Building and Construction Commission makes strong bid for Arsehat of the Week

Well done to Angus Thompson at Nine newspapers who produced a little ripper of a yarn today on an internal staff survey of the discredited, and soon to be disbanded, Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). Thompson reported that the survey revealed ABCC staff complaining of “contagious negative morale”, a “culture typified by active mistrust”, and having to engage in harassment of industry merely to generate statistics.

What was the ABCC’s reaction when Thompson sought a response? They sooled the lawyers onto him, threatening to sue Thompson if he published any material from the survey, and demanding he delete it and report back that he’d done so.

No wonder the ABCC was seething about Thompson’s great get — it exposed a body that was supposed to police construction industry workplace culture as having its own rotten culture. And maybe we now have a reason why instead of improving productivity in the building industry since its reestablishment, the ABCC instead sent productivity into decline: its harassment of the industry in the name of box-ticking and stats-generation wasted time and resources.

Today’s the day the ABCC’s function gets shifted to the Fair Work Commission. Good riddance.