The Cole Royal Commission: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

They made lurid claims. Many which hogged the headlines have since been shown to have been false. Others were accepted by Cole, in the face of outright denials, and evidence that the accusers, themselves, were engaged in unlawful and even, downright illegal, activities.

But this Commission wasn't established to shine a torch into their worlds. How else can you explain the fact that both the ATO and, eventually, Cole accept there is widespread tax evasion by employers but the Commissioner's report does not make one finding of tax evasion against a single employer, anywhere in Australia?

Cole's report opens its section on "Bricklaying and Masonry" with a classic example of its modus operandi…

"Mr Andrew Clifford Ball is a sole trader trading as Ingleside Bricklaying," Cole writes.

"Ball engages his employees on a casual basis. He has individual employment contracts with his workers. Ball pays no Construction & Building Unions Superannuation Fund (or any other superannuation), Australian Construction Industry Redundancy Trust or Coverforce Top-Up Accident Scheme contributions for his workers. The evidence of Ball would support the conclusion that he has little or no regard for complying with statutory obligations with respect to his employees."

Against that background, Cole accepts every allegation Ball has made and, on that basis, finds 15 separate inappropriate actions by union officials.

This was the Commission in a nutshell. A shonk would drop a bucket, on the way through he would reveal himself as a tax cheat, super defaulter, exploiter of illegal immigrants, or worse, an operator of unsafe sites.

It never appears to cross Cole's mind that these "inappropriate" or "illegal" actions might just explain the union responses he finds so offensive.

The CFMEU contends it must take an active interest in tax fraud, super rip-offs and safety issues in an industry built on lowest-tender contracts. That to do otherwise would expose the workforce, its members, to plumetting living standards, insecurity, serious injury and even death.

Cole, and those who assisted him at the Commission, simply reject this. The reaction of Counsel Assisting to a Queensland dispute in which unionists defend their actions by tendering evidence of a worker falling down a lift shaft; dozens of photos of safety problems; and a video highlighting more than 100 safety issues, is most instructive.

"In our submission" Counsel Assisting tell Cole, "for every practical purpose it is meaningless to ask whether any workplace, in particular a large building site is safe … We therefore do not proposed to consider whether the Nambour site was safe."

There you go, that small matter out of the way, they ask for dozens of adverse findings against unionists who had based the whole of their defence on safety concerns.