’s rant against the union is hysterically silly: “the biggest defrauding of Australian taxpayers in the nation’s history!” Has he hired one of Trump’s speechwriters?
On one matter, however, there is agreement across the aisle: the ABCC was ineffective. But what to do with an ineffective outfit – strengthen it or abolish it? Labor certainly doesn’t want to strengthen a body with an anti-union brief.
The construction industry has a terrible history on occupational safety, which means unions have been able to play an important role in improving workers’ welfare. But that function has also given opportunistic union representatives tremendous power, because it’s not hard to find minor technical breaches of OH&S regulations, and to shut a site down. Armed with that power, unscrupulous union officials can engage in boycotts and standover tactics for any reason they choose.
Such is the precarious cash flow in building contracts (many construction companies are over-leveraged), that even a short shutdown can be very costly. The imperative is to finish a project and get paid. Under such pressure quality control is hard to sustain.
In the interview with Sarah Maunder, linked above, Andrew Forsyth identifies the problem as a systemic one in the whole industry. Thuggish behaviour on one side reacts to, and reinforces, thuggish behaviour on the other side.
Nick MCKenzie gets to wider problems in the construction industry, where he refers to an enduring dysfunctional culture in the union in a three-minute interview on ABC TV: it’s not just about John Setka. And it’s not just about the occasional misbehaviour: it’s also about the way construction projects, public and private, are much more expensive than they should be.
The ABC’s Daniel Ziffer addresses the drivers of costs in his post Has the CFMEU made home building more expensive? Yes, but not how you think. If there have been cases of corruption they have contributed to costs, but the main cost driver has been a market one: there is a severe shortage of people with construction skills. Those who do have these skills have been employed in the construction sector, benefiting from a huge investment in state government transport projects. The union has exploited this shortage, achieving higher wages for its members, as any union would. The problem relates, in part, to the industry’s failure to train people. But this failure relates in turn to structural problems in the industry.
These structural problems aren’t solved quickly, because they’re deeply embedded. The construction industry has always had deep and complex relationships with state and local governments involving deals about land releases, zoning and building approvals. Coalition governments have privatized building inspection services. There is huge potential for corruption.
It has relied on chains of contractors and sub-contractors, and on labour-hire companies, a structure that does not necessarily make for long-term cooperative relationships or investments in training.
Governments have contributed to this dysfunctional structure. They have assigned to the construction industry the role of providing a buffer in the economy’s business cycles. There are opportunities for quick profits when governments have loose fiscal and monetary policies, which dry up when the cycle turns to austerity. That role does not make for enduring relationships, or investments in ways to improve productivity.
These problems are likely to get worse, as the nature of the industry changes. Policymakers used to distinguish between the “housing” and “construction” industries. The former built houses and the occasional small block of “flats” on 0.1 hectare blocks, and was dominated by non-unionized small businesses. The latter built large commercial buildings, railroads and freeways. But with the increasing shift of our living styles to apartment blocks, we are coming to rely more on the construction sector to provide housing, and the costs, including the costs of shoddy construction, are falling on individuals who are far less able to look after themselves than government or big business clients.
Here is an opportunity for governments, including the Commonwealth as funder, to re-establish housing authorities to provide social and affordable housing, contributing substantially to housing availability and setting standards, roles once served by state housing authorities. They could help the private construction firms by providing training: that’s traditionally been a benefit of government enterprises operating in the same industries as private firms. It’s only an irrational concern with the cosmetics of public borrowing that stands in the way of such policies, which would provide housing directly and help suppress construction cost pressure.
More basically, here is an opportunity for the Albanese government to go beyond getting rid of a few spivs from the CFMEU. It could initiate a program of fundamental reform of the whole construction industry and the associated property development industry.
Sports betting – another affliction
Big events like last week’s “State of origin” football matches, bring to attention two afflictions – domestic violence and sports betting.
Sporting events, particularly football matches with their valorisation of male aggression, are associated with spikes in domestic violence. Supporters of losing teams are disproportionately represented among perpetrators.
Those findings are based on research in Europe. Kirsty Forsdike of La Trobe University explains on the ABC’s World Today that such spikes are also observed in Australia, particularly among people who have a strong emotional investment in their chosen team’s fortunes.
Writing in Eureka Street – Sports betting is ruining more than our sports – Tim Costello sees another link to domestic violence, the loss by one’s team being compounded by the loss of one’s bet.
He draws to our attention the extraordinary cost of sports betting – a cost which represents profit to the businesses running sports betting. He reminds us that a third of spending on bets is by people with a gambling addiction.
Reformers like Costello are focusing on sports bets, because that is the fastest-growing segment of the gambling market.
The Alliance for Gambling Reform reminds us that the government has had more than a year to act on the report by the late Peta Murphy: You win some, you lose more: online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm. Murphy called for a three-year phase-out of gambling advertising. The Alliance for Gambling Reform has a petition of 35 000 signatories calling for an immediate ban on gambling advertising. But the government is dragging its feet.
