When calls for a royal commission, de-registering the union or reviving the (admittedly inefficacious) Australian Building and Construction Commission are dead-batted in favour of appointing external administrators, the government is not projecting the alleged corruption behaviour inside the CFMEU as a first-order problem.

A few years back, some of these issues dogging the CFMEU (alleged infiltration of the construction sector by criminal organisations, extortion and intimidation) were found to be rife in the casino sector.

In that case, state governments responded by conducting royal commissions or commissions of inquiry in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. The boards and senior management of casino groups Crown and Star Entertainment were replaced within months.

Meanwhile, we have dozens of territory, state and federal inquiries covering everything from telco network outages to aircraft noise.

Unsurprisingly, the limp response from the federal government on the CFMEU matter has failed to placate business groups, who have taken particular exception to comments made by cabinet minister and former union leader Bill Shorten that, “for everyone who’s doing the standover, what business person is also engaged? Because for everyone who takes a bribe there’s someone giving a bribe.”

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Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said he was “a little surprised by the pushback from the government ... saying for every unionist engaged in standover tactics there’s a businessperson also involved”.

It’s a fair point. The extorted don’t share equal blame with those doing the extorting.

“The ‘it takes two to tango’ response from the government serves no purpose other than to avoid taking responsibility for properly investigating what has or hasn’t occurred,” says Black.

He notes that proper investigations have been the approach regularly taken by Australian governments, pointing to dozens of territory, state and federal inquiries and suggesting the CFMEU revelations deserve similar treatment “at the very least”. Another fair point.

If Albanese continues to take a light-touch approach in response to the allegations swirling around the CFMEU, such complaints from the business world will only get louder. He also risks giving Dutton a free kick in the high-stakes political fight over the cost of living.

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