This is not a great failure. The strike, no pun intended, against Carnell is her apparent inability to appreciate that "workplace relations reform" is well down any sensible priority list of things necessary to maintain the country's near record stretch of economic good fortune. While her self-interested mates in the business sector might tell her otherwise, she should understand that they're not on about a better working economy; they simply want greater power for themselves and less for their staff. It makes for an easier life for managements, which, of course, are always right. That's what clarion calls for greater "flexibility" are all about.

If Carnell would like to be better informed about workplace relations, she should read the recent Productivity Commission report on the subject. While not without its shortcomings, its basic conclusion is sound. It said: "Contrary to perceptions, Australia's labour market performance and flexibility is relatively good by global standards ... strike activity is low, wages are responsive to the economic cycle and there are multiple forms of employment arrangements that offer employers and employees flexible options for working". In concluding that "Australia's workplace relations system is not dysfunctional", the commission recommended some relatively minor changes, some of which are worthwhile.

More fundamentally, however, the commission noted "there is little robust evidence that the different variants of workplace relations systems over the last 20 years have had detectable effects on measured, economy-wide productivity".

It's to be hoped that, in her new government job, Carnell will allow evidence to have the influence it deserves.

And now industrial relations is edging towards centre stage as the country faces the possibility of a double-dissolution election, enabled by the Senate's unwillingness to pass related legislation, most notably bills to recreate the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

In heading down this path, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said: "When the ABCC was last in force, productivity in that sector grew by 20 per cent. Since it was abolished, productivity has flat-lined."

At best, this is misleading. More realistically, the insinuation that the ABCC had a significant material effect on productivity in the building and construction industry is unsupported by reliable evidence. A poor effort from Turnbull, who, when he displaced Tony Abbott, indicated he would treat voters as sentient beings. His comments on the ABCC are pure Abbott: sloganeering masquerading as policy.

Of course, there are genuine problems of productivity and the behaviour of employees and employers in the building and construction industry. These are the product of impermanent and diffuse employment arrangements, sham contracting, insecurity of employment, worker health and safety, diverse negotiating arrangements and the boom-and-bust cycles to which the industry is prone. Apart from workplace relations, productivity in building and construction is affected by many factors, including project definition, procurement, prefabrication, design, incentives for innovation, degrees of regulation and competition, and so on.

In this quagmire the causes of productivity movements are difficult to identify, but such respectable analysis as has been done doesn't support the Prime Minister's simple-minded claims.

Again, the Productivity Commission is a source of enlightenment. Its report of May 2014 on public infrastructure examines in detail productivity and factors affecting it in the construction industry.

In considering consultant reports commissioned by the ABCC from Independent Economics (previously Econtech), which claimed the ABCC was responsible for productivity gains, the Productivity Commission said these reports "do not provide credible evidence that the ... ABCC regime created a resurgence of aggregate construction productivity or that the removal of the ABCC has had material aggregate effects".

More generally, the commission said: "There is no robust evidence that the new industrial relations regime specific to the construction industry had significant effects on costs and productivity performance of the construction industry as a whole."

Needless to say, the commission concluded that restoring the ABCC "will not be sufficient to address the industrial relations environment as a whole" in the building and construction industry, and it did not suggest bringing the organisation back. Rather, it recommended that:

Apart from the unlikelihood that the ABCC bills will do anything for industry productivity, they are offensive from a civil liberties point of view. The Australian Law Council has said: "A number of features of the [ABCC] bill are contrary to rule of law principles and traditional common law rights such as those relating to the burden of proof, the privilege against self-incrimination, the right to silence, freedom from retrospective laws ... It is also unclear as to whether aspects of the bill which infringe upon rights and freedoms are a necessary and proportionate response to allegations of corruption and illegal activity within the building and construction industry."

The ABCC was created in 2005, abolished in 2012 and replaced by the inelegantly titled Fair Work Building Commission, an industry watchdog without the powers now proposed for a revived ABCC, which the Law Council finds offensive and which would seem to exceed those of police on murder investigations.

In her autobiography, former prime minister Julia Gillard wrote: "To its discredit, the ABCC did not use its resources and powers to crack down on real problems. Rather, it contented itself with terrorising workers for minor matters, like flying flags on building sites." Perhaps that's a predictable sentiment, although, whatever the ABCC did or didn't do in its seven-year life, it left behind rich pickings in building and construction for the Heydon royal commission on trade union governance.

