Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I start to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011, I would like to respond to the diatribe that we just heard. In my 18 months as the member for Herbert, not one worker has come into my office telling me that they have been done over by the ABCC. What I have had is a lot of builders coming to me and telling me that the red tape that this government and the state government are imposing on the industry is killing the industry. What I see in the industry is people being paid above award wages because employers want to keep good workers. The ABCC is not anti-worker; it is pro-work.

I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011. The purpose of this bill is to abolish the successful Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, the ABCC, and replace it with a new agency, the Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate. It also provides for a new independent assessor's office, which will be able to determine what examination notice papers should apply to specific projects. It also removes laws related to the building industry that provide for higher penalties on those found to have breached industrial law and a wider set of conditions that attract these penalties.

The coalition established the ABCC back in 2005 in response to the Cole royal commission's findings of rampant unlawful and inappropriate industrial conduct in the construction industry. Part of those findings emphasised the lack of powers and resources that the regulatory body had at the time and the consequences of this. The ABCC has been the policeman of the industry, dealing with these problems in a tough but fair and balanced manner so that heavy-handed tactics are no longer what the industry is known for. The industry cannot afford to return to the days when unlawful tactics became rife as a result of weak oversight bodies.

It is clear that this bill is another example of the Labor Party giving in to the unions, their lords and masters. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union does not like the ABCC because it has been effective at holding militant industrial relations antics to account. The government does not want to scrap this for the good of the construction industry; they want to scrap it for the good of the union, regardless of the outcome.

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