Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this bill before the chamber, the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011, which is another broken promise from this Labor government. Worse than that, it reflects more about the internal machinations of the prime ministership of our country than it does about a genuine attempt to bring about good reform and productivity-increasing changes to our economy. This is a deal with the Left of the Labor Party and the Greens party to ensure that this Prime Minister is propped up for just a little bit longer to hold the Minister for Foreign Affairs at bay. It was promised before the 2007 election that this would not be changed, but we know and we knew then that the powers within the union movement, the millions of dollars of donations they receive from these unions, would eventually hold sway and this bill would be introduced and the powers of the ABCC would be gutted absolutely.

The ABCC has actually been effective. It has done what the royal commission sought it to do when it handed down its report in February 2003, some nine years ago now. It did take some time for the Howard government to get the necessary reforms in place, and in 2005 they were able to get through these reforms, and they were good reforms. They sought to bring the rule of law back into an industry which had been marked by complete disregard for the normal laws of our country for too long. That had an effect not just on the operators in that industry but also on the prices of properties that Australians had to pay for, which of course impacts on the economy and reduces the amount of money that people are able to spend on other productive things. It impacts on inflation and impacts on the employment prospects of many Australians.

The royal commission found that this industry was plagued by behaviour that was just unacceptable in a modern society. It was plagued by violence, by corruption, by the use of threats to stand over contractors, to stand over companies. It has to be said that the royal commission found some of the same behaviour by some of those companies involved also. This industry had operated like a jungle with the rule of the jungle for too long and it took extraordinary laws, absolutely extraordinary powers, for this industry to be brought back under control.

What we have now seen is that this Labor government is desperate to hang on, obsessed with itself, obsessed with one job, the job of the person who sits next to the dispatch box. The current occupant, the member for Blaxland, hopes to be there one day too, it must be noted. This is a deal with the Greens, a deal with the Left of the Labor Party, to ensure the stability of this Prime Minister for just a little bit longer. This is something the Labor Party very clearly said they would not do. They said that they would not change the ABCC. They said they would not gut this important cop on the beat. They said they would not bow to the millions of dollars they get from these trade unions to influence this policy, to change this policy which has changed behaviour in this industry, which has ensured that this industry is once again competitive, is once again able to produce high quality at lower cost, reducing the pressure on consumers and reducing the pressure on the taxpayers, it must be said. Someone not often spoken about that in this place anymore is the taxpayer and their money being used properly.

We know that the government is not all that interested in spending money properly or wisely. That is why we have seen a deterioration in the Australian Commonwealth finances from a $20 billion surplus in 2006-07 to now nearly $140 billion in net debt, $300 billion in gross debt, and blowing out day after day. This is part of the problem we see, this reregulation in this area. We have seen this day after day over the Christmas period and most of last year—and some people have been making this point for a while—that the changes made in the workplace relations area, including in this particular area, are doing enormous damage to our future prospects as a nation, to our future productive capacity as a nation.

The member for McEwen may shake his head, but I do not think Marius Kloppers lies. I do not think there is any need for Marius Kloppers to lie. I do not think the head of Toyota lies. We hear much about the car industry from those on the other side. We hear much about how great the car industry is, how it must be saved, that we have to keep co-investing to ensure we save it. But we knew nothing about the microeconomic reforms which actually would ensure its survival, ensuring that people can be employed at reasonable rates of pay and reasonable conditions—but not in the position where the union movement in this country is given such power that it is able to bring massive corporations to their knees. That is what we are seeing with BHP with the coking-coal dispute in Queensland. We are seeing a massive global corporation employing hundreds of thousands of people, one of Australia's great prosperity drivers—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can't even keep a straight face when you say that, Jamie.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Being sledged by the member for McEwen is an interesting experience.

Mr Mitchell interjecting—

This sort of gutter behaviour of the member for McEwen and the language he uses in this place reflect exactly where they are. We saw that on Australia Day and we see it with the member for McEwen and his behaviour today. I think the voters will see it very soon, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The reregulation, the changes that the Labor Party have made to Australian workplace law, driven by people like the member for McEwen, are impacting enormously on the disputation in our nation. They are impacting enormously on the employment capacity of thousands of small businesses, and now we are seeing it with our biggest employers. The people these people pretend they stand for are being affected by the laws that they put in place. We will see it no worse than what we see with this bill, which is again a broken promise—from a government you cannot trust and a Prime Minister who said 'There would be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' This is exactly the same broken promise—the same as the broken promise that the member for Denison has gone through in the last few weeks with the pokies change, which we always said they would never go ahead with.

Mr Laurie Ferguson interjecting—

We always said they would not go ahead with it, Laurie. You know that, mate. We always said that. All was promised to ensure that one job in this country. The chair the minister currently at the table is sitting in is all the Labor Party is interested in. This bill is a backdown on a promise because of a demand of the Greens and a demand of the Left of the Labor Party. Reflecting back on the building industry royal commission, I will remind the House of some of the key findings it handed down in 2003. It found:

… structural changes are necessary to ensure that bargaining at the enterprise level occurs. At present, it does not. Pattern bargaining in this industry should be prohibited by statute.

It was prohibited by those changes. It will be undone by these changes. It also said:

… mechanisms should be in place to ensure that any participant in the industry causing loss to other participants as a result of unlawful industrial action is held responsible for that loss.

They were by the Building Commission reforms. They will not be by these changes. It further said:

… mechanisms must be in place to ensure that where disputes occur within the industry, such disputes are resolved in accordance with legislated or agreed dispute resolution mechanisms rather than by the application of industrial and commercial pressure. The 'rule of law' must replace industrial might.

That is exactly what the building industry reforms in 2005 were about. It is what they have achieved since 2005 in this industry. They brought back into the normal practice of rule of law the normal behaviour expected by ordinary Australians and by other industries across this nation. These changes will reintroduce the behaviour where contractors were stood over and contracts demanded union participation on sites. These are the sorts of provisions we will see again when this is all removed. The cost will be borne by Australians. It will not be borne by the Australian Labor Party; it will be borne by Australians.

The royal commission recommendations went on to say:

… there needs to be an independent body, free of the pressures on the participants in the industry, which will ensure that participants comply with industrial, civil and criminal laws applicable to all Australians, and thus operating on building and construction sites, as well as industry specific laws applicable to this industry only.

These are very specific provisions. What the royal commission found was so shocking that these eminent people decided that there had to be specific provisions to deal with this industry because it was in such a bad state. It was costing Australians so much more because of the behaviour of participants in the industry.

The findings highlight exactly what it was trying to achieve and exactly what the Howard government's bills did in 2005, which was to bring back the rule of law and bring in an independent body with a specific group of people looking at the law to ensure that this industry once again was brought back to productiveness and was governed by acceptable community standards of behaviour in industrial relations in this country. It was a cultural issue as well as a legal issue and it needed and continues to need specific attention.

Removing the watchdog, the cop on the beat, in this industry, as we see in this bill, will do untold damage to the productive capacity of this industry at a time when we should be looking at how we can become more productive. We should be looking at how we can free up our economy. This measure will again encourage the worst of the behaviours, as we are now seeing on worksites around this country, whether it be BHP, Toyota or the thousands of small businesses that every day face increased activity by the union movement. That puts untold pressure on thousands of businesses and jobs and on our economy when we need to be finding ways to be more competitive.

The reforms at the broader workplace relations level were always going to be a disaster from the very moment they were put in place. We know that because we see it every day now on the front page of the Financial Reviewand the Australian and as we move around our country. There is immense fear in the eyes of Australians over their job security, because of the changes this government is putting in place. It is a real and genuine concern for the future of our country. These laws are continually being made more union-friendly and friendly to specific interests rather than being for the broader economic goals of all Australians. This is exactly what we are seeing with this bill. It is more about the Labor Party and its internal machinations and about rewarding its mates. It is about rewarding those who have donated millions of dollars over time to ensure that they get to write policies for the Australian Labor Party.

What it is not about is finding ways to ensure that this industry can continue to be competitive in a modern economy and in a flat world. Instead what these people are trying to do is create a circumstance—

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Flat world?

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The members opposite seem to think that you can just continue to apply standards to industry that are far above what is affordable in the future, and the building industry is a perfect example of that. If you let unions run rampant, if you let unlawful behaviour run rampant, as it has historically—and the royal commission found this—you will find that there will be fewer Australians employed, it will cost more and our productivity will continue to go down, as we are seeing right now.

This is an important bill. If it passes, this industry will go back to the bad old days of the past. It will go back to where people could not go to work to achieve good outcomes and a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. They will go to work and be bullied and intimidated and exposed to the worst excesses of an industry that has been guided by lawlessness in the past. This bill should not be allowed to pass for that reason.

The agency has done an excellent job, firstly under the leadership of John Lloyd, who was an outstanding Australian and an outstanding thinker in these areas. He did an outstanding job in bringing this industry back from the very worst excesses we had seen for so long.

