Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On Thursday night two weeks ago, while we in the House here were on our way home from hearing the budget in reply speech, a car bomb exploded in an office building in Lidcombe in Sydney, in the neighbouring electorate to mine. At about 10.30 pm a stolen car was rammed through the front security fence and into the foyer of an office building. The foyer was soaked in petrol before being set alight. The car had been stolen two days before. Firemen fought the blaze, unaware that the car was still full of unexploded petrol drums.

Nobody was hurt in the attack. Around $500,000 of property damage was done. The foyer looks like a bombsite, but then it is. Clearly the perpetrators anticipated far greater damage than that. Had the petrol exploded, the damage to the building would have been even more substantial and firemen may have lost their lives.

The building was the state headquarters of the CFMEU, the union that represents workers in the construction, forestry, mining and energy industries. Two community groups that had been meeting in the building had left just an hour earlier. It could have been much worse, but let us not lose sight of how bad this was.

A person or people unknown decided to bomb a building. It is hard to imagine any explanation other than they were deliberately targeting the CFMEU. Was it an attempt at intimidation? Was it a warning? Will there be more attacks? These are all questions we cannot answer at this point, but we do know that such an action must be condemned by all of us. Such actions are unheard of in this country, and that is the way it must stay. I stand in this place on the first parliamentary day since that event to condemn the car bombing of a union office.

I suspect there are many people wondering how they missed this event. It received very little coverage. I received a text about it late Thursday night. I heard a brief reference to a bombing on the news as I was driving back to Parramatta very early on Friday morning and then I went through the channels looking for more information. It did not make the front pages of the papers and was not covered well in the regular news bulletins throughout the day. I cannot help but wonder if it would have been more newsworthy if—heaven forbid—a sports club, a synagogue, a church, an employer organisation or even a bank had been car-bombed.

I remember thinking at the time that the coverage was light on for such a significant event in the history of this country. I am hoping that there was some quirk that day that distracted the media from covering this profoundly disturbing event. I am hoping that the coverage was not so low because it was a union office. I do acknowledge that it was the day after the budget reply speech, but I cannot help think that a car bomb in another location might have taken even the budget reply off the front page.

I also note that comment by politicians of all persuasions and at all levels, including me, was unusually quiet. If there was comment, and there may have been, I did not see it reported. We do not have many car bombings to compare this to, and that is part of my point. Bad behaviour by unionists, even swearing, does receive attention.

The union claims that staff have been receiving threats and there have been attempts at intimidation. That is not entirely new. It is not acceptable, but it is not new. The bombing of a union office is a particularly appalling turn of events. If it flickers across the mind of anyone out there who is listening that the union probably did something to deserve it—and I have read some blogs to that effect in the last couple of days—I suggest that they think again.

This is not the way industrial relations is played in this country. There are heated disputes and there may be strikes, but they are resolved by negotiation, not by intimidation and fear. Union offices do not get bombed. People do not get threatened with violence. Car bombs do not explode over disputes over workers’ rights. Unionists and their families do not live in fear.

We can probably assume that the matters behind this attack are more about criminal exploitation of workers than any reasonable definition of industrial relations. We as a nation, particularly the labour movement, have worked too long and too hard to see criminal exploitation of workers creep back into our community. A car bomb in a union building should be a warning to us all that something really needs our attention here.

I feel I need to acknowledge that for members of the union the lack of attention to the bombing of their headquarters is seen as a stark contrast to the very harsh spotlight on the behaviour of union members by the building commission, which was formed by the previous government and retained in a slightly modified form by the government of which I am a part. I know for them there is a stark contrast with the looming case of Ark Tribe, who faces a three-day trial on charges of refusing to be interviewed by the ABCC about who organised a meeting by workers over safety issues. Whether the government and unions agree on this or not, the union is right to expect aggressive pursuit of the perpetrators of the bombing of their headquarters and they are right to expect outrage from us all. (Time expired)

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