The building industry watchdog has been accused of acting as John Howard's political policeman by ordering removal from building sites of stickers and posters critical of the Prime Minister.
The Australian Building and Construction Commission has also ordered that a flag advertising a trust fund for brain tumour victims be taken down from sites because it is based on the Eureka flag, which it considers a construction union symbol.
Richard Burke, a union delegate on a city building site, was told by his employer to remove his car sticker, which read "For our kids' sake, Howard has to go!" or he would no longer be able to park his car on the site.
The ABCC, set up by the Government to keep the building union in check, has ordered construction companies to make sure their sites are free of union signs, posters and paraphernalia, saying they "convey a message that union membership is not a matter of individual choice".
But at a Hawthorn site the foreman, who said he was acting on orders from the commission, has gone further by ordering the union to remove stickers that contain no union symbolism but criticise WorkChoices and Mr Howard.
One such offending sticker calls the Prime Minister "Con-Man", with his picture in the O. Another says: "WorkChoices and John Howard? Not my choice!" Neither sticker identifies the union.
Construction union assistant secretary Bill Oliver said the stickers were in the union shop steward's office and the lunch room of the site.
"Workers have been bombarded with $116 million of taxpayer-funded advertising about WorkChoices, but they get ordered to take down a few stickers that advertise their opposition to it," he said. "It's a bit rude."
The commission ruled this year that the Eureka flag was a union-related symbol that implied CFMEU membership was compulsory on a building site, in breach of the freedom-of-association provisions of WorkChoices.
A letter from builder Baulderstone Hornibrook's Victorian general manager, Ian Luck, to ABCC official Helen Evenden, seen by The Age, confirms that the builder has recently been audited by the commission and has been found in breach of the freedom-of-association provisions. If companies refuse to comply with the commission's orders they can be banned, under the Government's National Code of Practice, from doing construction work on any Federal Government-owned building site. Mr Luck said the company would "reinforce to all Victorian operation staff that no advertising material of a political nature, or material that is contrary to the code, is to appear on our sites".
But ABCC commissioner John Lloyd denied he had ordered the removal of straight political material, only union advertising.
"In its report to the company, the ABCC identified the display of numerous union posters and paraphernalia as inconsistent with the national code," he said.
"The ABCC did not identify any 'material of a political nature' as being inconsistent with the code. The term was used by the company, not the ABCC."
A Baulderstone Hornibrook spokesman said the company was "not in a position to comment".
The cancer charity flag is designed to raise money for the John Cummins Memorial Fund, named after the former union militant who died of a tumour last year.
His widow, Di, said yesterday the charity was a sub-fund of the Melbourne Community Foundation, set up to donate money to the Austin Hospital for cancer support, and towards scholarships for disadvantaged young people in Melbourne's north.
The flags are sold for $100 each and the charity has already raised $100,000.
"I'm not surprised, but I'm extremely disappointed with the ABCC, and I probably wouldn't want to say any stronger emotions than that," Ms Cummins said.
"It was a woman who drove me to drink...and I never had the decency to write and thank her." - W. C. Fields http://iamawobbly.multiply.com/
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