Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to continue the remarks I commenced on Thursday, 9 August on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (OHS) Bill 2007. I was given leave to table the complete list of workplace accident victims honoured on the CFMEU wall of remembrance in New South Wales. Construction, by its very nature, is hazardous. However, these hazards can be reduced by effective management. The bill we are debating today takes a positive step in that direction. Of course, the best prevention of accidents is by the workers themselves. Every worker wants to return home safely at the end of the day, and their families want them to return.

Unions have a long history of ensuring that workers are trained and supervised in a safe manner. They have ensured, when no-one else cared, that there were occupational health standards in place across industry. Since 1902 the building unions have campaigned to ensure workers’ safety on site. This has included campaigns for weight-lifting limits, compulsory safety helmets and hard hats, the banning of asbestos and the banning of lead paint and organochlorines, to name a few major campaigns. Unions introduced full-time safety officers and have relentlessly promoted the need for safety committees. Unions have taken the responsibility for ensuring safety training is available to workers. Unions have led the charge to ensure there are industry standards and regulations to reduce workplace accidents.

I must now ask: given the critical nature of occupational health and safety, why single out the building and construction industry? Surely this government is concerned for the health and safety of all Australian workers. Why is there a need for separate legislation for this specific industry? It is legislation that was prepared for political purposes. It is complex, conflict-driven legislation which is based on false assumptions that will not assist the industry or its consumers. This government’s agenda is clearly fixated on crushing the union movement. The approach of confrontation that was so aptly demonstrated on the waterfront was extended to the building industry and then to other industries through the so-called Work Choices legislation.

In the building and construction industry the government introduced the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Let us consider the powers of that body. The ABCC can issue a notice to anyone they believe is in possession of information that can assist them with a prosecution of a building industry participant. The worker has 14 days notice of an interview. The worker cannot refuse to attend the interview. The worker cannot refuse to answer their questions. A lawyer representing the worker can be present. The worker must hand over any documents that the ABCC requests to further their investigation. This is a mandatory process and there is only one penalty for failure to cooperate: six months jail. In addition, there are penalties imposed if the worker reveals the content of the interrogation process.

The ABCC decided to prosecute 107 individual building workers for allegedly participating in unlawful industrial action on a building project in Perth. These workers face individual fines of up to $22,000 under the current building legislation. Some face an additional $6,600 fine for allegedly ignoring an Industrial Relations Commission order banning strikes. The irony of this case is that the company involved chose not to sue their own employees while they were suing the union. The company see no merit in dragging their own employees through the courts. This could be perceived as a malicious action on behalf of the ABCC. The actual merits of the case are irrelevant. This smells of retribution. This is the result of legislation singling out a specific industry. We are witnessing a concerted attack on unions and union members in this country. This attack commenced with the waterfront dispute, it continued with the Cole royal commission and it will continue while this government remains in office.

I would like to return to the words of Andreia Viegas, the widow of one of those killed on a worksite. Mrs Viegas provided a succinct description of what workers are facing today under the government’s industrial relations laws. On 26 October last year she said:

These laws attack the right of entry of trade union officials, stopping them from cracking down on safety problems in dangerous workplaces. They limit the ability of union officials to investigate and rectify safety issues. This is despite the fact that trade unions’ do more to campaign against workplace deaths and injury than any other organisation in this country.

If the government were really serious about occupational health and safety in the building and construction industry, it would abolish its unfair industrial action laws for the industry. These laws mean that, for a worker to prove that he or she is faced with a situation that they think is unsafe, they risk fines of up to $22,000 to prove to a court that there was an imminent risk to their health or safety.

There are serious issues in the building industry that we have to confront as a community. It is about time that the government stopped being consumed with crushing the union movement and the state and territory governments and started to think about a serious reform agenda. This bill is a small step in the right direction and Labor will support that move. But it leaves unanswered the many other issues which face the building and construction industry. It does not address the need for tougher penalties for corporate insolvencies involving ‘phoenix’ companies. These are companies that leave employees, revenue authorities and other creditors unpaid when they are wound up. It does not address the security of payment for employees when companies are deliberately ‘sunk’ for tax evasion purposes. It does not address non-payment of employee entitlements. It does not address the exploitation of illegal immigrant labour. Trade unions are and always have been about workers looking after each other. This government has provided a separate set of laws for one industry, purely for political purposes.

I would like to conclude by quoting from one of the submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations and Education. The committee reported on the draft of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Bill 2003. This bill enacted recommendations from the Cole royal commission. Included in its terms of reference was item 2(b), referring to the consistency of the bill with Australia’s obligations under international labour law. The preface to chapter 3 of the final report included a comment from the CEPU (Plumbers Division) taken from page 21, and I will quote it in full here. To my way of thinking, it is a precise summing up of the broad issue which underlies this government’s approach to the building and construction industry—notwithstanding Labor’s support for the bill now before us. The quote reads as follows:

Apartheid is an emotional term but does bear out the wrong done when a discrete group within a community is treated differently to the rest. Whether that different treatment is based on race, or religion, or income, or location, it is unjust. The fact that it is based on industry, as is the case in the present instance ... does not remove the vice in treating one section of a class less or more favourably than the rest ... the rule of law showers us all. Those proposing this legislation understand that, unless there is a valid justification, it is wrong to identify a particular industry for special treatment.

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