This week’s Essential poll includes five sets of questions on people’s attitudes to sports. Australians want more control on sports betting: 40 percent believe it should be banned altogether, and 25 percent believe it should be banned during sports events. Women are much more in favour of bans than men, as are older people.
Just over a third of respondents say they bet on sport (probably an under-estimate because of biases in such questions), but there are significant gender and age differences: young people and men are the biggest gamblers. A combination of the gender and age figures suggests that about 70 percent of young men bet on sport.
The same survey also asks respondents which, if any, sports they watch. There is a clear gender bias: 10 percent of men and 25 percent of women say they don’t watch any sport. Just under half of men watch various forms of football. The age breakdown on the same question is revealing: younger people are watching soccer and basketball while older people are watching cricket and tennis – sports with longer durations.
Young Australians are missing out
“Youth is wasted on the young” said George Bernard Shaw in one of his cynical moments.
Research by the Monash Centre for Youth Policy and Education, summarized in The Conversation, finds that we are denying our young the pleasures of youth: Young Australians feel they are “missing out” on being young. To quote:
While most adults have nostalgic memories of being young, and the freedom, exploration and learning that entails, this will be less likely for the current generation of youth.
I recall that over the twenty years I was at the University of Canberra, there was dwindling patronage of the university bar, and there was an increasing number of students trying to juggle work and university. The full-time student was becoming an endangered species.
That’s anecdotal, but it’s confirmed by the Monash University researchers, who found:
In 2022, 45 percent of 505 Australians aged 18 to 24 said they felt they were missing out on being young. These feelings were associated with pressures in young people’s lives around finances, work, education, housing, and long-term planning.
Of those 45 percent, 69 percent – or 31 percent of the entire sample – were worried about not having enough to eat.
This is yet more confirmation that those with a public voice should stop talking about a “cost of living crisis” and start to address the serious injustices and waste in the raw deal older Australians, many of whom enjoyed the generosity of previous generations of taxpayers who financed their full-time study, have given the young.
An Australian head of state kicked down the road
The government didn’t have to invite the King and Queen of England to visit Australia. Perhaps, in his memoirs, Albanese will reveal what prompted him to make a symbolic gesture against progress towards Australian independence.
She wasn’t an Australian
You can hear an ABC interview with Esther Anatolitis and Nathan Hansford, new co-chairs of the Australian Republic Movement. (9 minutes). The polls don’t look promising – 32 percent in support of a republic, 35 percent in support of a foreign monarch.
The interview does not convey the impression of an energetic movement mustering support to deal with a serious flaw in our democracy, The Australian Republican Movement website is unimpressive in comparison with the professional (and atrociously misleading) website of the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.
The matter is more than symbolic. Because the two-party system is fading out, there is the strong possibility that in the foreseeable future the Governor-General may have to be actively involved in appointing or dismissing a prime minister, as was the case in 1975. Will the Governor-General feel bound to act independently or as a servant of the monarch of a foreign country?
There is also the question of national independence because a shared monarch implies some special relation with the UK. Australians’ attachment to Britain was a factor in our involvement in a war, in 1914-18, that had nothing to do with our interests, in which 60 000 young Australians died. Australian governments, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, invited the British to explode atomic bombs on our land. More recently, that same misplaced sense of loyalty has seen us sucked into AUKUS and has damaged our relationship with France.
The ABC, our leading cultural institution, has its European presence in London – a geographical and political outpost of Europe – rather than on the mainland, and keeps Australian TV viewers attached to a string of BBC content. The ABC may claim that the UK is a source of English-language content. That’s a point – some British speak an intelligible dialect of English – but there are many other sources of English-language drama, including Canada, Singapore and New Zealand. Political and economic reporting should not be bound by language considerations.
Similarly public servants, politicians and academics, inspired perhaps by Barry McKenzie, often default to London as their first port of call, bypassing Asian countries.
The ARM does not seem to have thought through its mission. To scholars the word “republic” (res publica) is a democratic idea, but to most people what comes to mind is the dysfunctional US model (which is actually more like a monarchy than a republic – it’s essentially a replica of the Court of King George III, which is why its “president” has extraordinary executive powers). There is no reason we should abandon the name “Commonwealth of Australia”, with its clear message of sharing. (The Commonwealth of Massachusetts wears its name with democratic pride). And why do we need a “president” when we have a respected “governor general”?
The issue should simply be about an Australian head of state. In view of Australians’ ignorance about our constitution, an ignorance cynically exploited by the “No” campaign in the Voice referendum, there is a great deal of work to be done in preparing the ground for a referendum. It may take several years, but that shouldn’t matter, because it will be some time before Dutton and others loyal to a foreign monarch will pass out of our political life.
With luck the visit of the King and Queen of England will pass as a non-event. They should be treated with the same respect as we show a foreign monarch from a distant land, and more gently than we treated King Charles’ great-great-great uncle when he came to our country in 1867.