Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I like the member for Fowler. He is a good man, and we should have more good men in this place, and I appreciate the pressure he is under to stave off the current member for McMahon and hold his seat. We think he should be a lay-down misere to hold the seat of Fowler and give good representation to the people of New South Wales.

My basic philosophical position on this is that the Labor Party has never met an election promise to which they did not object. So the member for Fowler—who should be a minister—sits there and says that this is a surprise and that this is a contrivance by the coalition, yet this was a clear election commitment and issue. Tony Abbott, the then Leader of the Opposition, went to the election saying, 'One of the things we would do is we would bring back the ABCC. We cannot be clearer than that. If we win the election we want to bring back the ABCC to make sure that the construction sector has that strong cop on the beat to make sure that we are delivering safe and efficient workplaces without the interference of these thugs.'

Now, the worst part about the ABCC being rolled back is it was not rolled back because the construction sector was under fire, it was not rolled back by Labor because the construction sector was in disarray, it was not rolled back because the construction sector was working unsafely; it was rolled back because Labor had a philosophical position against it and it was their election promise—and it went through. We waved it through. So why don't you wave through our things?

The main object of this bill is to provide an improved industrial relations framework for building and construction work to ensure that it is carried out fairly, efficiently and productively for the benefit of all building industry participants and for the Australian economy as a whole. This bill was an election campaign promise from 2013. During the 43rd Parliament, the opposition leader Tony Abbott could not have been clearer with his discussions and his position on what the coalition would do should we win the election. And, hey presto, in September 2013 we won the election. We now hold the majority of seats in the House of Representatives and I do call on the crossbenchers to recognise that specific mandate: that we got elected with things to do.

From my perspective, what I would like to do here—for my people at home, to whom I will send this—is lay out the things on which we, on all sides of this parliament in both houses, should agree, and I believe that we all do agree. For the purpose of the exercise, I want to highlight what we, as a parliament, do and then what business does.

It is my strong belief that everyone in this building wants the following things in our construction sector. We want safe workplaces. We want safe working conditions. We want a pipeline of projects waiting to be done. We want investors, both government and private, lining up to do business. Both houses of parliament want apprentices in jobs learning their trade and making their way in the world. We want jobs for people in the design, engineering and trades who want to build a career and a future. But everyone who takes up a seat in this place also wants jobs for people who just want to work. We want jobs for people who just want to get through to Friday so they can spend time with their family and friends. On this, I think we, as a parliament, all agree.

Compare that to what my construction sector tells me at home. They want safe working places. They want safe working conditions. They want a pipeline of projects lined up waiting to be priced and won. They want the ability to make a dollar, to invest in their business and their community and to build a future for their family and their friends and the other businesses in the community. They want the ability to employ people who can provide the design, the engineering, the trades and the apprentices and the people who just want to work, who want to get through to Friday and spend time with the family and friends.

The big difference between the two is that if we do not deliver on this we still get paid but if business does not deliver on this no-one gets paid. When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke about this yesterday, he said the ABCC is not an industrial relations issue as far as he is concerned, it is an economic issue. What we have to do is understand that the construction sector in our community is a huge economic driver, and everything we can do to make sure that the construction sector operates efficiently and to make sure that the profit is spread and the money washes all the way through our communities should be done.

Prior to 2007, we had the ABCC in place and the construction sector was thriving. The Gillard-Rudd governments came in with an election promise to get rid of it, and as soon as they came in it was cleared off the statute books, and then all hell fell in around projects in Melbourne and around the country. There are stories in my city of Townsville where CFMEU officials will walk up to a bloke who is a sole trader driving a truck or anything like that and poke him in the chest and say, 'You'll never get the job here.' That is the sort of thing that is happening on worksites around town.

To which point, and running alongside this, in my city we are running a Tenders for Townsville campaign. Townsville, as a city, is unique in this country. We are the only city of nearly 200,000 people that is 1,400 kilometres is away from capital city and that has a viable construction industry and varied economy. The largest city in South Australia outside Adelaide has 23,000 people. Drive 350 kilometres outside of Melbourne and you are in New South Wales. If you take out the cities of Wollongong and Newcastle and Sydney, the next largest city in New South Wales is Wagga Wagga at 60,000 people. We are 1,400 kilometres away, and yet the same tender processes work across the industry in Townsville as they do in the rest of the country. It simply does not work in Townsville.

