Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It will not be a boom time if Labor is removing the Building and Construction Commission. We will have the shop stewards controlling the jobs again. Labor has made much this week about the plight of homeowners and aspiring homeowners. The consequences of being in the pockets of the unions and winding up the ABCC would be lower productivity in the building industry and, as a result, higher prices. How do higher prices, due to reduced productivity, improve the lot of first home buyers? It is easy to talk the talk on concern for first home buyers, but you have to walk the walk. Certainly the opposition does not do that. How is that going to help aspiring homeowners?

If you want to see the kind of behaviour on the part of the unions that the abolition of the ABCC will unleash, you need look no further than the ABCC website and some of the recent press releases. I will quote some from this year alone. The press release of 23 February, under the headline ‘CFMEU prosecuted over alleged coercion at Hamilton mine site’, states:

The Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner ... has instituted proceedings against the CFMEU and three of its delegates over allegations of coercion at ... Roche Mining ... near Hamilton in Victoria.

The 26 March press release entitled ‘CFMEU ordered to pay $9,000 in penalties for misleading workers’ states:

The Federal Court ... in Brisbane ordered the CFMEU and the CFMEU Queensland to pay penalties of $6,000 and $3,000 respectively for making false and misleading statements to three employees at a Gold Coast spray paint shop about their obligation to join the union.

Again on 26 March—clearly a bad day for the union—the press release entitled ‘CFMEU ordered to take out newspaper ad as part of court penalty’ states:

On top of $23,250 in penalties, the CFMEU was today ordered to take out full page advertisements in the Illawarra Mercury newspaper to correct misleading statements it made to workers about their obligation to join a union.

…     …         …

Federal Court Justice Graham also instructed the union to destroy the CFMEU Code of Conduct for Union Delegates. The Code instructs delegates to ensure that all workers on site are financial members of the relevant union.

Oh dear—$32,250 plus the cost of newspaper ads on one day alone could have gone into the coffers of the Labor Party, for instance, to finance their campaign against the government. It is just another day for the CFMEU.

I have a different union this time. On 10 May the press release entitled ‘CEPU admits coercion at Bass Link site’—they are great corporate citizens—states:

The Communications, Electrical, Electronic, Energy, Information, Postal, Plumbing and Allied Services Union of Australia (CEPU) and one of its organisers have been ordered to pay penalties of $15,400 for unlawful conduct involving the exclusion from a building site of four apprentices.

Back to the CFMEU again. The press release of 4 July entitled ‘Court imposes penalty on CFMEU for attempting to force painters to join the union’ states:

The Federal Court in Sydney today ordered the CFMEU and a delegate to pay penalties of $10,000 and $2,000 respectively for attempting to force a painting contractor to make its painters join the union.

My final example is 13 July, the most recent example: ‘CFMEU engaged in secondary boycott—Federal Court.’

Today, in the Federal Court at Sydney, Justice Gyles found the CFMEU and three officials guilty of secondary boycott offences.

We will wait for a further instalment on that. It went on to say:

As part of his decision, Justice Gyles said: ‘There could not be a clearer case than this of interference with contractual relations ...’

Yet Labor believes that somehow by 2010 none of this is going to occur; that all of a sudden the unions are going to see the warmth and light of some form of cooperation with community expectations and that this sort of behaviour will end. It will not. It will be to the detriment of the Australian community. It will be to the detriment of people who use the services of the building industry. It will be to the detriment in particular of first homebuyers struggling to get into the home market. I commend this bill to the House. It further extends the government’s efforts in relation to ensuring that we have an effective system within this country. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this bill.

See this speech in context