Bring back a cop on the beat

Bringing back the cop on the beatRestoring the Australian Building Construction Commission will boost productivity on building sites around the country and reduce unlawful industrial action, says Property Council chief executive Ken Morrison.As Parliament returns to Canberra next week, the first order of business will be the passage of the Australian Building Construction Commission (ABCC) and Registered Organisations bills.The ABCC bill would restore the powers of the construction industry watchdog to monitor and enforce civil workplace laws, such as restrictions on industrial threats.The complementary Registered Organisations bill seeks to impose higher standards of regulation on union officials, and aligns penalties to those currently in place for company directors.Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called the ABCC bill a “critical economic reform” that will reduce the high levels of industrial disputes on building sites, and the Property Council’s chief executive Ken Morrison agrees.”When the industry watchdog was in force, industrial action in the construction industry fell by half,” Morrison says.”From 2005 to 2012, Property Council members achieved construction-related productivity gains of 15-20 per cent, and industrial threats and disputes fell dramatically.”The Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption has found that misappropriation of funds, secret payments, reprisals, bullying, under the table union payments, slush funds, false invoices and secrecy were rife throughout the construction sector.Constitutionally, the next step for the Turnbull Government is to present both bills to the House of Representatives and then the Senate. If the bills are rejected by the Senate, which industry and political analysts say is likely, the government can convene a joint sitting.During the joint sitting, both houses of Parliament will vote as one chamber. The Coalition holds 76 seats in the House of Representatives and 30 seats in the senate – a total of 106 votes. To pass a vote in a joint sitting, the Coalition needs 114 votes, so it must pick up an additional eight votes from the crossbench for the legislation to pass.Morrison says the Property Council will be speaking with key crossbenchers in the coming weeks putting the case for the re-establishment of the ABCC.”Construction disputes remain at their highest level since the cop left the beat. This is a vital economic reform that will provide an immediate productivity boost to the second largest industry in Australia’s economy,” Morrison concludes.