Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia. Will the minister update the House on how re-establishing the ABCC will promote jobs and growth in Australia's vital resources sector, including in my electorate of Durack? Is the minister aware of any alternatives to this approach?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Durack for her question and note that she has not only the biggest electorate in the country but also one of the most productive when you consider the state of the resources sector. It was a great pleasure to join the Prime Minister last week in visiting Durack and the US$54 billion Gorgon facility and to hold a roundtable with community and business leaders in Karratha.

Without the resources and energy sector in Durack, Australia would not be the largest exporter of iron ore in the world or soon to become the largest exporter of LNG in the world. In addition to Gorgon you have Pluto and you will soon have Wheatstone. You also have the Prelude floating LNG facility, the Roy Hill facility, other BHP, Rio and Fortescue assets as well as Port Hedland, which is the largest bulk exporting port in the world.

But I am asked: are there any alternatives to this approach? The greatest alternative comes from those opposite, because they are the great threat to the prosperity of the people of Durack. They are actually dancing to the tune of the union piper with their position to block the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and to block the passage of the registered organisations bill. This is despite the Heydon royal commission finding that in 2008 the developer of the Blacktip gas reserves near Darwin paid $1 million to the MUA to keep the peace, that dredging companies in WA made payments to the so-called 'MUA training funds' for 'no appreciable benefit to the company other than to have a working relationship with the union' and that the AWU got $25,000 from a contractor working on a gas platform as a price to end unlawful picketing.

It is no wonder that Kathy Jackson described the Leader of the Opposition, when he was going to become the Minister for Workplace Relations, as 'Dracula in charge of the blood bank'. She said of the Leader of the Opposition that he is 'an international grandmaster in the process of using unions as chess pieces in ALP factional warfare.' But nothing tops what happened in Fremantle in February 2013, the day after Chris Cain, the Secretary of the MUA in WA, addressed the union's militancy conference and told the gathering, 'Laws need to be broken; you're going to get locked up.' Then none other than the Leader of the Opposition the next day went and addressed the MUA and said:

There's no other place I'd rather be today anywhere in Australia and I mean that with all my heart … I wish we could bottle a bit of the spirit here and spread it on perhaps some members of the Labor caucus …

The Leader of the Opposition and his union policies have— (Time expired)

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.