Builder bikies political gold for Tony Abbott The bikies and builders scandal offers Abbott the opportunity to dictate a large part of the political agenda for a year or more. Picture: Thinkstock Source: Herald Sun ALMOST five months after the federal election, at last a genuine piece of good luck has come the way of the Abbott Government. The latest reports linking the builders union with bikies and corruption are political gold for the Coalition. Here is the sort of issue that all governments - especially in their early days in office - yearn for. It offers the opportunity to dictate a large part of the political agenda for a year or more, and to inflict serious irreversible damage on the Labor Party. Most important of all, it elevates the prospect of rewriting the nation's labour laws - a cherished policy goal dear to the hearts of the Liberal Party's leading figures and their most powerful business backers. Potentially, it pulls together all the strands that make up political success and ties them in a bow. The furore engulfing the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union over kickbacks and ties to enforcers linked with bikie gangs is not based on some loose, unsourced conjecture. As the first reports hit the media, an organiser in the Victorian branch had resigned after claims of bribery were put to him. The CFMEU scandal is the crucial third peg upon which Tony Abbott and Employment Minister Eric Abetz can hang a wide-ranging royal commission into the union movement. Until now, it had been committed to pursuing a limited judicial inquiry into so-called union slush funds. Essentially, this was an attempt to exploit the controversy that had dogged Julia Gillard surrounding the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association, a body set up in the 1990s to help officials of that union get re-elected. Given that Labor leader Bill Shorten was, prior to entering Parliament in 2007, the national secretary of the AWU, there was a strong possibility he could be dragged into that inquiry. And cases involving past leaders of the Health Services Union have been winding their way through the courts. Michael Williamson, the former head of the HSU and one-time national ALP president, pleaded guilty last year to a series of charges relating to defrauding the union of $1 million. A sentencing hearing is due in March. Another ex-HSU chief, Craig Thomson, also a former ALP MP, is before the courts on a string of charges involving the misuse of union funds. Throw in the CFMEU material and it's easy for the Government to grow the small inquiry into the AWU into a full-blown royal commission with the powers to look into every nook and cranny of the industrial wing of the labour movement and its connections to the ALP. Labor and the ACTU yesterday described a royal commission of that nature as a political witch-hunt and they were almost certainly right. But the suggestions of misbehaviour within more than one big union will provide the necessary cover for the Government. This comes at the worst of times for the ACTU and its member unions. Early last year, with the installation of the Abbott Government imminent, the ACTU was out of the blocks ahead of the election with a well-resourced advertising and marketing campaign aimed at not just shoring up but extending its membership. More than 80 per cent of workers do not belong to unions; quite simply, the ACTU is fighting to stay relevant to the broader community. Few things can poison that mission more than the suggestion that union corruption is not just some isolated activity. Similar dangers lie ahead for the ALP. Shorten made his name as a union official before entering politics. Closer to home, Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy was almost frenetic in his high volume condemnation of state Labor leader Daniel Andrews, whose Socialist Left faction includes the CFMEU, and understandably so in this election year. For the Liberals, this is a tantalising situation. John Howard overreached with WorkChoices and paid a massive price. His objective then was to recast the industrial laws to tip the scales heavily in favour of employees, boosting profits while also forcing unions to wither on the vine. In the medium term, the upshot would be a union movement reduced to a husk, a vital source of funds for the ALP wiped out. The Liberals still want that. But Abbott and Abetz know they have to go about it in a different way, methodically building a case to the people that unions are marginal institutions, irrelevant to modern Australia, before they can produce a new set of labour laws. What was missing from WorkChoices was the explanation as to why the changes were needed. A trawl through the innards of various unions via a royal commission might not produce a greater number of convictions than a set of regular police investigations would achieve. But it could generate a willingness among voters to tolerate, while perhaps not embracing, a new industrial regime - one that puts unions to the side and denies them the money and the leverage to act corruptly or join hands with organised crime. Shaun Carney is a Herald Sun columnist