Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Members opposite have occasionally accused those of us on this side of the House, and sometimes me, as being anti union. I doubt many would blame us if we were. I was in the building industry for 30 years. In a past life I was a carpenter and joiner, a builder and a building construction barrister. I've seen the best and the worst of what goes on in the building industry, but the truth is that we are not against unions. What we are against is unions that break the law—nothing more, nothing less. What we're saying, with the bills before the House this week and the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 today is that we will no longer tolerate a situation which says that it's okay to have one rule for some and a different rule for everybody else. That's what members want. It is what the unions want: one rule for them and a different rule for everybody else. We have seen this time and time again.

When two corporations want to merge, members opposite are the first to scrutinise the merger and ask whether it is in the public interest that these companies be allowed to act as their shareholders direct. When two unions want to merge, even if one of those unions is arguably the most lawless this country has ever seen, members opposite reject scrutiny and insist the union must be allowed to do whatever it chooses. When a corporation or an individual business leader breaks the law, members opposite are the first to call for severe and harsh penalties. They are the first to condemn any political party that may have taken donations from that corporation or that individual. Yet when the CFMMEU topped a record-breaking $16 million in fines for contraventions of the law, when they accumulated more than 2,000 separate incidents of law-breaking all over Australia, what did those opposite say? What did they do? All we hear from members opposite is excuses while they continue to bank the CFMMEU's seven-figure cheques.

In my state of Queensland we have seen a particularly sinister example of this special treatment. Under the Palaszczuk state Labor government, any individual or corporation with the remotest connection to a developer is banned by law from expressing their political beliefs by making a donation to a political party, no matter how modest. If a union, whether in the construction industry or otherwise, whether a constant and recidivist lawbreaker or not, wants to take its members' money and hand over millions to the Labor Party, that's absolutely fine. Not a problem! Nothing to see here. Is it any wonder that, after years of this special treatment from Labor governments, the unions no longer believe that even the law of the land applies to them. We've all heard, of course, the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, say as much on national television. Ms McManus believes that if a union doesn't like a law they should be entitled to break it. Did members opposite condemn this outrageous suggestion? Of course they didn't. For members opposite and their friends in the CFMMEU and the ACTU it's one rule for the unions and one rule for every other person and entity in this country. Enough is enough. For too long some unions in this country have considered themselves above the law. For too long they have been encouraged and enabled in that belief by Labor parties at a state and federal level, who have been owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the CFMMEU.

This legislation, in combination with the raft of other measures that the coalition has introduced in this area, will help to end that perception and curb the illegal behaviour in workplaces all over Australia that is threatening the very integrity of our rule of law. Firstly, the bill permits the Federal Court to cancel the registration of an organisation on a wider and more streamlined set of grounds. Despite one infamous union accruing more than $4 million in fines in just the last financial year, the existing deregistration provisions in the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act have never been utilised. Under the new bill, it will be easier for the Federal Court to make such a cancellation on the grounds of unlawful conduct, serious criminal offences, repeated breaches of industrial laws or illegal industrial action.

We all know how necessary this amendment is and why. The CFMMEU remind us, it seems, almost every week. With more than 2,000 separate incidents of law-breaking to choose from, it is difficult to select just a few examples of the CFMMEU's illegality. But one in particular stands out in illustrating exactly the kind of entrenched belief in their immunity to the law that this bill will help to stamp out. At the Barangaroo site in Sydney, union delegate Peter Genovese was suspended from his job for throwing a punch at a site manager and threatening to kill him. Anywhere but at the CFMMEU would these actions have resulted in that delegate's immediate termination. But the CFMMEU did not condemn Mr Genovese or launch an internal investigation into his conduct. They doubled down on it in the most dramatic fashion. Then New South Wales secretary Brian Parker and his senior colleagues responded by leading 1,000 workers in illegal industrial action, which shut down the site. They shouted abuse at innocent workers who tried to do their work, calling them scum, dogs and far worse.

