It took the prime minister to make an obvious point that had been overlooked in all the coverage of the CFMEU’s alleged corruption: much of the alleged misconduct took place while the construction sector was regulated by the Coalition’s bespoke industry regulator, the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), which was only abolished by Labor in February last year.
The ABCC was re-established by the Turnbull government in 2016 with the promise that it would end CFMEU thuggery and lift productivity in construction. We were told back then the restored ABCC would lift productivity in the sector by 20%.
This was always a dubious claim, as I pointed out at the time. Productivity in the construction sector was flat under the Howard government until Labor “neutered” and later abolished the previous ABCC. The “neutering” coincided with a surge in productivity, according to the Productivity Commission (and the small matter of a significant fall in the number of workers killed in the industry).
It’s been the same story with the new ABCC: productivity growth in construction went into reverse under the restored ABCC, as I noted in 2022. Indeed, the new ABCC seemed to accelerate the decline in productivity growth in the industry pre-2016.
More recent figures from the Productivity Commission show that, for 2021-22, labour productivity in construction fell by 0.9% — a slower rate of decline than in previous years but still negative. For 2022-23, the last year of the new ABCC, labour productivity in construction fell 0.8%.
The only recent rise in productivity in construction came after the ABCC was again abolished in late 2023, when the industry contributed to what the Productivity Commission called a “modest uptick” in productivity across the economy in the second half of the year after an extended period of stagnation. But despite that, the PC’s most recent productivity bulletin shows the sector once more back in the long list of industries where productivity fell or failed to grow.
Remember that the Coalition didn’t just set up a bespoke regulator for the construction industry, it also set up a bespoke regulator to go after unions, the Registered Organisation Commission — ostensibly established to oversee both unions and employer groups. It, too, was abolished in 2023. Its only noteworthy achievement was an extended and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prosecute the Australian Workers’ Union and its former head Bill Shorten over AWU donations to GetUp! more than a decade before.
It was quite an achievement by the Coalition: to establish not one but two regulators specifically intended to target trade unions, and for neither to lay a glove on actual instances of corruption and improper conduct within the construction sector. You can also throw in the now-discredited trade union royal commission under Dyson Heydon.
That hasn’t stopped the opposition from again demanding that the ABCC be reestablished. What’s that line about doing the same thing over again and expecting the result to be any different?
