SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Militant CFMEU as bad as Vladimir Putin if poor behaviour left unchecked
Bad guys rarely get better with time. Left unchecked, they all too often get worse.
Take two wildly different examples. One an assailant on peace, the other a cancer on our economy.
Russia under Vladimir Putin, and Australia’s militant construction union.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.In both cases, there was plenty of warning. Not enough was done to rein in outrageous behaviour. And an even higher price is paid in the long run.
Today is an especially important day to call out Russia and Putin, as we mark the 10th anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
Immediately doomed as they were shot from the sky over Ukraine by Russian-backed militia, some 298 innocent lives were taken on this day in 2014, including 38 who called Australia home.
The response of Australia, The Netherlands, Malaysia and the other nations that lost citizens was swift, has been enduring and is carefully targeted.
Australian police joined with international counterparts to establish a joint investigation. Working together, they established the facts, gathered the evidence, and ultimately secured the prosecution of three men directly responsible for this atrocity.
A Dutch court also found that the Russian Federation controlled the so-called separatist forces these men were fighting with. Russia armed them.
Putin’s Russia, however, has dodged all accountability. They harbour these men, refuse to engage in international proceedings, and shamefully deny justice to those who grieve.
One year after causing this tragedy, Russia invaded the Crimean region of Ukraine. In the years that followed, Russia has sponsored poisonings and murders on foreign soil, and is behind countless cyber-attacks around the world.
If we don’t stand up to bullies, expect worse to come.
There were responses to these acts, like targeted sanctions and suspension or removal from international forums. But Putin didn’t become compliant, he became emboldened.
Now, more than two years into Russia’s attempted wholesale invasion of Ukraine, and tens of thousands of deaths, it is apparent that the world didn’t respond strongly enough to earlier warnings.
More pressure needed to be applied much earlier to Putin, his cronies and Russia’s economy. Greater defences needed to be deployed much sooner, to create a stronger deterrent to increasing Russian aggression.
The failure to heed the early warnings now means Ukraine, Europe and the world are paying a much higher price.
Thousands of kilometres away, a different group of thugs engaged in a very different type of destruction.
Proudly militant leaders of Australia’s construction unions have made an art form out of breaking the law to seize power and money by holding our building industry to ransom.
If you want a new road, hospital, school, office block, apartment building, hotel, industrial facility or any other project built on time, then you better have the CFMEU on side.
“Do this, or else” has been the catchphrase of union-to-builder relations in Australia.
The “or else” would all too often result in massive delays and cost blowouts to projects, with taxpayers and consumers ultimately footing the bill.
Australians are paying higher taxes, burdened with higher inflation, face a housing crisis and are living with a weaker economy in part because of this lawless union activity.
Rather than a secret, these actions have been more like an inconvenient truth to the Labor Party and Labor governments.
The CFMEU is affiliated with the Labor Party. It votes in internal Labor ballots. It gives millions of dollars to Labor. And many Labor MPs are or were CFMEU members.
Little wonder then that Labor has taken a see no evil, hear no evil approach to the CFMEU.
Counterintuitively, rather than tougher scrutiny, Labor eased scrutiny. Rather than a stronger watchdog, the Albanese Government abolished the building industry watchdog.
As a result, all Australians are paying a much higher price.
Many lessons are learned the hard way. In these two cases, the consequences are incomparable but one of the lessons is near identical.
If we don’t stand up to bullies, expect worse to come.
