Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work ( Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2012. It is interesting that it took the government only 10 days to announce this legislation, but only after the Leader of the Opposition had announced the coalition's Better Plan for Accountability and Transparency for Registered Organisations. It is flattering that Labor has sought to emulate the stance that had been articulated by the Leader of the Opposition, but, as usual, Labor's plan is lacking in a number of key areas: it still sees Fair Work Australia in control of investigating registered organisations; it does not expressly provide Fair Work Australia with the ability to cooperate with police; the requirements and penalties are still not in line with the Corporations Act; and it has no reporting mechanism on why investigations are going overtime.

The coalition's plan, on the other hand, seeks to make sure that members of registered organisations can be assured that their money is being used for the right things and for their interests. There are rules to ensure that companies and their boards of directors do the right thing—the same rules should apply to registered organisations and their officers. Our plan seeks to ensure that registered organisations and their officers are as accountable and transparent as companies and their directors, and that we have a level playing field where we ensure that everybody plays by the same rules. It is clear from the experience with the HSU that Fair Work Australia is not up to the job of making sure that registered organisations do the right thing—it is either a model of incompetence or is engaging—or has engaged in—a deliberate and overt go-slow to protect the government.

The coalition's plan proposes to remove from Fair Work Australia both the investigative and the compliance powers over registered organisations and give those powers instead to a new, genuinely independent body, which will be called the Registered Organisations Commission. The Registered Organisations Commission will have stronger powers. It will be tasked with acting quickly and efficiently and will be required to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies where it is in the interests of the public to do so.

By contrast, in this bill and under Labor's proposed changes Fair Work Australia would continue to be responsible for registered organisations. Under the government's plan, former union bosses are going to regulate union bosses. It is akin to putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. The rules and requirements which would apply as a result of the proposed changes are still significantly weaker than those currently applicable to company directors. Company directors are subject to 697 federal and state provisions that impose legal liabilities, including massive fines and jail time.

While the penalties proposed in the bill are in line with other civil penalties in the Fair Work Act, they still fall considerably short of those required under the Corporations Act. It is the disjointed and inconsistent nature of this regulation that creates opportunities for people to find loopholes. This is disappointing but also expected of this government.

Under the coalition's plan, the penalties would be the same across the board, whether for union bosses or company directors. It is worth noting that we can enforce penalties all we like but, at the end of the day, it is individual behavioural systems that let the everybody down. This point was highlighted in an article by Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks when he said:

Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.

As we discussed in earlier debates today, that rings very true. In a perfect world, citizens would be more aware of their 'moral' responsibility; however, as we all know, this is not necessarily the case.

While this bill seeks to expand police cooperation powers, it does not clearly state that Fair Work Australia can cooperate with police. Given the track record of Fair Work Australia, it is important that we get clarity on whether there will be cooperation in this area. There is also no express provision to allow Fair Work Australia to provide a brief of evidence to the DPP when it is important to give express powers to allow this to happen. This is a bill designed by a former union boss to regulate union bosses that sees former union bosses as the 'cops on the beat'. It is a weak bill that does not go far enough and we call on the government to support the common-sense amendments that we will be proposing.

These amendments will include: to give specific permission for Fair Work Australia to prepare a brief of evidence; to ensure that the investigation is conducted by Fair Work Australia, not outsourced entirely, as this bill would allow; to ensure that the disclosure of how money is spent is provided to Fair Work Australia as well as to union members; to have reports to parliament on why investigations are taking so long, when the investigations last for more than a year, and then every six months thereafter; to make the provision relating to police cooperation very clear so that Fair Work Australia can cooperate with police at the commencement, during and at the conclusion of an investigation; and to increase the penalties for misusing members' funds, in line with the Corporations Act. At the end of the day these bills and the penalties imposed should not be compromised to keep union bosses happy. They should be designed to protect everyday working Australians that fund these unions in the first place.

In terms of the case with the HSU, it is disgraceful to see health workers' money being spent for personal purposes by union bosses and employees. Our health workers, who look after our ageing population, work with the disabled and support the sick, are not usually rolling in dough. They work hard to pay their bills and pay their unions to represent their best interests. If I were part of this workforce paying union dues, I would be outraged by the recent reports in the media about what has gone on and the outrageous, unauthorised expenditure of union funds. It is because of this investigation that we stand here today debating this proposed legislation. We have maintained all along that the process Fair Work Australia has undertaken on this investigation was severely lacking. The final report that was produced had 1,200 pages, with many pertaining to the former secretary of the HSU.

We will not oppose this bill but will seek to apply sensible amendments to make it work better in everybody's interests, as we agree that something needs to be done to ensure that money being paid by members to registered organisations is used for proper purposes. As previously stated, and as usual, the coalition have a better plan and we will seek to improve the proposed legislation by making the amendments I referred to earlier.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is obvious, as a number of members have already made clear in their contributions to this debate, that the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2012 is a response to some pretty concerning allegations that have been made in recent times about expenditure of union money in this country. There should be a fundamental principle that applies whatever your union, and that is that members' funds are spent for the advancement of members' interests.

