Abbott Government's Royal Commission Witchhunt

Hands Off the Unions!

The Abbott Liberal/National Coalition government’s recent announcement of a royal commission into the trade unions is part of a multi-pronged attack on the organised working class. The royal commission combines with other institutions of anti-union repression including the new Registered Organisations Commission and the planned revival of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). Through these instrumentalities the government aims to make anyone who engages in effective picketing of worksites liable for massive fines and threatens tougher criminal penalties, including jail terms, against union officials deemed to be breaking the law. Clearly these draconian measures are an attempt to criminalise militant unionism and break union power in order to more easily drive down the conditions of all workers in the interests of the profit-hungry bosses.

The federal ALP opposition says it is against the royal commission because it does not have the power to prosecute and won’t be able to act quickly enough! Instead, ALP leader and former head of the Australian Workers Union, Bill Shorten, demands a taskforce led by the Australian Federal Police! In line with their ALP parliamentary brethren, the ACTU and the CFMEU leadership have bowed to the government’s anti-union witchhunt. In the words of the ACTU president, Ged Kearney: “Along with the leadership of our movement, I support tough penalties in cases of corruption and other criminal behaviour by union officials.” She continued, “I support the leadership of the CFMEU in referring these matters to the police” (Sydney Morning Herald, 30 January). By such craven obeisance to the capitalist state the union tops act to legitimise and embolden the very forces that are conducting a war on the unions. As shown by the attacks on the Painters and Dockers Union and the Builders Labourers Federation in the 1980s, “corruption” allegations and government investigations have always been used as a pretext for attempting to destroy the unions, the basic economic defence organisations of the working class.

The Spartacist League stands sharply opposed, on principle, to any intervention by the capitalist state—its courts, commissions and cops—into the union movement. Inviting the cops and courts to snoop in internal union affairs, as the union bureaucracy does, is class treason! The working class must clean its own house! In order to become weapons of struggle the unions must be completely independent of the capitalist state. In political opposition to the pro-capitalist union tops, workers need a class-struggle leadership determined to take on the bosses and win. Such a leadership linked to a revolutionary workers party would fight for the overthrow of the whole repressive and exploitative capitalist system through workers revolution. State out of the unions!