Only a fool would think that removing the union from the equation will rid the building industry of criminality.

But that is just what the ALP government is doing: introducing draconian laws with the backing of the Liberals to neuter the entire unionised workforce.

It is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is a pre-election ploy that has the added bonus for Anthony Albanese to remove factional support for his internal “left: opponents in the party.

The building companies and the Master Builders Association are licking their lips.

Yes, there are serious problems in the CFMEU construction division – problems the prime minister has known about for at least a decade, but is pretending to only have learnt about recently. But these problems cannot be solved by the current laws being rammed through parliament.

A former senior CFMEU organiser told me:

The Prime Minister is trying to blame the Greens for his own mishandling of the issue with a policy equivalent of a brain fart after not having dealt with the corruption that he was informed about 10 years ago.

As it stands the current legislation will enable any incoming Liberal government more or less to deregister the union, thereby guaranteeing that the presence of organised crime becomes a pandemic and not an illness.

In the early 1990s, at the time of the Gyles Royal Commission into Productivity in the Building Industry in NSW, newspaper columnist Paddy McGuinness recounted a maxim long held in the building industry: it was either dominated by organised crime or communists.

That was when the forerunners of the CFMEU – the BWIU and BLF – had militant, communist leaderships.

The building industry is manna for organised crime (petty or serious), for money laundering or for shuffling large amounts of money at the big end of town.

While some of the criminals are jacked up on ’roids and covered in tatts, the people creaming off the serious bucks wear suits, drive Teslas and live in the leafy suburbs.

Only a militant, independent union can tame the concrete jungle. Unfortunately, with its communist leadership gone, the jungle has been trying to tame the union.

Since the 1990s, building unions increasingly relied on organising the strategic production points – like crane crews and concrete pours – to control the price of labour power.

While........

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