We want to see the tender process altered to drive value for the taxpayer, drive competition and give my local contractors the best opportunity to hire and win work. If we can do that then we can drive those things there. In a city like Townsville we are getting fantastic support from the federal government and, to some extent, the state government in relation to the building of infrastructure around the city. The problem we have is that governments want tenders to be big—$100 million or $200 million. My local contractors cannot bank a $100 million tender or a $200 million tender; they can bank $20 million to $40 million tenders. If we can open up those things then we will be opening up opportunity for those tier 3 businesses—my small businesses. If the city of Townsville, the largest city in northern Australia, is to take that next step and be an important city in Australia, then we need our small businesses to grow into medium businesses. We need to be able to give our small businesses the opportunity to become a tier 1 or tier 2 contractor who can win these contracts and provide employment locally.

What we are seeing is that Lend Lease, Seymour Whyte or Watpac win the tender. They win the tender fair and square. They are doing nothing wrong, I want to be very clear about that. But the profit does not stay in our community; it goes back down to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The profit is what drives further investment. In my city, when it comes to the construction industry, we not only have trouble getting work for people who are not aligned to a union; we have a problem with winning that job, driving that commitment through, and providing the second and third wash of that money through our community. That is what the ABCC can do in my city of Townsville. We should be opening up the tender process. We should be making sure that we are doing the best possible thing for the taxpayer and getting as much competition around these jobs as we can. We should ensure that we are driving these things as well as we possibly can and getting the best result for the taxpayer. That is what the ABCC should be about.

That is what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is talking about when he says the ABCC is not industrial relations to him, it is a huge economic lever. The construction industry is so vital to everyone in Australia, but nowhere is it more important than in Queensland. If we are talking seriously about the development of northern Australia, then we have to make sure that the work is being done in northern Australia and that the profit is being used to drive through more things for northern Australia. It is one of those things—

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

Sorry, I am making the kids cry! Government infrastructure is hugely important. You must have the bridges, the roads, the sheds, the hospitals and those sorts of things. But what we need to do is make sure that the people building these things are the ones who are buying trucks and cars and sending their kids to school and buying houses and living in our community. If we continue to push down this line of not changing anything, of not being innovative in the way we deliver work and make sure we drive the best possible result for the taxpayer, then my city will not see the second and third wash of that profit from infrastructure.

That goes for private as well as government work. At the moment, we have a situation where a large private employer has awarded a tender to an out-of-town provider. He has been pilloried in Townsville, as he should be. The ABCC is central to making sure that when a person goes on site—whether they are a large corporation, whether they employ 100 people or whether they are just one bloke and a truck— they are treated with the respect they deserve. That person is trying to make a living. That person has a family, a wife and kids at home, who are trying to make a living. If they do not feel comfortable going onto a site—or if they are getting pulled up at the gate and poked in the chest by someone who says, 'There's no job for you here, mate, because you're not a member of the union and we have the say over what goes on here'—that is wrong. That is un-Australian. That is unfair.

I go back to what business wants and what we as a parliament should be wanting. We want safe workplaces. We want everything that should be here. My small businesses are saying to me that, if they had the ABCC on site in Townsville, there are jobs they would be getting and they would be making money. You would not see the sole trader driving a truck on one rate and the other bloke on an EBA getting another rate. Those are the things that the ABCC can, and should, look at. Those are the things we need to do. That is hugely important in my city and hugely important to my region. My small businesses demand that the ABCC be a critical part of redeveloping the construction industry.

There is a baby up in the gallery that was crying before. It is important that, when that baby comes through and wants to get a job, they are able to get a job in a firm that is not a great big conglomerate but a firm somewhere in Australia that is able to do something and develop its own community. So I say: good on the coalition for bringing this forward. I am 100 per cent with Michaelia Cash, the Minister for Workplace Relations, on this. We need to get this thing through. The crossbenchers really need to understand this. We were prepared to fight an election on this—and we will do it again. But it should not be necessary. This was a central plank to our winning in 2013, and that should be respected. I thank the House.

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