Crossbenchers carve ABCC bill into the biggest protectionist turkey in decades
The government has established a new set of protectionist local content and standard requirements for the building industry as part of the ABCC bill -- which was designed to make life easier for builders.
But your descriptions of the assorted amendments all suggest that there is no explicit local content requirement (e.g. “70% of value added must be of Australian origin”.) Rather, they will require a great deal of paperwork and creative interpretation and so will increase compliance costs, perhaps quite significantly, but may not change underlying behaviour a lot. Or is that too rosy a view?
Very true Decorum … just some weak requirements to “consider” this and that … Hinch and Xenophon are self-congratulatory fools … now we must face the awful prospect of a smirking propaganda session from Michaelia Cash on the news … made up of a pile of vile anti-Labor and anti-union rhetoric … which is the purpose of the whole charade…
Well, the ABCC legislation has been gutted. It isn’t a shadow of what it was going to be. In fact, developers are going to be ropeable with the LNP for having all those regulatory concessions forced upon them. If Cash wants to smirk about the LNP failure then she should go for it.
Looks scary to shake her hand, Mitch looks like his is being squeezed to death.
Agree on the creative interpretation point – I did some work in the social procurement space. Businesses count GST and all kinds of things towards these figures. Governments will simply roll over if the price is right anyway. More focus is needed on making Australian products a better value proposition, both locally and in export markets.
As the developed world has discovered: global markets do not provide training and jobs for the next generation. That falls to governments.
So Pauline Hanson (who supposedly champions left behind working class Australians) voted for anti-worker legislation providing no ameliorating amendments … she is a fake and a lackey for the LNP … and will do nothing for those working class people who voted for her … just a jumped-up and pumped-up fake …
With the end of the mining construction boom, there is no reasonable requirement for 457 visa construction workers.
I reckon it will be interesting watching who’ll be lining up to claim paternity when this baby starts delivering the sort of “unforeseen” outcomes they didn’t want to see when they passed it.
Again BK, anti-dumping is actually pro free trade. You should be a champion of anti-dumping measures, as they are there to ensure a level playing field, which is an essential pre-requisite for free trade. Otherwise we would just subsidise all our exports too, a no-win game!
Further, as already pointed out, the need for 457 visas for construction would be impossible to justify now that the mining boom is over. They were only necessary to put people into jobs in the outback mining operations where it was reasonable that Australians weren’t willing, or there weren’t the numbers, to fill the position. That’s no longer the case, so again, no problem.
“imported steel — often accused of failing to meet Australian standards”, and in fact found to be failing to meet our standards, resulting in wiring from China throughout how many homes and businesses just waiting to burst into flames. Is that really a cheaper option, or just a profit for the builder option?
“… the Building Code will now also require the government to demand that successful government project tenderers explain how much domestically sourced and manufactured building materials will be used, whether all materials comply with Australian standards (materials not complying with Australian standards will now be banned),” Ummhhh, if they don’t meet standards they are already banned from construction projects, so that’s no change. Perhaps they will just be enforcing existing compliance legislation, in which case, excellent!
” .. the jobs impact of the building work, and “whether the project to which the building work relates will contribute to skills growth”.
Funny that, exactly what we should be asking of all government tenders. I would add another – whether the successful company pays tax in Australia.
Bernard, cheapest does not always amount to best value, and the government paying over the odds for locally produced product is what is called a Keynesian stimulus.
The money is not lost Bernard, except when it is taken out of the country. That’s what we should be looking at!
No, no, a thousand times no! Anti-dumping is not pro free trade. Anti-predation is pro free trade and that was the rationale for AD legislation in the first place in the early 1900s. Of course, predatory behaviour is a bad thing whether done by domestic firms or foreign ones, of course, so it’s not obvious that it calls for a trade remedy. More to the point, though, is that AD legislation in Australia and everywhere else in the world no longer has anything to do with predatory behaviour (i.e. low prices now to drive out the competition then crank the prices back up again) and is naked protectionism. Do you really think that 100’s of non-coordinated foreign steel producers constitute a monopoly that is selling low to corner the future market? Or that Italian tomato producers are a global monopoly threat?
