Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank members who have contributed to the debate on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (OHS) Bill 2007 and I note members’ support for the bill. First and foremost, I would like to make it clear to members what this bill is and what it is not. For all the predictable ranting from the members opposite, this bill is not related to workplace relations issues in the building and construction industry and it is not about the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner. This bill is very simply about saving lives. It is about ensuring that workers in the building and construction industry make it home safely to their families and friends at the end of each day.

The government is committed to improving the occupational health and safety performance of the construction industry and to developing a culture where workers perform safely as well as being on budget and on time. Cultural change takes time, effort and, most importantly, leadership. The government is providing leadership to the building and construction industry through the Federal Safety Commissioner, through the Australian Government Building and Construction Industry Occupational Health and Safety Accreditation Scheme and by acting as a model client. This government will not do business with builders who do not hold safety in the highest regard.

Through this bill, accreditation under the scheme will become a requirement not only for builders on directly funded Australian government construction projects but also for builders on construction projects to which the government has contributed significant funding, such as AusLink road projects. These amendments are not made to address deficiencies in the BCII Act, as the Labor Party would have us believe. It was always the intention of the government that the scheme would be implemented in a staged approach to allow a suitable adjustment period for affected companies—and that is exactly what the main amendments of this bill deliver.

The government has driven stunning improvement in the building and construction industry with the establishment of the ABCC and the Federal Safety Commissioner. What the Labor Party proposes now is to wind back the clock by abolishing the ABCC and to enable the union bosses—people like Kevin Reynolds, Kevin Harkins, Joe McDonald and all the friends of the honourable member opposite—to use occupational health and safety as part of their industrial relations strategies.

A study into the impact of the ABCC, which was released in July 2007 by Econtech, found—and the honourable member should pay attention to this—that labour productivity in the construction industry is 9.4 per cent higher as a result of the creation of the ABCC. That is a good thing. You would agree, wouldn’t you? As a result of the creation of the ABCC, GDP in Australia is 1.5 per cent higher than it otherwise would have been. Inflation in Australia, the CPI, is 1.2 per cent lower than it otherwise would have been if we had never created the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Compared with the 1994 to 2003 period, when costs in the commercial building sector were 10.7 per cent higher than in domestic residential building, the cost gap between these two sectors of construction has fallen to just 1.7 per cent. Further, working days lost per 1,000 employees due to industrial action have plummeted from 37.4 in the September 2005 quarter, immediately before the creation of the ABCC, to just 1.5 in the March 2007 quarter. So that is 37.4 working days down to 1.5 working days lost to strikes.

Why would anyone abolish the initiatives and the body that have delivered these improvements? It is pretty simple: the Labor Party wants to abolish them because that is what the union bosses want. That is what the CFMEU and the BLF in Queensland want: they want to abolish the watchdog that has brought about sanity in the construction industry. These amendments strengthen the already strong base for improving occupational health and safety in the construction industry. I encourage my colleagues to continue to support this bill, commend the bill to the House and recognise that the ABCC, together with all of the surrounding infrastructure, is helping to deliver a more stable, a more successful and, even more importantly, a safer building and construction industry in Australia.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.

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