You have to ask yourself what the motive is for this bill. Is it about making a better industry or is it about rewarding mates? Is it about rewarding those who have donated so much for so long, rewarding those who sit on the back benches of the Australian Labor Party and rewarding those who help prop the government up? The answer to all those questions is that it is about the Labor Party and the prime ministership; it is not about the good productive capacity of our economy for the future. It should be opposed in the strongest terms.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Isn't it a pleasure to follow the Barbara Cartland of Australian politics, the member for Mayo, with his romantic fiction about how big and bad the world is going to be when we have a fairer workplace, harking back to the good old days as the architect of Work Choices—the man whose idea of fair work in this country is you work hard and he will take the money? It is an absolute joke to have him stand there and conjure up all these thoughts of dark clouds and the world falling down because what we want to do is let industry and workers have a workplace that is fairer to give everyone a go.

I am very pleased to be able to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011 because it is built on the foundations of what is great about the Labor Party: fairness in the workplace. On this side of the House, we know how important the building and construction industry is and how in turn this industry has directly helped to create jobs and boosted our economy during the global financial crisis, and which continues to strengthen and grow the economy today.

Not only has our nation-building plan, with projects such as the Building the Education Revolution, kept our economy strong, it has also kept Australian workers in jobs, with their families getting food on their table and paying their mortgage payments and their bills and still having a lifestyle during the global downturn. The delivery of our nation-building projects is reliant on the construction industry and that is why it is pleasing to speak on a bill which abolishes the Howard government's Australian Building and Construction Commissioner. Despite what was said earlier, this bill will deliver on Labor's commitment to replace the ABCC with a new body which provides a balanced framework for cooperative and productive workplace relations in the building and construction industry. The ABCC is not a suitable regulator and needs to be replaced with a new body which is part of the mainstream Fair Work system and it will operate in harmony with community expectations of a fair and just workplace relations system. As the Prime Minister has previously stated, this bill will ensure that a new regulator is established to provide information, advice and assistance to all building industry participants regarding their rights and obligations under the law, as well as seek to improve the standards of occupational health and safety in the building and construction industry.

The government appointed Justice Murray Wilcox QC, a person of very high standing, to consult and report on the matters related to the creation of a new building industry inspectorate to regulate the construction industry and, after Justice Wilcox's extensive consultation with all stakeholders, we are now moving to deliver on abolishing the ABCC and establishing a new fair regulator. The bill honours the government's commitment and gives effect to the principal recommendations in the Wilcox report. The bill aims to provide fairness in the industry by ensuring that information, advice and assistance is available to all participants in connection with their rights and obligations under all the relevant laws. It also provides effective ways for investigation and enforcement of the relevant laws while balancing the rights of the building industry participants through the provision of appropriate safeguards in relation to the use of enforcement powers. The bill seeks to improve the level of occupational health and safety in the building industry, something that we on this side of the House are very mindful of. We want to make sure that when people go to work they go to a safe workplace and they can come home to their families. That is why this bill is important, to ensure that we do see the OH&S standards lifted. The bill also retains the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner and its related accreditation scheme, which have resulted in demonstrated improvements in the OH&S practices and records of accredited companies and related projects. The creation of the building industry inspectorate will work in compliance with the general workplace relations laws, as prescribed in the Fair Work Act 2009, by all—that is important—building industry participants.

The ABCC showed the contempt that the Liberal Party has for workers. Let us remember that the ABCC in conjunction with Work Choices illustrates the lack of respect those opposite have for the hardworking men and women of Australia. They have never supported them and we know they never will. It is not in their DNA. Think about the data that was collected during the dark days of the Howard Liberal government. The results of the data that they wanted collected were so bad that the Liberal government went to the Office of Employment Advocate and said, 'Stop collecting the data. It's showing how bad it is. We've got to stop it immediately.' That was their way of hiding the truth: 'Let's just shut it down and hide it and no-one knows about it.'

Once our new regulator is established it will have the powers and responsibilities to ensure that employers, their organisations, employees and trade unions all abide by their obligations under the law. As I have said, this bill will abolish the office of the ABCC and create a new agency, the Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate, to regulate the building and construction industry. The bill implements the key recommendations of the Transition to Fair Work Australia for the Building and Construction Industry report by the Hon. Murray Wilcox QC. The bill removes existing higher penalties for building industry participants for breaches of industrial law and introduces safeguards in relation to the power to compulsorily obtain information and documents. It also creates an office, the Independent Assessor, who will determine, on application by the stakeholders, that compulsory information-gathering powers will not apply to a project.

In the development of this legislation, the government carried out very extensive consultation with industry, with unions and with state and territory governments in 2008-09 and Justice Wilcox also consulted widely with all stakeholders in the construction industry as part of his 2009 report. And while we do this, the opposition are still committed to pursuing their extreme workplace relations laws rather than ensuring lawful conduct by all parties in the building industry. It is our government, the Gillard government, that is continuing to support a fair and effective industrial relations system. We abolished Work Choices and created a balanced industrial relations system that has returned fairness to our workplaces while, at the same time, boosting our national productivity. This means that 2.8 million more Australians have protection against being unfairly sacked.

As I travel through the electorate of McEwen, I find that Australians are getting sick to death of the Leader of the Opposition saying no to everything. But it seems the one thing he can say yes to is Work Choices. Wherever you look it is deep in the hearts of those opposite. They cannot get rid of it. They want an unfair industrial relations policy. They can say it is 'dead, buried and cremated' but it rises again like Frankenstein. We know from their talk over the last six months that they have been thinking of reintroducing a Work Choices system. They do not want Australians to have a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. That is the crystal clear difference between us sitting on this side of the House and those who sit opposite. We want to make sure that everyone gets paid fairly. We want to make sure that for a hard day's work everyone is delivered a fair day's pay in a safe workplace.

Under the Howard Liberal government thousands of Australian workers were worse off. There were the unfair dismissal laws. The most vulnerable workers were forced onto those horrible things called AWAs. AWAs stripped away conditions like penalty rates, rest breaks and overtime—conditions that are so important for people who do not earn as much as we do. Those opposite decided to strip those conditions away from them to make sure that they could not afford that little bit extra for doing an extra bit of hard work. This is not something that the Leader of the Opposition shies away from. His only current policy seems to be Work Choices mark II. Let us go to a speech that he gave in 2001 to that interesting group called the Nicholls Society. He said:

One of the most important Howard Government policies has been the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements.

He thinks it is a good thing that 64 per cent of the AWAs cut annual leave loading; 63 per cent cut penalty rates; 52 per cent cut shiftwork loading; 46 per cent cut public holiday pay; 40 per cent cut rest breaks; 36 per cent cut declared public holidays; and 22 per cent provided workers with no pay rises at all—none, and some for up to five years. They ripped off workers. It is an absolute disgrace that they sit there and say: 'We care for workers now. We've turned over a new leaf.' They have not changed their spots at all. Give them two minutes on this side of the House and I can guarantee that they will be back to where they were under Work Choices, ensuring that we have a two-level society. It will be them taking the money and the rest of the country working hard and delivering the benefits into their pockets and those of the shareholders.

All data shows that our industrial system is working well. We have low unemployment. We have contained wages growth. We have low levels of industrial disputations and record levels of successful workplace agreements. Labor ended the AWA individual contracts that stripped away all the pay and conditions of hardworking Australians. We established Fair Work Australia, an independent umpire—that is the key word, 'independent'—to help employees and employers resolve disputes in the workplace. The Fair Work Act is delivering the outcomes promised to Australians in Labor's Forward with Fairness election policy. It is delivering a record number of agreements, low unemployment and contained wages growth—all three are important to keep our economy growing. It has restored the balance to the industrial relations landscape in this country—a balance that was lost under the dreadful Work Choices.

For all the heat the opposition attempt to create in industrial relations, the reality is that there is precious little to support their views. We have broadened the definition of pay equity so that it does not simply provide equal pay for equal work but provides equal pay for equal work value so that discrimination does not have to be proven as grounds for bringing a case forward. Labor has provided a fair minimum safety net for Australian employees consisting of 10 national employment standards in a modern award system. Labor has helped young families with Australia's first Paid Parental Leave Scheme—a parental leave scheme that the Leader of the Opposition said would happen over his dead body—another promise he broke.

Labor has extended the rights for unpaid parental leave in the National Employment Standards. We have introduced a no disadvantage test to make sure that workplace agreements leave workers better off. We have restored protections from unfair dismissal to 2.8 million Australians. Seven million employees are now eligible for unfair dismissal claims—almost double what was available under Work Choices. We are out there protecting Australian workers and their families. We have streamlined and strengthened the general protections for workers with the freedom for them to choose to be represented in the workplace as a key part of our new system. We are not going to give ground when it comes to protecting the rights of working people.

The Labor way is to support working Australians and the Liberal's way is to abandon them for big business. This legislation is an important step, an important policy, that we are delivering and we need to see it go through to ensure that we have safe and fair building and construction industry workplaces. I wish this bill a very speedy passage.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The last time a bill like the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011 was introduced into the House a very good friend of mine was working on scaffolding and there was a problem. He lost his leg and he very nearly lost his life. Right before that legislation was introduced by the Liberal Party, I knew someone who had suffered in the industry and very nearly died. I was very honoured to see him in hospital. He was dying at that stage and only a few people were allowed in to see him—but he recovered.

