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

As the member for Wright says, it is incredible. These are teachers who need to be part of the union to have protection in case of litigation—in the same way that nurses and police often join unions for that one purpose. But I tell you what, it makes them awfully angry when they see what has occurred over the last two years, and they must wonder what is happening to their money. We just had the Sunshine Coast University Private Hospital open. I will be delighted to be able to go back to them and the Sunshine Coast Public University Hospital, when it opens in 2016, and to say to them, 'You will be able to have confidence as health workers, because the legislation is in the parliament.' Mind you, there is only one thing standing in the way of giving them certainty and confidence. It is the Labor Party.

Why does the Labor Party come in here and say, 'We don't want to lift the high-jump bar, we do not want to improve and increase standards, and we do not want to occupy the realm the public expects of us.' What is it that those opposite are afraid of? What is it that they are protecting? It is simply not good enough to say that this is going to be too burdensome.

Let us just have a quick look at the bill at a glance. This bill provides for a registered organisations commissioner. It also provides for the organisation itself—I will get there in a moment. It requires increased disclosure. So think about this for a moment: what does that actually mean? You may be an employee of a registered organisation. Let us go through a few of those organisations again: the Australian and International Pilots Association, the Australian Meat Industry Council and the AMWU. There is a bit of variation for you. Take yourselves out of the parliament for a moment and put yourselves in the meatworks as a paid union employee. Isn't it reasonable that a worker can turn up to you—you have been paid through the worker's contributions, union fees or affiliation fees—and get to know whether there is some sort of a conflict between what you are doing in your paid job and the associations you have outside, or that the association that you are part of is giving money to a third entity, which is again a conflict? Is that not a reasonable thing for people to be able to do? I would say to you that if you are going to stand in this place and argue that it is not, then you are out of sync with community expectations today.

This is about a separate body. This bill provides for a supervised registered organisation to be a separate body. It explicitly did not consider registered organisations in the 2012 act under the previous parliament. You have got to ask yourself why. The final report of that review mentioned that it would be appropriate, however, to consider changes to the law to make clear separation between Fair Work Australia's functions as a tribunal and as an administrator overseeing registered organisations.

That is exactly what we are doing here. We are providing for additional penalties, an independent body, an independent commissioner and stronger disclosure laws. All of those should be tools that the union representatives and the associations of employers go out to their members and use as benefits and reasons you can have confidence to invest in them. Yet every speaker on the other side will get up here and say that this should not occur.

Let us go into the increased disclosure in a little bit more detail. First of all, the top executives' remuneration will have to be disclosed, as has recently been disclosed by the ABC. I do not think that did anybody any harm. I think the public were probably quite delighted to learn what some of the ABC personnel are earning. Maybe some of the union representatives, and the rank and file, will be interested to know what their representatives are earning. Surely there cannot be anything wrong with that.

So, the remuneration of an officer of an organisation has to be disclosed. Those nominated for a position on a board, branch or peak council must in addition also disclosure remuneration paid to them by related parties. There is an important one: the remuneration paid to them 'by related parties' will be disclosed. It is a bit like the NRL, really. You have players and you have salary caps. They get their wages from the club, but there is a bit of a backhand deal to try and sweeten the deal.

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