Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

This month the weak leadership of Prime Minister Albanese has been exposed by the belligerence of John Setka, the Victoria-Tasmania secretary of the CFMEU. After we on this side of the House moved our bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024, to allow the manufacturing division to demerge from the militant union, Labor have been embarrassed into acting. There is no clearer case, story or study of the weakness of the Prime Minister's leadership than their obedience to their union masters, and I will catalogue those impacts on my electorate of Mallee shortly.

At long last, despite opposing a proposal of this very same nature in February, the Albanese Labor government are now allowing the manufacturing division to demerge from the CFMEU. We have seen the belligerence of Mr Setka, with his threats to the AFL construction projects because of a grudge against Stephen McBurney, former commissioner of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC, from 2018 to 2023. Mr McBurney is a former AFL umpire with over 400 games experience up to 2011, including four AFL grand finals in the 2000s. In April this year, the AFL appointed Mr McBurney as head of the AFL's umpiring department, drawing Mr Setka's fire and ire. I note that Mr McBurney was responsible for bringing evidence before the courts of the CFMEU's bullying, thuggery and intimidation, and the CFMEU were found to have breached the Fair Work Act in 91 per cent of cases.

What did Mr Setka say about Mr McBurney? I'll be bleeping where I can't say the word: "We have an obligation to pursue anti-union, antiworker bleepers like him, and we will until the end of the earth. This is going to cost the AFL a lot of bleeping money. I hope it's worth it. Projects without our full cooperation are going to be a bleeping misery for them. They will regret the day they ever employed him.' Yet, when the press gallery asked the Prime Minister about Mr Setka's comments, he begged, 'Don't question me on it, because it will just encourage him.' That sounds like the pleading of a hostage, not the Prime Minister of Australia.

The coalition re-established the ABCC in 2016 after a double-dissolution election. Labor shut the ABCC down between December 2022 and February 2023, leaving our construction industry and its more than 400,000 small businesses at the CFMEU's mercy. In tandem with the Registered Organisations Commission, the coalition had established watchdogs to prevent bullying, thuggery and intimidation from unions like the CFMEU on worksites, but Labor has abolished them both. The coalition gave teeth to the watchdogs, but Labor are lapdogs to militant unions like the CFMEU.

The demerger we are debating today is the one that the manufacturing division sought in January 2023, but the move was rejected by the Fair Work Commission. Division secretary Michael O'Connor told Nine media that the manufacturing division had 'been the victims of a whole range of attacks by the construction division' and there had been 'no attempt to resolve continuous attacks and sniping by construction'. At that time, I note the mining division had also applied to the FWC to break away from the CFMMEU. Little wonder that the manufacturing division have requested a secret ballot on the demerger question.

Let's not forget the CFMEU's track record towards women, of which there is a higher proportion in the manufacturing division. The coalition's efforts to allow them to demerge have been to give women a voice, to let them stand up to the thuggish bullying and misogynistic culture of the CFMEU. One of the union representatives described the workplace culture of the CFMEU offices:

Within the building there were jokes about domestic violence. It was very uncomfortable to the point where our division had to leave the building.

In 2014 a female ABCC inspector reported visiting the Barangaroo casino hotel construction in Sydney was surrounded by 40 CFMEU members, who used a loudhailer to call her words I can't put on record—but a disgusting slur, with profanity, against a woman. There are plenty more examples.

In 2020 the coalition in government legislated to allow parts of amalgamated unions to demerge if they felt it was in their best interest. This was to ensure unions were fairer representatives of their members. However, during the union controlled Labor 2021 Special Platform Conference, they committed to 'union demerger reform reversing the Morrison governments legislative changes that make it easier for unions to demerge'. Despite the CFMEU's history of bullying, thuggery and misogyny, Labor removed the right to demerger and persistently failed to stand up to Mr Setka. That was until, and only until, a footy code was threatened. Then, after some handwringing and goodness knows what else behind closed doors, the minister announced a demerger would be allowed, saying, 'That attack on the AFL really made the decision clear and made the timing immediate.' This is nothing but pathetic.

Labor has known for a long time about the CFMEU's appalling track record of economic disruption. Federal Circuit Court Judge Salvatore Vasta described the CFMEU as 'the most recidivist corporate offender in Australian history'. Federal Court Justice Jessup said:

The CFMEU's record of non-compliance with legislation of this kind has now become notorious … That record ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement.

Federal Court Judge Jarrett said:

The CFMEU has as egregious record of repeated and wilful contraventions of all manner of industrial laws.

Federal Justice Flick said:

The CFMEU has long demonstrated by its conduct that it pays but little regard to compliance with the law and indeed has repeatedly sought to place itself above the law.

