The Cole Royal Commission: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

In Cole's view compliance is none of the union's business. In fact, very little is.

The industrial landscape, redrawn by Cole, would limit unions to negotiating contracts once every two or three years and only then after being invited by a majority ballot on every site. Other than that, they can get back in their boxes and keep their sticky beaks out of the proper functioning of the market.

If they don't they will face a range of fines and the possibility of imprisonment, or alternatively, deregistration of their organisation. All of these options to be policed and prosecuted by a special Building Industry Commission.

There may well be suggestions of merit buried amongst Cole's 6900 pages. After all, a strong bias and a demonstrable lack of understanding of industrial relations do not mean the man is thick.

Unfortunately, though, we will never know because the process was so wretched that each and every result is questionable.

Your average building worker could have told the Commissioner that sloppy foundations and poor raw materials make for an ordinary outcome. Then again, all the evidence suggests, they would have been the last people he would have asked.