'Too much power': Union campaign targets government links to banking
The newly merged Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union has launched a national political campaign targeting the Turnbull government's links to the banking industry.
The union declined to say how much it had spent on the campaign, but Fairfax Media understands it is hundreds of thousands of dollars. It follows the Australian Council of Trade Unions' "Change the Rules" campaign launched last year in a bid to shift industrial relations laws in favour of workers.
The ads say Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull voted more than 20 times to block the royal commission and asks why. It then flashes a photo of him with the tagline 'once a banker'.
Photo: SuppliedUnions are hoping to generate a similar level of community support to that seen during the "Your Rights at Work" campaign against the Howard government's WorkChoices legislation.
The CFMMEU ads running on television and in print and social media say Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull voted more than 20 times to block the royal commission and asks why. It then flashes up images of Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer tagged as a former NAB executive, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann as a former insurance GM and Mr Turnbull as "once a banker".
The campaign comes as the Business Council of Australia, representing the country's largest companies, ramps up its own political advertising campaign to counter anti-business sentiment. The BCA has not publicly commented on media reports it has asked its 130 members to contribute $200,000 each to fund a multimillion-dollar political campaign.
The BCA has announced its campaign will focus on business as a provider of jobs and will make the case for the Turnbull government's stalled company tax cuts.
The CFMMEU's national secretary, Michael O'Connor, who also co-chairs an industry superannuation fund, said scandals exposed by the banking royal commission could have come to light much earlier if the federal government had not been reluctant to support it in favour of protecting the "big end of town", including BCA members.
"It beggars belief that the government acts shocked about what has been exposed because a lot of the banks' behaviour was documented and explained to MPs in the government and the opposition for many years," he said. "Some people decided to do something about it and some people decided to do nothing about it."
Mr O'Connor said the government had been attacking industry superannuation funds while at the same time protecting banks and AMP.
"Clearly the association between the people in the government and the big banks need to be exposed," he said. "Big business has too much power, which is why our industrial relations laws are weak and why the government doesn't do anything about wage theft."
Mr O'Connor said the government's decision to freeze funding for the Fair Work Ombudsman and give its unions watchdog, the Registered Organisations Commission an $8 million increase in the budget "reflected its values and priorities".
The ad tags Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer as a former NAB executive.
"I haven't met a young person in the last three or four years who has not been a victim of wage theft in nearly any industry you can think of," he said. "The fact that the government decides that the regulator doesn't get extra resources to do the job properly ... makes it very clear this government doesn't want to do anything about wage theft."
When Mr Turnbull was asked about the advertisements on Radio 3AW on Tuesday he said he had seen them. "The only thing that was missing was the white cat on the lap. Sort of like the character out of a Bond movie, yeah," he said.
Anna Patty is Workplace Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald. She is a former Education Editor, State Political Reporter and Health Reporter. Her reports on inequity in schools funding led to the Gonski reforms and won her national awards. Her coverage of health exposed unnecessary patient deaths at Campbelltown Hospital and led to judicial and parliamentary inquiries. At The Times of London, she exposed flaws in international medical trials.
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