Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Parliament should be a place where the rule of law and civil liberties are defended. There are a number of elements of those core principles, but two very important ones are under significant threat from the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. The first is the basic principle that people are entitled to equal treatment before the law. That principle says that it does not matter that you happen to be a person of a certain colour, a person of a certain occupation or a person of a certain residence—your right to be treated before the law as a citizen equal to other citizens will be guaranteed. That is a cornerstone of democracy.

Another fundamental principle is that, as an individual, you have rights to liberty and rights to privacy—and that those cannot be taken away by the state in the absence of some compelling urgency. Most importantly, our criminal law is founded on the principle that it is up to the prosecution to prove that you have done something wrong and that you cannot be compelled to say something that might incriminate you. There are very limited exceptions where that rule does not apply. It is often said, with some justification, that those principles of equality before the law—the fact that you cannot be treated in an arbitrary manner by government just because of the circumstance of where you happen to be born or where you happen to work or who you happen to be, and the fact that you cannot be forced to give up the right to silence—define a democracy, and that once you remove those you start slipping from a democracy into something else. We need to carefully police those principles and the parliament should be the prime defender of them.

The thing about defending the principles of the rule of law and the right to silence is that you cannot just defend them when they are being exercised by people you like. If you believe in the right to silence and if you believe in equality, they need to apply to everyone—not just those who happen to be on your side of the fence at a particular point in time. This is a government that is fond of making that case, especially when it comes to freedom of speech. It says that that should be an untrammelled right and the parliament's role is to expand the right of people to say whatever they like. You would expect, also, not only that parliament would be the place where that will be defended but also that a party that has the word 'liberal' in its name would be one of the first bodies to stand up in defence of an individual's right to the rule of law—to be treated equally and to have their liberty preserved.

That is not what we are getting with this bill. As other speakers have said, we are getting a situation where in Australia, just because of the industry you happen to work in, you can be hauled before a Star Chamber for a secret inquisition, you do not have the right to silence, and when you get out you cannot even tell your wife or your husband or your family about it, because that would be breaking the law. As the member for Fisher said, this does not apply just to people who work in that industry—it applies to someone who happens to be walking past at a particular time who might accidentally witness something. They can be hauled in and become subject to those same rules as well. This is not liberalism. What we have from those who sit on the government benches is reactionism masquerading as liberalism; extremism masquerading as liberalism. It is why in all of their speeches so far we have not heard them say one thing about an individual's right to silence or the right to equality before the law. This is absolutely a targeting of particular people in particular industries on a particular side of the fence.

It is said that there are problems in the building and construction industry. There are problems in this industry. There are problems with sham contracting that the government says nothing about. Even more recently, we opened up the newspaper to find that one of the biggest construction companies in this country is alleged to have tried to bribe Saddam Hussein's regime. When that happens in the construction industry, what do those opposite do? Nothing. There is no request to investigate what ASIC and the AFP have been doing or why this has been allowed to continue. Where is the royal commission into that? Instead, we have the targeting of a particular group of people because they happen to sit on the government side—on the wrong side of the fence.

The member for Fisher talked a lot about the Cole royal commission, saying that that was a judicial inquiry. That was a judicial inquiry in the same way that Stalin's show trials were a judicial inquiry. I observed the royal commission at very close quarters, and on an incredible number of occasions the prosecutor would get up and talk about people being locked in shipping containers. But, by the end of that case study, no evidence was led about anyone being locked in shipping containers. But the headlines were there and the damage had been done. Whatever you think about that royal commission, after all those millions of dollars had been spent on that royal commission that is supposedly the basis for this bill, how many prosecutions resulted? Zero. Zero prosecutions came out of that royal commission. Despite all of this alleged illegality in the industry that this royal commission uncovered, not one prosecution came out of it.

We hear talk about alleged crime and thuggery in this industry. I remind members sitting on the government benches that this legislation does not give the new body power to deal with criminal matters. That is what the police are for and will continue to be for. All this rhetoric about burning necklaces and so on is completely out of order because it has nothing to do with this bill. This bill is not about criminal matters. It is a hallmark of this government that it will dress it up and use inflammatory rhetoric to do something in an area the bill has nothing to do with. The bill is about targeting a particular group of people, and one aspect of it is to try to litigate those workers and their unions to death and to tie them up in red tape while their other mates are allowed to go off and do whatever they like. You can see that shining through in the proposed section that says it does not matter if the employer and the workers have resolved the dispute, this new body still has the power to come in and continue the litigation. What other areas of industrial disputation does that apply to, where we do not encourage people to resolve things at a workplace level but instead allow the government to come in and continue litigating one side to death if they want to?

In the same way that we did not hear any commentary from the government benches about the right to silence or an individual's liberty, those opposite have shown their rank hypocrisy through this legislation when it comes to the free market. They are saying, 'We are quite happy for people to go and negotiate amongst themselves, as long as it turns out in our favour.' People who work in the construction industry or who perhaps do dangerous and demanding work offshore might be able to negotiate themselves better wages and conditions but, no, they cannot do that because the free market was not meant to operate in that way; we need a massively resourced government body to come in over the top and tell people how to live their lives and if they do not accede they will face the threat of going to jail.

This is not a government of liberals. This is a government of corporate shills who are willing to stand up and say whatever their mates on one side of the fence want them to. But, when it comes to tackling sham contracting or addressing substantial underpayments of people on building sites right across this country, this government is completely silent. So I will not take up the previous speaker's suggestion to join the coalition in this assault on the rule of law. This is something that, quite rightly, deserves the condemnation not only of people who work in the industry and who know what this will mean for them on a day-to-day basis, but of civil libertarians and anyone who believes in the principle of the rule of law. I am very proud to stand with them in opposing this bill.

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