The Government’s appetite for expensive election stuns continues unabated. The most recent example is yesterday’s decision to launch a Royal Commission into the building industry. In announcing the Royal Commission, Prime Minister John Howard said it was being called because of unacceptable practices and examples of criminal behaviour in the industry.
The Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, said, “This is an industry which, in the past month, has seen absolutely outrageous attempts to nobble police inquiries, threaten witnesses, and pervert the course of justice.”
The difficulty for the Government in justifying the expense of a Royal commission is that on the Government’s own admission knowledge of illegal activity in the building industry is widespread. If we know that illegal activity is going on, why do we need an expensive Royal Commission to find out about it.?
Moreover, this Royal Commission will be just a repeat of a the Gyles Royal Commission into the construction industry in its NSW which reported in 1992. That commission found widespread illegality, absence of law enforcement and a reversion to the law of the jungle. That commission cost $24 million.
Australia does not need a Royal Commission to tell us what we already know. What the building industry needs is effective prosecution of breaches of the law with appropriate criminal and civil penalties.
The Gyles Royal Commission has already done the groundwork. At its completion a task force ran for three years. It ran as an effective law-enforcement agency both in the criminal and civil areas. Unfortunately, it was abolished by it the Carr Labor Government under a union pressure. It also altered the recommended the ending of deregistration proceedings against the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union and relaxed the prohibition of compulsory unionism.
The Federal Government says that it has launched the Royal Commission after a report from the Employment Advocate, Jonathon Hamberger, which was commissioned by Mr Abbott. Mr Hamberger’s report alleged bribery and secret commissions, harassment of workers and company blacklists. Surely, on the basis of such a report there should be police investigation and prosecutions without the need for another Royal Commission.
The real reason for a Royal Commission is a publicity stunt which will ripen at the time of the election campaign. Mr Howard has dismissed such suggestions as “plainly a ludicrous”. However, when one considers that a Royal Commission has inquisitorial power and sits in a glare of publicity whereas the prosecution process is initially done outside the public arena and when it goes public only does so after the gathering of evidence which will satisfy strict admissibility criteria, it is easy to see how the government would have preferred the former over the latter as a political exercise. To have Royal Commission hearing painting a picture of union lawlessness is likely to rub off adversely on the Government’s main opponent in the election, namely the Labor Party, which is closely affiliated to the union movement.
That said, the Government would be naive if it imagined that the Royal Commission would go only the Government’s way. These commissions have a habit of blowing up in the face of the Government that appoints them. Previous inquiries into the building and waterfront industries have resulted in as many charges against employers as unionists. For every case of union intimidation and coercion, there is a case of employers’ acquiescence or even secret commissions or deals to guarantee industrial peace. Worse, there have been cases of collusion among the building companies in the tendering process which ultimately results in higher costs being passed on to the general community.
As the Gyles commission found, the connivance of employers and unions in illegal activities had polluted the whole moral climate of the industry. Nothing has changed. And another Royal commission will not change it. What is needed is the more effective prosecution of existing laws.