When Dyson Heydon delivered the report of the Royal Commmissioner into Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, he claimed that his findings represented “the tip of the iceberg”. At the time, I commented that, given nearly $50 million of public money and lengthy hearings with the exceptional powers of a Royal Commission, the Australian public was entitled to expect the whole iceberg.

It turns out that I was too charitable. In the months since the Commission reported, a string of the charges he recommended have been thrown out or withdrawn In fact, six months later, there has only been one conviction, resulting in a suspended sentence. The only big fish to be caught since the establishment of Heydon’s star chamber has been the Commission’s own star witness, Kathy Jackson.

And the bills keep coming in. The last budget allocated $6 million more for the AFP-Victorian Police taskforce, which currently has outstanding cases against a grand total of six unionists. By contrast, taskforce Argo in Queensland, focused on child exploitation, has a budget of $3 million.

For another contrast, here are a few of the cases of alleged wage fraud, misappropriation of worker entitlements and so on that have emerged since Heydon’s Commission was launched: 7-11 ( million underpayment), Queensland Nickel, Pizza Hut, Myers and Spotless, and lots of small employers in the agricultural sector. That’s on top of the general run of sharp practive, environmental vandalism, market rigging, and dubious practices of all kinds.

It would be absurd to deny the existence of corrupt union officials and, though it is much rarer, systemic corruption, as in the case of the Health Services Union. But the continued failure of a massively expensive, politically motivated inquisition to turn up more than a handful of cases suggests that the problems are isolated, and that the real drive is to attack unions for doing the job of representing workers.

Just as there are no permanent allies in politics, there are few if any permanent enmities, just permanent interests. The recent reconciliation between Tony Abbott and Pauline Hanson is a neat illustration of this. A decade or so ago, Abbott was the driving force behind the prosecution that saw Hanson imprisoned (wrongly, as I wrote at the time) for breaches of electoral laws. Now he is courting her support, coyly mentioning how useful it might be to a future government with an unspecified new leader.

What’s of more interest is Abbott’s observation that half a million people voted for Hanson and that “she would be a strong voice for their concerns”. (Turnbull has said something similar, though not quite as strong). The implication, presumably, is that those concerns are legitimate, and that Hanson herself is therefore an appropriate person to make deals with. Of course, we don’t know what motivates any particular voter, but Hanson has stood for racism and bigotry throughout her political career. Anyone who voted for her can be assumed, at the minimum, not to be concerned about opposing racism.

Equally relevantly, how does this square with the government’s attitude to minor parties in general, not to mention the Greens? The Greens got twice as many votes as Hanson, and I’ve never heard anyone from the LNP suggest that those voters should be treated with respect. Similarly with the other minor parties. The whole idea of the double dissolution was to clear out the minor party senators elected in 2013. That didn’t work, and the share of the minor parties rose even further. Far from celebrating this exercise of our democratic right to choose, the LNP and its cheer squad viewed this outcome as a disaster.

The only way to understand this is in terms of an emerging coalition between the LNP and One Nation, within which the Abbott-Hanson faction will drive most decisions, while Turnbull remains as a helpless puppet, holding on only because a government with a one-vote majority can’t afford to change leaders.

After the election results came in, I posted about the implications for the Turnbull government of dealing with One Nation as if it were a normal and legitimate political party.

It seems likely, however, that Turnbull is going to treat One Nation, for the first time in Australia, as a normal political party, and to negotiate with Hanson as an equal. That would be a new low for him, and for Australia. And, sooner or later, it will come back to bit him and the LNP. For an object lesson in the dangers of courting racist votes while maintaining a claim to be non-racist, he need only look at the US Republican party,

It is already clear that this analysis fell far short of the mark. Far from being “just another minor party”, One Nation has become a semi-formal member of the LNP Coalition and part of the dominant rightwing grouping within that coalition. The two most striking developments, among many, are
* The decision of the Queensland LNP to preference One Nation ahead of Labor . This is unusual in itself, given that no election is in prospect any time soon and a radical reversal of the pre-election position of putting One Nation last[1]
* The alliance between One Nation and the LNP right to promote a change to hate speech laws, allowing racial speech that “offends” or “insults” the target.
I remain convinced that this will prove a path to disaster for the LNP in the long run, but it could do a great deal of damage to Australia while the LNP-ONP coalition remains in office.

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Now that the Greens and Xenophon group have rejected the idea of a plebiscite, the only chance of getting one through is if Bill Shorten agrees. Turnbull obviously hopes to wedge Labor on this, by saying that this is the only way of getting equal marriage through the Parliament, and that there is no way he will allow a free vote on the issue. What should Shorten do?

In my (not original) view, Shorten should announce support for a binding plebiscite beginning with a bound vote of both parties. That is, the Parliament should pass legislation stating that equal marriage will come into effect immediately on receiving majority support in a plebiscite. Labor’s support should be conditional on all Coalition MPs voting for the legislation.

It’s obviously unlikely that Turnbull would accept such an offer or that he could deliver on it if he did. So, the primary effect would be to point up the bogus nature of the proposed plebiscite. But, supposing he did accept, I don’t see that this would be a disaster. There’s no fundamental principle that plebiscites are a bad way of deciding things. And the whole idea of a splecial “free vote” makes it clear that this set of issues has always been regarded as exceptional,

It’s true that the campaign over a plebiscite would be divisive. But this has been a divisive issue ever since Howard ramped it up more than a decade ago. An outright win at a plebiscite might be a good way of silencing the haters.

To repeat, though, there’s almost zero chance of a plebiscite happening on these terms. For Turnbull, it’s an offer he can’t accept.