Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the findings of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, which found 'widespread and deep-seated' misconduct by union officials;

(2) recognises the outstanding work of the Trade Union Joint Police Taskforce (Taskforce) in NSW, Queensland, Victoria and the ACT, which are investigating 34 referrals of alleged criminal breaches from the Royal Commission;

(3) calls on the Queensland Government to overturn the decision to withdraw from participating in the Taskforce; and

(4) condemns the Queensland Government and Australian Labor Party for putting their union mates before Queensland's lowest paid and most vulnerable workers.

The Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption found widespread, ongoing and deep-seated misconduct by union officials. Labor and their socialist chapter, the Greens, opposed the royal commission and opposed the government's efforts to clean up union corruption. Why would they be happy for unions to continue to exploit their members and engage in corruption, bribery, thuggery and maintaining links to organised crime? The answer is: political donations—the rivers of cash that are collected from hardworking union members and that are funnelled into Labor and the Greens. Unions spent $20 million in donations and campaigns against the coalition. Good unions have had a proud tradition of protecting workers' interests in this country for many generations, but the royal commission shone a light on disgraceful practices and dodgy deals and uncovered evidence of just how far some unions, supported by their Labor mates, betrayed their membership.

For evidence of betrayal, one only needs to look at the Leader of the Opposition. As national secretary of the Australian Workers' Union, Mr Shorten authorised agreements to cut or remove penalty rates for low-paid workers. In at least one agreement he endorsed the removal of penalty rates for cleaners, without giving them any compensation. At the same time, the employer, Cleanevent, turned around and paid Mr Shorten's union $25,000 per year. It was Mr Shorten who happily stripped away penalty rates from Australia's lowest paid workers in return for secret cash payments to his union. Mr Shorten has the audacity to cry crocodile tears over the decision of the Fair Work Commission to change penalty rates, when it was Mr Shorten, in 2013, who introduced the legislation that requires the commission to review penalty rates every four years. He is the architect of the policy framework that brought about this decision.

The royal commission also examined many cases of alleged union corruption. In my home state of Queensland, then Builders Labourers Federation secretary and later CFMEU president, David Hanna, allegedly received more than $150,000 of free goods and services from Mirvac to upgrade his luxury home in Cornubia in 2013. Mirvac allegedly organised the work in order to receive favourable treatment from unions. In another case the Queensland and Northern Territory branch of the CFMEU attempted to set fire to documents that it had been ordered to produce to the royal commission. These examples highlight the need for more work to be done to uproot union corruption, but in January this year the Palaszczuk Labor government announced it was withdrawing from the Trade Union Joint Police Taskforce. This move can only be seen as Labor pandering to its union masters to secure its continued supply of donations.

The royal commission made 120 references of alleged unlawful conduct to law enforcement agencies, and the work of the joint police taskforce is invaluable. To date, action by the joint police taskforce and the working group of regulators to deal with civil referrals has resulted in six convictions for offences including blackmail, obstruction of a Commonwealth official and giving false testimony. An additional 13 matters are before the court, including a number of high-profile former union officials who are accused of fraud, blackmail and making secret deals with employers for their own benefit. These cases show that Queensland is not immune from union corruption. As recently as January this year, suspicions have been raised over the legitimacy of more than $700,000 of credit card spending in the Queensland branch of the CFMEU.

It is totally unacceptable that Labor would support a system where the interests of workers can be traded away and where employers can be held to ransom for industrial peace. Just last week we had the ACTU secretary, a union leader with great influence, promote an opt-in, opt-out attitude to lawfulness, encouraging people to take the law into their own hands and degrading our democracy. As I have said before, it is an absolute disgrace that the Labor Party continues to support and receive support from organisations that live outside the laws that we here are elected to make.

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