If so, could it be that they’re not privately pressing the Libs actually to fix the problem rather than just score political points against Labor?

We’re hearing about small contractors who aren’t game to stand up to union bullies for fear of retribution. I don’t doubt it’s true. But the construction companies running the show are huge. I don’t believe that, if they really wanted to rid themselves of union thugs, they lack the brains or the wherewithal to make it happen.

Remember too that when it comes to industrial relations, it’s always the unions that look bad, never the employers. That’s because the world is run by bosses. When everyone does what the boss tells them to, there’s never a problem.

But when the workers form a union to challenge the boss’s decision to pay them peanuts – or to run worksites where you could lose your life – it’s always the union that’s making trouble. It’s always greedy workers who strike and make you walk to work, never intransigent bosses. The media almost invariably fall for this characterisation.

We’re hearing that the rogue union’s disruptions and success in extracting excessive wages and conditions have forced up the cost of big city buildings, railways and motorways. It may look that way, but I’m not sure that it’s true.

Nor am I persuaded by the claim that high wages in the construction sector have flowed through to home building, and so explain why it’s so hard to afford to buy a place. This is a tricky way of claiming that employed carpenters, sparkies, plumbers, tilers and all the rest are grossly overpaid. Bulldust.

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And Peter Dutton’s attempt to link union thuggery to the cost-of-living crisis is laughable. Whatever the union’s doing to construction costs, it’s been doing for 40 years, not just the past two.

Next they’ll be telling us the bullying will force the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates again.

But consider this thought experiment. I reckon that if Anthony Albanese could wave a wand and remove all union presence from the construction industry, the effect on the cost of major constructions would be minor.

Why? Because, although the untrained don’t know it, and some economists seem to have forgotten it, the biggest single message of conventional economics is that market prices aren’t just set by the cost of production – supply – but by the interaction of supply with demand.

If it’s true that a rogue union’s demands have been able to push up the costs of constructing office towers and all the rest quite excessively, how come employers have had no trouble passing those excessive costs on to their customers?

Partly because the union has imposed the higher cost on all the businesses in the industry, but mainly because any outfit that wants a city building, or government that wants a motorway, has no choice but to pay up. When economists say that the demand for the output of the construction industry is highly “price inelastic”, that’s what they mean.

But why can the industry get away with high costs? Why do its customers have no choice but to pay? Two reasons. First, the industry enjoys “natural protection”. That is, you can’t import office blocks.

Second, the industry is dominated by a just few big companies. It’s an oligopoly. It lacks effective competition between the local players.

Point is, magically remove the unions and none of that changes. If so, why would the big companies lower their prices? Why wouldn’t they keep charging the prices they know the market will bear?

Not enough people understand the unions’ role in the economy and how they go about advancing their members’ interests. The mistake is to imagine that the bosses represent capitalism, whereas the unions represent anti-capitalism.

No. Union bosses are capitalists too. The true contest is between the representatives of the two main “factors of production”: capital and labour. So unions are an integral part of the modern capitalist system. They’re a countervailing force that helps keep the system in balance.

Take out the unions, and capital ends up with almost all the money, and the households whose income comes from selling their labour have very little. In which case, the capitalists have no one to buy their products. Unions save the capitalists from their own excesses.

But get this: the unions are rogue capitalists who try to beat the real capitalists at their own game. The most successful capitalism comes from finding a business where it’s possible to make super-profits (in the jargon, to earn “economic rent”).

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Turns out that’s also what the most successful unions do: find an industry whose circumstances allow it to earn super-profits and then demand a generous share for the workers. Guess what? A good example of an industry earning economic rent is construction.

And my guess is that the construction industry oligopoly finds it quite convenient to have a union that goes around bullying smaller businesses. Why? Because what they’re doing is policing the industry’s “barriers to entry”.

Ross Gittins unpacks the economy in an exclusive subscriber-only newsletter. Sign up to receive it every Tuesday evening.