An urgent ALP conference amendment proposed by construction union chief Dave Noonan to amend Labor’s national platform to outlaw special inspectors has been withdrawn at the 11th hour.
Crikey understands that the Construction, Forestry Mining and Energy Union’s national construction secretary had prepared an amendment, likely to have been contested by the Right, to immediately dismantle a watchdog within the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman, the successor to the notorious Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Labor’s draft platform already calls for the ABCC’s abolition, however under the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment Act recently considered by federal parliament, the government retains special oversight to compel workers to give evidence before secret tribunals. It is believed the CFMEU wanted to strengthen the form of words in the platform but backed away at the last minute.
The ABCC has been accused by unions of demonising workers on building sites across the nation and its successor is just as controversial.
Noonan took an opportunity to sledge the watchdog regardless while speaking in support of a general industrial relations motion proposed by right wing shop assistants’ head Joe de Bruyn.
“Why should we keep them? Why should we keep laws that oppress workers in this way? They are not in keeping with the ethos of Labor. They are not fair laws and they are discriminatory,” he said.
Noonan said Labor laws should be designed instead to improve safety, build apprentiships and end sham contracting, to calls of “shame” from delegates.
“It is time for Labor to rethink coercive powers, let’s banish the ghost once and for all, let’s banish the ABCC,” he concluded, in a rousing call to arms.
Meanwhile, debate has continued this afternoon on the industrial relations-themed chapter 5 of the platform entitled “Opportunity and fairness for working families”.
An resolution taking Qantas to task was moved by the Transport Workers Union secretary Tony Sheldon and backed by the Maritime Union of Australia’s Paddy Crumlin.
“We’re going to fight you…because we’re going to fight for this company, fight for this country and fight for the workers we represent,” Sheldon said.
Crumlin, who was gagging for a drink at the bar, said the recent Qantas decision to ground its entire fleet was the “greatest act of self harm” ever committed by an Australian company.
An earlier move to secure greater union representation on a Carbon and Biodiversity Advisory Board was proposed by the CFMEU’s national secretary Michael O’Connor but shot down by the mustachioed former Army officer Mike Kelly and lost on a formal vote.
*Andrew Crook will be reporting from the ALP conference all weekend – stay tuned to the Crikey website for updates
Why is it Labor cant understand people like me who spend their time and money telling anyone who will listed that Labor and Liberal National Coalition politicians too, are by their inaction on documented complaints from all over the place, which I have taken to identifying as political sins against the peoples. Obviously accommodating systemic corruption is what too many politicians do because most of the time their fellow party members are directly involved in abuse of power if not flat out corruption. Corruption in political parties cant exist for long unless those members standing to the left and right of a corrupt party member accommodate it. The Party is the problem and what is being offered this weekend is not a solution to the cancer which is eating away parties from within ! We the people have the solution to their lack of understanding, keep voting for change and change again until every last bit of political dead wood has been put out of Parliament into the street where they belong, not on the opposition benches for tax payer funded RnR ! http://bit.ly/EJ_PNewsAds Link to political attack ads Edward James
I have followed the fight of Ark Tribe. I believe it is just flat out wrong that a law has been drawn up with special coersive powers written in. So that a worker can be pulled in and forced to tell a an inquisitor what occured at a union meeting while being threatened with a court visit where a continued refusal to answer can result in contempt of court. This is simply not right it makes a select few citizens subject to a law which is not applied to us all equally. I believe the reason for that is Australian would not sit still for it. But because it is only applied to a small part of the community there has not been national outrage. Edward James