Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The bill also limits the exemption to building industry participants submitting expressions of interest and tendering for Commonwealth-funded building work. This means enterprise agreements will need to comply with the building code before contracts are awarded and work gets underway.

We are very proud to be putting this bill before the House because what this amendment does is create a level playing field for those in the industry. There are some building companies who did not enter into a new enterprise agreement because they knew that they were obliged to incorporate into the enterprise agreement the building code. I include in those companies Kane Constructions, which is doing wonderful work in the city of Geelong in a $74 million construction of stage 4 of Simonds Stadium. There are other companies that rushed their agreements through and thought that they would have two years to move to the building code, which, frankly, was far too long.

I do want to commend Senator Hinch. Initially, of course, he opposed this particular component of the ABCC legislation. I spoke to Senator Hinch today and I congratulated him, and he said, 'You know, Sarah, in politics when you make the wrong call, when you make the wrong decision, you have to be man enough or woman enough to change your mind and to set things right.' That is exactly what Senator Hinch has done in putting to the Prime Minister that two years is too long.

As we all knew on this side of the House, the reason Senator Hinch took that approach was because over the summer he was approached by many building companies that said to him: 'This is absolutely unfair. You are forcing us to comply with the code, yet other companies have two years to move to a building code. That creates a very unlevel playing field and puts us at an enormous disadvantage. It hurts us. We won't be able to tender for the same work because we have much higher obligations.'

In the end, Senator Hinch recognised that this was going to hurt companies and it was going to hurt workers. That is why Senator Hinch, after speaking to many people, recognised the inequity of Labor's position and put to the Prime Minister that a nine-month transition period is appropriate. So building companies now have a reasonable period of time to renegotiate their enterprise agreements so that all companies are on a level playing field.

In his contribution earlier in the day, the member for O'Connor said: 'I don't know what this is going to do to improve productivity. How is this going to fix business? What is the problem with an enterprise agreement including a broad scope of terms?' Well, clearly, the member for O'Connor—

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