Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Whether it was the 2005 introduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, whether it was the ignominious defeat of the attempt to resuscitate that, suffered in August 2015, or whether it is this particular effort to once again bring in particular measures within one industry alone in this country, there have been certain common factors. There has been the attempt to utilise purportedly legal inquiries into the building industry. Of course, there was the original one with Terence Cole, where Australian taxpayers were compelled to fork out $60 million for months of investigation. That eventually led to 31 individuals being referred for alleged misconduct but not one prosecution. This time, Dyson Heydon has sought investigation by referral of 90 individuals. In both cases, there was an attempt to imply to the Australian electorate that these particular measures are about corruption in the trade union movement.

Obviously, there has been exposition of very disturbing corruption, most particularly in the HSU national and New South Wales branches, the New South Wales branch of the NUW and pockets within other organisations. But this is not about those kinds of activities. This measure is about trying to accomplish the same wage repression in the building industry that the government has accomplished in other parts of the economy—whether it is the mere 2.5 per cent increase in Australian wages up to January of last year, or whether it is the figure to June last year of 2.3 per cent. In both cases, they were the lowest wage movements in this country since 1997. That is the fundamental attempt by this government to act against the building industry, where there are variety of factors, such as the Sydney construction market and the major projects of infrastructure throughout the country. The previous speaker to the debate eventually mentioned the cost of projects in Victoria. So this is about trying to ensure that wages are repressed in the building industry.

It is not as though Labor can be accused of not acting on the question of trade union corruption. Recently, a number of measures were announced as Labor policy, including: making the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, with its coercive powers, the regulator of the most serious contraventions of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act; extending the current electoral funding laws to trade union elections; the General Manager of the Fair Work Commission continuing in the role of regulator, with its current powers to conduct investigations and inquiries and resolve minor compliance issues, and receiving an additional $4.5 million for increased monitoring; and protection for whistleblowers. It is not as though Labor believes that corruption in the trade union movement, which undermines the rights of the members of those organisations, often leading to the diminution of those people's legitimate industrial conditions, should not be tackled. What is corruption in the union movement about? It is very often about a deal between employers and union leaders to, basically, sell out the workers. So we are very proactive on the question of trying to do something about trade union corruption.

Despite half of the member for Solomon's speech concentrating—and I take her as being honest on these matters—on what looked to be a very tawdry activity in the Northern Territory, that has nothing to do with these measures. Whether the Stella Maris site in Darwin was improperly given to the trade union movement in the Northern Territory, it has nothing to do with introducing very draconian measures against rights of individual workers within trade unions which would not be tolerated by those opposite in any other sector of the Australian economy. These are the kinds of measures that, if they were occurring in Tajikistan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo—whatever sector it was occurring in—they would join other human rights campaigners, one would hope, to deplore.

I do not want to remind people in too lengthy a fashion, but let us remember that when they tried these measures originally the very established, respected ILO—for those who are not aware, a tripartite organisation of unions, governments and employers—was less than laudatory of this government's intervention in the building industry. In the committee on freedom of association back then, they spoke of the need to ensure that any reference to unlawful industrial action in the building and construction industry was in conformity with freedom of association principles. They said that because they were disturbed by this government's measures. The ILO further spoke of the need to ensure that the determination of the bargaining level was left to the discretion of the parties and was not imposed by law. They further commented that there was a need to introduce sufficient safeguards into the BCII Act to ensure that the functioning of the ABC commissioner and inspector did not lead to interference in the internal affairs of trade unions.

This is a government which has a track record that is condemned by the main authority in industrial relations around the world. It is the kind of authority that tries to do something about Bangladeshi garment workers' rights as buildings crash down on their heads and they are murdered, the kind of organisation with employer involvement that seeks to make sure that, in Guatemala and Honduras, trade union officials are not gunned down.

We talk about violence in this industry and we talk about intimidation et cetera, and I heard a number of examples from the government, but I would just like to cite some of the other realities in this industry. Regarding the Lidcombe state office of the CFMEU—those dreadful people in the construction union leadership in New South Wales!—I do not see any concern that that office was firebombed at a cost of $1 million, with a petrol laden vehicle being sent in, obviously by employers who were disturbed by industrial conflict and who then fled the country. I do not see any reference to that kind of activity.

