Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I join the member for Perth—and I commend him for his contribution—and all of my other Labor colleagues who have spoken on this bill in opposing this legislation, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Amendment Bill 2017. The last time that legislation relating to the ABCC came before this parliament, in both October and December of last year, the debate was gagged. The government did not want to talk about the ABCC legislation. They did not want to talk about it because they knew full well that it would not stand up to public scrutiny when they did. The legislation did not withstand the fairness test and it did not withstand the common sense test. Indeed, this was the legislation that the government used in order to call a double dissolution election on 2 July last year, and yet we saw in the whole campaign for that election, that the government refused to even talk about the very legislation that they called the election upon. Again, they did so because they knew that out there in the community people did not accept the justification for this legislation that the government continuously tried to spin.

This legislation—the same as the original ABCC legislation—does not pass the fairness test, nor do the amendments that we are dealing with right here and now. It simply delivers on the self-interest of big construction companies and their pressure on the government, and also on the government's anti-union ideology. That is what it is all about. The Turnbull government is prepared to trade away the workers' rights in order to bolster the profits of large construction companies, in the same way that we have seen them try to do this week with legislation that will trade away social payments to some of Australia's lowest paid workers and individuals, people on the lowest incomes, people that are some of the most needy in the country, in order to give a $50 billion tax break to big business. The similarity is right there and very stark: trading away workers' rights in order to bolster the profits of big companies.

I would expect that from this government because it has a track record of doing that, but I have to say I am both disappointed and surprised to see the same approach to this legislation from the Nick Xenophon Team, from Senator Hinch and from Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. Those minor parties were all elected and came into this place as champions of the Aussie battler, champions of Australian jobs, champions of common sense and champions of fairness and common decency. Yet this legislation shows that their true values have been exposed. They will have a lot of explaining to do to the wider community as a result of their support for this legislation.

This legislation weakens or deletes provisions in the current law that favour Australian workers over temporary foreign workers and support Australian apprenticeships. We have an ageing workforce. Everybody talks about that consistently. If we do not 'trade up' young people into those trades we will ultimately end up with not enough tradespeople to meet the demands of this country. Then the government can justifiably do what it has always wanted to do, and that is bring tradespeople and workers from overseas, because it can justifiably say, 'We simply don't have those skills here in Australia.' And when it does that, again, its prime and only motive for doing it will be to bring down and lower the wages and working conditions of other Australians.

This legislation also does away with measures that support Australian manufacturers, as others of my colleagues have pointed out. And it waters down important work safety matters, including the long work hours that construction workers are often obliged to work. I can say that with absolute confidence because I speak to, and I know, many construction workers. Indeed, I am quite surprised to hear how often they tell me about the long hours that they are working.

But I want to touch for a moment on the matter that the member for Perth eloquently put to the House only a few moments ago, and that is the condition in this legislation which deals with asbestos awareness training and how that is also going to be phased out as a result of this legislation. This is an industry sector where asbestos products pose a constant risk. Again, the member for Perth alluded to a number of examples in recent times after asbestos was meant to have been banned in this country but is still being used.

In South Australia, we have the Asbestos Victims Association of SA. Senator Xenophon is a co-patron of the Asbestos Victims Association of SA. It is an organisation that for the last 12 years has been campaigning about the dangers of asbestos and running education programs to make the community and industry more aware of the dangers of this product. Each year, there is a service held in Salisbury to commemorate those people who have died—and will probably die in the years to come in greater numbers, as a result of the research that has been carried out—because in the course of their work, they have had to deal with asbestos. Senator Xenophon, of all people, should know better. By supporting these provisions, Senator Xenophon betrays the organisation that he lends his name to as a patron.

This legislation does not deal with criminal behaviour, as members opposite would have you believe—at least the two members who had the courage to come into this chamber and speak on it. I am not surprised that only two members have spoken on it, but the two who did essentially focused and concentrated their remarks on criminal behaviour within the construction sector. This legislation, as other members have quite rightly pointed out, does not deal with criminal behaviour. There are other agencies that are well-resourced and quite capable of doing that and, indeed, have done that where and when it has occurred.

The government's spin about the Heydon royal commission and the need for this legislation, again, simply does not withstand scrutiny. Indeed, to my knowledge, and I think the member for Moreton made this point as well, no criminal prosecutions have resulted from the Heydon royal commission. That says it all. The commission was nothing more than a witch-hunt. Again, if one thinks back, the Australian Building and Construction Commission was brought in as legislation before any of that commission took place. It was always an intent of the coalition government to attack the construction workers of this country.

Every construction project is unique—unique in scope, unique in the construction risks associated with it and the risks that the project presents to the surrounding neighbourhood and unique in the project's proponents, be they locals, overseas builders, reputable firms or unreputable firms. Every project is unique and, therefore, quite rightly, the workers who are going to work on those projects and the unions that represent them have every right to enter into individual agreements with the proponent and the builders of those projects to ensure that all the matters that need to be covered with respect to that project are, indeed, covered. That is what has happened in the past, and that is why we have some 3,000 agreements in place.

It is not a case where each project is the same as the other and, therefore, there is one template that can be used across all of them. We know—

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