The decision by the House of Representatives to abolish the IR regulator in the construction industry, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, is a complacent decision by this minority parliament, and a sign that the House of Representatives has not yet come to grips with being a house of review over contentious IR legislation where detail and history matter, according to a statement by Peter Anderson, Chief Executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The House of Representatives has abolished an important regulatory institution under pressure from government and building unions only six years after the parliament established it on the specific recommendation of a Royal Commission.

"This is a risk not only to the construction industry but the wider economy. The costs of construction arising from coercive or unlawful behavior and cultures are paid for by taxpayers funding infrastructure and by small businesses renting shop and office space."

In submitting to the wishes of government and the building unions, the House of Representatives complacently suggests that knows better than a Royal Commission. In doing so, it exposes the wider economy to a return to cultures that Labor and Coalition governments at both State and federal levels had been unable to curb for a generation, until the Cole Royal Commission and its recommendations came along.

If the government and the parliament does not want behaviour or the culture on building sites to regress, then why change the regulator? As the Royal Commission found, those cultures even prevented non-union tradies and contractors from doing work in the CBD of their own capital cities because they didn't have union tickets.

Suggestions by building unions that the ABCC as a separate building regulator breached the principle of ‘one law for all' is humbug, but the parliament's fallen for it. Building unions for years have, and still do, assert the right to separate laws when it suits - such as long service leave portability, redundancy pay, RDO's and working hours well beyond community standards.