Unions are one of the few organisations that we have left in this country where members are able to exercise some very real control over the direction of their organisation and who runs it. You will find more democracy and control in a union than you will find in a publicly listed or a privately listed company or in many incorporated associations. It is a fundamental principle of unions, but it of course relies on members being properly informed about what happens in their union, including in their union leadership.

To the extent that this bill aims to provide members of unions with more information about what is happening in their own organisations, we are supportive of the intent of the bill. We note that the ACTU, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, also supports this legislation. However, I do wish to raise one comment, which is that I wonder whether, in their haste to introduce this bill, the government have created in some ways an unlevel playing field.

The requirements for disclosure of remuneration that are found in this bill would be a very good principle if they in fact applied across the board. But what we know is that, in many instances, unions and workers will find themselves negotiating with private proprietary limited companies and those companies may be very big and very powerful. There is no obligation on the five most senior staff within a privately listed company to tell the union or the workforce what they are earning and yet there will be an obligation on the people in the union to disclose their remuneration. So, potentially, as a result of this bill, we will have a situation where a union official—and it might not even be an elected official; it might be a staff member—is sitting down across the table from a very well paid human resources manager or consultant or one of the directors of the company, and one side will know what the other gets paid but the reverse will not be the case.

I am concerned that that may lead to a situation of significant power imbalance between workers and their representatives on the one hand and employers who may be very big and powerful employers on the other. For all the reasons I outlined before, that is not enough reason to stand in the way of this bill. But we do note that perhaps, in their haste, the government have tipped the playing field slightly against the people that this is supposed to assist.

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

I rise also to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2012 and support the amendments moved by this side of the House. I will begin my remarks by quoting from another member in his contribution late last week. The member said:

In my experience, the vast majority of trade unions are professionally managed by highly competent and dedicated people who act on the basis of sound professional advice. But, regrettably, there have been exceptions to that. Officers have sought to obtain personal benefit or benefit on behalf of others at the expense of members of their union. Reported instances include not only misapplying funds and resources of the union but also using the privileges of their office to attract and obtain services and benefits from third parties.

Aside from issues of profiteering, secret commissions and tax avoidance, these undeclared benefits can compromise officials. Rather than diligently representing the interests of their members without fear or favour they effectively ‘run dead’ as a result of these side deals. This is no less than graft and corruption in its most reprehensible form, and it occurs at the expense of vulnerable members whose interests they have been charged with representing.

That was in the early part of the contribution from the member for Barton, who made, I thought, an extremely good contribution to this debate last Thursday. They are words that I very much agree with.

Unions play a fundamental role in Australian workplaces and people have the right, and should always have the right in our free and open democracy, to join a trade union. And to ensure that the trade union is managed properly and within the law, you need to ensure that the laws that govern them give people faith that they can trust that the money they are contributing will be used to represent their best interests.

The same applies to the employer who decides to join a group of like-minded employers to have their interests represented in industrial relations in this country. It is an important element of running a business, dealing with your staff. It is a complicated area of law which very rarely goes through a period of five years without having substantial change in one form or another. So these are important institutions in our country. Trade unions are a very important institution in our society.

What we have seen in the last 2½ to three years—and have probably seen only very few times in the past—is a fundamental undermining of the role of unions and the faith that people have in their operation. I think that the member for Barton is right to say in his contribution that the vast majority of trade union officials are professional and that the vast majority of unions are managed professionally by highly competent and dedicated people, and many of them in this parliament, who were formerly trade union officials, fit into that category. They care deeply about their perspective, they care deeply about the working people who join trade unions, and they have sought in their career to represent them to the level that they have risen in being elected to the federal parliament, and I think that genuinely of many of those on the other side.

But what, I think, should pain us all is that laws—laws which I have some familiarity with—have for some time been so badly abused and so badly misused. It must cause many of those on the other side a great deal of pain to see the institutions which are so valued and so important in our society undermined by those who are—in the member for Barton's words—'profiteering', seeking 'secret commissions' and practising 'tax avoidance' which is 'no less than graft and corruption in its most reprehensible form'.

The allegations and the evidence which have been produced in relation to the Health Services Union are an example. No worse allegations could have been made. The fact that we are having to debate this bill in such haste, as the member for Melbourne commented, shows just how shameful this episode has been. It has dragged out for a period of four years because the agency which has been enlisted to investigate it has dragged its feet, for whatever reason. It has been shown not to have the capabilities or the capacity to investigate thoroughly enough or to bring justice to those members whose funds have been used in inappropriate ways.

Putting aside the contemporary and real political debate in relation to a member of this parliament who had involvement in these issues, and putting aside whether he was at fault or not, there is no doubt that this behaviour went on. There is no doubt that this behaviour was allowed to go on for a very long period of time, and there is no doubt that many within the union movement knew that it was going on. There is no doubt about that. A very recent piece from Aaron Patrick in the Australian Financial Review steps clearly through what people knew and when they knew, and the extent of the involvement of people in the party of those who sit opposite must bring great pain to many.