Federal Circuit Court Judge Vasta said:

It seems that the CFMEU feel that they can usurp Parliament and that they can set the law in this country. There is no place for such an attitude in Australian society.

Let me give a few Victorian examples of what the CFMEU have done to stymie construction work in our state. In 2017 the CFMEU and 10 of its officials were fined a total of $590,800 for unlawful industrial action at nine construction sites across Victoria. The sites include four hospitals and an aged-care centre. In 2017 the CFMEU was ordered to pay $100,000 in penalties for unlawfully blockading a major Port of Melbourne expansion project and threatening to bring 20,000 workers to join the fight. In 2014 and 2015 the CFMEU was forced to pay a variety of fines and compensation payments in relation to its unlawful blockading of the Melbourne CBD Emporium site, including $3.55 million in damages, $1.25 million for breach of court orders and another $115,000 in penalties for organising the unlawful industrial action.

Another example of the CFMEU's economic impact is one I've had constituents raise with me, and we hear it all over the country—road traffic controllers being paid over $200,000 per annum for holding a 'stop/slow' sign at roadworks. That arrangement was secured through Setka's Victorian branch of the CFMEU. Little wonder that construction costs are going up so much, and that goes to the point of the economic impact of the CFMEU's behaviour. The only financial impact Labor care about is the $4.3 million the CFMEU gave them before the last election.

The weakness of this union-controlled Labor government hits home for my electorate of Mallee when it comes to policies rolled out in regional Australia without a care or concern for—or, it seems, awareness of—the reality of working on the land. The prominent recent 'same job, same pay' industrial relations changes—rebranded with spin as the 'closing loopholes' bill—saw National Farmers Federation president David Jochinke respond in September that farmers are now left to grapple with how they engage employees through labour hire during harvest, the busiest time of the year. In December it was Merry Christmas to union bosses and thanks for all your support, but to Australian businesses it was a lump of coal under the tree.

Union-controlled Labor are bulldozing the industrial relations landscape, where all you can see is the barren land of a union-controlled employment monoculture. Employment diversity and flexibility are gone. Labor's IR agenda, at the unions' behest, reversed decades of history, where Australia had moved away from centralised wage fixing towards pay and conditions that were based on productivity and reward for effort. Who would think it? Labor has reinstated the age of entitlement, and the most entitled of all of are the CFMEU, thanks to their donations to Labor.

In my electorate of Mallee, our farmers and small-business owners are the casualties. One farmer in my electorate said:

The obstacles that could be put in the way of small family farms and businesses by this legislation are nothing short of catastrophic and naive, written by those who have no experience of how small communities are the backbone of the Australian way of life.

In Labor's two years in government, Labor have taken away piece rates in horticulture, which paid reward for effort on the basis of how much fruit was picked, and forced farmers to pay workers an hourly wage—same job, same pay; the lifter and the slacker paid the same, with no incentive for productivity or efficiency. Union-controlled Labor binned the ag visa the Nationals fought for and established when in government. Union-controlled Labor imposed a higher salary for migrants on the temporary skilled migration income threshold, or TSMIT, lifting it from $53,900 minimum salary to $70,000. Union-controlled Labor imposed a 30-hour week pay requirement for workers brought into the country on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, or PALM, scheme.

Labor's lapdog action for the unions is rolled out on country people like Mallee voters as their primary experiments. It's all part of Labor's scorched-earth approach to regional Australia, which is, I repeat, by design: experiment on the farmers and, if they get away with it, roll it out on all small businesses. Union-controlled Labor want to come into the family farming home as well, rolling out the red carpet for the likes of the CFMEU right into the kitchens of family homes on farms. Labor have given unions the right to enter farms unannounced, intruding on people's privacy and threatening the personal safety of farmers and their families.

In the May budget, Labor removed funding for the successful coalition-initiated Harvest Trail program. This exposes the lip-service Labor pays to the topic of exploitation. Labor axed funding and the jobs of those providing a service that prevented the potential exploitation of harvest workers—for instance, on working holiday visas. This funding decision was made despite a resurgence of backpacker labourers since the pandemic—more, in fact, than before the pandemic. The Nationals have worked very hard to help secure the workers needed in horticulture, which dominates my electorate of Mallee, but union-controlled Labor couldn't bulldoze our employment landscape fast enough. They don't care about the impact on the farmers and yet again are exposed for not caring one bit about the cost of living. While farmers are price takers, in some instances the food shortages produced by Labor's policy will be felt at supermarket check-outs in higher fruit and vegetable prices. Union-controlled Labor's belated action with this bill demonstrates that, yet again, we have a weak Prime Minister and a government distracted by its pet projects and pleasing their union masters, with no concern about the cost of living and the cost of doing business.

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