We had the plumber in the other day, and were grateful that he even turned up. Although he charged us nearly $800 to replace a tap in the kitchen and fix a leaking tap in the bathroom. Evidently, washers are so yesterday, and a $50 cartridge was required to fix the drip in our modern looking tap.

He was a cheerful, chatty type. He even offered to show me how the new tap works, but I declined. I thought about asking him his views on the Plumbing Industry Climate Action Centre, but I was pretty sure I would have drawn a blank. He was more interested in making money and getting to the next job.

Now, I’m not sure what the link between plumbing and climate action is, but the PICAC, which is controlled by the Plumbers’ Union, has received $60 million in grants from the Commonwealth, Victorian and New South Wales governments.

Under the terms of registered enterprise agreements covering plumbers, employers are required to pay a weekly levy to this centre, thereby guaranteeing its cash flow.

What does the PICAC do? It’s a good question, and I am really none the wiser having trawled through the expensively produced website of the centre. To be sure, there are bespoke buildings, and there is a board.  Evidently it is engaged in training, but if you look at the accounts, the sum of money the centre receives for training is trivial.

According to the blurb, ‘PICAC was formed in 2009 at the height of the millennium drought in Australia. The first PICAC training facility opened in Brunswick, Victoria in April 2009, with the primary purpose to provide courses in Green Plumbing to address the skills shortage in sustainable plumbing within the industry at the time.’ I’m not sure what distinguishes green plumbing from plumbing, but it sounds very on trend.

A senior official in the establishment of PICAC is Earl Setches, who has been a key figure in the Plumbers’ Union for many years. Labor governments don’t say no to Earl. His power has been massively enhanced by state governments’ badly executed infrastructure spending – in Victoria, it even has a name, Big Build. The relative shortage of qualified plumbers coupled with their critical role in the execution of the projects has played into Earl’s hands.

The Menzies Research Centre (MRC) has undertaken a very useful piece of research tracking down the numerous government grants that trade unions have received in recent years. Entitled Fewer members, fuller coffers: $215 million in Government Grants to unions, it provides a great deal of important information.

Take the nearly $50 million the Albanese government awarded to the Australian Council of Trade Unions through the Productivity, Education and Training Fund. The purpose of this grant is ‘to promote the government’s industrial relations legislation’. The grant was handed over on a non-competitive basis.

Let’s face it, this is just a handout for the peak union to do what it should be doing anyway. Of course, what goes around comes around. So, grants to unions are very handy when it comes to underwriting union donations to Labor for the purpose of funding election campaigns. It’s a very convenient circular micro-economy.

To provide some cover against the accusation that these sorts of government grants are just for close mates, there are typically some crumbs handed out to the big employer associations. It’s not called the Industrial Relations Club for nothing. It’s a cosy arrangement in which the employer groups just go with the flow dictated by the unions and facilitated by sympathetic tribunals. The results may be very damaging to individual employers, but what the heck.

This was very clearly illustrated by the workings of Incolink, the Victorian-based redundancy fund linked to the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU ) and its former official, John Setka. Construction employers are required to make weekly payments to the fund to cover the redundancy payouts available to workers when projects end. Mind you, if a worker is not a member of the CFMEU or other acceptable union, it is difficult for them to extract any funds.

But here are two things you should know about Incolink. The first is that the board has distributed large sums of money based on the surplus returns on the funds invested.  And one of the major recipients has been the Master Builders Association of Victoria (MBAV), the employer association covering construction employers in the state. Note here that MBAV is represented on the board of Incolink.

It turned out the funds that were being received by the MBAV had been underwriting the commercial survival of the association. This situation was raising concerns in certain quarters, particularly as there were many question marks over the operation of Incolink itself. It was screaming ‘conflict of interest’, but the MBAV representatives of the board of Incolink preferred to turn a blind eye. (This topic has been well covered by Nick McKenzie and his team at the Age.)

The second point of note is the range of grants that Incolink has received from the Victorian government, notwithstanding its very comfortable financial position. Under the Building Women’s Careers program, for instance, Incolink was awarded $5.5 million.

As the MRC report notes, ‘this grant came as the union faced serious allegations over the treatment of women in construction, including a Fair Work Ombudsman investigation and its national secretary’s admission that it had failed women in the sector.’

Incolink also received nearly $4 million under the Victorian Government’s Skills First program and $1.65 million for occupational health and safety training, again from the Victorian government. This grants caper is clearly good money if you can access it.

Close to $40 million has also been handed to the state peak union councils by the Commonwealth government under two programs, Advancing Gender Equality and Information for Migrant Workers. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has also got in on the act and awarded the overseas development arm of the ACTU – is there such a thing? – nearly $7 million.

The picture that clearly emerges is a financial merry-go-round whereby taxpayer money is simply given to trade unions based on invented reasons to bolster the financial position of Labor-affiliated unions. In turn, these unions are well placed to return the favour by supporting the electoral efforts of the political arm of Labor, both financially and in kind.

There is effectively no scrutiny. There is no accountability. In many instances, the registered employer associations provide cover for the racket by also receiving sums of money, although they are in total considerably less than the amount unions receive.

Did this sort of thing happen when the Coalition was in power federally between 2013 and 2022? The sad answer is that this flow of funds was around then, although the sums of money were considerably less. Support for the IR Club is not unknown among some Coalition parliamentarians.

The ultimate irony is that trade union membership continues to tank – it is under 10 per cent in the private sector – but who needs members when money and power are gifted from governments? How good is that? Just not so good for everyone else or the economy.