A policewoman at the site told the Federal Court that Mr Parker had, 'made sure that I was feeling either intimidated or scared'. She wasn't the only one. Union organiser Luke Collier described a government inspector at the site as, 'lower than a paedophile', and he proceeded to provide a crowd of workers with the inspector's mobile telephone number. I pose this question to those opposite: how can the Labor Party, which prides itself on standing against domestic violence and, particularly, violence against women and children, support a trade union regime that donates it millions of dollars yet which not only condones physical violence and intimidation against people on building sites but actually carries it out? Or they threaten to carry it out. How can that be?

Where is the consistency of the Labor Party on this issue? Those opposite and their party machinery continue to take offending union money—millions and millions of dollars in donations—when the same union thugs are committing acts of violence in the workplace. Do those opposite suggest that unless you're a card-carrying union member that you do not have a right to enjoy a safe workplace, free of the threat of physical injury by virtue of such basic things as scaffolding, but then in the next breath suggest that those who do not toe the union line should die and that their children should be raped? What about the mental health of those people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened every single day on building sites around this country? What about that of their families? Where is Labor's sanctimonious chest beating about workplace health and safety for those people who dare not to toe the union line?

When the dust had settled and the CFMMEU had received a record single fine of $1.7 million, was the union's current leadership contrite? Are they any more fit to lead a registered organisation than their colleagues? I think we all know the answer to that now. Dave Noonan, the national secretary of the CFMMEU's construction division said that the laws are rotten and they need to be changed. In Queensland, disgraced former state CFMMEU president Dave Hanna demonstrated the union's attitude perfectly, when he illegally entered a worksite in Fortitude Valley. Having given the finger to one site manager and threatened to bury the mobile phone of another down his throat, Mr Hannah stated, 'I can do what I like'. As Justice John Logan said in his judgement in that case the CFMMEU, 'cannot expect to remain registered in its existing form'. How right Justice Logan is.

This bill would not only provide the court with greater discretion to deregister the CFMMEU and others, if it sees fit, but also to make alternative orders for remedial action or to appoint an administrator where it believes these actions are necessary. These powers bring the law as it applies to unions much closer to the law as it applies to corporations in this country. No longer will it be one rule for unions and another for everyone else. I hope what we do today will force the CFMMEU to change their ways. If they do not, personally, I hope that the court will see fit to use its new powers to stand up for workers and to deregister this rogue organisation.

Secondly, the bill makes it easier to disqualify people who are unfit to hold office in a registered organisation. If you are a criminal convicted of a serious offence you cannot be a company director. This bill ensures that union officials must abide by the same rules by introducing an automatic disqualification for those who have been convicted of serious criminal offences punishable by five years or more imprisonment.

However, during the Heydon royal commission and in many court cases since, we have heard countless examples of union officials who don't commit serious criminal offences but breach their duties, abuse their privileges, act in contempt of court and engage in repeated acts of blackmail, extortion and coercion. We cannot permit that behaviour to continue. This bill would help to control unlawful, thuggish behaviour by allowing the Federal Court to disqualify officials from holding office where they have contravened industrial laws, repeatedly failed to take reasonable steps to stop their organisation from breaking the law or where they are otherwise not a fit and proper person to hold office in a registered organisation.

All in all, I imagine there are a great many CFMMEU officials around Australia following the progress of this legislation closely and reflecting very carefully on what they have done. They know that, after we pass this bill, no longer will it be one rule for unions and another for everyone else. They know that they are going to have to clean up their acts or face real consequences for their actions. They know that today there is a federal government in this place which stands up for workers and which, on their behalf, will not tolerate these lawless bands of thugs any longer.

As I said at the start of this speech, I have been involved in the building industry for 30 years. I saw the worst of union thuggery on building sites when I was a young apprentice. It's time for those opposite to take heed of the warnings and to stop the thuggish behaviour that occurs on building sites whilst they take millions and millions of dollars from organisations like the CFMMEU. We have no quarrel with unions. I have no quarrel with unions. I was a union member myself. I had to belong. I had to join the CFMMEU—as I'm sure my friend did as well—because I needed to get a job. In those days, if you wanted a job in the building industry, you had to join a union. We have no quarrel with unions—only those unions who continue to break the law.

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