Before the bill before us was introduced I attended a stop-work rally. A couple of very good candidates for our new party are very strong union representatives. They insisted that we go along to the stop-work meeting at the tunnels in Brisbane where a series of accidents had occurred. They demanded that I get up and give a speech. There were about 1,000 people at the meeting. I did not know that there was a person teetering between life and death—a man called Sam Beveridge. I did not know who he was. I just knew that there had been a series of accidents and the boys were entitled to go out on the grass about them because the situation was just getting worse, not better. There needed to be a public statement made. I lent whatever value I had in being there. Our state leader was also there. What I did not know was that this person, Sam Beveridge, was a very good friend of mine. I think he ran for mayor of Charters Towers, my home town. Both Frankie and Sam had been brought up with my own daughters and they are some of my best friends in the town and area. Frank is very fine young man. I did not know it was his brother, so it came home to me with a terrible vengeance that whilst I was out there just looking after John Doe, it was not John Doe—it was a person. In fact, both the boys had been very friendly with our family throughout their lives and Frank—Sam's brother—has been one of my closest people in the city of Charters Towers. Sam subsequently died.

There are a lot of people on the Left but almost all the people on my right on the opposition benches do not have a remote understanding of how the real world works. When I was a union rep, briefly, in Mount Isa we had two health issues and one safety issue. I took them up with the foreman on the site and he did nothing about them, so I went racing off to my union—I will not mention which union it was—although the boys told me not to. But, being real smart at that age—I was in my late teens or early 20s—I knew everything about everything. I watched in horror as the union organiser came down, went up in the control room where it is all air conditioned—we were covered in lead dust from daylight to dark where I was working with my shovel over my shoulder—and pointed out to my bosses that I was the bloke making the complaints.

I am ashamed to admit this, but I think I should: I pulled out on that because I was on huge money and was not going to give up my job. So we just had to go on in an unhealthy situation. I do not want to be very specific about it but there was wire netting. We had pretty bad dengue problems up in these areas and there were massive numbers of mosquitoes. Someone had got drunk and fallen through the wire netting and it needed to be fixed. On the work site, a shaker kept getting stuck so one of us had to jump on a flue and hit it with a sledge hammer and then let it move—you hoped—but often it did not. Then a bloke on the other side would hit it with a sledge hammer until, eventually we would break it free and it would start moving. But when it started moving it came back at you at about 60 miles an hour. Of course, if you stayed long enough on the flue leading up to it your leather boots would start to burn because it was extremely hot as well. It was an extremely dangerous situation and the damn shaker needed to be fixed. But, I am ashamed to say, I was intimidated.

The reason this bill was introduced was to intimidate union officials so that they would go to water, like I did. We do not want our union officials being intimidated. They tell me—I do not remember it clearly—that there were terrible problems and excessive behaviour by some of the unions involved. Some of these people came across from the Painters and Dockers Union where there were serious problems, and I would be the first to admit that. I was well aware of that. If those problems were there, they are ancient history and they are most certainly not there today. But even if they were, you do not start taking away basic freedoms. In Australia today, particularly in the states of Queensland and New South Wales, property rights are just a joke. I mean, you do not own your house; the Crown owns your house.

Long, long ago, in 1215 at a place called Runnymede, we stood the Crown up and said, 'Listen, Mr Crown, you are not grabbing us off the street any longer and dragging us to one of your dungeons. You will only take us through due process of law that you, Mr State, will not control.' What does this bill do? Exactly that. We can grab you, take you away and put you in a room. You have no rights, you have got to do that, and when you are in that room you will tell us what we want to know and if you do not we will leave you in that room indefinitely—it is called a jail.

In this place it amazes me that nobody seems to read any books. They do not seem to have any knowledge of history. They do not understand that the most basic concepts upon which our society is built. I said to an Attorney-General in the Labor government—no, I will not say that because I am not too sure whether he was Justice Minister or Attorney-General or assistant Attorney-General or what the hell his position was—'Don't you understand this is habeas corpus? It's what we fought and died for, the Magna Carta, and our forebears have been fighting and dying for it ever since. Don't you understand that?' He just did not understand it. I said, 'Mate, your superiors understand it and you are in desperate trouble.' This man was a numbskull. The judge in court said, 'I simply can't believe this case, that the minister could have allowed such a towering injustice to occur; that the man was taken without any evidence whatsoever and thrown in jail for five years of his life without any evidence.' In fact, there was evidence and it proved that he was not in the place, absolutely, where the crime was committed. But the minister would not review the case, so the judge pounded him. The Prime Minister, who makes these decisions, subsequently sacked him. How is it that a person can become a minister in a government and not know about these most elemental freedoms?

If the opposition votes against this bill today then it will demonstrate to every single person—all 22 million, or whatever it is, of us in Australia—that it does not understand the most basic precepts of freedom. Habeas corpus in its translation from Latin says 'have the person'. You cannot have the person without due, proper and fair process of law, and that dates back all the way to 1215. I strongly recommend that everyone in the House go and see Russell Crowe's movie Robin Hood. It was more about the property rights side of things, but it had it dead right. Effectively, the message was: 'Mr King, Mr Crown, you do not have a discretionary power to tell me what to do. You do not have a discretionary power. You are subject to the law, Mr Crown. That is my land, not your land.' There was a wonderful scene in it in with the great Australian actor and father of the Rabbitohs, Russell Crowe—he could get away with it, of course. King John says to him, 'What? Do you think I have the wherewithal to give every Englishman a castle?' and Russell Crowe—as I say, he could get away with it—replies, 'Every Englishman's home is his castle.'

Well, it ain't so in Queensland or in New South Wales. We are not allowed to remove a flying fox from our backyard in Queensland. We are not allowed to kill a deadly snake in our living room in Queensland. We are not allowed to have a pocketknife in Queensland; they have banned all pocketknives in Queensland. No, we have discretionary government. It was called tyranny once upon a time, but I will use the term 'discretionary government'. This is at the very heart of that. The Crown's minions can be given the power just to pluck you off the street, put you in a room and, if you do not tell them what they want to know, leave you in that room forever, just about.

I do not want to be promoting either myself or my colleague—it is very rare for him to be my colleague—from the party which sits at the opposite political pole to me. But there has to be something badly wrong when the Greens climb into bed with Katter's Australian Party. There has to be something very badly wrong.

It is all right for the government to promote themselves and say how wonderful they are by moving this and by saying how terrible the other mob were. But I still have worries about this. Obviously, I have discussed it with union officials, but the coercive powers are still there for three years. If you wanted to phase them out, why would you not phase them out in 15 months? I view the three years with very great suspicion, because 15 months is plenty to phase them out. If they are to continue for three years, the polls suggest there may well be a change of government in that time. So it could well be that the government of Australia—the cabinet ministers—sat down with the captains of industry and said: 'Don't worry about it, blokes. We are not going well, mate. We won't be there, so you can change it all back again.' It is just a stop-the-sunshine clause. But if it were to be removed entirely, it would make it infinitely more difficult, particularly with the numbers in the Senate, for the people on my right to take away our basic freedoms, as they did with their IR legislation.

I spoke about habeas corpus—that you cannot 'have the body'. Another term is 'Star Chamber'. It is about discretionary power. The king decided that he would just give discretionary power to a judge and judicial set-up—it became known as the Star Chamber—but there were no rules; they could just decide whatever they liked. They were just attack dogs, in many cases, for the Crown. So the term 'Star Chamber' is a word that we curse and vilify, as we do the Inquisition and various other forms of tyranny which have jumped up to attack us over the course of history. The concept of a Star Chamber was that it could just make a decision whether you liked it or not. In this case, they have the discretion to apply coercion if the person is not going to rat on his mates or his fellow workmen. It gives me no great pride to stand in here and say that I dingoed it back when I was working at Mount Isa Mines. I was not actually a union rep at that time, so I can defend myself to some degree, I suppose, but I still feel pretty ashamed to have to admit that.

But what I am trying to get across is that it is scary out there. If you complain about the way things are happening at work, you get sacked. I do not think the people on my right here have ever worked in a job in the real world, because if they had they would know that if you complain about safety and security—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then how do you explain to me that, if a person in the building industry decides that there is a serious problem of workplace health and safety and he complains about it—

Opposition members interjecting—

No, your legislation said that he has to rat out his mates.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! All remarks will be made through the chair.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are going to move amendments to try to make this legislation go as it should go if it is going to be fair dinkum. We will be moving to remove the coercive powers now and restore the right to silence—a right which every other country in the world respects. We are going to respect habeas corpus and the right to silence, which are two basic building blocks of society throughout the rest of the world, with— (Time expired)

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011. This bill will rename the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 as the Fair Work Building (Industry Act) 2011. It will also abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and replace it with the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate, which will be headed by a director appointed by the minster. Under the bill, the minister will have the power to specify the manner in which the director of the inspectorate is to exercise powers and functions, although that will not be in relation to particular cases. This is similar to the power of the minister found in the BCII Act. However, the minister will also have the ability to give direction to the director on policies, programs and priorities. This power is not found in the current act. The bill also introduces new compulsory examination notices which would allow for the director of the inspectorate to apply to a nominated Administration Appeals Tribunal presidential member for a notice that would require a person to attend an examination in relation to an ongoing investigation. The bill provides for the conduct of such examinations, as well as penalties for noncompliance with an examination notice. However, an interested person can make an application to have the compulsory examination notice powers of the Administration Appeals Tribunal presidential member not apply to particular building projects. In effect, this means that a person can simply switch off the inspectorate's ability to examine possible contraventions of workplace relations law.

