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

I won't make that mistake. I promise you I will not make that mistake a second time.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission performs a vitally important role in our industrial relations and construction sector landscape. I've heard those members opposite talk about how the ABCC doesn't do this and it doesn't do that. Of course, the CFMMEU are as pure as the driven snow—absolutely as pure as the driven snow! There's nothing to see here! Let's have a look at the CFMMEU. The mining and energy division are so impressed with their construction colleagues that they've just brought an application to the Fair Work Commission to seek to be deamalgamated from them, such is their disgust with the way that their colleagues in the construction division handle themselves. They in fact cite in their application 145 separate infractions, breaches of the Fair Work Act, as to why they want to be cut loose from this mob. That's the second lot. There is also the manufacturing division, which prior to that also brought an application to disassociate themselves from those fine, upstanding gentlemen in the construction sector.

Those members opposite can come in here and talk the big talk about how the ABCC are terrible and they haven't done this and they haven't done that. In case after case after case, the Federal Court has held that the CFMMEU are the most recidivist industrial organisation in this country, which continues to break laws in this country. That is very hard for those members opposite to hear. Why? Because they continue to receive significant funding from the CFMMEU. I understand it's somewhere around $10 million in donations to the Labor Party over the last 10 years. I can understand why that is a source of discomfort. Premier Malinauskas from South Australia was so discomforted that he actually ordered the return of those political donations to the CFMMEU. Yet the federal Labor Party continues to take donations from an organisation that, quite frankly, has made its bread and butter in breaking the law.

I have spoken with people I know personally who are involved. In fact, I have seen it in my old days as a chippie working on building sites in Melbourne, albeit in the BLF days. It is standard de rigueur practice and process for the CFMMEU to harass, to hunt down and in fact, through practices like third-line forcing, to deny businesses that do not employ CFMMEU labour the ability to set foot onto building sites. We have laws against that. John Howard introduced laws about freedom of association. Prior to those laws coming in, every building site in Victoria had a big sign on the front gate that said, 'No ticket, no start,' meaning that if you were not a member of the BLF, which was the precursor to the CFMEU, you could not get a job on that building site. We brought an end to that, and it was a good thing too. But what we are now seeing is the CFMMEU muscling up to small businesses and large businesses alike—but particularly small businesses—and saying, 'If you don't have a CFMMEU approved EBA or if you're not employing registered union labour, not only you will not get a job on this site but we will shut you down on every other site in Queensland. That is wrong, and that is what the ABCC is designed to fix.

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