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The Victorian government is looking to push its new Labour Hire Licensing Bill through Parliament, starting this week. The Bill is a legislative scam pretending to do one thing, but in reality will do something else—namely, open new doors to corruption in Victoria.

The Bill is supposedly a (long overdue) response to the exposé by the ABC's Four Corners programme on 4 May 2015 about the exploitation of migrant workers on some Australian farms. What Four Corners exposed was illegal migrants, working below legal pay rates and organized through some small, illegal 'labour hire' businesses.  More...

Last week we expressed our strong support for the deal to bring forward to this year the implementation of the Building Code for the construction sector. We billed the move as the Senate independents again demonstrating their common sense and willingness to listen to the ‘little people’.

Today we’ve lodged a submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Bill explaining why we support the deal.

Our submission is here. More...

It’s been quite a week on the construction anti-corruption front:  More...

Yesterday, The Australian carried an article reporting that the AMWU wants to ‘represent’ independent contractors. The article quoted Ken Phillips (our Executive Director) who said: More...

Yes,  it’s illegal to smoke marijuana but it’s okay to use a bong! That seems to be the type of message the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission is sending in its latest decision to allow the Transport Workers Union to bargain collectively with the giant Japanese-owned transport company Toll.

If you’ve followed us for a while, you’ll notice we’ve been persistent in pushing the ACCC to do something to stop unions and big businesses colluding to rort competition for their own benefit. More...

Australians may not know all that much about the Tea Party in the USA. It’s effectively a party within the Republican Party defined as ‘hard right.’ Well, it is campaigning to have the US Tax (IRS) Commissioner impeached by Congress. In 2013, the IRS admitted that it had been targeting for scrutiny Tea Party groups in the 2012 election. Thousands of Tea Party members were targeted with ‘audits, threats and onerous interrogations’ because of their political affiliation.

Corruption or not by the IRS, it does demonstrate the extraordinary power of the instruments of the state. We don’t have a ‘corruption’ problem with the Australian Taxation Office but we did reiterate to Prime Minister Turnbull early this month that the treatment of self-employed people by the ATO is holding back entrepreneurship and innovation. The PM has referred our letter to the Assistant Treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer and we will be talking with her.  More...

The Victorian government this week imposed the first sanction against a construction firm for breach of the Victorian Construction Code, banning it from tendering for a period of 3 months. The firm was dictating industrial relations arrangements to a subcontractor, forcing the subbie to use the union. Ken Phillips explains the issue here. More...

Read this speech by the head of Boral concrete, Mike Kane, describing the intimidation they have stood up to from the construction union, the CFMEU. Mike recognises that to agree to CFMEU demands would rightly open a company to accusations of ‘criminal cartel conduct’. Ken Phillips wrote an open letter to Mike on the issue in July. More...

Ken Phillips wrote in Business Spectator about the huge threat to Victoria if the ALP wins the upcoming November election. Ken says that to elect Labor  “…the voters will have put the CFMEU in control of Victoria".  Labor supports the CFMEU’s aim to terminate the state's Construction Code even when CFMEU officials are facing Federal Court proceedings and court proceedings for alleged coercion. More...