The royal commission into trade unions is a political witch hunt
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Version 0 of 1. A couple of days ago I was leaked a document from the federal attorney-general’s department. Reading it reminded me of the old gag: “just because you're paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” As is widely reported today, all federal departments and agencies are being asked to disclose every contact with any trade union for any reason over the past decade in response to a “scoping questionnaire”. It’s a pretty extraordinary document. For one thing, although it’s notionally about the royal commission into unions, it goes well beyond the Commission’s terms of reference and seems to imply that any consultation with unions on public policy matters, and even negotiating a workplace agreement with unions representing public servants is somehow illegitimate. In other words, two of the core roles of unions as representatives of working people are somehow inherently corrupt. This document confirms what the ACTU has said all along: that the royal commission into trade unions is a political witch hunt. It’s more evidence of the deep contempt the government has for unions, unionists and union members. The ACTU has today sought access to correspondence and other documentation through Freedom of Information to determine precisely what involvement the attorney-general George Brandis or the employment minister Eric Abetz have had in this process. If ministers have ordered the public service to pursue this anti-democratic frolic it’s a clear abuse of power. The whole thing is particularly bizarre given that the royal commission has shown no interest in the public sector and doesn’t actually need any help getting information if it wants it. Perhaps the government feels the need to run a parallel royal commission because of the disappointing results from the real one they established. It’s not like the real commission is lacking in power. It has coercive powers to collect information and to make witnesses attend hearings and give evidence. The commission is conducting “private hearings” out of the public gaze. The government has given it authority to tap phones. Many of the rules that apply in normal court proceedings don’t apply or are limited at a royal commission, including in relation to self-incrimination, legal professional privilege and the right to cross-examine witnesses. But so far, it has precious little to show for the public money spent. An archaeological dig into some home renovations in the 1990s and a re-visit of matters already the subject of criminal convictions and civil proceedings have occupied most of its public hearing time. Untested and uncorroborated allegations have been allowed to make their way onto the public record without any right of reply, or serious examination of the facts or the motivations of those giving evidence. The residents of the right-wing fever swamp on the internet who are following the process obsessively see unionism as a giant conspiracy against the national interest, and union officials as a kind of fifth-column. They are welcome to those views, as misguided as they are, but there is no basis for those views in our democratic institutions. The “scoping questionnaire” and spiteful rhetoric of ministers (Senator Abetz’s go to line is “union thug”) is evidence of a broader infection. We have, as the ACTU executive noted last week, a royal commission into trade unions which “appears to be proceeding on the basis of an antipathy or lack of understanding of the basic principle that a union is a collective, industrial, campaigning, political organisation of working people.” What’s absent is any sense of the purpose or function of trade unions, or the motivations of trade union members and officers. At a deeper level, it seems to reveal a fundamental clash of world views. If workers are commercial providers of "labour units”, then collective action seems like a restrictive trade practice – and trying to take wages out of competition seems like collusive conduct. Except we aren’t in a bad economics textbook, we are in the real world. Workers are real people living off their labour for wages, and labour law, unions and collective action are a modest attempt to even up the power imbalance of an individual worker and their employer. The royal commissioner may be technically correct that “the terms of reference do not assume that it is desirable to abolish trade unions”, but the conduct of the government certainly leans that way. Over the last couple of years, state and federal Coalition governments have taken every opportunity to hop into unions, using executive power, legislation and regulations. These governments have restricted or removed the rights of union members to organise, strike, protest, campaign, engage in political activity, bargain, take legal action, and access dependent arbitration. And, as the “scoping questionnaire” implies, the government even wants unions excluded from conversations about our community’s future. This adds up to a pretty exhaustive list of things union members might want to do. And it’s a pretty good indication that it’s not just their preference, but their intention to see a union-free Australia. Winning an election means you get to run the machinery of government. It’s not a licence to eliminate your enemies. Parties who take power in coups and revolutions are the ones who play that game, not ones that temporarily triumph in a democratic process. |