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A win would be handy for Michaelia Cash and offsider John Lloyd right now. On Monday at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, the Employment Minister and Public Service Commissioner couldn't even get close, despite departmental boss Mike Pezzullo, not known for his subtlety, throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign to convince his restive workforce to accept a new enterprise agreement. The failure, with a whopping no-vote of 82 per cent, means there will be compulsory arbitration at the Fair Work Commission. It's the outcome Pezzullo was desperate to avoid and the department's decision to call in the industrial umpire in the first place to put the kybosh on airport strikes does not look smart after all. The Commission, unlike the department, is not bound by the bargaining framework and if it orders a settlement that includes terms or conditions outside the Coalition's tough rules, then the whole public sector bargaining framework could be fatally undermined. After the crushing defeat at DIBP, with perhaps worse to come, and the humiliation last week at the hands of the ABC, which agreed to a deal with its workforce well outside the terms of the bargaining policy and then raised a middle finger at the government's helpless protests, Cash and Lloyd need to take a trick. The close yes-vote at Environment was a decent result for the government and bosses at Agriculture are in with a shout of getting their agreement voted-up next week, given they've come so close before. But Agriculture's right to hold that vote is being challenged in the Fair Work Commission so it might not go ahead as scheduled. There are about 7500 public servants working in Agriculture and Environment and those numbers, if they can be delivered, are important to help Lloyd try to convince the 97,000-odd public servants who still haven't accepted agreements that they're isolated and they should just take what's been on offer. One of Lloyd's problems though is they're nearly a two-thirds majority. There was a hint of desperation last week when Lloyd's offsider Deputy Commissioner Stephanie Foster produced a press release trumpeting a yes-vote at Cancer Australia. Yes, the Cancer Australia, all 70 of them. On a brighter note, the Defence Department's 19,000 are set to vote within weeks. They've voted no twice but it was close on both occasions amid definite signs that the government's attritional approach might be working. A win at Defence would put close to half of the Australian Public Service signed up to enterprise agreements. Not much to crow about nearly two-and-a-half years since the old agreements expired, but it might, just might, prove to be a psychological tipping point. Another problem for the Commissioner is how often these days we hear the words 'Fair' 'Work' and 'Commission' in relation to the ongoing disputes. The giant Department of Human Services is voting this, with another Fair Work challenge in the background, and you'd struggle to get odds on a no-vote, if you fancied a flutter. The CPSU and its allies in Parliament will try to pile on political pressure this week with its Senate inquiry into the government's approach to bargaining. The inquiry will come to nothing. It is political theatre, but it is part of a pattern of more and more things happening on this issue that, like the pesky Fair Work Commission, Cash and Lloyd cannot control. This is all about control now. Pezzullo lost it for good on Monday. Cash and Lloyd need something to go their way if they are to avoid the same fate.

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