The bill before the parliament today will strip away many of the protections that workers in the building and construction industry currently have that ensure they work in a safe and lawful environment. When we look to what has happened in the past, the most probable outcome of the removal of the Building and Construction Commission will be a resurgence of uncertainty and a decline in productivity in the building and construction industry.

I have previously spoken in this place about the history of the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Whilst I do not intend to go through that detail today, it is useful to briefly go through the background. The building and construction industry in Australia has a long history of industrial disputation. Over many years, there have been numerous inquiries and investigations into how that sector operates.

Some of the reviews appeared to focus on terms and conditions of employment and relevant awards provisions, such as the review conducted by a full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in the late 1980s. The full bench made a number of findings in relation to inconsistent regulation between federal and state jurisdictions, the abolition of paid rates awards, the establishment of a single award and the rationalisation of award respondents. Whilst these were clearly very useful findings, this review dealt with only a relatively small number of issues that impacted on the building and construction industry.

In effect, what was uncovered later revealed it to be the tip of the iceberg. Whilst this was a positive step in regulating the industry, there was no doubt that there was a significant way to go to reform the sector, particularly to deal with entrenched work practices. There were further reviews during the 1990s and the early 2000s at various levels dealing with a wide range of issues, including workers being forced to join a union, right of entry, strike pay and contractors.

In 2001 the Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry was established, with broad-ranging terms of reference, including inquiring into and reporting on unlawful or otherwise inappropriate industrial or workplace practice, occupational health and safety, fraud, corruption, collusion or anti-competitive behaviour, coercion, violence and interference in decisions on whether or not to engage persons or the terms under which they would be employed or engaged.

Clearly, there were some significant and serious matters impacting on the performance of the sector in the years leading up to the royal commission. Submissions were put to the Cole royal commission in relation to the perceived need by major contractors to concede to union demands in order to avoid future economic losses and subsequent pressure on subcontractors to sign pattern bargaining agreements or not be engaged on major building sites.

The findings of the royal commission included that there was an urgent need for structural and cultural reform in the building and construction industry and that the industry 'departs from the standards of commercial and industrial conduct exhibited in the rest of the Australian economy'. Commissioner Cole found that past attempts to reform the conduct and culture of the industry had failed and that this failure was due 'to two principal factors'. Firstly:

… there has been an insufficient determination on the part of government to establish structures which will enable the industry to operate fairly and productively and in a manner respecting the rights of individuals. There has been an inadequate structure to enforce the law and usual standards applicable in other industries.

Commissioner Cole also recommended the establishment of an independent commission, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, to monitor conduct in the industry.

The Building and Construction Commission which was subsequently established, has instituted proceedings for contravention of laws, including those relating to coercion, right of entry, strike pay and freedom of association, just to name a few. It has also initiated proceedings in courts and with Fair Work Australia. Investigations over the past financial year discovered over 900 contraventions of Commonwealth workplace relations law, with $2.5 million worth of penalties being imposed by the courts and Fair Work Australia. Master Builders Australia said in relation to these penalties:

The Parliament cannot ignore such court findings and convictions and should not agree to any watering down of the current powers.

From its inception through until the end of May 2011, the Australian Building and Construction Commission has successfully prosecuted 74 cases, and it has been unsuccessful in only eight of those. Most of these cases have been in Victoria, where there is a long and bitter history of disputation in the building and construction industry. In the financial year 2010-11, 402 investigations were conducted by the Australian Building and Construction Commission into alleged workplace relations law contraventions, 72 of those being in my home state of Queensland. In 2010, there were only 20 investigations in Queensland. During this period, there were 354 new investigations, compared to the 2010 number of 241, and the 2009 number of 213. There were also 107 continuing investigations, compared to 48 in the previous year. The picture that this very clearly paints is that there has been an increasing number of investigations conducted by the Australian Building and Construction Commission over more recent years. It is clear from that pattern—there is clear evidence—that there is a genuine, ongoing need for the Australian Building and Construction Commission to be retained and to continue. It also, as part of its activities, began 134 sham contracting investigations and recovered $127,479 in wages—again, significant amounts. The increase in the number of investigations can be put down to the Australian Building and Construction Commission now being able to conduct full service regulation. This was only achieved in March last year after it assumed responsibility for wage and entitlement claims from the Fair Work Ombudsman.

These facts show the effectiveness of, and the hard work that has been done by, the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner in bringing a degree of certainty to an industry that has otherwise been characterised by, as the Cole commission described it, a certain degree of lawlessness. However, this government has recently seen the number of working days lost in the building and construction industry skyrocket to 44 days per thousand employees, the highest level since 2005. This is clearly disappointing, considering that the number of working days lost per thousand employees fell from 224 in 2004 to 24 in 2006, this being the time period where the Australian Building and Construction Commission was first set up.

It would be inappropriate and unrealistic to believe that all disallowed activities on building sites can be completely eradicated. The National Electrical and Communications Association also said in November last year that there is still some degree of lawlessness in the building and construction industry but:

… the ABCC has been effective in removing the worst instances. Removing the ABCC or emasculating its powers will see increased inappropriate behaviour and this will lead to the costs of projects blowing out and delays in construction.

I support those comments.

The benefits that have come about due to the Australian Building and Construction Commission's activities are not restricted to regulation of inappropriate action in the industry. During the period of time since the creation of the ABCC, the building and construction industry has seen a 10 per cent increase in productivity, an economic welfare gain of $5.5 billion per year, reduced inflation of about 1.2 per cent and a 1.5 per cent increase in gross domestic product. The creation of the Australian Building and Construction Commission has also had the effect of reducing the cost of construction around Australia by 20 to 25 per cent, with project delays being significantly reduced.

As an independent body, the commission is currently separate from Fair Work Australia and the Fair Work Ombudsman. It has the ability to investigate contraventions in workplace relations law and also to promote harmonious working environments within the entirety of the building and construction industry. Yet the government is willing to strip back all the ground that has been made by the commission in recent years, even in the face of the commission's success.

Although this bill may have national impacts, it will potentially directly impact my electorate of McPherson. On the Gold Coast, the construction industry has traditionally been a strong contributor to the local economy, yet there has been a downturn in the industry due to economic circumstances, probably significantly for the past two or three years. The abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission will return the building and construction industry to the days of work stoppages, heavy handed industrial tactics and project uncertainty. With the current economic climate, the Gold Coast's building and construction industry cannot withstand the introduction of another impediment to future success, nor can the wider Gold Coast economy, the Queensland economy or the Australian economy.

Removing the Australian Building and Construction Commission as well as the protections it offers workers in those industries will merely be a return to the old days of union run and dominated construction sites. This cannot be allowed to happen, not just for the sake of efficiency and certainty in the building and construction industry but for the benefit of communities and the nation. I support the continuation of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Geoff Lyons (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the House today to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011. This bill provides the framework for cooperative and productive relations in the building industry. It is based on the recommendations of Justice Wilcox QC, who said the new regulator should retain coercive information-gathering powers while removing the existing higher penalties for building industry participants for breaches of industrial law and introducing safeguards in relation to the power to compulsorily obtain information and documents.

I am proud to be here today to say that after six years we are on the verge of seeing the end of the Australian Building Construction Commissioner, the ABCC. The ABCC was created by the Howard government in 2005 to enforce its laws and 'criminalise' much union related activity on construction sites. It was:

… provided with powers to enforce workplace laws, to address the problems that the building and construction industry encounters.

… Its key objective is to ensure that workplace relations laws are enforced in building and construction industry workplaces.

To give a bit of history, its predecessor, the Building Industry Taskforce, was set up in the wake of the politically driven Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry. It is okay for employers to salt away their capital and withdraw their labour but it is a criminal act for employees to do the same, under the Liberal's law. While its brief was to oversee adherence to industrial law, the ABCC evidently fails to investigate or prosecute employers for underpaying workers or breaching safety regulations. Rather, it has been alleged that it targets individual workers involved in union or collective activity not strictly related to EBA negotiations.

This bill will abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and create a new agency, the Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate, to regulate the building and construction industry. The new regulator will provide information, advice and assistance to all building industry employers and employees regarding their rights and obligations under the law, as well as seek to improve the standard of occupational health and safety in the building and construction industry. As Minister Evans said, the inspectorate will have the powers and responsibilities to ensure employers, organisations, employees and trade unions abide by their obligations under the law. The bill implements the key recommendations of the report Transition to Fair Work Australia for the Building and Construction Industry by the honourable Murray Wilcox QC. Mr Wilcox undertook a considerable amount of work, and I take this opportunity to thank him for his efforts and his thoughtful and balanced report.

