Senate Rejection Reflects Reform Malaise

9th March 2015

Australian’s have been conditioned through nightly news stories of union corruption, mismanagement, fraud and thuggery. The Royal Commission into Union Governance and Corruption hearings have uncovered slush funds, use of bikie gangs to intimidate builders, extortion, and interference with candidates in union elections. Who can forget whistle blower Kathy Jackson, or the Craig Thompson saga and Michael Williamson’s conviction for fraud as secretary of the Health Services Union.

Given the breadth of evidence already in the public domain, you would think it would be a priority for our parliamentary representatives to start the task of fixing this appalling state of affairs. However, last week the Australian Senate voted down a rather modest amendment to the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 to introduce criminal offences for serious breaches of officers’ duties and establishment of the Registered Organisations Commission with investigative powers to monitor and regulate registered organisations (unions). If this rather modest contribution to the reform of regulatory oversight of unions failed, then I don’t rate the chances of implementing genuine workplace reform in Australia. The vote to reject the amendment Bill epitomises what I describe as the ‘Reform Malaise’ in which this country now finds itself.

Reform malaise shouldn’t simply be dismissed as a product of hard edged politics. It reflects a serious degeneracy in Australian political life. It has both an intellectual and moral dimension. Elected representatives incapable or unwilling to address difficult issues with independent open enquiring minds abrogate responsibility allowing party leaders to direct them, or resort to ideological rants to disguise their ignorance. Moral degeneracy is evidenced in the fundamental dishonesty of representatives voting in their own interest and that of their political party over the public interest.

To be fair, the public interest is often an elusive beast, and we can’t expect parliamentarians to be experts on all subjects. So, it’s worth reflecting on what actually transpired in the Senate on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014 on 2 March 2015. Understanding the parallel universe of the Canberra Beltway is not an easy task so I will offer these snippets of information drawn from the parliamentary papers in support of my thesis.

The thirty-three Senators that voted against the Bill included Labor, the Greens but also the Palmer United Party senators, the now independent Jackie Lambie and the accidental Victorian senator Ricky Muir. Amongst the Labor senators voting against the Bill was Chris Ketter, a person named twice in the Royal Commission into Union Governance and Corruption Interim Report. Firstly whilst Queensland State Secretary of the shop assistants union he had been accused of improperly dismissing an employee from his employment so as to disqualify him from eligibility to contest an election for union secretary and secondly potentially breaching the National Privacy laws in collecting information on members political and moral attitudes. You can add a third issue of the failure to disclose a secret election fund. The Bill before the Senate was fairly aimed at the sort of behaviour Senator Ketter had been accused by the Royal Commission. However, Senator Ketter didn’t absent himself from the vote on the Bill or offer an explanation as to why he believed it appropriate for him to vote on it. He just voted against it.

The combined vote of Labor and the Greens is unfortunately, not surprising. Here is a extract from the contribution of the Greens spokesperson Lee Rhiannan on the merit of the Bill before the Senate

“Our generation cannot allow hard-fought-for workplace rights to be wound back. While the Abbott government prioritises the sectional interests of those whose concerns do not go beyond increasing their profits, the Abetz war will rage.”

However, it is the PUP and the erstwhile independent senators that are the core of my despair. The following extract from Jackie Lambie’s contribution to the debate illustrates the paucity of intellectual rigour.

“It is part of a Liberal Party attempt to silence and weaken those who advocate on behalf of workers, because, once the Abbott Liberal government silences their workers, it becomes easy to exploit and steal money from them.”

The two PUP senators and Senator Muir did not offer any reason for their vote against the Bill.

Assessing the contributions of these senators to the debate, one may surmise that the thirty-three senators must believe that union officials should not be held to the same standards of behaviour that you and I are expected to adhere when we volunteer for school committees, charitable organisations, sporting clubs and the like, let alone the higher standards of responsibility imposed on company directors. Sure, volunteering on such committees wouldn’t attract the same level of fines proposed under the amendment Bill, but there are standards of conduct expected of the people that volunteer their time for such activities that just don’t apply to unions.

Sporting groups and after school care committee of parents are subject to police checks and must be accredited to minimum quality standards to ensure children are properly cared for. Hospitals, educational institutions, community health and social service organisations undergo rigorous quality auditing at least every three years to maintain accreditation. Most adopt internationally recognised standards of management practice (e.g. ISO 9001, Business Excellence Framework) Registration of such organisations requires them to demonstrate good standards of governance reflected in policies an procedures, organisational reporting relationships, record keeping, financial and legal risk strategies. Directors of charities are expected to exercise their duties with due diligence and always in the interests of the membership of the organisation. Conflicts of interest must be declared and systems put in place to prevent directors profiting from decisions that they have an interest in.

Unions are not held to any of these standards. I wonder if they ever will?