Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm a great fan, as many are, of that wonderful 1942 movie, Casablanca, with Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. One of the classic scenes in a classic movie is where the French chief of police Captain Renault is ordered to shut down Rick's Cafe. Rick says to Captain Renault, 'How can you close me? On what grounds?' Captain Renault says, 'I'm shocked! Shocked to discover that gambling is going on here.' At which point, a croupier comes over and says, 'Your winnings, Sir.'

I can imagine that this is sort of what happened in the Australian Labor Party when the media exposed what we all knew that there's thuggery and bullying in the CFMEU. 'I'm shocked. Shocked to discover that there's bullying and thuggery in the CFMEU. We could never have known that was going on. We better do something about it!' To their credit they did put forward a bill—one that has been significantly improved by the coalition.

When we tried to discuss this issue in question time, a perfectly reasonable question was asked of the housing minister about whether the CFMEU's behaviour—the bullying, the thuggery and all of the associated stuff—has pushed the costs of construction up, the minister said, 'Some experts believe CFMEU corruption and illegality has no impact on residential construction.' There was then this back and forth for the next couple of days asking, 'Which experts? Tell us the experts. Tell us who made the quote. We'll look up the research. We'll interrogate it!' But there was no furnishing of the experts. There was no furnishing of where this information comes from. If you get up, as a minister in this place, and you say, 'some experts' and make a claim, you should be able to come back in and answer a question backing it up. I think that's standard.

The ALP, which was elected with the support of the CFMEU, has now, because they were so shocked, put forward a piece of legislation to put the CFMEU into administration. I do give them credit for that. The bill has been significantly improved by the coalition, and there are a number of amendments that Senator Cash has been able to get Senator Watt to agree to which improve the piece of legislation. But, if the government were really serious about ending this thuggery and bullying in the CFMEU, which are obviously pushing up the costs of construction—if you make it harder for business to do business, the costs go up; Blind Freddy sees that—it would support the Leader of the Opposition's bills that were put to the House. One would restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which the Albanese government scrapped in one of its first actions after the election, and a separate bill would enhance integrity measures and combat criminality on our nation's building sites. I think that's really important.

As I said earlier, I give the government and the ALP a little bit of credit for at least being shocked and putting forward some legislation, which is now going to be improved. But, while Captain Renault and the ALP were fake shocked, I was genuinely shocked earlier today when I saw the Greens defending the indefensible.

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