The inspectorate will retain the coercive information gathering powers. The bill removes existing higher penalties for the building industry participants for breaches of industrial law and introduces safeguards in relation to the power to compulsorily obtain information and documents. The bill creates an office of Independent Assessor who will on application by stakeholders determine that compulsory information gathering powers will not apply to a project. The bill includes a three-year sunset provision for the compulsory information gathering powers. A review will occur prior to the sunset of the compulsory information gathering powers. The bill does not impact on the provisions that establish the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner or the OH&S Accreditation Scheme.

At the heart of Labor's new workplace relations system is fairness. It is what we have strived for and it is something I am very proud of. Under the Liberal Party's Work Choices scheme, protection from being sacked unfairly was stripped away from more than three million workers. Thousands of workers were pushed onto AWA individual contracts: 70 per cent lost shift loadings, 68 per cent lost annual leave loadings, 65 per cent lost penalty rates, 49 per cent lost overtime loadings and 25 per cent no longer had public holidays. Those on the other side of the chamber should hang their head in shame for what they did to everyday working Australians. I cannot comprehend why they would have devised and voted for such a destructive scheme. As workplace relations minister, the member for Warringah actually opposed a paid parental leave scheme and said it would be introduced over his government's dead body. We cannot trust the Liberal Party on workplace relations.

Liberals seem to think that the stick will make the donkey work harder, but they are wrong. There is significant criticism of the former Howard government's ABCC, especially its targeting of building unions, by the wider community and by the labour movement. Here, today, we are taking a stand. We are creating a new body to provide a balanced framework for cooperative and productive workplace relations in the building and construction industry. Labor understands that the construction industry contains unique challenges for both employers and employees. As a result we have always supported a strong building industry regulator to ensure lawful conduct by all parties. The government believes that the ABCC in its current form is not an appropriate regulator and needs to be replaced with a new body that is part of the mainstream Fair Work system. This new regulator will operate in accordance with community expectations of a fair and just workplace relations system. I say here today that the abolition of the ABCC will not result in a return to the industrial disputes of last century, because the building industry inspectorate will continue to regulate the industry fairly and effectively. The opposition is committed to pursuing extreme workplace relations laws rather than ensuring lawful conduct by all parties in the building industry. We cannot trust the opposition on workplace laws and fairness.

Construction workers want to be treated the same as all other workers—not be subjected to the stress of arbitrary interrogations which can hang over their heads for months. Mr Noonan, National Secretary of the CFMEU's Construction Branch, said that since the Australian Building and Construction Commission was created by the Howard government it had achieved nothing except intimidation of workers in the construction industry. Right across Australia construction workers have been under attack from the legacy of Howard's industrial relations laws. As the Australian Building and Construction Commission continues to use its draconian powers, I stand here today with the aim of putting an end to this.

The International Labour Organisation, the UN body charged with looking after workers' rights, has taken aim at the ABCC on several occasions in the past, but earlier last year its condemnation was expressed in the strongest possible terms. The ILO's Committee of Experts, an eminent body of labour law jurists, noted:

… the manner in which the ABCC carries out its activities seems to have led to the exclusion of workers in the building and construction industry from the protection that the labour inspection system ought to secure for these workers under the applicable laws, the Committee urges the Government to ensure that the priorities of the ABCC (or the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate) are effectively reoriented …

We believe the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner needs to be replaced with a body that is part of the mainstream Fair Work system. Only considered, fair and balanced laws will create the sort of long-term change that the industry needs if it is to create jobs and make a positive contribution to national productivity and prosperity.

The building and construction industry is a critical sector of our economy with immediate and direct impacts on jobs, growth and productivity. Its importance is demonstrated by the scale and scope of construction funding the Australian government has committed through the BER projects. Those opposite of course opposed the GFC package. They opposed the jobs it would create and the facilities it provided. In Tasmania, Liberal state parliamentarians and even Liberal candidates for the next election have been happy to attend BER opening ceremonies, even though the initiative was voted against by the Liberal Party.

We know that the Labor Party is the only party that supports a fair and effective industrial relations system. We abolished Work Choices and created a balanced industrial relations system that returns fairness to our workplaces, while boosting national productivity. All the independent evidence shows that our industrial system is working well for employers and for workers. We have very low unemployment: more than 750,000 jobs have been created since we came to office, with 120,400 in the last 12 months alone. Wage growth has been moderate and fair. Industrial disputes remain at low levels: days lost due to industrial disputes are a third of the number during the Howard years. During the Howard years, 13.6 working days were lost per 1,000 workers per quarter; under this Labor government, 3.6 working days have been lost per 1,000 workers per quarter. Record levels of successful workplace agreements are being completed. The way we handled the Qantas situation in 2011 demonstrates the effectiveness and fairness of the laws put in place by this Labor government. The Labor government stands for fairness. It abolished Work Choices and ended individual contracts that stripped away Australian pay and conditions; set up Fair Work Australia, an independent umpire, to help resolve workplace disputes; introduced a new no disadvantage test to make sure workplace agreements left workers better off; and provided a fair minimum safety net for Australian employees, comprising 10 national employment standards and a modern award system.

As Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the current Leader of the Opposition, the member for Warringah, sought to trade government support for the car industry for them implementing a radical IR agenda, including individual contracts. He insisted the car companies set up a $1 million fund to sue workers and unions. Later, as Minister for Health and Ageing, he tried the same thing, asking drug companies who received PBS income to implement AWAs. And let's not forget that he refused to release documents detailing the government's involvement in the protracted meat dispute at G&K O'Connor, where union members were locked out for nine months and endured pay cuts of up to 60 per cent.

If he ever becomes Prime Minister, I have no doubt in my mind that he will bring back Work Choices. He said on 19 March 2008:

The Howard Government's industrial legislation, it was good for wages, it was good for jobs, and it was good for workers.

We all understand that Work Choices is in the Liberal Party's DNA. They do not believe in protections and regulations at work. They do not believe in protecting basic rights such as holiday pay, sick pay, redundancy, overtime, and health and safety. Shame on them. No matter what they try to call it, they will bring back its key elements—stripping away basic employee rights such as unfair dismissal protections.

The Gillard Labor government believes in making this nation stronger and fairer. The government understands that only considered, fair and balanced laws will create the sort of long-term change Australia's building and construction industry needs if it is to flourish, create jobs and make a positive contribution to national productivity and prosperity. The Gillard Labor government is working hard at building a strong economy, a sustainable environment and a fair society that provides every Australian the opportunity to prosper and succeed in life. What the Liberals do not get is that putting people under threat reduces productivity and industry. Our first priority is keeping the economy strong—protecting jobs, driving new growth and creating opportunity for all so that no person and no place is left behind. We are striving for fairness and balance. I commend the bill to the House.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to be able to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011. The situation we find ourselves in is that we have a leftover issue to deal with in relation to the terrible Work Choices regime. Here we see the next step and the healing hand of Labor in dealing with the deep and damaging wound caused by that Work Choices period. It was a shameful period with a surprise package sprung on the electorate without a mandate.

It is something to reflect upon that we have heard from the coalition that they generally supported the mandate that we had to deal with the Work Choices issue, and yet they have strongly opposed this last remaining measure to deal with one of its most damaging aspects. It was an aspect that I found particularly abhorrent, as I know many members on our side did. This was a mechanism, the ABCC, that targeted a particular component of the industrial relations sector, a particular element of that component being focused purely on construction industry workers in a totally disproportionate manner. There are incidents and issues in certain locations in the sector but it is, generally speaking, a well-functioning industry that was at the time achieving productivity gains and which still is. I will come back to that point.

This measure that we are discussing today introduces a new mechanism, the building industry inspectorate, to replace the ABCC. It will get the balance right in dealing with the issues that we know emerge on the employer side of this equation as well. There have been many of those. I have witnessed many of them in my proximity to colleagues in the ACT and the loss of life experienced on building sites. It has also been my great privilege to represent many CFMEU members in my region. Prior to the redistribution, a large number of them were working in the Carter Holt Harvey and Hyne timber mills in the Tumut and Tumbarumba region and down at the South East Fibre Exports facility in Eden. And there are many construction workers who live in Queanbeyan, Bungendore and Jerrabomberra who commute across to worksites in the ACT and around my region. These are men and women enjoying the benefits of collective agreements negotiated with their employers through good partnerships, producing good productivity outcomes with that team approach to an industry, which we know is going to always offer the best potential for productivity outcomes.

This measure will even out the oversight of the industry given that we obviously have issues that still remain that people are concerned about to do with the oversight of the industry. I am personally of the belief that the day is fast approaching when there will be no need to make any distinction in relation to this sector of our economy. In particular, I have always been deeply concerned about the compulsory examination power that existed under the ABCC. With this reform there will be a sunset clause attached to that aspect, and the belief is that in three years time there will be no longer any plausible argument as to why such powers need to exist. These sorts of powers should be extremely carefully considered in any democracy. The circumstances in which you would resort to powers like this have to be exigent and very focused on limiting their duration and application. It has always deeply troubled me that these sorts of provisions have existed. I look forward to their demise and there being no longer a need to resort to them. So we will then see the last of some of the abhorrent aspects of this Howard measure, which was in fact designed to target workers, destroy their representative capacity and destroy unionism in this country. That was the overall plan.

