Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, let me congratulate the member for Wright for having the strength of character to bring his private member’s bill forward in the last parliament. I was a little reluctant to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2013 because I did not want to bring my ideology into it. I am a strong supporter of the unions, and being such a strong supporter of the unions I see this bill as probably being the strongest tool that any union boss or rep could possibly have when going to a workplace. Mr Deputy Speaker, let me put it to you this way: you turn up to a workplace and say to a worker such as a nurse, a construction worker or a policeman, 'Listen, from now on, I would like to take $20, $30, $40, $50 out of your pay.' They say, 'Well, I'm not so sure that's a great idea. What about that Thomson affair? What about what happened with the HSU?' And you say, 'Let me just put it straight to you: anybody that plays around with your money is going to get whacked with a massive stick. They're going to be thrown in jail. They're going to be investigated and they're going to be investigated quickly.' And he or she says: 'Oh, that sounds a bit better. That's not the way it used to be.'

So you can give them confidence. You can give the workers of Australia confidence that when they take money out of their back pocket and put it into a union they can be assured it is not going to be misappropriated, misused, given to someone who does not deserve it or, worse still, knocked off. Surely, all of those who sit opposite who acquaint themselves with union delegates are pushing this argument on them every day, saying: 'Let's embrace this piece of legislation. Let's take it and build the union numbers.'

In this debate so far we have had a lot of talk about unions, so I took the opportunity to go back to Fair Work Australia and look at their registered organisations, because they are not just union organisations—far from it. We have the Australian Aircrew Officers Association, the Agribusiness Employers Federation, the Australian Education Union. That is just the 'A's for you. There is the Building Services Contractors Association, the Confederation of ACT Industry, Clubs Australia—the list goes on. It gives you a bit of a feel that there are unions but there are also employer associations.

As I have been listening to the debate, I have noted some of the issues that have been raised so far. Some people would say I need to be certified to listen to some of the debates in here, but we come to this place to try and share ideas. I was hoping that the member for Melbourne would be speaking before me, as he was scheduled, because I listened to his contribution yesterday on another workplace relations bill, where he talked about human rights. I was hoping that he would repeat his statements today so that I could rebut him. You see, it is all well and good to talk about human rights and about making sure that the rule of law is being applied equally, but it seems that it only applies to one side of the ledger in the Greens' lexicon. My view is that we need to be evenly balanced and to give people confidence, because confidence is the imperative that we all need before we invest in anything or anyone. It is people that we are talking about here.

The member for Wright talked about being above reproach. When I go back to 1996 and the standards that applied then in this place to the disclosure of your pecuniary interests, I can see that they have now changed markedly, because that has been the expectation of the public. By increasing the disclosure laws in this bill means that we are meeting the expectation of the public.

Now, because I was not in this place for the last six years—and because of that I spent more time with the public—I can tell you about the dismay that was there with this ongoing saga of the HSU. Let us be frank, there were comments made to me almost daily, such as: 'Surely, there's political interference here. Maybe that's what this is all about. Maybe they're stalling with all of this and using Fair Work Australia as a political pawn.' These were comments coming back from our fellow Australians who had lost confidence in Fair Work Australia and even in this parliament and the people who are involved with it.

This bill goes some way towards addressing those concerns that so many people had. I would challenge those opposite to tell me they did not hear the same thing, not only from non-union members but also from their own union bases and their membership. People were dismayed and they felt let down. They thought it was dirty, and they were right. It does not have to be that way. This bill is about, as the member for Wright said, lifting the high-jump bar. It is about putting in standards. When you set low standards and then fail to achieve them, you see what happens. Today, we have the consequences of that being played out in the courts.

As I said, this is not about unions; this is about all registered organisations. I took the opportunity today to ring one of the newest and smallest registered organisations to see whether they would have an issue with this. I did that because we are now hearing all the time that—and I will use these words—this will be 'a disincentive' to being involved, that this is an attack on trade unions, that this should go to more consultation, that this is an overreach and that people will not be involved. Let me tell this place that the private teachers' professional association in Queensland—which is a union by any other name and one of the smallest ones; it is just getting started—says, 'We fully embrace this.' It gives them another tool.

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