Senator Cash has been all over the media saying that, if Labor want to side with rogue unions, the Coalition will fight the election on protecting workers.
This is the same woman who is pretending that the government is not going to get rid of penalty rates. Just like they don’t have a policy to raise the GST. And none of them have ever suggested that we should abolish the minimum wage.
This is the same government that, instead of delivering their election promise to pay parental leave at replacement wages for 6 months plus superannuation, has now decided to cut any government payment at all if you happen to have a workplace entitlement to PPL.
Ms Cash is calling for legislation regarding the regulation of registered organisations but this is the government who had a Bill to abolish charity watchdog, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). This was put on the backburner when Kevin Andrews was replaced by Scott Morrison, the excuse being it was low priority and he wanted to focus on his families package.
Moves to axe the regulator – which Fairfax Media reported was prompted by lobbying from Cardinal George Pell’s office – had been widely criticised by the charities sector, who said the body improved transparency, by providing oversight of a sector that contributes about $43 billion to Australia’s gross domestic product.
In September, Morrison said he did not want the ACNC to continue to be a regulatory body.
“We will continue to look at that issue closely in the weeks ahead and what I will intend to focus on in the short term is that we get the focus of the ACNC where I believe it wants it and of course the Government wants it, and that its rather than regulation the ACNC should be about championing charities, working with them to become more effective and improve their governance arrangements,” he said.
“We don’t want another bureaucracy any more than the ACNC does, and we don’t want more red tape for our volunteering and our Not-for-Profit sector. We need to strike the right balance between public accountability and cutting red tape maintaining public confidence through transparency and consistency of reporting and having a proportionate compliance framework across state and territory charity legislation.”
At the moment the ACNC still has regulatory power and announced on December 16 that 182 former charities joined more than 9,000 other organisations that have had been deregistered by the ACNC since it was established in 2012.
ACNC Commissioner, Susan Pascoe AM, said the revocation was part of an ongoing process to ensure only active and compliant charities kept their registration.
“We conduct regular reviews of the charities registered with the ACNC to ensure only those that meet their obligations maintain their registration status and are able to access Commonwealth charity tax concessions,” Pascoe said. “This group of charities have failed to complete their 2013 and 2014 Annual Information Statements, despite multiple reminders.”
Not only is the ACNC acting as a regulator, but it is also responsible for:
- providing education and support to the sector
- implementing a ‘report-once, use-often’ general reporting framework for charities
- implementing a public information portal.
Rather than a similar body which would help unions with their reporting obligations, the Coalition want to reintroduce the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
When it was established previously in 2005 it was given powers that greatly exceeded those given to any police officer in the nation.
“The ABCC can force people to answer questions in secret and to reveal documents that relate to any of its investigations. This negates a person’s right to silence. It also removes their privilege against self-incrimination, a protection that has been described by the High Court as a ”cardinal principle of our system of justice” and a ”bulwark of liberty.”
There are no limits on the type of information that can be sought by the ABCC. A person can be compelled to hand over personal phone and email records, reveal memberships of a union or political party, and report on private meetings.
This can be applied to anyone. Workers can be brought in, not because they are suspected of wrongdoing, but to report on the activities of their co-workers. Family members, including young children, can be told to reveal information about a parent in the building industry.
In case there was any doubt about the scope of these powers, the law says that the ABCC can override the protections that innocent people have under privacy law. The law may well be unique in also allowing the commission to ignore the confidentiality of cabinet documents and to demand secret national security information held by agencies such as ASIO.
The problem is not just one of extraordinary power, but also that the expected safeguards have been stripped away. Unlike other bodies that question people, the ABCC does not need a warrant from a judicial officer or other independent person. The normal grounds of reviewing its decisions have also been excluded, meaning federal law cannot be used to argue that the ABCC has breached the rules of natural justice or made a decision in bad faith.”
“The ABCC constitutes a frontal attack on basic legal and democratic rights. It can demand that a worker submit to interrogation on pain of prosecution. Its inspectors can enter building sites, interview anyone without a lawyer present, demand documents and force people to provide information relating to industrial action or internal union business. The watchdog also has the power to initiate prosecutions with fines of up to $110,000 against unions or $22,000 against individuals for taking unlawful industrial action. Disclosing the contents of an ABCC interrogation can lead to six months’ imprisonment, as can refusing to attend a hearing or answer questions.”
In August 2008, Noel Washington, a CFMEU official, was summonsed to appear before Geelong Magistrates Court for refusing to comply with summons issued by the ABCC which alleged that Washington had distributed a flyer that made “derogatory” remarks about a Bovis Lend Lease site manager. (Where was Tim Wilson when we needed him.). Six days before his trial, the DPP dropped the charges.
In December, the Fairfax press reported on the case of a Melbourne academic – which it was prevented under the ABCC’s legislation from even naming - who witnessed a scuffle while walking past a building site and found himself under interrogation by the ABCC and under threat of imprisonment if he revealed his interrogation to anyone.
In its 2008 submission to the Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations, a consortium of four unions, estimated that since 2003 more than a quarter of a billion dollars had been spent on the Cole Royal Commission and the establishment and operations of the ABCC.
Adelaide worker Ark Tribe was the first union member to be charged with failing to attend a hearing of the ABCC in 2008. Mr Tribe had been summoned to appear at the ABCC after he walked off a construction site at Flinders University over safety concerns and if convicted, faced a maximum penalty of six months in prison.
Mr Tribe was found not guilty of the charge in November 2010 and, in 2012, the legal saga finally concluded when Commonwealth prosecutors agreed to pay $105,000 for his legal fees.
The ABCC was abolished in 2012 and replaced by the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate
Surely help, co-operation and regulation like that provided by the ACNC would be preferable to the draconian powers of interrogation and punishment by a body like the ABCC.
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