We are asked to have some faith in this organisation to police the industry in a sensible fashion. The activities of Mr Hadgkiss over the last two years lead one to be deeply disturbed. I noticed particularly his appearance on 22 October in estimates, and I really advise people to see this just for the theatrics. The reference in his report to 1,000 crimes in the building industry sounds very disturbing. That would be deeply disturbing to anybody. He took quite a long time to understand and admit that investigation of alleged conduct is not investigation of crimes, and he further noted that they had moved towards 36 to 40 prosecutions. This is a man who has very much become part of the political campaign this involves. He has, at one point, addressed 50 stakeholder organisations in a period of eight months. When asked to indicate where those briefings had occurred, a bit like the Attorney-General of this country, he said it would be too much of a diversion of resources to provide that information. He has led an organisation which is supposedly to talk about productivity and to ensure that the building industry gets over its productivity issues. He has led an organisation which has seen a doubling of its sick leave and unscheduled absences, a culture of bullying and harassment within his own organisation and a question of pursuit of whistleblowers. He has been accused, quite correctly, of distortion of statistics by omitting references to the 2013 and 2014 figures on deaths in the building industry, which grew, in actual fact, from 17 to 28.

Whilst we are dealing with statistics, we should perhaps turn to the intervention in the last week of our friend Terence Cole. He has come up with the ludicrous figure—and I do not think many people in the government would really believe the figure—that these changes resulted in improvements of $6 billion in productivity in the industry. I want to deal with that because that came, essentially, from some figures that Econtech—Independent Economics—provided some years ago. Amongst the attacks upon those statistics, in August 2013 the Fairfax federal politics fact checker found the claim to be 'mostly false'. That is no mean description. The reports have been decried by economists for assuming union density accounts for all cost differentials across two sectors—domestic and commercial—and for ignoring other factors such as greater site complexities and higher capital intensities. Econtech has admitted to mathematical errors in their first report. Economic experts from the Queensland industrial relations department and from Griffith University have re-examined the data used in the first Econtech report and found that there was 'no evidence of cost narrowing between the two sectors'. In a perhaps more convincing analysis of the figures on which this government, through Terence Cole, relies, the Wilcox report, which inquired into the industry and also looked at Mr Cole's efforts, said of Econtech that it was deeply flawed and was to be totally disregarded.

This man who had control of the inquiry which justified the first instance of this organisation—at tens of millions of dollars of cost—rushed into the debate again this week to basically try to defend this attempt to have an industry specific suppression of workers' rights. As I said earlier, Labor has acted on the question of trade union corruption in a very real fashion, not using it as a guide to try to come in and extend suppression of individual workers in the workplace. But it is also a broader question of protecting workers' rights in this country.

Labor has also announced a policy of cracking down on the underpayment of workers, with significantly increased penalties for employers who deliberately and systematically avoid paying new employees properly, and ramping up protections for workers from sham contracting. We have had no reference in any of these inquiries to what really bedevils the industry—sham contractors establishing companies with front people who often know nothing about the company they purportedly control, and collapsing those companies. If any problem befuddles this industry, it is this sham contracting operation. It is not only the workers who are deprived of their conditions when these companies collapse; it is also suppliers and a whole lot of building companies.

Under the guise of being concerned with trade union corruption, we have had very politicised inquiries. Coincidentally, we have seen two leaders of the main opposition party in the country called before them, with attempts being made to discredit them and use this as a political exercise. It attempts to construe the concern with corruption as a guise to clamp down on people's rights. Not only that, but they are extending this into new areas such as picketing, the transport of supplies to building sites and offshore operations. This is a government that has attempted, on a broader scale, to undermine people's conditions. They now have a situation where one million people are in this country as temporary workers. This is just another part of that pattern to try and repress wages reduce people's conditions and ensure that the kind of wage repression I cited earlier occurs. I join my opposition colleagues in opposing this legislation.

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