A Promise Abbott Should Break

Today’s media predicts the announcement of a Royal Commission which will cover union corruption and corporate contributions to the “corrupt” unions. We should hope that either the terms of reference are broader than that, and/or that the announcement indicates the government intends major reform of the Fair Work legislation and administration before the next election.

Even though considerable evidence of union corruption is already available this is unlikely. The government will  want to use the Royal Commission to justify subsequent major reform, and despite belated revelations by businesses of the legislation’s disastrous consequences — Boral CEO Mike Kane’s brave column in today’s Fairfax press, for example — it will not want to break its pre-election promise to implement no major changes during this current term. As the analysis in today’s Australian by Henry Ergas suggests, this would be unfortunate. He perceptively points out that the underlying problem is with…