Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. And I oppose it because not a single extra building worker will get home safely because of this bill; not a single extra building worker will avoid losing their entitlements from collapsing companies because of this bill. What will happen is that the 5,000 building workers in my seat of Charlton and nearly one million Australia-wide will lose their fundamental rights. Sadly, this bill is not aimed at productivity, it is not aimed at strengthening the economy; it is aimed at destroying the basic rights of Australian workers, and it is built on a tower of sand. Every single economic fact that I will present in my speech demonstrated that the industry is in good shape, productivity is strong, industrial disputation is down and safety is increasing.

We do not need this bill. This bill is aimed purely at attacking workers and destroying trade unions. It is typical of the Orwellian approach of the new government to title it the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill. Let's look at the industry first. The construction industry is a viable sector of the economy. It has grown strongly over recent years and, with average growth of around 2.9 per cent, it has outgrown other sectors of the economy. It contributes over $100 billion dollars to annual GDP and employs around 900,000 people, which constitutes 7½ per cent of the total workforce. The percentage is even higher in my electorate of Charlton where 8.3 per cent of workers are employed in the construction industry. This represents almost 5,000 workers in my electorate who will be adversely affected by this legislation.

While the government allege that the introduction of this bill will improve productivity, there is no credible evidence to substantiate this claim. It is based on flawed and discredited analysis. Yet again, dodgy research is driving their approach. They have attempted to justify the return of the ABCC by referring to a recent report by consulting firm Independent Economics, a firm formerly known as Econtech. What they will not tell you is that this firm has a long history of churning out report after report which attacks workers and their unions whilst supposedly demonstrating a path to improved productivity. The member for Sturt failed to disclose when he introduced this bill that this consulting firm once had the rare distinction of producing modelling so inaccurate that the former Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox slammed the work as deeply flawed and recommended that it ought to be totally disregarded. This is the factual base that the government rest their justification for this bill on.

But attacking workers does nothing to improve productivity. Productivity improves where workers are guaranteed safe and fair working conditions. This bill, which will reintroduce the ABCC, was never about productivity, nor was it about taming an industry that is out of control. This is a robust industry. There are bad actors on both sides of the industrial landscape in this industry, that is without doubt. But there is no evidence to suggest that disputation in this industry has materially increased in the period since the ABCC was abolished or that the disputation in the construction industry is at historically high levels. Under Labor's Fair Work model, industrial disputation remains comparatively low. So why is it then necessary to make these changes? The truth is that it is not necessary. It is ideologically driven, just like Work Choices was. It was only ever about attacking unions and workers' rights.

Let's look at its origins of this bill. In the second reading speech, the Minister for Workplace Relations, who introduced the original ABCC in 2005, directly referred to unions no fewer than nine times and stated that they were specifically targeted to address union activity. The previous speaker, who is one of the Western Australian members, was very obvious in saying that this bill is designed to attack the CFMEU in particular. To be honest, at least they are not hiding their true colours in their speeches. This bill is now, as it was then, an attack on unions. It is a deliberate and orchestrated attempt to destroy the unions that represent the construction industry. But they have not stopped there. They have extended the definition of 'building work' to include offshore construction and the transport and supply of goods to building sites. This means that these new measures will apply to workers in the maritime industry and the transport industry and could extend to the manufacturing industry. This is another case of this government attacking workers' rights, not just in the construction industry but in every other industry they can get their hands on. This is truly a 'back to the future' time.

The construction workers that I have met in my electorate are hardworking Australians, just like every other worker. They have families and mortgages, and they expect—as they should—a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. Most importantly, they expect to return home safely from work. Every worker is entitled to a safe workplace free of injury. I have met families who have been affected by workplace safety incidents and by workplace deaths. It is a tragedy. Even one worker dying at a workplace is one too many. This bill, sadly, does not improve safety—it undermines safety. As I have said before, every worker is entitled to a safe workplace. Unfortunately, this was not happening in the industry when the ABCC operated. From the time the ABCC was introduced, the rate of workplace fatalities increased every year until Labor was elected. Their model organisation for industrial harmony and for improving the construction industry occurred at the same time as fatalities in the industry increased year on year. I am proud to say that, under Labor's Fair Work model, fatalities in the building and construction industry have declined. According to the ABS, last year the construction industry saw a fatality rate of 1.93 deaths per 100,000 workers. This is the lowest fatality rate in history. This is very much lower than under the former coalition government, where it peaked at 2.95 deaths per 100,000 workers. The fatalities in the construction industry were fully a third higher under the last coalition government than they were last year. Under Labor, workplace injuries also declined.

Let's consider productivity for a second, because the government have included 'improving productivity' in the title of bill. Labour productivity in the construction industry under the Labor government was double that of the last three years of the Howard government. I know speakers on the other side will be tempted to compare the labour productivity in the unionised sector with that of the non-unionised parts of the construction sector. Any comparisons are facile because the unionised sector covers high-rise commercial construction, and they are trying to compare it to low-rise commercial construction in the outer suburbs, which is a completely different form of construction. The productivity story is very similar in the economy as a whole. I am proud that economy-wide labour productivity rose over one per cent last year and 3.9 per cent over the past two years. This is the highest in a decade, and our average productivity growth in the last five years has been twice that of the OECD average. On any available measure, labour productivity under Labor's Fair Work model in the construction industry and in the broader economy is much stronger than when the coalition is in government. On industrial disputation, the rate of industrial disputes in the construction industry is, on average, one fifth of the rate we saw under the previous government.