The case for bringing back the ABCC rests primarily on the subordination of rational, evidence-based policy to Abbott-like slogans and a willingness on the government's part to hold its nose about the contraction of civil liberties inherent in the proposed legislation. Not, the ABCC bills provide the means to try to wipe out small parties in the Senate and, most likely, leave the Greens with the balance of power.

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Still, the government's industrial relations credentials cannot be held in high regard on the basis of the unholy mess it has made for itself among Australian Public Service employees. After a couple of years of agency-based bargaining, something like 80 per cent of staff remain uncovered by new agreements.

This shambles was recently addressed in an article in the Economic and Labour Relations Review by Sue Williamson and Michael O'Donnell, of the University of NSW, and Cameron Roles, of the Australian National University. Rarely have so many words been used to cast so little illumination.

The article adopts an academic construct, derived apparently from the United States, as a basis for analysing recent bargaining experience in the APS. It's more of a hindrance than a help, as it distracts the authors from the main problems with the current bargaining policy.

They are unable to come up with any useful conclusions or suggestions as to how to escape from the current farce. They limply say that "the reality of oversight by the central agencies over public sector collective bargaining processes highlights the likelihood of ongoing structural conflicts between line and central agencies in public sector pay negotiations".

This is not only wrong-headed, it misses the fundamental point. Throughout the Commonwealth's entire history, there's always been "oversight by the central agencies" on bargaining, usually without significant "structural conflicts". The point is that the current remuneration policy requiring improvements in pay and conditions to be 100 per cent offset by productivity gains cannot be rationally implemented, because productivity in public service agencies cannot be measured. That is, in terms of the policy, there is no satisfactory basis for negotiation because departments (and the Public Service Commission) are unable to demonstrate that their offers are fair and reasonable, and the unions are unable to demonstrate that they are not. The parties are left with effectively nothing to talk about. It's no wonder things have gone so hopelessly off the rails.

Williamson, O'Donnell and Roles say: "The Coalition believed that public service conditions should be brought into line with those of private sector employees." Did it? That's not what its policy says. Indeed, it effectively excludes the fixing of public service remuneration on the basis of what might make for a fair and reasonable comparison with that paid for comparable work in the private sector labour markets.

This is what the Remuneration Tribunal does for secretaries of departments and other positions in its jurisdiction, and it's what should be done for all and sundry. It would provide an accessible body of fact capable of reasoned assessment and negotiation. It's what sensible private sector employers do because they know that, if they want to be able to recruit, retain and motivate their staff, they need to have remuneration in a demonstrably reasonable position in the labour market.

For mysterious reasons, the government has not thus far been prepared to follow such simple habits that are alive and well in private sector organisations they pretend to admire. Such a market-based approach would, of course, require remuneration bargaining to be re-centralised, as it would make no sense for all 100 or so agencies to be doing exactly the same thing. Maybe heads of departments and agencies are reluctant to give up the powers they now hold, although the unpleasantness and distrust the present policy is causing between them and their staff must give pause for rueful reflection. Who knows.

One thing is clear: the current wasteful and disruptive policy, based as it is on a pack of lies, has gotta go.

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Finally, indulgence is sought to respond to comments of my esteemed fellow correspondent, Stephen Bartos, in the Informant's March edition. In referring to my article on Peter Shergold's report Learning from Failure, Bartos says: "Rather unfairly, Paddy Gourley takes Shergold to task for addressing" the lessons of the home insulation and national broadband network programs.

I didn't. Aware that the terms of reference for Shergold's report required him to consider these programs, I said: "Being based principally on the home insulation and NBN cases, this report is unbalanced." That's not a criticism of Shergold but of the terms of reference the government used to screw as much political mileage out of these cases as possible. I did go on to say: "If the government expected Shergold to accentuate the negative, he's delivered in spades" – and he did.

Further, Shergold insufficiently addressed another of his terms of reference, which required him to "also take account of best practices on the nature and effectiveness of public policy processes and the implementation of large public programs and projects in Australia and internationally". Apart from a fleeting reference to the national disability insurance scheme, Shergold's report makes no meaningful mention of the lessons from the successful implementation of many, large-scale, Australian government projects and programs. Backyard lessons are invariably the most useful and it's a pity they were ignored.

Anyway, it probably doesn't matter all that much, as there's not been a squeak out of the government about the report it's now had for about eight months. It was released without fanfare and the chances of something being done with it look remote.

Paddy Gourley is a former senior public servant. pdg@home.netspeed.com.au