Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I say to the previous speaker that it is a pity that the examples he gives did not extend throughout the rest of the country. The waste and mismanagement that are part of that program could have provided for more schools, more teachers and more facilities not only for Indigenous students in the Northern Territory but for students throughout this country. The pity is that on this day, when we mark three years since the election of the Labor government under Mr Rudd, we see that it has been three years of waste not only of time and reform opportunities but of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money by a government that has largely been all talk and no action.

I raise in this wide-ranging debate an important issue about both the environment and industrial relations—in particular the industrial mess that the Victorian desalination plant project has become. In particular, I call on the Victorian Premier, John Brumby, to demonstrate leadership by stepping in to fix the industrial mess surrounding the Victorian desalination plant project and to come clean about any involvement of the Victorian Labor government in ensuring that the CFMEU would be the major union involved in the construction of the desalination plant.

Last Saturday, the Australian newspaper revealed that one of the reasons Thiess management had resorted to the unorthodox practice of hiring an undercover investigator to get to the bottom of hiring practices at the desalination plant was that union officials were dictating to Thiess who could be hired on the project. It seems that a number of these employees do not have the appropriate skills required to do their jobs and that this lack of skill is inhibiting productivity and delaying the progress of construction. One manager apparently said that there was no way that the plant would be constructed on time. It was also claimed that the union thug and convicted criminal Craig Johnston has been involved with the project. While it seems that Mr. Johnston, a former state secretary of the AMWU, has an AMWU ticket, the union at the centre of all of this mess is the militant Victorian construction division of the CFMEU. This is a union with such an appalling track record of thuggery, intimidation and unlawful behaviour that it was recently fined $1 million for its disgraceful actions on the West Gate Freeway project, a project which involves erecting safety barriers on the side of the West Gate Bridge to stop attempts at suicide by people who are obviously in that mental condition.

The Labor government is trying to wash its hands of the problems at the plant, saying either that management practices have nothing to do with them or that Thiess has a fixed price contract and that it will be their problem if the construction is not finished on time. Mr Brumby desperately wants to avoid accountability for the fact that his government was involved up to its armpits in ensuring that the CFMEU rather than the Australian Workers Union got the desalination plant job.

The involvement of Victorian government minister Martin Pakula, a former Victorian secretary of the National Union of Workers, in directing traffic to the Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary and former BLF official Brian Boyd to negotiate industrial agreements for the desalination plant is Victoria’s worst kept secret. The story is that the interests of Victorian taxpayers were ransomed as part of an internal ALP deal to satisfy a bizarre political alliance between the CFMEU, the National Union of Workers and the shop assistants union. Observers do not think it a coincidence that Martin Pakula announced that Thiess was awarded the desalination plant tender within days of the finalisation of preselections within the Labor Party for the elections this Saturday.

It is extraordinary that, while John Brumby talks tough when it comes to law and order, he has never publicly criticised the CFMEU, even when that union was bringing in bikie gangs as picketers at the West Gate Bridge project. Presumably Mr Brumby’s and the Labor government’s silence when it comes to the thuggery of the Victorian branch of the CFMEU is as much a mystery to the Prime Minister as it is to observers of the Victoria’s industrial scene. On this issue, credit must be given to the Prime Minister. She should be given credit for standing up to a powerful left-wing union by making clear that she will not support or condone, either actively or by her silence, union thuggery, while the so-called right-wing Victorian Premier sits on his hands. But then maybe it should not come as a surprise. The Prime Minister would have as much understanding as most of how Victoria’s so-called right-wing Premier is beholden to this bizarre alliance between the National Union of Workers, the shop assistants union and the CFMEU.

The fact is that Labor used taxpayers’ money to pay off the CFMEU by ensuring they got the work at the desalination plant, and Victorians are paying and will continue to pay a huge price for this tawdry deal. The excessive wages and conditions being paid to construction workers have been well documented. Tradesmen stand to earn more than $200,000 annually on this job. The long-term ramifications for Victoria, which already has a reputation for being expensive to build in, are serious. Now we have the allegations of poor productivity because of the employment, at the insistence of union officials, of employees who are not properly qualified.

It is time for the Victorian government to put the interests of taxpayers first rather than their Labor Party factions and subfactions. There should be full and frank disclosure on the part of the Victorian Minister for Water, Tim Holding, as to all the advice, both informal and formal, that he received from his department detailing any recommendation, advice, opinions and views about the awarding of the tender for the construction, operation and maintenance of the Victorian desalination plant project.

Likewise, Ministers Pakula and Holding should disclose details of all meetings, telephone discussions, teleconferences, videoconferences and correspondence between them or their office and any representative, employee, official, member, lobbyist or consultant acting for or on behalf of the NUW, the CFMEU, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Australian Workers Union, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Thiess Degremont joint venture and John Holland Leighton joint venture discussing the Victorian desalination plant project.

The dispute at the Victorian desalination plant does not look like being resolved any time soon. The project has become an industrial quagmire that needs to be fixed and fixed fast. It is therefore a great pity that the Victorian Premier has tied his own hands on the matter and is unable or unwilling to intervene. The people of Victoria deserve much better.

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