Kevin Rudd continues to be the master of the political centre, even with the entry of the socially moderate Mal Turnbull.
Case in point: his dismantling of John Howard’s wonderfully oxymoronic ‘WorkChoices’ laws. He’s been very careful when clipping the union’s toenails to go a bit too close – so they squeak a little. Just loud enough for the electorate to hear.
Not only are union peak bodies miffed at last week’s watering down of the anti-WorkChoices policies the Ruddbot took to the last election, but building unions are especially in a huff.
This is because they still have to deal with the most aggressive part of Howard’s anti-union witchhunt - the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Howard always had it in for building unions, mainly because they are some of the few that still have any power and also because they campaign on issues far beyond industrial relations.
Like his destruction of student unions, getting rid of potential political opponents is the gift that keeps on giving to Tories until the end of time.
Before he foisted the Australian Building and Construction Commission on building workers it was his 2001 Building Industry Royal Commission that effectively shut unions down for six months and bled them of a heap of dosh in legal expenses.
And what did that yield after costing tens of millions of dollars and going around the country? One union official got charged with perjury after making up some silly story about sleeping with a boss’s wife.
That’s it?
But even that warranted foisting on building unions an industrial watchdog that has powers akin to a terrorist taskforce. Including denying workers who are to be interrogated access to legal counsel of their choice.
You’d think in an industry where one worker is killed every week there would be other priorities on your mind. Workers like 17-year-old Dean McGoldrick, who fell from a Sydney worksite less than a month after hitching down from Tamworth to find work in the big smoke. He wasn’t wearing a harness.
Or 16-year-old Joel Exner who died on his third day of work labouring on the old Sydney Wonderland site – he fell 16 metres. He also wasn’t wearing a harness.
But that doesn't seem to rate.
What the government does do is attempt to fine workers tens of thousands of dollars for taking industrial action. And it also does a good job of making sure building workers are under more scrutiny and seemingly have less rights than everyone else in the workforce.
You’d think Rudd would want to end all that. But why bother when the odd squeal from a militant union is good for business?
You wouldn’t want to leave any room on the fence for Mal Turnbull to manoeuvre.
