Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

That is right, and we are talking about rights of entry and having to be a member of a union, and we are talking about the fact that the unionised workforce now is down to 13 per cent in this country because people have realised that unions are not serving the workers; they are serving the interests of their political masters. This is what is happening in this case.

As we know, it took someone like Bob Hawke, an ACTU boss, to introduce a number of regulations to limit the unions' wage demands in what he called the Accord. He understood that the unparalleled increase in employees' wages could damage our economy and hurt businesses in this country. Paul Keating then expanded this. Two leviathan Labor leaders saw the problems of allowing unbridled union power and they wanted to limit it.

Today, this Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a former union lawyer herself, representing the AWU and others, is trying to return to the dark ages of union militancy and dominance by trying to appease the interests of the very people who are keeping her in power. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did not pursue the interests of the unions enough, which led to his knifing and dismissal as Prime Minister by the current Prime Minister along with the faceless men and the union heavyweights such as Paul Howes of the AWU. Since then, this Prime Minister has been valiantly working to restore union power, particularly as over two-thirds of her cabinet are former union secretaries. Interesting. Two-thirds have a union background as members of parliament. We have a diverse background on this side of parliament. We have got a whole range of different career options, as opposed to, as I said, two-thirds of cabinet having been union secretaries. As eloquently put in the Australian by Ross Fitzgerald in a recent article on 11 May:

The Prime Minister has repaid that support—

in other words, the support of the unions—

by backing legislation that unfairly tips the balance of workplace relations in favour of the unions and with fiscally reckless policy announcements including the use of taxpayer funds to prop up salaries of aged-care and childcare workers on condition that they join a union.

They are using taxpayers' money to do it. It is back to the old 'no ticket no start' on building sites.

This is what this legislation is about: entrenching the power of unions in terms of right of entry and other issues in this legislation. This further cements this dominance and increases the right-of-entry provisions, not only creating an unnecessary issue relating to bullying and harassment, but also causing the loss of time and wages for both the business and the staff—the workers. Remember the workers? They are meant to care about the workers on that side of the House, but they do not; it is more about themselves and their own power base.

It has also been shown that membership of the unions significantly decreases an employee's chances of re-employment. A lot of people coming back as FIFOs from the north-west in non-unionised workforces are finding it difficult to get employed in certain areas if it is a unionised workforce. These are some of the issues facing people now. For example, in the Pilbara all that militant union behaviour that was happening in the seventies and eighties had been stopped and we saw the productivity that came out of the Pilbara, where Western Australia produces more than 50 per cent of this nation's export income, but now we have both the CFMEU and the AWU wanting to head towards demarcation disputes in the Pilbara.

Part of this legislation says that businesses are going to be required to foot the bill to allow union representatives to go on site, to have this right of entry, in remote places and that the businesses will have to pay the costs—the airfares, the accommodation. Some of these sites are oil rigs or drilling platforms off the coast. It has been estimated that the cost of this right of entry could be something like $30,000, borne by the employer—and we wonder why we are one of the dearest places in the world to do business. This is, as I said, just kowtowing to their union bosses.

We have made it clear that, should we be the government after 14 September, we are going to restore the powers of the ABCC, the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner. One of the great ways of reducing those powers was to defund them, but we are going to see that they are properly funded because this will take the militancy out of the Australian workplace. You can see what is going on in Melbourne at the moment with Grocon and others. This needs to be stopped. It needs a decent cop on the beat and we are going to refund and re-empower the ABCC so that they can do their work and they can stop this thuggish behaviour that the Prime Minister, through this legislation, is trying to entrench in the Australian workforce before she exits the stage on 14 September. It is not in the interests of the Australian economy. It is not in the interests of Australian workers or businesses or our reputation. This piece of legislation is not supported because of the consequences it will bring to our country. (Time expired)

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