From the Desk of the Executive Director

The Coalition parties have a history of failing whenever they attempt workplace reform. Yesterday I explained that the Turnbull government is positioning itself for a fall by promoting the Heydon report as being anti-union.

The report isn’t anti-union; it’s anti-corruption. But by focusing on the report as if it is anti-union, the Coalition presumably believes this will give it political advantage. Wrong! More...

The Turnbull government’s response to the Heydon Royal Commission Report into union corruption sets the scene for policy and political failure. It has responded just as the union movement and Labor hoped they would.

Further, Labor and the unions have already started their process of a slow and steady ‘kill’ of the Coalition on the issue. They have a surprisingly high chance of success. For the government, my perspective is probably a counterintuitive unsettling of their obvious glee over the Heydon report. More...

Around 20 years ago, when I was writing for another news outlet, I received out of the blue a large cardboard box in the post. It contained the true financial records, including source documents, of a high-profile union. My suspicion was that it had come from a senior union official who’d just been kicked out of the union. When I checked the real records with the union’s officially declared financial returns, nothing matched. The official returns were a fabrication.  

On Monday the Victorian boss of the construction the CFMEU, John Setka, and his deputy, Shaun Reardon, were arrested and charged with blackmail. The blackmail charges relate to the CFMEU putting pressure on concrete company Boral to stop supplying the CFMEUs hated construction firm Grocon. More...

The current attacks against the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption for overreaching its authority are a comparative diversion from a larger systemic problem.

New South Wales has a long history of ingrained corruption. It’s a bigger issue than just corrupt individuals.

Rather, individual corrupt behaviour is the end result of a political, governance and business system that masks, almost legalises and certainly facilitates corruption.

The problem goes back a long way. More...

The announcement by the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews of the ‘settlement’ to not go ahead with the East West road link has all the signals of a significantly incomplete picture.

There are three major components to the cancellation costs confronting the government. The first is to pay out the construction consortium, East West Connection for the costs they have incurred in starting the project but having it cancelled. Some $339 million has been agreed and allocated to this, the government says. More...

The big superannuation funds are at it again. They're campaigning against the one million Australians who own and control self-managed super funds.

The big funds have done this before, under the Rudd-Gillard Labor governments.

There's about $1.6 trillion of Australians' retirement money in superannuation. The industry (union-controlled) funds have 26 per cent. The retail funds (controlled by banks and AMP) have 20 per cent. Ordinary Australians with SMSFs have 31 per cent, or $500 billion. More...

The Australian union movement has been quite open about its campaign to stamp out independent contractors wherever it can. Running parallel to this, it's instructive to see that the Australian Taxation Office has shifted to a decidedly anti-independent contractor stance over the last few years.  The outcome (intentional or not) is to aid the unions' objectives. More...

Every Australian with money in a big superannuation fund should be concerned about what's happening to their retirement nest egg. They should be worried for one reason: funds don't fully disclose what they're doing with the money. This would probably surprise most Australians. More...