Call to minimise union influence of Govt policy

A key parliamentary committee has been warned that costs around the Government’s marquee Future Made in Australia policy will likely escalate if trade unions are allowed to have too much influence.

The Senate Economics legislation committee was specifically reminded of the allegations made against the Construction Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU).

Business Council of Australia chief executive, Bran Black, cited trade union influence as one of the significant risks facing the success of the Government’s policy and suggested that care needed to be taken in interpreting community benefit principles laid out in the legislation.

“There are five of them on page 12 and one is promoting safe and secure jobs that are well-paid and have good conditions and as I have mentioned before that is an innocuous enough statement and no one would object to that on its own face,” Black said.

“However, what we are worried about is that we’ve seen in some overseas jurisdictions like the US where that’s been interpreted to mean that a particular proposals for investment needs to be supported by unions and the consequence of that, and this has been put to me anecdotally, is that it has added significant cost to the overall project cost,” he said.

“The second point I would make in that regard is that we’ve seen with the CFMEU in the recent revelations that one of the key allegations that is put to them is that they have been receiving pay-offs in order to preference certain companies for [enterprise bargaining agreements] EBAs which in turn gives the companies an opportunity to receive lucrative Government contracts.

“In other words, if you are saying that a union endorsement is required in order for a particular proponent to succeed with a grant application you are creating an inherent risk of corruption and we think that absolutely needs to be avoided,” Black said.

“We would say instead that the way of interpreting that particular provision is simply to say that if a company is employing people in accordance with the law it has satisfied that criterion,” he said with respect to the community benefit principles.