Funny that. He's just left for an overseas trip.

Is there a particular reason we need a royal commission instead of a police investigation?

There has always been something very suss about the Gestapoish building industry regulator installed by Howard and Reith.

Since it’s beginning, it has always seemed to be most interested in ensuring that Unions lose the right of entry to building sites to ensure safety for workers. There is no doubt that there have been occasions when some union officials have used safety issues to bludgeon construction companies into submission, and that is indefensible. But in what must be the most deadly industry in Australia, even more so than mining, locking union safety advocates out of the picture doesn’t seem like the highest priority to me.

For a while, I lived next door to and became good friends with a big wig in the Canberra construction industry. He often commented on the thuggishness of some of the building union heavies. When I asked him what was the root of the problem he replied that it was an own goal by the construction industry in that they had either neglected some glaring problems within the industry or had in some cases explicitly employed some very undesirable persons as “muscle’ to be used in negotiations with employees, unions, building inspectors, competition, etc. As he put it, in a fight to the death, mild mannered negotiators become thin on the ground. One of the greatest needs of workers within the industry became having some body which could extract monies and other entitlements from “phoenix” contractors whose very modus operandi was to ensure that no such thing occurred. The industry would not do anything about these phoenix contractors, and would sometimes encourage them, Hard men from within the unions were voted into positions of power explicitly to combat their methods.

For at least the last twenty years it has been obvious there has been a cancer within the construction industry and in the development industry. The roll call of organized crime figures, bikies, corrupt ex cops, painters and dockers etc all prominent within the “consultants to industry’ groups should have been a huge neon sign to the Police, AFP, probably ASIO, and most certainly the Howard/Reith building industry watchdog. The fact that the problem has been mostly ignored points to massive incompetence at best, serious corruption is more likely.

The murder of Michael McGurk in Sydney opened a small door into the development industry which revealed a business rotten to the core. Murder, standover tactics, tax evasion on a massive scale, fraud on insurance, and all kinds of skullduggery were seen, but quickly covered again. I once had a friend who lived on the northern beaches of Sydney. He was approached by a developer who was an ex NRL player or ill repute to sell his house. He declined as he liked the location, his family was nearby etc etc. The developer then told him that no was not an option and if he didn’t sell he would have his legs broken, and if that didn’t convince him he would work his way through the family. My friend went to the Police and was told it would be best to sell as the developer was dangerous (mad was the term used), and so he did. He died from a heart attack soon after. There has been no watchdog instituted over the development industry by any Government, despite my story being a commonplace in the industry. Easier to go after the big bad Unions who react to the envoironment in which they find themselves.