I well remember my opponent in the 2007 campaign, the former member for Eden-Monaro, saying on radio that unions knew that if Labor was not successful in that campaign their days would be numbered, that it would be all over. This was the strategy and that was the tactic: to destroy the representative ability of workers in this country—a more reprehensible strategy could not be contemplated.

With these provisions in this legislation we will also see the ability to deal with the situation of the employers—and we have seen lots of unlawful conduct associated with the construction industry on the part of employers. We have seen underpayment of wages and sham contracting. In recent times in this region, we have seen lots of incidents of unsatisfactory practices in relation to work and safety. I commend the colleagues that I have worked with who looked after the interests of those workers in the CFMEU, who do such a wonderful job not only in representing the interests of their members and promoting a prosperous industry but also in the added support that they provide to our community and our region. They have been involved in so many activities, charitable and otherwise, that they are integral to the quality of life of our community. I salute what the CFMEU have contributed to my region and to the interests of the workers in that region.

Coming back to the context in which this legislation is being introduced and curing the legacy of the Work Choices years, we know that Mr Abbott has stated that Work Choices is dead and buried or cremated, but we have seen the reintroduction of the concept through the code word 'flexibility'. What flexibility means to the coalition is returning to those days when the worst impositions of Work Choices had a devastating effect on people. Why is that? Why do they resort to these measures? They talk about productivity in the economy. To the coalition, we know that productivity solutions always mean making the worker carry the burden of those productivity gains. The easy solution for them will always be to cut wages, cut jobs and support productivity gains in whichever way they can through the hide of the worker.

When Mr Abbott talks about signing pledges in blood, he means he is signing his pledges in workers' blood. He does not support the preservation of jobs—the hundreds of thousands of jobs that were obviously saved through the GFC, the hundreds of thousands of jobs attached to the automotive industry, or the thousands of jobs we have heard the shadow Treasurer talk about axing from the Public Service in my region alone, which would devastate our local economy, as the coalition did back in 1996 when they sent us into recession.

We should really focus on the true story of productivity. There are many fine economic commentators who have burst the balloon on the issue that industrial relations is the heart of productivity and accounts for where this country is now. It just is not true. Of course improvements can always be made to industrial relations regimes. Circumstances change, economies transition, and you always need to keep an eye on reforms that might be necessary.

Where we are now has been greatly emphasised by a number of very credible commentators such as Alan Kohler, Ross Gittins and George Megalogenis, people you would pay attention to on economic matters—not, I am afraid, Larry, Curly and Moe, the member for Goldstein, the member for North Sydney and the Leader of the Opposition. Their credibility has been absolutely blown out of the water in recent times. Not only have we seen the farcical 'pass the parcel' situation of the budget reply at the previous budget; also we saw their credibility blown out of the water in the 2010 campaign with the Howarth so-called 'audit' that was not an audit and disciplinary action had to be taken in relation to that. That was a farce, because they were not able to test the assumptions that underpinned the estimates. If you can test the assumptions then the figure, if you pardon the expression, is bollocks. We have seen their credibility blown out of the water. Since then we have seen the estimates in relation to Nauru done on the back of a coaster by a catering company. I am not sure what we are going to see next. Perhaps they will subcontract their next budget reply to McDonald's.

If we look at what Alan Kohler, for example, has written in relation to productivity—and we are talking about multifactor productivity, the relationship between capital and labour which is the only really important and relevant factor to look at—we have seen that the productivity figures at the moment, taking into account all the sectors, have been skewed in relation to the impact of investment and issues in the mining sector. Certainly, there has been a decline in mining productivity and the reason for that are the high levels of investment in the mining and utilities industries that have not yet come on-stream. That has also been affected by the GDP growth, which has been slower during the GFC.

The massive investment in the mining industry that we have seen is important because the injection of capital relating to productivity outputs of labour has been extremely skewed by this massive investment. It is the mining and quarrying sector that is skewing the overall productivity picture in this country. If you look at manufacturing, construction, hospitality and real estate, they all improved their growth in productivity between the 1990s and the 2000s. This is the true picture.

When we talk about productivity, what we mean is facilitating it through investment in infrastructure, investment in skills and particularly through promotion of innovation. These are the key areas. We want to see wages maintained. We cannot engage in a race to the bottom with China and India on labour costs. That is just not possible and is not desirable for our country. We know that there are huge possibilities open to us in innovation. This government have been investing not only in innovation but also in addressing those long-neglected infrastructure and skills issues that the previous Howard government let slide during those Rip Van Winkle years. We know that, more broadly, growth in non-mining productivity has picked up and not slowed. Clearly, the impact of industrial relations reform has just not been what some of the commentators in the coalition have claimed. Another key factor underpinning the government's approach has been research by the University of New South Wales, Australian National University, Macquarie University and the Copenhagen Business School, which examined 77 businesses in the services sector with more than 5,600 employees. They found that the best performers are better at innovation. They generate more new ideas and are better at capturing and assessing their employees' ideas. In consequence, they make more improvements to services and production processes, management structures and marketing methods. But some 'treat them mean to keep them keen' managers will be surprised that high-performing outfits do better when it comes to employee emotions. They have higher levels of job satisfaction, employee commitment and willingness to exert extra effort, and they have lower levels of anxiety, fear, depression and feelings of inadequacy. One of the bottom line consequences of this is low rates of staff turnover. As Ross Gittins points out in his analysis of that study, these are the keys to where smart employers need to go. Certainly those employers that encourage innovation and are open to criticism see it as a learning opportunity. They foster involvement and cooperation among staff and provide opportunities for them to engage and contribute to the long-term progression and development of their enterprise.

These management practices are what smart employers are doing. Through the clean energy future package we have seen this government open up a whole new field of potential, not only through the Carbon Farming Initiative—which has provided great opportunities for our agricultural sector in innovation and employment opportunities—but also through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, with the $10 billion that will be able to get behind loan guarantees and so on and will encourage the venture capital for a new economy that is in great demand the world over.

This is the real secret to the economic improvements in this country and these are the challenges ahead of us that we must face. This comes back to our philosophy of not treating workers as widgets in the way the coalition does. We do not believe that workers are simply commodities that cannot be dealt with as human beings. We will find a way to achieve our productivity gains without penalising the workers. We also intend to make sure that we keep the jobs—prosperous and satisfying jobs—growing in this economy through the investments we are making in infrastructure, in the clean energy package and also, most importantly, in the rollout of the National Broadband Network. It is absolutely beyond belief that someone like the Leader of the Nationals and the coalition are doing the regions of this country a disfavour. This is the great potential piece of infrastructure that will open up worlds of possibilities to regions like mine, where we will see things like the timber precinct in Bombala growing through the investment of $200 million by Dongwha-Tasco, who will not reach or develop the full potential of that project without the NBN underpinning it. This is what they have clearly indicated to us.

Beyond that, there are lots of innovative, new, non-polluting industries that will be associated with the NBN, because basically you can hang off that infrastructure in any location you choose in many industries without having to be tied to metro environments. For a region like mine and regions all over this country, the NBN will be a key factor in achieving the goals that we set for ourselves. That is what the government is all about: a rewarding, secure, prosperous future for our people.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak this afternoon on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011 and to argue passionately against its passage in this parliament. This bill impacts one of the most important sectors in our economy: the building and construction industry. This is an industry which employs almost a million people, it contributes 10 per cent to our GDP, and it supports the growth and prosperity of almost every other industry as well. We know, for example, that if construction costs are down then this flows through the entire economy in a positive way. It means that the input costs for most businesses are lower. On the other hand, if construction costs are up, the reverse applies. Then it means that every single business needs to have higher input costs in relation to their construction costs.

This bill goes directly to the productivity of this sector, it goes directly to the safety of this sector and it goes directly to the performance of the construction industry. Unfortunately, it has a negative impact on this sector in every sense of the word. Consequently, we on this side of the House are strongly opposed to the bill.

It is well known on this side of the House and it is well known across Australia that unlawful behaviour exists on some building sites. It is well known, as ACCI has pointed out, that intimidation, threatening behaviour and disregard for the law have been part of the industry for some time, particularly in my home state of Victoria. In the mid-2000s, such was the extent of the public's concern, the industry's concern and the government's concern that a royal commission was established to get to the bottom of the problem and to work out how to tackle some of the unlawfulness which was occurring on building and construction sites. A royal commission was established, headed by Mr Cole QC. This commission found a number of things. It found that indeed the building and construction industry was characterised by widespread disregard of the law. Indeed, the royal commission, the highest form of government inquiry that we can have, found over 100 types of unlawful and inappropriate conduct occurring on building and construction sites across Australia.