So we have higher productivity and we have fewer fatalities, and we have numbers of industrial disputes running at 20 per cent of those we saw under the coalition government. Yet their solution to this supposed problem is to crack down on workers' rights. I would submit that this is incredibly unfair and shows what the coalition is really about. The government remains wilfully ignorant of all the evidence that the current building industry regulation arrangements are working well. Labor has always supported a strong building industry regulator and a strong set of compliance arrangements for the building industry. Labor will not tolerate corruption, extortion or criminal behaviour in any industry, not just the construction industry.

There is no evidence to suggest that the monitoring of compliance in relation to building laws has failed or is not occurring under the current provisions. The current Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate has considerable powers to obtain information and documentation and have questions answered without compromising procedural and substantive fairness. The inspectorate is undertaking more investigations, concluding more investigations, getting matters to court faster and recovering more money for workers in the industry than the ABCC ever did. The inspectorate has secured over $2 million in unpaid wages and entitlements for more than 1,500 workers. Those are the sorts of breaches that the ABCC was never focused on. Those opposite do not care about nonpayment of employee entitlements, nonpayment of employee superannuation and nonpayment of workers compensation premiums. Most importantly, in an industry where there is, on average, one fatality per week, they do not care about compliance with occupational health and safety standards.

It is the government's responsibility to create a sound and workable industrial landscape in this country. To achieve this you have to have employers, workers and their representatives working together in a spirit of cooperation. Labor got this right with the Fair Work Act. In this country workers have safeguards to protect their rights, employers have safeguards to protect their interests and representatives are acknowledged as having a legitimate role in Australia's industrial relations system.

I want to go to the extreme nature of the proposed powers for the ABCC. The proposed powers are extreme and unnecessary and they compromise civil liberties. They include unfettered coercive powers, secretive interviews and imprisonment for those who do not cooperate. People interviewed have no right to silence and are denied the right to be represented by a lawyer of their choice. This bill abrogates the privilege against self-incrimination—something that has, until now, been enshrined in the common law.

In terms of the level of judicial oversight into investigatory powers, ASIO's investigatory powers into terrorist activities are subject to more checks and balances than the ABCC ever was. If this legislation passes, alleged terrorists will be entitled to a higher level of judicial protection than unionists are entitled to. Let me pause on that for just a sec. If this bill goes through parliament, terrorists and alleged terrorists will have more rights under our laws than unionists will. That is disgraceful, and it demonstrates yet again that this bill is not about promoting productivity, improving competitiveness, reducing disputation and increasing safety; it is about taking rights away from workers and saying to workers, 'You should have fewer rights than people alleged to be terrorists.'

Prime Minister Abbott refers to his workplace policies as returning 'the industrial relations pendulum back to the sensible centre'. Interestingly, there is very little emphasis in this bill on tackling what I believe are some of the most serious issues in the industry, including nonpayment of employee entitlements, nonpayment of employee superannuation, nonpayment of workers compensation premiums, the use of phoenix companies to avoid these obligations or avoid paying tax, and compliance with occupational health and safety standards—in an industry with, on average, one fatality per week. These are the real issues confronting the construction industry. I have seen workers affected by companies shutting up shop one day and refusing to pay entitlements, and then starting again the next day with a slightly different name. It is even affecting members of my family, where all they have done is gone to work and worked hard, and at the end of the day they have lost their entitlements because of shonky contractors. This bill does nothing to protect those workers. All it does is attack them.

There are other areas of concern with this bill—for example, in relation to taking protected industrial action over issues of safety. An employee, when taking industrial action over safety issues, is required to prove their concerns about workplace health and safety only in relation to their personal safety. It is unclear whether or not this means that workers can only take action when their own personal safety is jeopardised and they are restricted from taking action over the safety of their colleagues. Let's pause on that for a second. Under this bill, it is unclear whether or not, if I am working next-door to another construction worker and I see his safety imperilled, I can take action to protect that worker. I would submit that that is a most unfair set of conditions.

Reversing the onus of proof is also part of this bill—a part that the previous speaker was proud of. It is a disgraceful state of affairs that the complainant bears the burden of proof. This undermines the tradition of 'innocent until proven guilty', which is the bedrock of Western legal traditions. That, combined with the loss of the right of silence, means that this bill is taking us very far away from those traditions. I would submit that this is nowhere near the 'sensible centre' the member for Warringah long promised us. The truth is that the ABCC is not a watchdog; it is an attack dog. It is an attack dog aimed at attacking workers' rights. It has been condemned by the International Labour Organization.

It is crucial that we oppose this bill because it attacks workers' rights, it attacks the rights of workers to organise, it will not improve safety and it will not improve productivity. It will not mean that a single worker in this country will have a better chance of being safe. The fact is that productivity in the construction industry is much higher now than it was with the ABCC under the previous Liberal government. Industrial disputation is one-fifth of where it was under the previous Liberal government. The industry is growing. It is strong. It was safe in Labor's hands. It has been jeopardised by the coalition because all they care about is attacking workers' rights.

See this speech in context