The Turnbull government has cited a gruesome type of mutilation from the Colombian civil war to argue its case for a building industry watchdog.
The threat of a "Colombian neck tie" - where a throat is slashed and the tongue pulled through the neck - was made by union officials during an industrial dispute on a City West Water worksite in the Melbourne suburb of Werribee.
"The dispute was so heated that workers had to be flown in by helicopter," Industry Minister Christopher Pyne told parliament on Tuesday as he reintroduced legislation to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
The government is making a second attempt to win parliament's approval after the Senate knocked back the legislation in 2015.
If if fails in the upper house again, the government could use the bill as a double-dissolution trigger.
Mr Pyne said the ABCC was a genuinely strong watchdog that would maintain the rule of law to protect workers and improve productivity on building sites and construction projects.
"The bill prohibits unlawful industrial action, unlawful picketing and coercion and discrimination."
The commission existed under the Howard government but was abolished in 2012 by Labor.
"This saw the bad old days return," Mr Pyne said.
"Wildcat stoppages, militant protests, demands from unions that their mates be employed on projects ahead of non-unionists and an increase in construction industry disputes to a seven-year high."
As well as the City West Water example, Mr Pyne cited a violent dispute at the Little Creatures brewery site in Geelong.
"Where union picketers were accused in court documents of making throat-cutting gestures, making threats to stomp heads in, workers who wanted to get on with their work being told they were dead, and shoving, kicking and punching of motor vehicles."
The commission would be able to compel witnesses to attend an examination and produce documents.
Mr Pyne described the commission as a "critical reform" for Australia, especially after the recent release of the royal commission's final report into trade union corruption.
"Australia can't afford to have a building and construction industry which is inefficient and unstable," he said.
Labor and the Greens already have vowed to oppose the legislation, meaning the government has to look to the crossbenchers.
Some of them have asked for access to a secret volume of the royal commission's report, which the government has agreed to subject to strict confidentiality provisions.
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