It also found that existing authorities and agencies did not have sufficient power to properly tackle that unlawful behaviour. It went through in some detail particular case studies which showed exactly what was occurring on some of these sites. It showed exactly some of the payments that were made, some of the go-slow actions that were occurring, some of the union unlawfulness, some of the days lost, and indeed it showed that in some instances the entire existence of some companies in Australia was jeopardised and that hundreds of jobs did not eventuate because of the unlawfulness which was occurring on the construction sites. The Howard government took heed of the royal commission. It looked very closely at the recommendations of Mr Cole QC and, off the back of that report, established the Australian Building and Construction Commission to tackle unlawful behaviour. It wanted to establish a very robust independent authority that could aggressively tackle the unlawful behaviour Mr Cole had documented so thoroughly through his royal commission. The ABCC has had a dramatic impact—there is no doubt about that. It has been what we would characterise as the tough cop on the beat. It has taken a very strong stance against unlawful behaviour on building and construction sites and a very strong stance against union thuggery on building and construction sites.

Let us look at the results of this action. I am not saying that all of these improvements are due to the ABCC, but certainly it has had a considerable impact on the results I am about to outline. First of all, productivity has increased by 10 per cent since the introduction of the ABCC. We have had annual economic welfare gain from the sector of $5.5 billion. It has helped reduce inflation overall by 1.2 per cent. Since the ABCC was introduced, the sector has helped increase GDP by 1.5 per cent. The following statistic is quite remarkable. The number of working days lost annually per 1,000 employees in the construction industry fell from 224 days in 2004 to 24 days in 2006, just a year after the ABCC was introduced. It is a remarkable impact. Building costs have fallen by 20 to 25 per cent. As I mentioned earlier, lower building costs flow through the entire economy. Almost every single business relies on some sort of office space, some sort of building, which has to be constructed and if building costs are lower it means the business's input costs are consequently lower, and it can be more profitable and employ more people. So the ABCC has undoubtedly been tremendously successful in the overall effort to tackle unlawful behaviour, to improve productivity in the industry and to consequently reduce building costs as well.

Nearly everyone has benefited from this. Clearly the industry itself has benefited because it is now a more productive industry with fewer days lost due to industrial action and the like. Consumers have also benefited because, with building and construction costs down by 20 to 25 per cent, they are also beneficiaries of the actions of the ABCC. Workers have benefited through higher wages, which can only be sustainable through higher productivity. Many of them have also benefited from a safer workplace, knowing that the laws will be abided by. Across all sectors—whether it is the industry, consumers, workers or downstream businesses—nearly everybody has been a beneficiary of the operation of the ABCC.

What does this bill before us actually do in relation to the ABCC? Remarkably, it abolishes this very body that has been so successful. It strips away the protections ensuring workers can work in a safe and lawful environment and replaces those protections with what we would consider to be a toothless tiger. The new body which will replace the ABCC will not be an independent body—it will be established within Fair Work Australia and it will be controlled by the minister; a minister under a Labor government who invariably will have been a union official and invariably will be reliant in some respects on the union to retain his or her ministry. If this bill passes it is almost inevitable that it will have a negative consequence on some of the things I have talked about. Inevitably it will contribute to more days lost on building sites and go-slows on major projects. It will have a negative impact on losses and productivity.

It is not as if there are no longer any problems on business sites. ACCI points out that in the last year alone there were 402 investigations into alleged breaches of laws. I know in my own state of Victoria there have been 130 days lost at the Wonthaggi desalination plant due to industrial action, and many commentators argue that there is basically a go-slow going on down there. ACCI believes this bill will effectively shut down the ABCC and hand over a watered-down set of powers to a specialist Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate, which it suggests will send all the wrong signals to industry participants.

Why is the Labor Party doing this? The ABCC has been a tremendously successful body. It directly came out of an independent royal commission headed up by a very respected QC and it has been very effective in its operation. I mentioned before that nearly everyone has benefited from the operation of the ABCC—the industry, workers, downstream businesses and consumers. The organisations that have not been beneficiaries have been the unions, which in some respects have had some of their unlawful activity curbed by the operation of the ABCC. As you would appreciate, many businesses are doing it exceptionally tough at the moment. The construction industry is doing it tough in many places, with growth figures flatlining. This is the most inappropriate moment to be introducing further measures that will make it tougher for that industry. This government has already introduced a number of measures that make it tough for the building and construction industry and indeed tough for businesses overall. We have had upward pressure on interest rates because of the four highest budget deficits in Australian history over the last four years. We have had a retightening of labour laws, which many businesses say is making it difficult to properly manage their businesses in a fair way. We have had overburdensome regulations introduced in many other areas. And of course the granddaddy of them all will be coming our way on 1 July and will apply to every single business across Australia: the carbon tax. While businesses are doing it tough, while we read in the newspapers almost daily about job losses in various sectors, the government is going ahead with some of these measures that just make it tougher for industry to operate.

This bill before us is not a good bill. This bill attempts to fix a problem that does not exist. Rather, the Australian Building and Construction Commission has been an immensely effective, independent organisation that has tackled unlawful behaviour, contributed to increased productivity, contributed to a safer workplace and contributed to lower construction costs, which flow through to everybody. We should be opposing this bill before us.

Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak in this debate on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011, because for me it represents one of the most stark contrasts between us on the government benches and the conservatives opposite. It really goes to the heart of how political parties recognise what it means to be an ordinary worker in Australia and the things that really matter to ordinary workers in Australia—namely, protection of their rights at work, the assurance that they will continue to have a job and the assurance that their rights at work will not be unreasonably interfered with. That is entirely what this debate is about and has always been about. So I am very pleased to be able to speak on a bill that will have the effect of abolishing the ABCC.

The ABCC is one of the many legacies of the Howard government that has seen workers targeted. It really saw workers as the enemy. It was the masthead of the Howard government's industrial relations—and it appears, from the tone of the debate today from those opposite, that it continues to be the masthead of the Leader of the Opposition's policies for Australian workers.

Earlier I caught a little bit of the contribution of the member for Mayo. In addition to all the usual ideologically driven arguments that come from the opposition about the rights of workers and about ensuring that we are tough on workers, the member included a line that, as I recall, said something about the ABCC legislation bringing the rule of law back to the industry. I find that deeply ironic. It seems to me that this debate is entirely about arbitrarily depriving one group of people in our society of certain rights. My conception of the rule of law has always been that it is about ensuring that no-one in a society is arbitrarily deprived of their rights. So it is extraordinary to me that that was the tenor of the argument coming from the member for Mayo earlier today.

This government committed to abolishing the ABCC. It did so at the election, and today I am very pleased to be able to speak to the bill that will achieve that. It really is time for the ABCC to go. At the core of Labor's industrial relations system is fairness. The ABCC, from its very inception, represented everything that was unfair in the Howard government's workplace policies. In my electorate I have certainly had a number of constituents who work in the construction industry and who have come up to see me at mobile offices to tell me about their unease with the ABCC. In addition to concerns about all the practical things the ABCC been capable of doing in the past, the ABCC is symbolic. It says to these workers that they are undervalued, that they are devalued, that their rights are not regarded as significant—certainly by the Howard government—and that they as construction workers are vulnerable to having their industrial rights interfered with.

Although I know that some changes were made to the operation of the ABCC in 2010, including some changes that reflected the recommendations of Justice Murray Wilcox in relation to the use of coercive powers, construction workers still know that the Howard government originally established the ABCC for the express purpose of targeting them. They do hard work and they do work that can be dangerous, and they expect that their industrial rights will be upheld and respected.

We made a commitment to the Australian people that we would replace the ABCC with a new body to provide a balanced framework for cooperative and productive workplace relations in the building and construction industry. Apart from anything else in this debate, it is simply the case that the ABCC is not an appropriate regulator. It needs to be replaced with a new body that is part of the mainstream fair work system, a system that is working well.

The result of the 2007 federal election made the public's intentions about their work rights very clear. It told us that the public was not prepared to tolerate the kind of arbitrary and harsh interference with their work rights that the Howard government was trying to put over. It told us that the public understood that workers, particularly construction workers, were being targeted by the Howard government for purely ideological reasons—because it was always Howard's plans to smash the unions and to smash workers, just as it is the Leader of the Opposition's plan to do so today. The Leader of the Opposition is trying to play nice and pretend that he is interested in workers at the moment—manufacturing workers in particular, it seems. The fact that he is keeping up this rather elaborate pretence while at the same time abandoning support for the car industry and the manufacturing workers whom it supports is a truly valiant effort, but I do not think that the Australian public are quite so easily taken in. They know that, at any opportunity, the Liberals will take a swipe at our Fair Work system and that, at any opportunity, the Liberals will undermine Fair Work Australia. We saw it during the Qantas dispute and we hear it almost daily in their remarks in this place.

Even the process of developing this legislation shows the stark contrast between Labor and the conservatives. This legislation has been developed through consultation, with expert contributions from Justice Murray Wilcox, consultation with industry and, most importantly, dialogue with working people. The government carried out extensive consultation with industry, with unions and with state and territory governments in 2008-09 as part of the development of this legislation for the previous parliament. Justice Wilcox also consulted widely with stakeholders in the building and construction industry as part of his 2009 report.