So this bill is an attempt by the government to address issues which have become clear in the HSU matter and other matters that the member for Barton refers to further in his speech, and he makes the point that the Prime Minister has some familiarity with some of those similar issues. To those involved in industrial relations, practitioners across the country, I think people are genuinely shocked at the level, as the member for Barton said, of graft and corruption which has gone on, and are surprised that these measures have had to be enacted in the first place.

We say, and rightly, that this bill does not go far enough. In fact the Leader of the Opposition announced, just 10 days before this bill was announced, stronger measures, and they are measures that we move as amendments to this bill. What we need now—and what we quite obviously needed in the past but what was not fully understood—are the strongest possible measures, measures which are consistent with responsibilities that corporations are required to meet. We need these measures because the faith of people who are paying their union dues week in and week out has been fundamentally undermined by the evidence as to and the examples through the Health Services Union. For those who do not understand or know, the Health Services Union workers are the people who push trolleys around hospitals: the hospital orderlies. These are not well-paid people. These are people who usually come from a migrant background, a non-English-speaking background. They are usually low skilled; although, some current members of the HSU are undoubtedly skilled employees. Many are unskilled and many are exactly the sort of workers who should be members of a trade union because they do need assistance in negotiations.

It has been a fundamental principle I have always supported that if someone wants to be represented they should have that opportunity. So it must pain all of us to see what has happened to these people who have committed their small amount of funds, albeit from their pay packets, every week, funds that could be used for all sorts of other purposes to make their life easier. In doing so they have knowingly made their own choice to commit to an organisation because they think that it is helping them to better their circumstances and that it is an institution that will negotiate with employers on their behalf to ensure a far better outcome in their workplace. But what they now know is that the money they contributed, for however long they have been contributing to that institution, has not always gone to these good causes, including the good cause of fighting for their rights and responsibilities.

We hear much from those opposite about the rights of working people and about ensuring that working people have fair pay and conditions and fair workplaces. We currently hear in question time the minister for workplace relations trying to create each day a political issue out of state legislation because he claims working people are going to be worse off, yet we have not heard the same minister and other members who also argue strongly on these matters—like the member for Wakefield and the member for Kingston, in my own state of South Australia—express the great outrage that they should be expressing when it comes to these matters. This bill is before the House not because the Labor Party want to reform the way that registered organisations operate but because they want to cover their great shame at the way that these workers have had their money ripped off from them in unimaginable ways. They have been ripped off to an enormous extent. There are suggestions that the amount of money ripped off from these union members could be somewhere around $20 million. The sums are quite extraordinary.

I have always been uncomfortable with the fact that trade union members contribute money to a political party whether they wish to or not and I think that is an area of reform that this country needs to consider. I know the new Premier of Queensland is considering such things, and I congratulate him for it. Early on in his premiership he is proving to be someone who will get things done, someone who is setting a course for the right things to be done. And this is a right thing to do. To give people choice about where their money is going is the right thing to do, particularly in the circumstances which we have seen in this HSU debacle, this shameful episode in Australian industrial relations history which is not yet fully investigated or prosecuted. So this bill is a shameful attempt by the minister for workplace relations to cover what is an ongoing sore for the union movement and the Labor Party which undermines the faith Australians have in these important institutions. The Australian Labor Party is an important institution as well but currently the leadership is trying to undermine as much as it possibly can people's faith in it.

As Senator Abetz has said time and time again, in relation to this bill—and the member for Forde repeated this before—it is true that this bill is designed by a former union boss to regulate union bosses and it sees former union bosses as the cops on the beat. It is completely conflicted. It is weak at its very foundations. It will not do the job it needs to do to ensure recovery of the faith that has been lost in this whole process, this whole shambolic HSU episode with its factionalism and nastiness and with its 'graft and corruption', to quote the member for Barton's terrific contribution last Thursday—reflecting the freedom of the back bench that he now has to outline some of these concerns. He did so in a quite fulsome way, as the House should be reminded. Obviously, he knows and he has seen all this as he makes the point in his contribution that in his time in legal practice these issues have been played out. That is the most concerning thing of all, that what has gone on at the HSU could be rife in the union movement. Certainly the member for Barton was indicating last week that there are concerns about other episodes and other examples and that these are matters which should be looked at, and I am sure that in the future there will be more consideration given to ensuring that the money of trade unionists, the people who decide willingly to contribute their own funds for their own betterment in the workplace, is being used in an appropriate fashion.

Sadly, this bill will not ensure that that is the case. The proposed amendments that have been put up by the coalition will ensure that that is the case. Certainly, they will ensure that there will be a greater level of transparency to ensure that people are being represented and are getting what they think they should be getting from the product that they are purchasing, which is membership of an organisation which seeks to assist with their working life, not for their money to be spent on the most objectionable indulgences by its officials. This has been a shameful episode in Australian industrial relations history and this bill should be tougher so that it does not happen again.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being approximately 1.45 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.