Porter's a reverse IR culture warrior

Before Christmas, Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter announced his third tranche of industrial relations (IR) reforms.

There is no doubt that he is a cultural warrior, but I'm afraid it is for the wrong side. He might not understand it, but everything he has done threatens the LNP and its constituencies and advantages the ALP.

I have spent 40 years in the industry, including an interesting two-year stint in the 1990s successfully managing a dozen or so high-rise construction sites in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast without the CFMEU, a feat not achieved by anyone since.

In the past eight years, my group has also successfully set up a system of alternate IR institutions – nursing and teaching unions – that welcome allcomers, especially non-ALP voting employees who wish to be represented by unions that don't financially support

the ALP. On our reckoning that is about a third of all union members, by the way.

Porter's first reform attempt at introducing "integrity" to the union movement was his first strike out. It was doomed from the beginning for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that he was fiddling foolishly with a symptom of the construction industry cartel problem instead of the core problem itself. The mechanisms are different today from 25 years ago, but the core principles have not changed.

In a nutshell, construction industry workers, thanks to the CFMEU, are paid from 50 per cent to 100 per cent more than they would get anywhere else.

Their employers can afford to pay them because they pass the costs on to the principal so-called "tier one" contractors.

Although there are about a dozen or so of these and they are the only firms allowed to tender for major government works, the ownership and control all comes back to just two firms. That sounds like a monopoly.

For the past 20 or 30 years, every government infrastructure project has cost between 30-50 per cent more than it should have.

Great theatre

Enter the Master Builders Association (MBA). Its constitution allows the "tier ones" to effectively control it. The core MBA role, unsurprisingly, is to keep the "tier one" tender monopoly.

Together with the totally ideologically captured state and federal works departments, they have convinced the respective "Works Ministers" that the CFMEU is utterly lawless and would wreck any infrastructure projects if those ministers opened up the tender process to genuine competition.

It is just a shake-down and, like all effective coercion schemes, it works best based on perception rather than specific performance. The more reckless and omnipotent the CFMEU look and sound, the more effective they are in preserving the cartel. It's great theatre.

So Minister Porter's Union Integrity Bill played right into this cartel preservation narrative. He was widely congratulated for his "bwavery", of course, in spite of the fact that every union member had their integrity insulted by the suggestion that the government would determine who they could or couldn't elect to their executives.

Remember one-third vote "non Labor". But even in the unlikely event his bill had succeeded, nothing in practice would have changed. Perceptions would have been unaltered. No Works Minister would have ended the monopoly tender process. Mark it as a fail for Porter.

Holiday pay decisions

In his second strike out with his IR Omnibus Bill, Porter fell for the spiel of the big IR institutions and big business that unless retrospective legislation was introduced, small business would be decimated by the consequences of the "casuals" holiday pay decisions (Skene and Rossato).

He clearly doesn't understand business, but more significantly he doesn't understand that ever since the employer and industry associations were invited into the Industry Super funds management boondoggle, they are now all fully in the ALP camp.

Except for our institutions, there are no IR institutions that aren't in the ALP camp. Yes they saw the good minister coming alright. In practice, small business would have been little affected.

He could have worked with the crossbenchers and easily sorted any number of solutions without retrospective legislation, bolstered popular small business "casual" IR arrangements and left the Big ALP supporting institutions to die on the vine.

But no, the good minister gave away everything for nothing in return. Big win for big business, big institutions and the ALP. Fail again, minister.

And finally strike three, the supposed de-amalgamation of the CFMEU. Conceptually a good idea until you look more closely. This is not about giving workers more choice in their representation. It is the opposite of that. They don't get a look in.

The good minister, as he did with his Union Integrity Bill, again sacrificed the workers and his constituency to look "stwong" and "bwave" by trying to control the CFMEU destiny.

The sole net effect of any demerger is that a split-off mining division will take about 18 per cent (the percentage of the mining division members of the CMFEU) of the $310 million in assets and $146 million of annual income to a new institution that is more amenable to financially supporting the ALP. Yes, the ALP voted for it alright.

I fail to see how Porter's reform attempts will win one vote or one dollar for the LNP. Fail again. Time to consider your position, minister.