SM
I am not disagreeing that unions need to be more transparent and get back to their roots. Long time overdue for sure.

However, to insist unions are in any way worse, or that business has all the accountability regimes that it needs is looking through rose coloured glasses. Who is paying these councillors for positive development applications? It is business. You mentioned construction. Construction businesses have also got into bed with unions, often to the detriment of union members as you state, particularly in the days of the BLF before a Labor PM deregistered the union.

Just trail through the ACCC, ASIC and FWA cases to see how often business get caught doing the wrong thing.

I merely point this out so as to balance your very one-sided view of the world.

Pelican, there are over 2000 000 businesses in Australia, the vast majority of which have very strict accounting and anti corruption procedures in place. There are less than 100 unions most of whom have very slack accounting and accountability practices in place.

Corruption flourishes because it can and it is not punished. The issues in the HSU came to light years ago, and has been covered up by the union bosses and the labor party.

As for the Wollongong council, they were directly soliciting "donations" and given the cost of waiting for years for approval due to council incompetence, the cost of not "donating" is huge.