The “levelling the playing field” canard was best skewered by The Economist many years ago when it noted that the only evidence many people will accept of a level playing field is, to pursue the sporting analogy, if equal numbers of goals are scored at each end. But some countries are better at making cars than others and score more goals in that “contest”. Others are better at iron ore, beef or wine and win those contests. Etc etc.
Finally, the money and where it goes is a red herring, Dog’s. What we should be looking at is the use of Australian land, labour and capital, both physical and human. If I pay $10,000 to buy an imported car rather than $15,000 for the same thing made in Oz that represents $5,000 worth of Australian resources available for employment elsewhere where they are more productive. That’s actually a good thing.
Extra $5000 for property asset inflation? Doubtful it would end up in the productive economy in Australia 😉
The whole ABCC/double disolution election will surely go down in history as one of the biggest own goals in politics, ever. First Turnbull calls a DD accompanied by the longest, most tedious election campaign ever, and a campaign in which he and his government never talk about the ABCC, and scrapes back into office with a margin of one, and hopelessly at the mercy of the right-wing of his party.
The DD also lowers the Senate quota, floods the cross-benches with the likes of One Nation, Culleton, Hinch & Leyonhjelm but fails to get the government the numbers to actually pass the ABCC into law, even in a joint sitting.
Now those cross benchers have amended the law to the point where it’s a productivity killing nightmare, and imposed exactly the restrictions on 457 workers that unions have been seeking.
The requirements to find Australian workers are not onerous. How else are employers going to find suitable staff for a new project unless they advertise? How are they going to know who is out there who might be looking for work? Employers shouldn’t need to import overseas workers if there are plenty of Australians around to do the job. However if they need skills not readily available in Australia and they can demonstrate that this is the case (and the unions will know if there is a shortage as well and can’t object in this case) then they won’t have a problem bringing in workers from overseas. That is how it is supposed to work. The door isn’t being closed. The requirements aren’t onerous. It is just stopping rorts.
Bernard Keane does not explain why it is good for societal wellbeing for the Australian Government to enable producers and suppliers based in other countries to oppress workers and wreck the environment. We have some capacity to enforce high standards in those areas. We should exercise our power to the full instead of cravenly pretending that if the bad behaviour happens in another country we bear no responsibility for it.
Bernard, you need to get out and about a bit more. Building materials comprise more than just steel. Have you not heard of the influx of asbestos-containing materials brought into the country by builders looking to cut costs, and not realising that in China, asbestos-free means up to 5% asbestos? Did you miss the story about the fire on the mutli-storey apartment tower in Docklands Melbourne which was clad with non-compliant, not fireproof cladding from…guess where?
It’s all well and good to stand for lower building material costs, but at what cost?
Quote: “no person is employed to undertake building work unless (a) the position is first advertised in Australia; ”
Umm, does this mean that a small building company that decides to create a position for an Australian apprentice or construction worker that they feel that they want working for them, who has, say, lost their job when a rival company has folded, is now legally obliged to firstly advertise the job before they are allowed to take on a local employee that they want to employ?
Jeez, Bernard, most of this sound pretty good to me: almost impossible to get a 457 guy on a construction site? Excellent. Now let’s see them hire and train some of the 20% of youth that are unemployed.
Companies must advertise here first? Well blow me down – why aren’t they obliged to that in all sectors?
457 visas were a racket from their inception, as was their US counterpart the 1HB visa.
PaulM makes the points I was going to make: asbestos in imported building products, and cladding that may not be fire-proof. I have worried for some time that we are going to see some horrible fires in newly-built apartment towers.
If this legislation really does its job and ensures construction materials meet Australian standards, then I will be impressed with this Senatorial rabble.
This Jeremiad from BK is as perfect an example as could be imagined of why neolibs haven’t a feather to fly with – it eats it young, if any, shits in its own nest then screams to be rescued the rising tide of consequences, each foreseen, forewarned and flashing neon dayglo orange.
I have nothing to add the many excellent points raised by others here, except to tell BK that his renewed job application to mudorc is being considered, placed at the bottom of the pile of other meretricious myrmidons desperate to escape the coming abolition of journalism.
Better brush up your stenography skills, BK..oh, wait…