We on this side know that our construction industry is critical to the national economy, to jobs and to productivity. When the Liberals put in place the ABCC, they took a heavy-handed and clumsy approach to the regulation of an industry which is responsible not only for the livelihoods of its workers and their families but also for the health of our economy. It was driven by an obsession with diluting workers' rights.

The bill before us abolishes the ABCC and establishes a new regulator, the Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate, which will operate in accordance with community expectations and a fair and just workplace relations system. The Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate will operate under a new framework for the industry, which will be confined to on-site building work.

The bill also removes existing building-industry-specific laws that had provided higher penalties for building industry participants for breaches of industrial law and broader circumstances under which industrial action attracts penalties in relation to the building industry. The new regulator will also provide information, advice and assistance to all building industry participants regarding their rights and their obligations under the law as well as seeking to improve the standard of occupational health and safety in the construction industry.

Most importantly, in my view, this bill contains a number of new provisions and protections—provisions such as those which ensure that a person can be represented by a lawyer of their choice and that legal professional privilege and public interest immunity are available. New provisions are also going to be put in place to ensure payment of legal, travel and accommodation expenses and any earnings lost due to giving evidence. The bill also includes provisions which repeal the previous compulsory interview confidentiality undertakings which prevent interviewees telling other parties what took place at an interview. I believe all of these things are extremely important protections and I am very pleased to see that they are being put in place in the bill that is before us.

The topic of coercive powers has come up already in today's debate, and it has certainly been a subject of considerable discussion in the community, and rightly so. As previous members on this side have reflected, when powers such as these are being put in place, we as a community and we as a parliament need to reflect on why they are being put in place, whether it is appropriate that they remain in place and for how long. Certainly due consideration has been given to all those things in the construction of the bill before us today.

I know that there have been calls, including calls this morning, for the coercive powers provisions to be removed now, and I do hear those calls. While coercive powers remain in the bill before us on the basis of the recommendations made by Justice Murray Wilcox, it is important to understand the kinds of safeguards that are being put in place, including external oversight of the exercise of those powers. I will mention a few of those safeguards today, but they are fairly extensive.

The safeguards will require that a presidential member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal is satisfied that a case has been made for the use of those powers on each occasion that they are used. As I mentioned, the safeguards require that an individual is able to be represented by a lawyer of their choice. Provisions exist for legal professional privilege and public interest immunity to apply, and safeguards apply in relation to the reimbursement of people who are summonsed to give evidence and to provide information at an examination.

The safeguards also go on to require that all examinations are to be videotaped and that the Commonwealth Ombudsman will monitor and review those examinations and provide reports to parliament on the exercise of those powers. There is an additional safeguard that, prior to allowing an examination to occur, the presidential member of the AAT needs to be satisfied of a series of criteria, including, amongst other things, a requirement that an investigation is actually underway and that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person to whom the application relates has the information or the documents that are being sought through investigation and is capable of giving evidence relevant to the investigation. It also requires that the presidential member of the AAT consider whether there are other methods of obtaining the relevant information and whether they have actually been undertaken or are appropriate.

Finally, it is extremely important to note that there is to be a sunset in relation to the use of coercive powers, to apply at the end of three years. As I have said, given the gravity of the use of coercive powers in any circumstances, it is extremely important that there is a timely review of the use of those coercive powers, that there be appropriate safeguards put in place for the use of those coercive powers and that they be considered regularly and reviewed. All of those things are features of the bill before us today.

Ultimately this bill is about restoring the confidence of a group of ordinary workers in the construction industry about their industrial rights. It is about restoring balance to the rights of participants in the construction industry as a whole. It is about respecting their rights under a reasonable fair work system, rather than the extreme, unfair and ideologically driven system that was put forward by the Howard government and seems, unfortunately, to be being revisited daily by those opposite. The opposition want to see a return to Work Choices. They want to see a return to those things that were rejected outright by the Australian public in their decisions at the 2007 and 2010 elections in relation to their industrial rights. None of this surprises me, because they are out of touch on so many issues. They have revealed themselves particularly in recent days in their unwillingness to ask questions about matters of economic policy or matters relating to the future of this country in areas as diverse as the minerals resource rent tax, health and education—all of those things which we on this side are regularly concerned about. They show themselves to be out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Australian workers today in their position in relation to this piece of legislation.

They have also shown themselves to be out of touch in relation to ordinary workers on other occasions, including in their opposition to the superannuation increase that will occur under the government's proposal for a minerals resource rent tax. They have no regard for the circumstances of ordinary workers now. Nor do those on the other side have any regard for the circumstances that ordinary Australian workers might find themselves in on their retirement. We on this side want to ensure that ordinary Australian workers have the funds to be able to enjoy their retirement. Those on the other side have no regard for the superannuation arrangements of ordinary Australian workers or for ensuring the continued prosperity of ordinary individuals.

During the global financial crisis we saw more evidence that those on the other side have no regard for the jobs of workers in this country. Indeed, there were some substantial and notable absences during the debate in relation to the surplus and the way in which it might support jobs for workers in this country. Those on the other side have no plan for investment in new technologies and new industries while those on this side have a plan for the future of ordinary Australian workers as we invest in the National Broadband Network, and inevitably the industry that that will generate and as we encourage a cleaner energy future through the clean energy future package, and all of the things that that will mean for the industries and workers of the future. On all fronts, those opposite have nothing to say on the rights, continued employment, prosperity, retirement income, health or education of workers.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I start to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011, I would like to respond to the diatribe that we just heard. In my 18 months as the member for Herbert, not one worker has come into my office telling me that they have been done over by the ABCC. What I have had is a lot of builders coming to me and telling me that the red tape that this government and the state government are imposing on the industry is killing the industry. What I see in the industry is people being paid above award wages because employers want to keep good workers. The ABCC is not anti-worker; it is pro-work.

I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2011. The purpose of this bill is to abolish the successful Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, the ABCC, and replace it with a new agency, the Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate. It also provides for a new independent assessor's office, which will be able to determine what examination notice papers should apply to specific projects. It also removes laws related to the building industry that provide for higher penalties on those found to have breached industrial law and a wider set of conditions that attract these penalties.

The coalition established the ABCC back in 2005 in response to the Cole royal commission's findings of rampant unlawful and inappropriate industrial conduct in the construction industry. Part of those findings emphasised the lack of powers and resources that the regulatory body had at the time and the consequences of this. The ABCC has been the policeman of the industry, dealing with these problems in a tough but fair and balanced manner so that heavy-handed tactics are no longer what the industry is known for. The industry cannot afford to return to the days when unlawful tactics became rife as a result of weak oversight bodies.

It is clear that this bill is another example of the Labor Party giving in to the unions, their lords and masters. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union does not like the ABCC because it has been effective at holding militant industrial relations antics to account. The government does not want to scrap this for the good of the construction industry; they want to scrap it for the good of the union, regardless of the outcome.

Geoff Lyons (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You want to put workers under threat.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Bass, how many people in Tasmania have a job, mate? Over the past year, we have seen a raft of industrial action in which people have not played by the rules. The last thing that we need right now is to abolish the watchdog responsible for ensuring that either side in an industrial dispute does not get away with underhanded tactics. The construction industry has a bleak history in this area in Australia. A tough commissioner was needed to clean this up and the ABCC has done that. Under their watch, productivity in the construction industry has increased by 10 per cent and inflation has reduced by 1.2 per cent. Replacing this with a new weaker inspectorate threatens to return the industry to the bad old days of devious union activity that hurts business and the economy.

On top of that, unlike the independent ABCC the new building inspectorate will be controlled by the minister. Everybody knows that independence is critical to ensuring that any workplace relations body is fair and balanced. That has played a big part in why the ABCC has been so successful. This bill will also allow for ABCC powers to be switched off on specific work sites. Absurd as it sounds, this means that unions will be able to try and have the law simply not apply to that workplace.

Townsville is a rapidly growing city and as such its construction industry is a key part of the local economy and the local community. The city is continuously expanding as new homes and new suburbs are built to cater for the population growth while the opportunities in the North Queensland economy have led to a number of business construction projects as well. Changes that threaten the construction industry have big consequences for the city. I have been speaking to builders across Townsville and I have heard their concerns about these changes.

Darrell Gribble of Liveconstruction lamented the burden of overregulation on the industry and the effect that it has on their ability to their job. I have listened to people express concerns about the risk that a weaker industry watchdog poses in terms of expanding the access of unions to workplaces and the impact that this will have on their work and on their productivity. Adrian Gabrielli of Gabrielli Constructions told me how worried he and other builders are about the consequences for their workplaces and about the impact that these changes will have on construction costs. Only trouble can come when you do not have a policeman on the watch. As he pointed out, all big businesses have had to bend to unreasonable demands issued by unions and this change will just give them more scope to wield their power, leaving building companies at their mercy. The system that we have at the moment has kept fairness in the building industry while allowing businesses to do their jobs instead of coming up against unions intent on stirring up trouble rather than raising genuine issues.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.