Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Clearly, I rise in support of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2009and can I say that I am less than overwhelmed by the contribution of the opposition spokesman, the member for Stirling. In fact, the member for Stirling should perhaps look at what was going on in this country about a century ago, when a chap by the name of Henry Lawson was writing a poem called Second Class Wait Here. The member for Stirling clearly supports a system where workers in the building and construction industry are second class, treated differently to all other workers in Australia. That is what the member for Stirling is on about. He recites a couple of examples from the Cole commission and he raises the spectre of Joe McDonald, a Western Australian union official, whom his party vilified in the course of the election campaign. The man swore on a construction site—gee whiz! If he is the only person in this country who has sworn on a construction site I would be very surprised.

Let’s talk about Joe McDonald, because the member for Stirling, who has now left the chamber, raised the issue of the chap. Let us talk about him and that particular construction site and the reason that he was on that site on that day. It was the Q-Con construction site in Perth. What was he there trying to do? He was there trying to ensure that the workers in his union were given the opportunity to work in safe conditions. He was videotaped verbally abusing an official from the company, a fellow who was obviously a much more worthy person than Joe McDonald, because he was dressed in a suit and tie. What happened on the building site? Let us just read from the West from 5 July 2007:

Falling concrete has prompted workers to walk off the job at a Perth building site where union hard man Joe McDonald was caught on video abusing a construction manager over safety.

Abusing a construction manager over safety on a building site that was unsafe—my goodness, what a dreadful man this Mr McDonald must be. Big chunks of:

Concrete fell 16 floors at the Q-Con construction site on St Georges Terrace … sparking safety concerns.

I beg your pardon? Joe McDonald was on the site sparking safety concerns and Joe McDonald was right. It is a fortunate thing that workers were not killed on that site. As has been noted on a number of occasions, not least by the former member for Corangamite, Mr Stewart McArthur, in a speech in this chamber about two years ago on 16 August 2007. I will read the full sentence because he was coming at it from a slightly different angle to me:

There is no room for bullying or unsafe practices on a construction site and the high-fatality statistics in the industry are chilling proof of this.

That speech was made in support of a system that we are told is the one that is going to improve construction safety. The Australian Safety and Compensation Council produces notified fatalities statistical reports. I have two here with me today: July 2007 to June 2008 and July 2008 to December 2008. It is interesting to look at construction industry fatalities statistics in those two reports. In the year from July 2007 to June 2008, 36 construction workers lost their lives on building sites. Nobody should have to go to work knowing that there is that level of fatality in the industry. I note that far too many people do die.

In the second half of last year there were 18 fatalities on construction sites, and 16 of them were workers on construction sites. But it is also illustrative to see how construction site fatalities have trended since the introduction of the ABCC, which members opposite tell us is going to solve all the problems. In 2004-05 there were 18 fatalities on construction sites; in 2005-06 there were 25. The ABCC came into effect in October 2005 and certainly did not reduce fatalities that year. In 2006-07 there were 28, in 2007-08, as I have said, there were 36. Fatalities have risen under the regime of the ABCC, which those opposite would have us believe was there to prevent just that happening.

Members opposite are more than willing to vilify and call criminals those members of unions and their executive who seek to protect lives. A submission to a Senate select committee quite recently from the building industry superannuation fund has an interesting little couple of paragraphs within it:

In September 2002 the Fund supplied the ATO—

Australian tax office—

with approximately 70 employers who had failed to pay contributions—

That is, superannuation contributions—

for the 2001/2002 year.

In a follow up conversation with the ATO—

The writer was advised—

that half had gone bankrupt … 10 had no record of existence at the ATO and the remainder would be followed up with desk audits over the next few months.

No doubt by the time that desk audit was over some of those too would have gone out of business. If you are going to go chasing the criminals in the building industry, you had better have a look at some of the building industry companies, not just the unions. The ABCC has concentrated its entire effort on building industry unionists or innocent bystanders. Look at the university academic that they were trying to haul in in Melbourne. This is not the way our country needs to be run.

I should make mention of a certain case just so that people understand the situation in which construction industry unions find themselves in their work. Several years ago I met a guy by the name of Gary McCarthy. Gary McCarthy was a member of and, I think, a site organiser with the CFMEU. A very close friend of his, a young man by the name of Mark Allen, died in September 1996. He was killed on a demolition site in Perth—this centre, the member for Stirling would have us believe, of unlawful activity by the building industries. He was killed on a site while trying to get workers down from an unsafe area on a demolition site. He was killed, he was opposed and Premier Court at the time thought the situation was wonderful.

I will now return to the provisions of the bill that is before us. This bill is informed by a number of things. One of the things it is informed by is the Wilcox review commissioned by our government, not the Cole inquiry commissioned by the former government.

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